One of them, its knobbed skin criss-crossed with sores, tore at my blouse with decayed yellow teeth and bit into my breast, fastening itself to me to suck my blood. In mind-blowing terror, I beat at it with my sword, but there was no strength there, nothing left to fight with. The curled mouth-parts of an obese worm ripped a piece out of my cheek and passed the flesh into its mouth. I was being eaten alive…
I wanted to scream and scream and scream.
But somewhere inside me I knew if I did, if I opened my mouth, the Ravage would enter my throat, burning, corrupting and killing. I kept my lips clamped closed.
Brand's roar of rage reached me, but meant little. I felt I was slipping away. I could see and hear, but movement was beyond me. The Ravage had long since _.
seeped through the remains of my warding; the creatures were now stronger than the power of my sword; the pain was more than I could bear.
I had come to the end of my endurance. I capitulated.
Beyond feeling, I let the rope slip free.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Brand howled his anguish once more and plunged his arm into the putrescence, groping blindly in the poison, refusing to feel the acid agony shrivelling his arm to irreparably cripple him. He managed to touch me, but his fingers slithered on my slime-covered skin, couldn't grasp me as I slid away from him. His weakened fingers skidded over my breast, my neck and the torn side of my face. I couldn't do anything to help him. I scarcely comprehended what he risked in his attempt to save me. Then, as I slipped away, he hooked fingers into the limb of the beast sucking at my breast and pulled it from me.
I fell to the bottom of the foulness, came in contact with the rock beneath the sore, felt myself enclosed in a cocoon of safety. The pain didn't disappear – there were too many raw and torn patches for that – but the agony reduced itself to a manageable level. Better still, I felt the comfort and love of the Mirage Makers. Rationality returned.
They piled concepts into my head, pictures, feelings. Concept: Time. Need. We can keep you safe here, but you cannot stay. You will soon need air. You
must have help. They offered me nothing more than a temporary security.
I said, There is no one.
That was when I saw Temellin in my head, his image startlingly clear.
Temellin? What could he have to do with this? He is too far away. I do not know where he is.
The next picture was of an embryo, and the urge I felt was a desperate desire to follow the child.
Follow the child? I assumed they referred to Pinar's son, and despaired. What kind of advice was that? I was doomed…
Another picture: this one showed me driving my sword tip into my cabochon. Garis had said something about that, hadn't he? But someone else had told me that if you cracked your cabochon, your life leaked away. None of this made sense! I beat down the panic once more.
I asked, remarkably calm, You wish me to die?
Emotion: Exasperation.
I don't know what you mean! Panic crept back, nibbling away the edges of my sanity.
They tried again: images of Temellin, of an unborn child, of a sword in my cabochon.
But for these beings, language was constricting, not liberating. Away from the Shiver Barrens, unable to use the sands, without a human form, how could they use words?
And yet they found a way. They used the only things available: the creatures of the Ravage. Goddess knows what pain it cost them, but the Mirage Makers forced the deformed jaws of those monsters to articulate laboriously formed words, spoken words, that I could hear.
'Shadow self. Your shade.' A grinding, scraping Ravage voice. Four words that chilled my soul.
And then, 'Release your essensa.'
I knew that word. Someone had said something once… Aemid? Temellin? The legions can never kill our essensa. All living things have a life-force we call the essensa. And the word had been in one of the books I'd read, too, but I couldn't remember the context.
'Put your sword through your cabochon. You will not die. We want to save you.' Kind words uttered in ugly rasping sounds, sentiments at variance with vicious teeth and foul breath and gleeful eyes.
Irresolute, I dithered. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps it wasn't the Mirage Makers who spoke. And if it were them, I should still question their motives.
But I was dazed and in pain and tired of the struggle. I looked down at my hand, surprised to see I still clutched my sword. I swapped it to my right hand and looked at my cabochon. Barely any colour remained; my power was almost gone. A shade? It was the best offer I had. The only offer.
Weakly, I placed the tip of the blade on the cabochon and pressed. Feeble the movement might have been, but the blade split the cabochon and drove through my hand to pin it to the rock beneath. There was no pain. I released the sword hilt, but the weapon stayed upright, quivering.
A moment later, the Ravage and its vile creatures disappeared. I was clothed in blackness. All I could see was the faint glowing outline of my sword. A mist began to form where blade met cabochon, seeping out of me, at first formless and indistinct, then becoming a bubble of vapour, mist-white against the black background. I looked into it and saw the shape there: a baby, still incomplete, and embryonic – my son, not
Pinar's. My son… and Temellin's. There was a whisper in the darkness, or perhaps it was in my head: Follow him.
I said, I don't know how. Yet even as I said the words, I floated free of my body, pulled by a mother's ties to her flesh and blood. Goddess, I thought, the shade that came into my bedroom in Sandmurram. This is what it was. Jahan. It had been fahan. No wonder I had thought him familiar when we'd first met in Madrinya.
The bubble drifted away into the utter desolation of the blackness, beckoning me with its longing.
I looked down at myself and saw my translucent form: naked, torn, defiled with sores and smirched with corruption. At my feet my body lay, solid, clothed in tatters, equally ravaged.
Free of pain, I drifted away, following my son through the darkness to his father.
And found him on the southernmost Rake. It was dawn there, and the camp was just about to settle into sleep for the day. Part of my rational mind puzzled over that – surely they should have been further away, somewhere deep in Kardiastan by now. Yet, there they all were: Temellin's small army, and Temellin himself. He stood on the edge of the rock, watching the red light of the sunrise wake the Shiver Barrens. He didn't see me at first. I opened my mouth to speak – and found I had no capacity for speech. I went to touch him, but my hand passed right through his body.
His eyes widened as he focused on the movement and realised it had form. 'Derya?'
His use of that name, the one he had known me by when we had been lovers, brought forth a rush of tenderness for him. I nodded.
He, however, was appalled. 'Are you – are you dead7'
I heard the dread in his voice and his concern warmed me. I shook my head. He stretched out a hand to touch me, but it passed through my image as though I were not there.
Then he saw the floating bubble that was the shadow self of our son, and looked at it with equal incomprehension. In the dim predawn light, I doubt he realised what it was. He looked back at me. 'You can hear me.'
I nodded again and I held out my left hand to him, indicating the split cabochon.
'You know how to release your essensa? Who taught you that? And why? It's dangerous! You are not yet Magor-strong enough to do such a thing without risk.'
Helpless to explain, I just stood. My thoughts were muddled, not fully my own.
He took a deep breath, striving to find sense in what was happening. 'Forgive me, Shirin, for what I did. For not trusting. I have your letter.' Finding no words to tell me how he felt, he made a helpless gesture with one hand. 'What can I say? I want you – and the baby.' He ran fingers through unruly hair. 'Garis told me everything. He was a fool not to go on believing you. Korden and I are on our way back to the Mirage City with half our force. In case you weren't able -' The words almost choked him. 'Is – is the Mirage City in danger, Shirin? Is that why you have come in this form? To warn us?'