Knowledge came to me as I watched. Just as the swords were gifts from the Mirage Makers to the Magor, so were the cabochons, only they were bestowed through the medium of a Magor sword. The Magor had no say in the gem colour.
I looked down at my own left hand. Somewhere, some time, I had lain in my mother's arms and a Magor – a Mirager? Temellin's uncle Solad? – had pressed the hilt of a Magor sword to my palm…
The vision was gone.
There was another in its place, but less defined, more blurred, as though it was something that had never happened, may never happen. I saw a figure – a Kardi who could have been man or woman – holding a soft, rounded shape cupped in his or her hands, a shape that throbbed with a regular beat. I stared at it, puzzled, and was given the knowledge to understand what it was. A woman's womb with a living embryo, a womb and its contents ripped from its mother… Appalled, I drew back, putting a protective hand to my
own abdomen as if I were denying to be identified with the woman who would supply that disembodied organ and its doomed child. I strained to see the person's face, but it was featureless. Whoever it was, he or she appeared to be offering the unborn child to the indistinct shapes inside the dancing sands, offering it to the Mirage Makers. And the Mirage Makers were accepting it, drawing it into the sands so it merged with them, so it became one with those shadowy beings who definitely weren't human. I thought, and knew it a truth: The Mirage Makers want an unborn child. And to supply it, a woman was going to have to die… Then, in shock: Why is such a vision being shown to me?
But I had no time to dwell on the horror, on the terror of that moment, or on the additional knowledge that was then slotted into my mind. Before I could assimilate all I now knew, there was another vision.
Two hands. Reaching out to one another. One was indubitably mine, the other was the personification of something that was not a person: the Mirage Makers. Then the vision split. In the first image the hands clasped and melted into one another in a symbol of unity. In the second, my hand took up my Magor sword and split the hand held out to me so its blood drained onto the sand below to become a black foulness that was death without redemption.
Then the vision was gone and I was standing under the dancing sands once more, the singing filling my ears, my eyes, my body. It was telling me the Mirage Makers knew who I was, knew I had the power to destroy both them and the Magor, that they had indeed given me that power with the bestowal of my sword, but that they'd had no choice. They were not
free to make decisions, they could merely accede to the immutable rules laid down in antiquity, when Magor and Mirage Makers had settled their differences and made their pacts.
The singing took on the sound of tragedy, of grief, of a plea asking me to respect my birth-gift. It was a song filled with such a depth of sorrow, I felt every dancing sand grain was a teardrop to be shed at the moment of my betrayal. I wept then, wept for what I was: Kardi Magor-born, but bred to know there was a better way of life, a great civilisation offering so much more…
, I turned and stumbled away, instinctively groping back to the safety of the Rake.
When I stood again in the desiccating sunlight with the hard red rock beneath my feet, I looked back at the dancing sands and knew they had become once again deadly for me. The Mirage Makers were gone from the Shiver Barrens. The song was there, still beautiful, but the melody now belonged only to the sands. And yet, I still thought that if only I could listen in the right way, I would understand. That it was important to understand.
It was hard to imagine I'd stood beneath the Shiver Barrens in the heat of the day and survived, yet I held the Magor sword in my hand as proof, its hilt fitted so comfortably into my palm… Right then, though, my thoughts were not of the sword. Nor did I think of the gift of an embryo, the bestowing of cabochons – I could think about all that later. It was something else that had me standing out there in the sun, unable to move in my shock.
There was one piece of information I had unwittingly gleaned along the way that tore me apart. No. It couldn't be true…
'LigeaF
I looked up. Brand was looking down on me from the crest of the Rake. Don't think about it.
'What the world are you doing out in the sun?' He came down to me and looked at the sword in my hand with surprise. 'Temellin's?'
I shook my head. 'No. Mine.' Concentrate.
'Where in Vortex did you get it?'
'I think – from the place that all the Magor obtain their swords. Brand, there's no way I can explain.' I refused to meet his eyes as I added, 'And please – don't mention this to the others, either; I don't want them to know I have a Magor sword. Not yet, anyhow.' I looked down at the weapon. I wanted to know what it meant; I wanted to know what this Covenant was… and I wanted to know my own mind. Only then would I know whether I should tell the Magor that these Mirager Makers had bestowed a sword on me.
Brand looked irritated. 'You expect me to take much on trust, Ligea. One of these days you will push me too far.'
I shrugged. 'You are free. You have only to tell me and I will ask nothing of you.'
'Ligea, Ligea, what are you doing?' The depth of his grief sliced into me, focusing my attention. He had deliberately bared himself. T feel I don't know you any more,' he said. 'This passion you have for Temellin, it's insane. Do you think you can bed a man one day and betray him the next? Not even you can do that and stay yourself.'
I gave a bitter laugh. I wanted to say, but I have to do just that, Brand. I have to betray either Temellin or Favonius. And I have known and bedded Favonius for years. It is Temellin who is the stranger, the foreigner with foreign ways. Temellin is just a lust in my loins.
Such lust won't last, it mustn't last – if it did, it would drive me insane because I can't have him forever…
Instead, I said, searching for calm, for reason, 'What passion? It's just lust, Brand. No different to the needs I slake with Favonius. Or the others, over the years.' Dear Goddess, what about that other thing they told you?
He gave a disbelieving snort and said, still angry, still grieving, 'I don't understand you. These people – those who call themselves Magor, I mean – for all their strange customs, they are an improvement on those you served in Tyr. I don't know why, because they have terrible power. I'm not going to forget in a hurry what Garis did to me that first day! But somehow they are not corrupt, the way those of Tyrans are. And if they win here, they won't be basing the nation they build on slavery as Tyrans does. Tyrans is sick, Ligea. Don't you know that yet? And what loyalty do you owe to such as Rathrox anyway?' He gave another snort of disgust. 'Vortex take it, how could someone who can see through a lie as easily as you can, let themselves be fooled the way you were? Think, Ligea. Think. Think about Gayed, about your childhood. Think about who it was who loved you. There's no more time for self-deception, not now. Now is the time for decisions, no matter how difficult they are to make.'
'And what's your decision to be?' I asked levelly. 'Will you leave me, to stay with these people, when I return to Madrinya?' I had deliberately emphasised the 'when'.
He winced, an expression of both pain and
exasperation. 'Why are you so blind to the things and
people that touch you closest, Ligea, when you see
other, more distant things and people so clearly? I love
' ¦…• – '"¦ -¦¦¦•'¦i "…*» -..^ ¦:.^.:‹s
you. I love you so much that I can stand here and watch your eyes hunger for another man, and listen to your cries of joy in his arms, and still take the pain rather than leave you. I make myself less than a man for you. I serve you, not Tyrans. I am so besotted, so weak, that I put you before what I know is right.'