The Heart of the mirage

Within a week, he had taken poison and died…

I had felt no remorse then, either.

I tore myself back into the present. Once again I was lying on the grass, closer to the Ravage this time. Or was it that the Ravage had moved?

I stood up and looked at the patch of slime. Fingers of liquid oozed out of the main body of the Ravage, each rivulet crawling in my direction. It was coming closer. Shit, I thought. This is personal. It's aiming at me.

And then I felt the appalling pain of the Mirage

Makers. They screamed with the agony of the cancer y

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eating deep into them in a hundred different locations, dissolving, corrupting, devouring their living flesh. Aghast, I remembered what Temellin had said about these sores having been present even when he was a child. How long then had the Mirage Makers suffered? Only then did I understand the strain there had been in Temellin's voice when he had spoken of the diseased land. He, too, had felt their pain.

I began to shake. Sickened, I was careful not to look into the slime again, but just as I was about to turn away, a bony limb shot out in my direction, jabbing at me, drawing the attention of the others.

I stumbled backwards in shock, thumping down on my backside. In one flash of rage and energy they had all turned on me, all those nightmarish creatures, rushing up out of the shadows of the depths in a mass of claws and talons and teeth, snapping, hacking, slashing, frothing, clawing at the edges in an attempt to lever themselves out of the slime…

I scrabbled away, still on my rump, my screams raw with terror. They flung themselves upwards, bloodying their jaws on each other in their efforts to reach me. They grunted and shrilled their need to rip into my flesh, then plopped back into the fester, their hate shredding my mind-block and slamming into my thoughts.

I got up and ran, incoherent with terror.

It was some time before I could think enough to acknowledge I wasn't hurt. In spite of their rabid desire to devour me, those creatures hadn't been able to leave the confines of the Ravage.

I was unhurt, but I had to walk back to the Mirage City in urine-wet trousers.

My shleth had long since fled.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I spent the next few days thinking about the Ravage. That wasn't altogether a matter of choice: it impinged on my thoughts whether I wanted to think about it or not. I'd wake in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat, remembering those shapes, recalling their hunger. Knowing I was their target. Not just anyone. Me. I was sure of it.

I tried to make sense of what had happened. Why were they able to take me back and make me remember past incidents with such lucidity? What were they? When I asked others of the Magoroth, they didn't seem able to give me a satisfactory answer to explain my regression into the past. They dismissed my assertion that the hatred had been personal. 'Oh, the Ravage hates everyone,' they said. Perhaps it did, but it was me it wanted most.

I spoke to Brand, describing everything I could remember.

'What do those two past episodes have in common?' he asked.

'I have no idea, beyond the obvious,' I said. 'In one

I was just sixteen. And I told a lie to punish someone…

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In the other I was an adult and told the truth to punish someone. The result was the same, I suppose. Both men died. Both were unpleasant men deserving of punishment.'

'Both incidents never gave you a sleepless night.'

'So?'

'I don't know. It just seems that maybe they should have. You don't appear in your best light, Ligea, either time.'

I thought about that, but came to no conclusions. 'They are foul, whatever they are, those Ravage creatures.'

'Perhaps that's it,' he suggested. 'They were looking for things in your past that are -'

'Foul? Are you telling me what I did was foul?'

'No, not exactly. But your lack of-' Once again he stopped, unwilling to speak his thoughts.

'Remorse?'

'No. Not lack of remorse. Lack of thought about what you did. In those days, you could walk away from all you did without wondering if it was right or wrong. Without doubts. Most people would worry about whether they could have done things differently. If their decisions were correct. You never did. It's very human to plague oneself with doubt after the fact.'

I stared at him. 'You think I was inhuman? And yet you loved me!'

'Yes. Because I know what was done to you. And by whom. And how. And I always knew what you could have been. What you still can be, and are becoming.'

'Weak,' I snapped.

'No. Human.'

I didn't want to think about that. I changed the subject. 'So why is the Ravage interested in that part of

my past? Why would they be linked to my… inhumanity?'

But he had no answer to that.

I went to bed that night hearing a refrain of facts like a temple litany inside my head:

The Ravage hates you above all others.

There must be a reason for such a specific, virulent hate.

The Ravage and its beasts live inside the Mirage.

What the Ravage knows about you it can therefore only have learned from the Mirage Makers.

And what is special about you anyway?

A puzzle worthy of a one-time compeer. Reluctantly, I thought I was beginning to make sense of it all; the trouble was, I didn't like the answer, because whichever way I looked at it, I ended up dead.

When Temellin and the other Magoroth returned with the freed slaves, Pinar was not with them. She had, Temellin said, gone to Madrinya on a private matter, but would be back within a few days.

I was alarmed. That Pinar, already brittle with jealousy, should allow Temellin to return without her was odd, even sinister. It prompted me to action: I told Temellin I had an urgent need to talk to him; he nodded and said he was busy making arrangements about the ex-slaves, could it wait until the next day? I agreed one more day would make no difference and spent the time trying to think of the right words to say and despising the cowardice that had kept me silent so long.

But when the next day came, we had other things on our minds. An outbreak of disease among the newcomers from Sandmurram kept all the Magor fully occupied, trying to stop its spread and cure those who had it. I did not sleep for two days, and I doubted

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any of the others did, either. We were all exhausted and drained; my cabochon was colourless with a lack of power.

On the evening of the third day, although there had been several deaths among the elderly, the contagion was halted and the ill began to recover. Those Magoroth, myself included, who had been involved with the sick, now found time to gather for a meal. There were a few wan smiles of subdued triumph, but most of us were more interested in the food the servants had prepared.

Temellin, slipping into a vacant seat next to me, said, 'We never did get to have that talk. What did you want to see me about?'

'Myself. Who I am. And -' I stopped. Conversation had died at our table and people nearby were listening. 'It's waited this long, it can wait until after we've eaten,' I said, glad, I suppose, to have yet another excuse. 'We're both too hungry to give any serious topic full attention. But it had better be today, Temel. It is a matter of some… seriousness.' I dropped my voice. 'In private.'

He nodded wearily and began to eat. The conversation around the table remained desultory as most of us confined our attention to the food and thought of our pallets. When the door opened, it took a moment for it to register with me that it was Brand who stood there and something was wrong. I half rose to go to him, and then sat back down again as the reason for his agitation became obvious. Pinar had entered the room on his heels and she wasn't alone.