Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  ‘Mirageless soul,’ he thought, ‘what is going on?’

  He pulled in his line and threw everything into his fishing bag in a mixed-up jumble, including a couple of uncleaned trout. He headed for home along the shoreline, fumbling at the ties of his bag as he ran.

  The cloud overtook him as he raced through Kallard’s vegetable farm. A wall, a moving wall, so thick it seemed solid…At the last moment he stopped running, knowing he was going to be engulfed. He turned instead to face the wind, as if to defy it, and saw something glaring at him from the cloud. A face. The kind of thing you saw in your worst nightmares, only this was alive. Real. He heard the rage of it above the wind. He saw its hungry eyes, its fangs with serrated edges dripping saliva. It howled. It clawed at the air.

  He swore, panicking. And then the dust billowed over him, around him. He coughed, choked and dived into Farmer Kallard’s mustard greens, burying his face in the plants and pulling off his bolero so he could use it to cover his nose. The noise of his panting was obliterated by the whining of a wind that sounded the way he felt: lost, despairing, alone. The sound of a thousand abandoned children, calling out their terror. Something fell nearby, shaking the earth on impact.

  And then it all began to fade. The wind passed on, the whining died to a far-off skirl and then into nothing. An uncanny stillness settled over the farms and the lake. Stillness, but not quite silence. He heard snuffling, snorting grunts nearby. He stirred and dust trickled from his clothes in rivers of red. He shook his head, showering his shoulders with dust, surprised to find himself still alive. He hauled himself up into a sitting position to look around. He blinked. He didn’t recognise his world. Everything was silted with red dust. The stalks of the mustard greens were broken, the leaves wilted and brown. The surface of the lake beyond was filmed thick with a scum of dust. When he stood, whorls of powdery red eddied in the air once more, reluctant to settle.

  Stumbling, coughing, he again started out for home. Some fifty paces further on, in Farmer Malthorn’s yam patch, he found the source of the snuffling. A creature sprawled across the way, its tail lashing in the irrigation ditch on one side, its face leering at him from the centre of the path. There was intelligence in its calculating gaze. Its body had split open when it landed and greenish liquid oozed from a gaping tear in its side. The grass under its body shrivelled and smoked and died.

  The lad’s gaze locked into the stare of slitted black pupils and golden irises. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t drag himself away from the attraction of those calculating eyes. Strange thoughts filled his head; memories, each one unpleasant, of when he’d been in some kind of trouble or another. His little sister, whom he loathed and tormented and loved in equal parts, figured in most of these recollections, usually crying. They weren’t memories he wanted to recall because they invariably featured an act of his own meanness, but he couldn’t stop them filling his head.

  He took a step towards the beast, and then stopped, puzzled by his own behaviour. And yet then he took another step, as though it was drawing him on, slave on an invisible thread. He knew he should flee. That was the awful part; he knew it would kill him, yet he couldn’t stop. He even knew what it was, though he’d never seen one before: a Ravage beast. They weren’t supposed to be able to leave the Mirage, yet here it was, in the vale, about to kill him.

  He couldn’t run. Couldn’t even scream. He took a step closer. Cold skimmed down his back. He took another step, and another. Closer. The beast smiled and lashed its tail.

  And then it gave a shudder and more liquid spilled out of its wound in a sudden flood, to pool in the irrigation ditch like stagnant bog water. The creature groaned, and died.

  When his father came looking for him sometime later, he found his son shaking on the path, unable, in his terror, to speak. The monster was already rotting.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Half a month passed before Tarran appeared in Arrant’s mind again, an interval marked by a confusing mix of loneliness and awakening friendships, or of despair at his humiliating failures and pleasure in his occasional successes.

