The Heart of the mirage mm-1 Page 2

  I interrupted. 'And that is not the only reason which motivates you, Magister Officii. I think you have come to fear me. I am too good at my job. It worries you that you cannot lie to me, that I know the feelings seething behind that expressionless face of yours. So now it comes to this: a posting without hope of recall. What is it they say of Kardiastan? A land so dry the dust is in the wind instead of underfoot and the only water is in one's tears! I gave a bitter smile. 'Is that how my service to you, to the Brotherhood, to the Exaltarchy, is to be repaid? You wouldn't do this, Magister Rathrox, if Gayed were alive. My father would never have allowed it.' It was five years since his death, yet I felt the pang of loss still.

  'General Gayed put his Exaltarch and his nation before all else, as you must. The Exaltarchy has given you all that you own, all that you are. Now you must pay the reckoning.' He shrugged. 'Supply the information that will quell the Exaltarch's rebellious subjects in Kardiastan and he will not forget you. Even now your salary is to be raised to six thousand sestus a year, while you remain in Kardiastan, and you go as a Legata, with the equivalent status of a Legatus.'

  My eyes widened. A Legatus was someone with a special mission and they carried much of the status of the official who sent them. If my papers were signed by Rathrox, my power in Kardiastan would be extensive. It was telling that I'd never heard of the feminine form of the word. Such power was not normally given to a woman. 'You must be very afraid of me to have

  obtained those terms, Magister Officii. They are generous indeed. // I can stay alive, of course. Nonetheless, I think I would have preferred to resign the Brotherhood, had you given me the option.'

  'No one leaves the Brotherhood,' he said, the words as curt as his tone. 'Not ever. You know that. Besides, what would you do without the intrigue, without the power, without the challenge, Legata Ligea? The Brotherhood is your drug; you cannot survive without it. You would never make a pampered wife, and what other alternative is there for you?' His voice softened a little. 'I'm twice your age, Ligea. One day I'll no longer head the Brotherhood. Take comfort from that thought.'

  I hated knowing how well he read me. I turned abruptly, leaving him, and made my way to the palace entrance. The sentries swung open the massive carved doors, then sprang to attention and saluted as I passed. I'd identified myself as one of the Brotherhood on the way in, and they knew it paid to be respectful to a compeer.

  Out once more in the dazzling sun, I looked around in relief. I'd never liked needless luxury and the extravagance of the Exaltarch's palace was stifling, especially when coupled with the emotions still warring inside me even now: anger, bitterness, pride, frustration. I thought I knew now why the Exaltarch had been amused. The idea of sending a Kardi to deal with Kardi insurgents was not without irony, and when the Kardi in question was a woman raised as a highborn Tyranian – oh yes, the situation was amusing. Unless you were the one being banished to a desert hell. The muscles of my stomach tightened in rebellion.

  Tyr, capital and hub of Tyrans – of the whole Exaltarchy – was my home; the only home I

  remembered. It was the centre of the civilised world, the place where everything began, where all decisions that counted were made, where things happened. How could I bear to leave it?

  I stood at the top of the stairs leading down from the palace doors and looked out over the Forum Publicum, the heart of Tyr. It was the hour before siesta and the Forum, a mile in length, was crowded in spite of the midday heat. The usual mixed throng: slaves and ambling highborn, merchants and work-stained artisans, strolling scholars debating a theory. Fountains jetted spray into the air in the centre of the marbled concourse and water channels bordered the edges. They even warmed the water when the weather turned cold…

  Damn you, Rathrox Ligatan. I am to lose all of this.

  I thrust back the rising bubble of anger and made instead a conscious effort to absorb all I could see, as if by carving a bas-relief of images into my memory, I could ensure that at some time in the future I would be able to recall them to assuage the emptiness of loss.

  On the far side of the square, the massive Hall of Justice brooded, its white columns catching the sun. White-robed lawyers were just emerging from a morning session with their lictors, arms full of ribboned scrolls, hurrying behind. Only two days before, I'd stood in the Praetor's chambers there to give evidence in camera at a treason trial; the accused had led a rebellion against tax collection in one of the outliers of Tyrans. Two hundred people had died as a result of his ill-considered revolt. He'd been condemned, as he deserved, and I'd felt the satisfaction of a job well done. Our court system, where even a common man could argue his case, was one of the finest achievements of the Exaltarchy.

