The Heart of the mirage

I shook my head, and he slumped with relief. He sat down at the edge of the rock, but his eyes never left my face. 'I've failed you all,' he said. 'I let my personal prejudices, my mistrust of you – I let them override my wisdom. Did you stop them, the Stalwarts?'

I nodded.

'How can I – we – ever thank you?' He heaved in a breath, trying to find the right words for what he wanted to say next. 'About Pinar; I know what you did. And I thank you – for saving my son.' He paused, his face white and strained. 'I've often wondered if I could have saved Miasa's child, if I had ripped my daughter from her mother's womb at her death, if I had given that baby to the Mirage… When we all knew Miasa was dying, I broached the subject with her, thinking it may give her some comfort to know I might be able to save the baby. But she was appalled. She forbade it, again and again. She made me swear. The child was hers too; it was her body… I couldn't do it to her.' His voice trailed away and he was silent.

'I think I was wrong,' he said at last, looking away from me to the Shiver Barrens. 'With that decision I condemned the Mirage – the Mirage Makers – to further years of pain and desecration. Now it seems someone else had the strength and the determination to do'what I could not.' His grief and guilt were palpable and I longed to take him into my arms. 'I should have told you. I should have told Pinar.'

I nodded, and meant it. It had been more than just a mistake; it had been wrong.

Brand would certainly agree with that, I thought. What's more, if he ever met Temellin again, he would doubtless tell him so, at length.

He went on, 'I had no right to keep the nature of the bargain a secret. I've known it since I was ten years old, you know. I've had to live with it since then. Never knowing what to do about it. But… I was always afraid someone would sacrifice themselves. How could I face Korden, for example, if it were his wife? I didn't know what to do. So I kept it to myself. I thought maybe the Mirage Makers would solve the problem

themselves, somehow… That it would never come to this. I failed my people, Shirin. I failed my Miasa's child. I failed the Mirage Makers.'

Goddess, I thought, appalled. Realising for the first time what it must have been like for him. A child, growing up with that knowledge, not knowing who to tell. Not knowing what to do about it. Knowing that somewhere in his future he had to sanction a murder.

'Pinar,' he said, after a long pause. 'She was thoroughly irrational where you were concerned. Cabochon knows, that at least was clear enough to me. She poured out her bitterness day after day, carried it to our pallet at night.' He raised tormented eyes to me. 'My fault, I fear. I couldn't give her the love she needed to be a happy woman. You have that. You always will. And she knew it. You can't tell lies to a Magor woman. Shirin, we can work this out – is that why you came?'

The sun's rays reached us at last and by its light he saw my ravaged skin. His gasping 'Derya -/' tore at me. He stretched out a disbelieving hand towards the wound on my face, but then withdrew it, remembering I had no substance. 'The Ravage…'

I nodded again.

He swore, words I didn't know, and turned from me, shouting, his voice harsh in the windless silence of the Rake. Within moments they were there: Korden, Zerise, Garis and tens of others of the Illusos and Theuros.

'Ravage sores,' Korden said with certainty, his eyes hostile. He wouldn't forgive me Pinar's death in a hurry.

'That's her essensa,' Zerise said, her scarred face thrown into stark relief by the coming light of day. 'The other is her child.' She brushed back an untidy hank of grey hair.

'But he – he is still in her womb, surely,' Temellin protested, finally understanding the floating globe.

'The Mirage Makers must be involved, and who knows what the Mirage Makers are capable of? But she needs help, Mirager.'

This last was said with so much reluctance I found it hard to nod my agreement. I could already feel myself fading.

'Can she hear us?' asked Garis. His emotions yearned at me, full of guilt and shame, asking for my forgiveness. I pitied him; I recognised all the signs of an overdeveloped conscience playing havoc with someone who failed his own high standards. Garis was finding it hard to live with himself.

'Yes,' the Illusa replied. 'But her essensa has no strength, no substance.'

Temellin cut her short. 'I want to get to her. I am going to follow her back.'

Zerise's razored features jabbed at me even as she looked at him. 'She is close to death wherever she is. Act wisely, Mirager. Kardiastan relies on you for its future.' Her emphasis nagged at me, telling me something, but I had no inclination to think about it just then.

'No, wait -' Korden interrupted. 'Temel, think] If you go as an essensa, how will you be able to help her if you have no substance?'

'My cabochon will retain its powers. Some of them, anyway. Garis, get my sword.'

'What can you do for her that she can't do for herself? She has her own cabochon! She's dying, Temel.* There's nothing you can do. But if you go, you may not come back. There's always a chance the essensa may lose its hold on reality – forget it has a body to go back to. And if it delays too long, the body dies.'

'I've done it before,' he pointed out, his voice tight with irritation. 'And so did Jahan, when we needed a spy after I'd lost my sword.'

I wanted to laugh at the irony. If Jahan had glimpsed me that night in the Prefect's villa in Sandmurram, my whole charade as Derya would have been doomed from the start.

'It was dangerous then, and it's dangerous now,' Korden said. 'You shouldn't risk yourself.'

Temellin looked back at me as Garis returned and handed him his sword. 'There's not much a person can do as an essensa, but if you are ill with the effects of Ravage sores, I can help to heal you.'

But Korden still wasn't about to give up. 'If you must help her, send someone else.'

'This is my child. They are both my responsibility.'

'This is the woman who killed your wife,' Korden said, 'who killed one of the Ten.'

Temellin turned on him, almost vicious. 'This is the woman who went to save your family, Korden, when our foolishness left the Mirage City undefended and our future – our children – in jeopardy. And you'd better hope she did succeed against the Stalwarts, as she says she has, because if she has failed, there's little hope we'll get there before the legionnaires do.' He pointed to the sword-shaped mark on my breast. 'Look at that, Korden, and tell me she's not worth saving.'

Illusa-zerise laid a hand on Korden's arm. 'He is your Mirager, Magori,' she said, resigned.

'He's also my cousin – my friend! I can't let him kill himself for this – this – Tyranian traitor!'

'Magoria-shirin is your cousin too.' The words came not from Temellin, but from Garis. 'And she is Kardi. Don't make the same mistake I did, Magori.' He

blushed miserably, embarrassed perhaps by his temerity, perhaps by the memory of his unjustified suspicions of me.

But Temellin was done with talking. He sat and pressed his sword down onto his cabochon. As mine had done, it split and the sword went on into his hand. He lay back down on the rock.

Zerise cried, 'Fah-Ke-Cabochon-rez!' and the words were taken up by all standing there, even Korden.

A mistiness gathered around his cabochon, a fog that grew and took on form as it swelled, pouring out of the palm. It wavered, gained definition and then steadied: Temellin, naked and visible, but with an unreality about his figure. The face lacked expression, the body moved with a stately smoothness that seemed unreal. The skin was waxy smooth, the eyes unblinking.