The Heart of the mirage

I battled to start thinking sensibly again, and when I did, my heart skidded somewhere down to stomach

level. If Temellin was the Mirager, then his behaviour that day, and the day before, was strange. What else had been going on unnoticed by me because I was too • busy thinking with my senses instead of my head? If I understood the situation correctly, Temellin was the leader of an insurgency. The man who would be ruler of the country, if they had their way.

But rulers did not normally go looking for lost property in person, not even precious property. They sent other people to do it for them. Nor did they risk their lives seeking out slave girls who could have been the bait in a rat trap. A ruler was too precious to risk.

And yet he was the Mirager; he hadn't been lying about that. So what was going on? What had I missed? Why had he risked himself to seek me out?

I was so engrossed in my private maelstrom I took no notice of the cloaked figure standing between me and the fires, until an arm shot out and clutched at me as I went to pass by. Startled out of my reverie I looked up. It was Pinar. 'Where's Temellin?' she asked harshly.

I gave a vague wave of my hand, knowing she could have sensed his whereabouts if she had really wanted to know. 'He went back that way' I tried to move on, but Pinar's hand, resting now in between my breasts, stopped me.

T know you for what you are,' she said. 'I can see what they are all blind to. You mean to betray us.'

I did not deign to answer. I attempted to brush past, but the hand stayed me. I was suddenly breathless, as if I had been running. 'Let me be, Pinar. You've no cause for jealousy tonight,' I said. But I could not pass. I felt her cabochon push against my heart, and the answering arrhythmia of the beat. I staggered and tried to push her away, but my arms felt weak. I wanted to scream, but no sound would come.

'I can't let you kill us all,' she said, her voice rough with dislike. 'You're just a Tyranian brute in Kardi disguise. You sold your birthright. It's better you die here, now, at my hand. I don't care what they all say; I know I'm right -'

I could not believe what was happening. I was dying. I knew half a dozen ways to kill using my bare hands – and I was helpless. I had just seconds before my heart stopped its beating. Goddess, J couldn't end like this, dead in this desert world, aged not yet thirty. Not me. My left hand crept upwards to Pinar's breast, each inch closer a desperate act of will and pain with no chance of ultimate success. This was power I knew nothing about. Magor magic. I was untrained, of a lesser rank -

I tried to send out my terror to alert the Magor, but I appeared to be cocooned within a barrier of her making. And she let nothing slip by. I tried to fight, but I knew nothing of the weapons – not hers, or mine.

I fell to my knees, incapable of resistance, so weak I couldn't even whisper a protest to the woman who was murdering me. My left hand was no longer part of me.. It moved on without my knowledge; it had a feeble life of its own and I was aware of it with a curious detachment. I saw it travel across the edge of my vision, reaching out to touch her just as she was touching me. The fingers uncurled and the cabochon on the palm rested against Pinar's breastbone.

And she smiled, not even bothering to brush it away. 'What can you do?' she whispered, her triumph foul in my senses. 'I am a trained Magoria.'

In the seconds before death I remembered my mother, my real mother, bathed in gold and blood, giving the battle cry of the Magor. Words I must have understood then, and remembered now. My lips

formed the shape of that heartfelt cry: Fah-Ke-Cabochon-rez! Hail the power of the cabochon!

I fell face down in the sand, blood rushing through me to obey the renewed vigour of my heart. I lay there, gathering strength to me as if it were a tangible thing in the air, to be seized on and imbibed. Then warm strong hands were holding me, lifting me, hugging me to a muscled chest.

'Temellin?'

'Brand, damn you! Are you all right?'

'She wanted to kill me. She tried – what happened?'

'You flung her away from you.'

'I did? Where is she?'

'She picked herself up and ran. She saw me coming, I think. She was crying. Are you sure you're all right?'

I stood back from him. 'Yes, I think so.' Crying? Pinar? Thanks -' I took a deep breath. 'You followed me,' I accused, anything not to think about what had just happened.

He shook his head. 'Don't flatter yourself. I came out for a leak. And then I saw her, and wondered what she was up to. I saw you both, but I thought you were just talking. It was too dark – Goddessdamn, I almost let her kill you thinking you were having a conversation!'

'Never mind. I'm all right. Let's go back to the fire.' I leant against him, still weak. As we walked, I said, 'Brand, Temellin is the Mirager.'

'Yes, I know.'

'You knewV

'Yes, of course. That was obvious.' He turned his face to look at me in surprise. 'Li- Derya, you didn't knowV

I was silent, shamed by his surprise.

'You seem to have been uncharacteristically dense. And I'm surprised you let Pinar get within pissing distance of you, too. Couldn't you see the way she has been looking at you? She loathes everything you stand for and, unlike the rest of these gullible folk, she has a pretty good idea just what it is you represent. What worm has addled your wits?'

I did not answer. He was right to ask the question, though.

That night as I lay on my pallet of reeds, I tried to persuade myself that all I felt for Temellin was lust: easily satisfied, easily forgotten once satisfied – and knew I was fooling myself. When I looked at Temellin, I lusted – but I also saw, for the first time in my life, a man I recognised as being the mirror of myself. Temellin responded to power and responsibility and excitement the same way I did: he was stimulated. We fed on those things, the way most folk thrived on security and routine. Challenged, we came alive… We were two of a kind.

And that was, at best, intriguing, appealing, unsettling; at worst, worrying. A mirror image had the power to shatter a reflection.

Such a man had the means to bring me down.

The next day, I came face to face with Pinar as the morning meal was being doled out from the pots at the fire. She gazed at me, emotions safely corralled behind her eyes. Temellin and Garis and Korden were all within hearing, so she was scrupulously polite. 'Good morning, Derya,' she said. 'How are you feeling this morning? You looked as if you had some indigestion last night.'

'Indeed I did.' I held out my plate for my share of porridge. 'Must have come across something… rotten.'

'You should be more careful.'

'Oh, I will. In future.'

'Tell me, Derya, what sort of slave were you?'

I had been about to turn away, but her words halted me. All instincts alert, I wished I could feel through the barriers she erected. 'A reluctant one. Why?'

'Well, there are different kinds of slaves, are there not? Whores for the military brothels, for example. Pallet slaves for officers, that kind of thing. I couldn't help but notice your hair has been well cut, your hands are not roughened with hard work. So I wondered if

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Temellin's voice cut across her questioning like a sword slash. 'Pinar, that's enough. It's none of our business.'

She turned to him. 'You are too trusting, Temel. If she was a love-slave, then perhaps it is foolish to trust her at all. Lovers can have loyalties to one another, rather than to the land of their birth.'

'That's true,' Korden agreed. 'Anyway, I'd like to know why she has said so little about this Ligea woman. I'd have thought Derya would have told us all sorts of things by now, without prompting. A Legata of the Brotherhood is surely a danger to us. We need to know what sort of person she is.'