  The next building along was the Public Library, separated from the Public Baths by the tree-lined Marketwalk. If I entered the quietness of the library reading room, doubtless I'd find Crispin the poet or Valetian the historian working on their latest creations; if I decided to bathe in the building opposite instead, I would be bound to meet my childhood friends, most of them now idle young matrons more inclined to eye the legionnaire officers in the massage room than to spend their time at the baths swimming, as I did. If I wandered down the Marketwalk, I could buy fruit from Altan, or ice from the Alps, or a talking bird from Pythia to the west. Jasper or jade, silk or sackcloth, peppercorns or pheasant livers: there was a saying in Tyr that the stalls of Marketwalk sold everything worth buying in the known world.

  On my right, across the square opposite the baths, was the arched entrance of the Advisory Council Chambers, used as gaming rooms ever since the Exaltarch had dismissed his recalcitrant Councillors, never to recall them; and beyond that was the paveway to the Desert-Season Theatre, where two weeks previously I'd seen Merius immortalise himself with his powerful portrayal of the manipulative Cestuous, whose tainted love for his sister Caprice had almost doomed the fledgling Tyr, and whose name was now synonymous with the despised perversion of incest.

  I shifted my gaze to the Academy of Learning on my left, where, as a citizen of Tyrans, I had often enjoyed the privilege of listening to the scholars' debates. It had been an Academy scholar who'd been in charge of my education from my seventh anniversary day until I'd turned sixteen, a privilege not often granted to girls. I sometimes wondered why my father, a man much given to talking disparagingly of 'a woman's place', had allowed – no,

  had encouraged – my formal education. 'You have a mind, Ligea,' he was fond of saying. 'Use it. Rely on it. Your emotions are those of a woman: foolish, unreliable and ruled from the heart. Ignore such stupidities. The heart is the foundation of ill-made decisions; the mind is where victories are forged.' I smiled to myself: I could hear him still, stern tones deliberately softening when he spoke to me. Others may have feared General Gayed, the man they called the Winter Leopard after his snow-season victories quelling the fractious tribes of the Forests of Valur to the northwest, but I never did. To me he may have been firm and intolerant of nonsense, but he was always kind.

  I lingered on the steps, remembering him. The pang of grief I felt was a weakness, inappropriate for a compeer, but I didn't care. I decided I would head for his tomb at the other end of the Forum and pay homage to his memory. A long walk, although one I wanted to make. Masochism, in a way, I suppose; not because of the destination, but because all I passed en route would remind me of what I was about to miss. But I wanted those memories. I wanted to absorb the essence of these symbols of Tyr. For they weren't just buildings; they were also the commerce, the learning, the law, the sport, the religion, the arts: they were all the things Tyr stood for. We were a cultured, refined people who respected both the human intellect and the human body.

  And Kardiastan? In Kardiastan, the soil was as barren as its cultural heritage.

  How would I be able to bear it?

  Damn you, Rathrox.

  The Temple of the Forum Publicum was built to honour the deity Melete. Other public buildings were

  imposing,
graceful even, but the temple was surely one of the loveliest structures ever built by mankind. The roof floated above lines of graceful caryatids, each supposedly a likeness of the Goddess in a different mood. The pediments and fascia were decorated with coloured friezes and statuary, the work of several centuries of the Exaltarchy's finest artists. Marbled columns glowed rosy in both the dawn light and the last rays of dusk or, as now, gleamed white with painful intensity in the midday sun.

  General Gayed's tomb was not in the temple proper, but along the pilgrim's way leading up to the main steps. There was nothing ornate about it; I had insisted on that. A flat oblong of marble marked his burial spot. A life-sized statue on a plinth engraved with his name was the only adornment. Not a man who liked frivolities, he would have approved of the tomb's austerity. I knelt and prayed there, although my prayer was unorthodox. I spoke to him, not to any god, thanking him for the compassion that had prompted him to take a war orphan under his wing in the heat of battle, for all the kindnesses he had extended to me as his adopted daughter. I blessed him, as I had so often done before. Without him, I would have been a Kardi barbarian, and the thought was the subject of a recurring nightmare I'd had in my younger years. I'd had a narrow escape, and it was all due to him.