  He’d spent a wonderful day exploring Madrinyan drainage with the buildermaster and discussing the plans for a new system. In Tyrans they built with stone and marble; in Madrinya they used sun-baked bricks strengthened with reed strips, so they’d had a long conversation about how that influenced building techniques. On his way back through the city, his guard trailing behind, he’d seen the streets with a more appreciative eye. He was beginning to love the simplicity of the buildings now that he noticed the way the austerity was always coupled with the intricate beauty of a smaller feature, perhaps the flamboyant fecundity of a garden, or the patterns of an agate path, or the inlays of decorative stones on a balustrade or the carvings on window shutters.

  He’d also enjoyed his first attempt at dubblup. His necklet had been so warm it had almost burned his neck, and he suspected the magic of its runes had played a significant role in the shleth’s cooperation, especially in its willingness to extend its feeding arm at the crucial moment during mounting. He felt himself more in tune with shleths than he had ever been with horses, and as timing was so important when you wanted to mount a moving animal, that connection proved invaluable.

  Afterwards, as he led the shleth he had borrowed from the Mirager’s stables back towards the pavilions, Serenelle dropped into step beside him, her gaze fixed on his face. He raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘I’ve never known anyone to succeed on their first try, let alone do it twice,’ she said. ‘Are you just lucky, Arrant Temellin, or have you been practising?’

  He shrugged. ‘I understand my mount. No more than that.’

  She frowned. ‘There’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there? That stupid brother of mine might have picked up more than he can lift.’ And she turned and walked away before he could ask what she meant. Or which brother. Was she warning him out of kindness, or in order to make him fearful? He had no idea. She was an enigma.

  Balancing out his dubblup successes were his failures in his classes with Ungar, and his humiliation in several of his general classes when he couldn’t call any colour into his cabochon as had been required. Worse, he’d found several unsigned notes among his things, written in different hands, deploring his presumption in thinking he should be Mirager-heir, and whispers continued to circulate about how he could be a danger to other students.

  His first combat classes taught by Firgan, however, had gone relatively well, although Firgan had several times subtly pointed out to the rest of the class how foreign his fighting style was. It was cleverly done, seemingly without malice—but Arrant knew it had been a deliberate move to make him appear less Kardi and therefore less suitable as a future Mirager.

  ‘You just have to ride it out,’ Temellin said one evening over dinner. ‘Ignore the rumours and innuendo and act in a manner which shows that you are a true Kardi with our interests at heart.’ He didn’t say how it was possible to show himself to be a true Magoroth, however. They both knew his success with his cabochon was crucial to his acceptance, and it wasn’t happening.

  ‘I shall arrange for our trip to the Shiver Barrens,’ Temellin added. ‘It’s time for you to get your sword.’

  As he left the Mirager’s rooms a little later, Arrant tried to convince himself that his father was happier with him. He didn’t succeed. Temellin could not quite hide his unease or his disappointment and Arrant was unable to blame him. They had not discussed it that night, but it lay there like a canker eating away at his soul: Arrant would never be confirmed as heir, indeed even Temellin would not countenance it, if he could not learn the secret behind power control.

  As he lay in bed that night, Arrant fingered his cabochon, depressed. Instinct told him that there would be no miracles for him—no sudden awakening of a latent talent. The unpredictability of his control over his power had been determined before he was even born, and nothing would ever change that.

  When he woke
in the morning, his brother was there, in his mind. And something was terribly wrong. He thought it must have had something to do with what had happened in the Mirage and he started to ask, but Tarran interrupted.

  How could you do that?

  ‘Do what?’

  Deny my existence to my father!

  ‘What are you talking about? I didn’t!’

  You know what I mean. It’s all there in your head—’

  ‘You’ve been rooting around in my memories while I was asleep? How could you do that!’

  How could you deny my existence?

  ‘I didn’t!’

  Yes, you did! As good as. You implied it. You implied that to believe in me would be silly, and you weren’t so stupid. You don’t want me to know my father. You want to keep him all to yourself—

  ‘Of course I don’t! Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, you had no right to go rummaging in my memories when I was asleep.’

