The Heart of the Mirage by Glenda Larke Page A

with obviousreluctance, to see the weapon Mir Ager had used. Deltos was a tall, sad-eyed man with a slow, measured way of speaking, and he did not like the whole subject of Mir Ager, or his weapon, a fact he made clear. ‘The sword is dangerous,’ he said. ‘We would destroy it if we knew how to.’
    ‘Dangerous? Then why not learn to use it?’ I asked.
    He gave a hollow laugh. ‘We don’t even know how to pick it up.’ He lit a torch and led us down into the cellars under the barracks, then still deeper down another flight of steps.
    ‘Sweet Melete, wherever do you keep it?’ I asked. ‘In the sewers?’
    ‘In the furthest dungeon cell. There are eight locked doors between it and daylight. Here we are.’ He unlocked the last door and swung it open. In the windowless cell, a bundle lay on a table. Deltos remained standing by the door. ‘That’s it. It had to be pushed with staves onto the skin that wraps it now. Don’t put your hand to it, Legata.’ He nodded at Brand. ‘You unwrap it, slave, but be careful not to touch it.’
    I held Brand back as he moved to obey. ‘No. I will.’
    ‘Legata, if anything were to happen to you—’ Deltos began to protest, but I was already unrolling the skin, spilling what it contained onto the table. At first I thought it was just a sword. It was far from gigantic; the Prefect’s memory was faulty on that point. It was, if anything, abnormally short. The hilt and the hand-guard were ordinary enough, patterned but not jewelled. Then I realised the blade was not forged metal as I had at first thought, but translucent like frosted glass—and it was hollow. The tip was open, the edges razor-sharp. I reached out my left hand to touch the hilt.
    ‘Vortex, Legata, don’t !’ Deltos cried. ‘It’s a spirit thing. Protected by—Goddess knows what! Numina spells. I know it sounds ridiculous.’
    ‘Quite ridiculous.’ A numen was an amoral spirit of ancient beliefs, not part of our pantheon of deities. We weren’t even supposed to believe in them any more. I turned to smile at him. ‘It will not hurt me, Centurion.’ Somewhere in my distant memories, something told me I had nothing to fear. My hand closed around the hilt and I lifted it from the table. It was as light as cork wood and slipped into my hold as though it belonged there. I uncurled my fingers and looked at the hilt again; there was a rounded hollow there into which the swelling on my palm fitted when I closed my hand. And the sword recognised me . Shock squeezed my heart painfully, but I tightened my grip on it once again.
    Deltos gaped as I held it up. ‘Goddess! It took six men to carry it here. Six men to lift it. And not one could touch it for the pain.’
    I blinked at that extraordinary statement, but decided not to ridicule him. He believed every word he said, so I decided to make use of his credulity. ‘Never underestimate the Brotherhood, Centurion.’ I wanted him to think it was my Brotherhood associations that made me special, but I knew differently. It wasn’t easy to quieten the fear—the fear of my past, of my blood, of what I was—that jerked my heart to such unevenness.
    I turned my attention back to the weapon that was not quite a sword. I slashed it through the air, bringing it down on the table. Had it been glass, the blade would have broken; had it been an ordinary sword, it would barely have marked the wood, because the force I used was insufficient to do much damage. Thisweapon sliced through the planks like a gorclak horn through horseflesh.
    ‘Goddess preserve us!’ Deltos exclaimed.
    ‘A formidable weapon,’ I said, impressed in spite of myself. ‘Tell me, Centurion, has anyone tried to steal this from you?’
    He shook his head. ‘We spread the rumour we’d thrown it into the sea. The Kardis don’t know we have it. If I’d had my way, we would have thrown it into the sea from a ship on its way to the Wild Waters.’
    I smiled. ‘You don’t have it any more. I’m