  After I left Gayed's tomb, I walked on up into the public concourse of the Meletian Temple.

  Melete was the city's patroness, the Goddess of Wisdom, Contemplation and Introspection. I always thought her a strange deity for a city ruling all the lands around the Sea of Iss by virtue of armed power. There were over a hundred deities in the pantheon, many more appropriate: Ocrastes, the many-headed

  God of War, for example. Or Selede, Goddess of Cunning. But no, our founders had chosen Melete. People said the Goddess was the reason Tyr became a centre of learning and scholarship; some even maintained the caryatids wept each time Tyr conquered another nation with bloodshed rather than negotiation. I was not given to such fancies, myself.

  I bought some perfumed oil from the stalls littering the forecourt of the temple and went on into the sanctum. I gave the oil to the priestess on duty, and she used it to fill one of the votary lamps for me. I lit it and knelt in prayer before the statue of Melete, and then, as countless thousands before me, kissed the cold marble of her feet. My prayers were for the success of my endeavours, and even more for my own safety. I'd long ago decided it was not much use being a hero if you were also dead.

  Yet even as I prayed, I wondered if it were any use. The statue appeared lifeless, and so very manmade. A. man's vision of the perfect woman: mother, whore, temptress. If deities were so powerful, why did they not visit us in person, as legend told us they had once done? The old tales were full of stories of people who spoke to the gods, but I'd never met anyone who admitted he'd seen a deity face to face. I had a sneaking suspicion the gods had vanished. Or that they were man's invention in the first place. Sacrilege, I knew, for the temple told us we were all the creation of the gods, not the other way around…

  'Domina Ligea?'

  Startled, I turned my drifting thoughts to the woman who stood before me: Antonia, the temple's High Priestess. I had never spoken to her before, and she did not normally chat to devotees. I remained kneeling and inclined my head. 'Reverence?'

  I'd heard she was brought to the temple as a young girl, selected because of her great beauty and virtue. Now she was more matronly than beautiful, but regal nonetheless. And powerful. Had she withdrawn the support of the Cult of Melete from the Exaltarch, she could have threatened his power base – although, knowing what I did of Exaltarch Bator Korbus, he would have had her assassinated first.

  'The Oracle requests your presence.'

  She could not have astonished me more. The Oracle7, The Oracle did not speak to Ligea Gayed. In fact, the Oracle rarely spoke, and when it did, it was to kings and emperors or the very rich, not Compeers of the Brotherhood or even a general's daughter. For one mad moment, I even wondered if the High Priestess had mistaken me for someone else.

  I stood, still puzzled. T am deeply honoured, Reverence.'

  'You are indeed,' she said. Her voice was as dry as grape leaves in autumn.

  She found my summons hard to believe too.

  CHAPTER TWO

  High Priestess Antonia took me behind the altar to the sanctum, that area of the temple not open to the public. Deep inside the building, we entered a small unoccupied room. 'I must blindfold you,' she said, taking a cloth from a hook. She meant me no harm, I could sense that much, so I acquiesced. However, with the blindfold on, I could see nothing and began to feel uneasy.

  There was an odd noise, like the turning of a millstone grinding wheat. I thought, Some kind of opening mechanism for a hidden entrance, and filed the information away. Then she spoke again. 'There are stairs.' She hooked her arm into mine to guide me. I resented her touch, disliking my dependency on her, loathing my sudden sense of vulnerability.

  A strong scent tickled my nostrils, redolent of some kind of incense, and after that I lost time, and touch. I floated, weightless. I saw colours – all shades of red, orange or yellow, each shade with its own smell: essence of poppies, wine, sulphur, wet earth, fermenting yeast. I think I laughed, although what was funny I could not have said. I heard the Goddess

  herself whisper, chiding me for my lack of reverence. I was chastened, but resentful nonetheless. The next moment that had any clarity was when Antonia removed the blindfold.