  But Tarran would not be diverted. No, you had no right to deny me to my father. I wanted to know him. I was dependent on you, and you failed me! Without you, how can my father know me? I needed you to tell him about me. Instead, you denied me. After all we have been to each other—how could you do such a thing? Why did you do such a thing?

  Tarran’s sense of betrayal filled his mind with devastated bitterness. Arrant tried to justify himself, but stuttered in his explanation, knowing some things can never be excused. ‘It was just—I was going to tell him—I was waiting for you to come back. How could I explain you if you weren’t there? We can go and see him now—’

  But Tarran had gone. Arrant tried calling after him, but the silence was the soundless emptiness of something that had vanished more thoroughly than a pricked soap bubble. He was gone, and he wasn’t coming back.

  Aghast, Arrant thought, ‘Acheron’s mists, what have I just done?’

  That evening, as usual, Arrant made his way to the Mirager’s quarters for dinner. When he entered the dining room, it was to find that he and Temellin were not alone. Garis was there. And the skinny girl who had helped him escape Lesgath’s ward. He stared at her, mind racing. A fragment of remembered conversation from the last time he had seen Garis in this room surfaced: his father saying, ‘Samia is in Madrinya, Garis, staying with her aunt.’ Samia. Sam. Garis’s daughter. Of course.

  Garis grinned at him. ‘How have you been surviving your first half month, Arrant?’

  He smiled back and tried not to lie. ‘I’m, um, all right.’

  ‘You haven’t met my daughter, have you? This is Samia the Savage. She persuaded her nurse in Asufa that she really, really needed to see her aunt in Madrinya.’ He looked at her fondly.

  Samia pouted playfully. ‘I came cos I knew you wouldn’t come home through Ordensa, and I was sick of waiting to see you again.’

  ‘And you were fed up with school. Admit it.’

  ‘Not with school. I like school. Well, most of the time. But I was sick of being looked after by Theura-viska. I’m too old for a nurse. Besides, motherless girls of my age need to see their aunts. For women’s talk.’

  Temellin sucked in his cheeks, and Garis waggled a finger at his daughter. ‘I was not born yesterday, young lady.’ He looked over her head to grin at Temellin. ‘Now say hello to the Mirager-heir.’

  ‘Hello, Magori,’ she said politely.

  ‘Hello, Illusa.’ He held out his left hand and they clasped cabochons, neither of them betraying by as much as a blink that they had ever seen each other before.

  ‘Arrant, sit down. The food’s getting cold. And I have news for you.’ Temellin passed the platter of unleavened bread around. ‘We have decided to take you to the Shiver Barrens tomorrow. At first light.’

  Arrant’s heart did something in his chest that resembled a somersault. At last—to enter the sands and receive his sword, the symbol of Magoroth manhood. To walk beneath the sands, to meet a Mirage Maker face to face, to see his brother for the first time. His heart thumped. ‘Oh! Good,’ he said inadequately and turned to Garis. ‘You’re coming too?’

  ‘We are. Samia and me, both. She has been nagging to see the Barrens since she was old enough to ride a shleth, so this seems like a good chance. To get home to Asufa we have to take the same paveway part of the way anyway—as far as the Three Wells Wayhouse. That’s where the turn-off into the Barrens starts. Going to the First Rake will add a few days to the journey, but as she’s missed so much school anyway…’

  ‘I promise to make it up when we get home,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’

  The pang Arrant felt as he listened to their banter delved deep into his mind, turning over his memories, pushing regret to the surface. He exchanged a look with Temellin and he knew they were both thinking the same thing: ‘This is what we missed, not being together. This is what we missed, not being a family.’

  He woke just before dawn with the impression that someone had entered his room. He sat bolt upright, all the hair rising on the back of his neck. In the dim of pre-dawn light filtering in through the windows he never shuttered, he thought he saw his brother standing in his open doorway.

