distrust you exactly, Derya, but you will have to prove
¦ j. ¦ -.if -
your loyalty before I give you my trust. I do not have Temellin's faith in the blood running in your veins. Temellin is our Mirager, but he is not an absolute monarch. He rules by covenant and must listen to others of his kind. Be warned: there will be those who watch you and who will turn the power of the Magor on you if you prove faithless.' With that, he switched his attention to Garis. 'I came to say goodbye. This is where I leave with my group; I will see you on the other side of the Barrens.' He stretched forth his left hand and Garis touched palms with him. He made no such gesture to me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We slept at night wrapped in woollen blankets, under the shelter of waxed sheeting strung up on poles to keep the dew off. After Pinar had left on the second day, I kept wondering if Temellin would come to me at night, but he never did. During the day, if anything, he avoided me. He didn't have to try hard: there were always people claiming his attention, always problems to be solved concerning the ex-slaves. After Korden left on the fourth day, he didn't have that excuse. There were only four of us left – Brand and Garis being the other two – but he only came to me the next morning.
He woke me just at first light. 'Come,' he whispered, 'I have something to show you. A wild shleth.'
I rose and followed him, brushing the sleep from my eyes as I went. He led me out into the desert, using his sword for light, but keeping the glow of it subdued. 'I thought you might like to have a look at this,' he said, pointing to where a lone shleth was using its feeding arms and feet to excavate a deep hole in the sand. 'It's about to give birth.'
The beast finished its digging, and knelt down in the hole. Almost immediately it began to strain, and
within minutes it had passed a blood-streaked, leathery sac about the size of a cat, oval in shape, into
the hole. The shleth proceeded to cover up its newborn with sand.
"What is it doing?' I asked in astonishment.
'They bury the sac in sand and promptly forget about it. It's like a large, half-developed egg. When the young is fully developed, it uses its feeding arms to dig out to the surface where it can fend for itself.'
'Shleths don't feed their young?'
'Kardis speak of shleth's milk the same way Tyranians refer to hen's teeth or Assorians talk about snake feathers. The young will grow up on the edges of the lake here, feeding on the grasses.'
He turned towards me. 'We have tried to raise the young from the time they dig themselves out, but we've never had success. They survive best by themselves for a year or two. Which has a disadvantage for us – we have to catch and tame them later on.' He reached out and drew me to him, kissing me gently on the lips. It wasn't the kind of kiss I wanted from him. 'It has been hard not to…' he said, and made a vague gesture with his hand. T want you so badly. Yet I shouldn't be here with you now. It has no future.'
'It doesn't have to have a future, Tern. In fact, I am not in the habit of considering a future for my relationships.'
'No, I don't suppose slaves can. I find it hard to imagine what it must be like to be enslaved. But now? You can have a future, Derya. You can plan to have a husband, a family, lots of children…'
T can't say children have figured much in my plans either.' That was certainly true. I'd never considered having any, and had taken good care I wouldn't. 'What's the matter with just here and now?' At least
this time I was well fortified with gameez to prevent conception.
He didn't need more of an invitation. The shleth had wandered away, but we stayed there on the sands and found something in each other's arms as magical as the sword he carried.
And yet, later, lying in my blankets back in the camp, I wondered if it hadn't been a mistake. When he clasped his palm to mine and we joined for that moment in time, we gave something to each other and gained something from each other that changed us both. We forged connections – in Magor magic, in physical loving. We fashioned bonds that lingered on afterwards in a way I'd never experienced before in any lustful coupling.
We forgot bonds could also be fetters.
'That's it?' I asked Temellin. 'That's the Shiver Barrens?'
'That's it.'
The two of us pulled up our mounts on the top of a stony rise. A red-rock slope of a few hundred paces led down to an expanse of sand that appeared to stretch on forever. Beside us Garis and Brand also halted, and all conversation ceased.
After the initial question, I was speechless. Any words would have been too mundane to express the cascade of overwhelming emotions swamping me at that moment. Whatever I had expected, it wasn't what I saw then – there had never been a place in my logical world for anything like this.
From a sky of unforgiving blue, unblemished by cloud, the sun screamed full-voiced down on the desert sands, relentless, scorching – and the sands responded. The grains rose up to greet the heat of the
day and gyrated for the sun god, as sensual as a semi-naked dancing girl discarding her veils.
The Shiver Barrens danced…
They moved in patterns that wove and unravelled, formed and disintegrated in shimmers of light and dark, and as they danced they sang a whispering song of seduction. The whorls and streams of sand grains reached twice the height of a man, pouring through the air from the ground and back again like wraiths of mist in a wind. But there was no wind. The sand moved of its own volition, every particle self-propelled, yet each obeying some cosmic law that orchestrated its movement into this tidal dance.
I watched in wonderment, and remembered being a child at our cliffside holiday villa on the Sea of Iss, watching schools of fish swimming in the ocean far below – the annual run of sardines along the coast. Sometimes the sharks would pierce the shoals in vicious thrusting stabs, and the fish would whirl away, turning and twisting in skeins of light and dark, each with a mind of its own, yet performing its part in perfect unison as the swarming mass split and rejoined.
Such were the dancing sands-of the Shiver Barrens.
And as they flowed and re-formed, clustered and seethed, they sang. Not in words, but in soft sound just out of range of my understanding, half heard, like the far-off tinkle of wind chimes, the patter of raindrops on water, the soughing of a breeze through pine needles, the soft licking of a cat's tongue on kitten fur.
In a dream, I urged my mount down to the edge of the Barrens, where rock gave way to dancing sand. I dismounted and leant forward to hold my hand out and catch up some of the grains bouncing in the air – but they couldn't be captured. They jiggled away from me, teasing.
'Try your left hand,' Temellin said at my elbow. This time I caught them and they nestled in my cupped palm, twinkling at me, purple and silver and gold and grey… slivers of colour. They tickled my skin until I released them and they flew away, humming their song of joy.
'What do you think?' Temellin asked softly. But I refused to be drawn; I still had no words. He stood close behind and put his arms around me. 'Can you hear it?'
'Oh yes.'
'Only the Magor can hear the song…'
'Does it mean anything? I keep thinking that if only I could listen a bit better, I'd be able to understand what it is saying.'
He was dismissive. 'There's nothing to understand. It's just a meaningless melody.'
He believed what he said, but I couldn't shake the feeling. I was also painfully aware of his body against mine. Remember, Ligea, you are a compeer. "Why can't the legions cross?'
'They don't know the secret. They ride out, not knowing the further you ride, the deeper the dance becomes. At the edge, where we are now, the firm ground is just a pace down; the pain of the grains brushing your skin would be bearable.' He waved a hand towards the horizon. 'Out there the sand dances above your head. You breathe it into your nostrils, you gasp and it dances into your mouth. It fills your ears and abrades your skin. You start to bleed; just pinpricks to start with, then your mouth and nose and ears trickle blood and your skin is rasped raw and the pain maddens you and your mount. You try to return, but you cannot see which way safety lies. Your clothing is shredded and you yourself are flayed to a mass of