  I was somewhere else. I must have walked there, but had no recollection of having moved, no memory of time passing. Vortexdamn the conniving vixen, I thought, as a semblance of rationality seeped back. The blindfold must have been soaked with something. She drugged me. There was an irony in that, of course; we of the Brotherhood were not unfamiliar with such tricks, but I was not in the mood to appreciate the parallels. Goddess, I thought, if they expose everyone who comes here to an elixir like that, no wonder there's never been a coherent description of the Oracle.

  I was assailed by more pungent smells, a mix of odours of the kind that might drift from an alchemist's shop along the Marketwalk. I looked around. I was in an underground cavern. Light came only from flames burning in a bronze container – a bowl as wide as I was tall – set in the stone of the floor. 'The Eternal Flame,' Antonia murmured in my ear, 'lit by the Goddess herself at the founding of Tyr and never extinguished since. It burns without fuel.' She believed it, too. I nodded, but wondered if it weren't fuelled from below, subterranean gases, perhaps. I always was a sceptical bitch.

  She waved a hand at the wall of the cavern directly in front of us. 'That is the Oracle.' She gestured again, this time at a pale young woman seated in front of the wall. 'The words of the Oracle will be interpreted for you by Esme, the Selected of the Oracle.'

  Esme, as beautiful as a caryatid and almost as lifeless, did not look at me. Her eyes were wide and expressionless; her body swayed slightly. Behind her

  something crouched and murmured, but whether it was a living creature or just a strange rock formation, I was not certain. The drug had left my mind fuddled and my senses blurred. My head was beginning to ache, irritated by the vapours. My eyes watered. The flickering of the Eternal Flame made shadows dance and writhe. The natural indents of the rough stone of the cavern wall behind Esme appeared to ripple. I saw in them a figure, huge, forbidding, lion-like, maned – yet with a man's features centred in the otherwise feline head. Eyes and nostrils and mouth were depthless slits boring back into the rock, to viscera beyond. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Vapours wafted through the creature's orifices, smelling of brimstone and pitch, the breath of Acheron, from the netherworld beyond the Vortex, surely. And the being – if such it was – muttered. No language I had ever heard before issued from its throat.

  I stared at Esme. She was young, though her skin had the unhealthy pallor of the chronically ill, and her eyes remained unfocused. Her voice, when she started to speak, was a monotone, but it oozed truth. She believed all she said.

 
I assumed she was supposed to be interpreting the mumble of the Oracle behind her as she intoned:

  'Ligea will travel by land and sea and beast

  To places new and far,

  She will hunt the fierce hunter to the east

  Who seeks our world to mar

  And kills our noble emperor's time of peace.'

  I blinked. One part of me hoped – with sardonic scepticism – that the Oracle's poetry was better than Esme's translation. The rest of me was appalled by the

  content of her lines. How could she know what I had only just learned myself? I moved, attempting to obtain a better view of the Oracle, but Antonia had a firm grip on my arm and jerked me back.

  Undeterred by my grunt of exasperation, Esme continued:

  'With powers to see behind the face,

  With ears to hear a lie,

  Ligea shall bring victory to this chase,

  And deal death to traitors sly.

  All power in her wide embrace,

  None will again deny

  Ligea Gayed her rightful place.'

  I was aghast. How could she – or the Oracle – possibly know of my talents? Acheron's mists, the Oracle couldn't really be percipient, could it?

  Legend said so. History gave us records of prophetic verses, written in far more memorable poetry than this. The religious maintained that the Oracle was our conduit to the advice of the gods.

  I felt sick. Damn it, Antonia was listening as my secrets were spilled from this silly girl's lips in infantile rhymes…

  She droned on, the poetry even more execrable.

  'A Legata shall journey back to Tyr, To lay tribute at her ruler's feet; Wreath'd, feted, granted gifts of gold, Honoured at her nation's desire, Her tale by poets shall be retold.'

  Fortunately, that seemed to be all. Esme stared blankly at the opposite wall in silence. The Oracle's

  murmuring continued, but there was no more translation.