  Tarran! he cried, and the overwhelming joy and relief he felt was as intense a pleasure as he’d ever known. And then he woke properly, and realised there was no one there, and never had been. The door—improperly latched the night before—had swung open in the breeze from the window. It swung gently to and fro on its hinges in the silence of the night.

  And it came home to him, yet again, just how much he had thrown away.

  Oh, Tarran, please come back.

  He lay awake until Eris came. After he had washed, he dubiously eyed the clothes that had been laid out for him on the bed. ‘Aren’t these a little, well, um, fancy?’ He had been about to say ‘flamboyant’, but changed his mind, not wanting to offend the man. Eris was an elderly non-Magor with cataracts, and he was unfailingly helpful in his attempts to make a proper Mirager-heir out of Arrant. ‘I mean, we are going on a journey, not to a banquet or something.’

  ‘It’s what your father had especially made for this trip, Magori.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, well then, of course.’ He resigned himself to wearing a bolero of bright scarlet with a matching cloth belt; an ivory-white shirt that tied with a bow at the throat, and a broad-brimmed hat of shleth leather to match his riding sandals. At least the trousers were plain enough, as was the cloak of warm shleth wool, although it had an ornate brass clasp.

  ‘It’s because you’re getting your sword,’ Eris explained. ‘It’s a very special event in a young man’s life. A time for celebration. ‘Specially for you, being the heir and all. City folk will be lining the streets to cheer you this morning.’

  He was horrified. ‘The non-Magor? They will? But it’s so early in the morning—’

  ‘Never you mind that. They’ll want to get a look at the lad who’ll be Mirager one day, all dressed up, fancy-like, looking as handsome as can be. I’ve packed your ordinary gear as well, but today you wear this. And the day you walk into the sands, too. You’ve got to show respect to the Mirage Makers.’

  Half an hour later, as he rode through the streets with his father at his side and Garis and Samia behind, he wondered if this was how slaves had felt being paraded before customers in a market. Every eye seemed to be on him, assessing. Girls threw flowers and blew kisses, until he was sure his face was the colour of his bolero.

  ‘Oo-er, handsome!’ a young woman shouted.

  ‘Smile and wave,’ Temellin hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

  He obliged, although his smile was sickly, especially when he heard Samia chortling behind him once she had somehow divined his discomfort. ‘Girls,’ he thought in disgust, although the truth was he’d had little to do with any until now.

  Only once they had left Madrinya well behind did Arrant understand how tense he had been ever since arriving in the capital. With the city and the Academy disappearing into the distance, though, he began to relax and enj
oy the ride, even revel in the way his Quyr necklet warmed on his neck until he felt at one with his mount.

  ‘I’ll see Tarran in the Shiver Barrens,’ he told himself. ‘We’ll make it up. I’ll promise to talk to Temellin, and maybe everything will be all right again.’ He had to make it right, because Tarran needed him, needed the shelter of his mind. How could his brother stay sane otherwise? ‘He has to come back. He has to.’

  He tried to stop thinking about it. ‘Do we really need guards?’ he asked his father. There were several Theuros guards and non-Magor servants riding with them, in front and behind, all discreetly out of conventional earshot. Several of the large transport shleths, their howdahs fully laden with supplies rather than people, accompanied them on leads.

  ‘Probably not. But it’s traditional since the rebellion, so I go along with it. There was a time when I didn’t bother too much with servants, either, but now it seems expected of me.’ He grinned at Arrant. ‘I’ll guarantee you and Sarana know all about that.’

  He gave his father a heartfelt look. ‘Gods, yes. It was so hard to be alone, sometimes. Or to have a conversation that wasn’t heard by half a dozen people. Ex-slaves were the worst. They were so used to having always to be in earshot to answer their master’s every whim.’

  His father grimaced. ‘Oh, I know. But I think everyone here knows to keep their distance in order to give us some privacy, if they want to keep me happy.’

  ‘Can I do that to Theura-viska when I get home?’ Samia asked her father.