Voice of the Lost : Medair Part 2 (18 page)

"Does that mean we need not be concerned with wild magic?" she asked, sitting up straighter.  "That he could not unleash the Blight, no matter what he tried to do with it?"

"I do not know, Medair."  Illukar's face was a blank mask again.  "The device is very unstable.  We cannot trust to chance."

They were distracted by a murmur from the crowd, and Medair saw that the first of Falcon Black's occupants were making their way down the slopes.  They were holding onto ropes for balance, but the path seemed safe enough after the initial drop from the end of the entry ramp.  Sendel was in the forefront, and quickly spotted Illukar, who had risen to his feet.  Medair stayed on her rock, not quite certain she was steady enough to stand.

The Decian Queen didn't return Illukar's gesture of greeting. "This is the work of Xarus' device?" she asked, tersely.

"Yes.  Tarsus is still unaccounted for."

"Then 'how and why' are of less importance than 'what next'," Sendel said, still curt.  Hardly pleased to have her castle transplanted.  "I will leave searching for the boy to you, but those in my command are at your disposal in seeing to Falcon Black."  She gave the castle one expansive glance.  "It seems unlikely to fall now, but I would have it preserved, no matter its location."

Illukar inclined his head, then his gaze went past Sendel to Islantar, leading Ileaha, Kel ar Haedrin and the two kaschen, who each had a corner of a blanket serving as a stretcher for an unconscious Avahn.  Herald N'Taive followed at the rear.

Islantar was carrying Medair's satchel.  He handed it to her wordlessly, and she looked down at the familiar leather, which she had once been so proud to carry.  It was as if it was fated to always return to her, as if it was impossible to leave it behind.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ileaha had fallen asleep cradling Avahn's head on her lap.  Even dozing she managed to steady him against the jerking of the carriage, and it was typical of the young woman that, no matter how furious she had been, she was still taking every care for his safety.  Medair and Islantar shared the opposite seat, packed off to the Cor-Ibis manor, The Avenue, as soon as a carriage could be procured.  Illukar had promised to follow soon after, and Medair had gone without demur, not willing to distract him from organising the search for Tarsus.  But good sense would not stop her from silently fretting.

"Twenty years.  Perhaps thirty.  The south will regain its strength, and we will do this again."

Adjusting her numb arm, Medair looked at Islantar.  There was a small graze on his chin, suggestive of a fall, but his mouth was firm.  Medair was not certain how cloistered the Kierash's existence had been, but she had seen enough dismay in the eyes of those who recognised him to guess how completely out of his experience these extraordinary circumstances must be.  Yet he was already looking to the future.

"Do you think it that inevitable?" she asked.  "Given Sendel's geas?"

"At least likely.  And there are those who will argue that it would be wiser, safer, to annex Decia, make it part of the Palladian Empire once again."  Islantar was watching her reaction, as if he thought he could gauge the mood of Farakkan from her face.  "And perhaps it would dull the weapons of those who wish to keep wounds open.  Perhaps make it more difficult for an organised force to be massed."

"I don't have your answers, Kierash," Medair said.  In the aftermath of her fall, it was all she could do to keep a peevish snap out of her voice.

"And are in no mood to find them?"  The look he gave her was all Emperor, the sort of survey Grevain would turn on those who offered excuses instead of action.  Medair struggled against a sense of injury, thinking him unfair to be pushing her now.  But the thought of Grevain stiffened her back, reminding her that she had abandoned the pretence of being an outsider uninvolved in the problems of the present.

"Do you think that question so urgent, then?" she asked.  "Above Tarsus and wild magic and a castle threatening to fall on our heads?"

"It is the one urgent to me," Islantar replied, shifting back from Emperor to boy.  A grave, serious youth willing to shoulder his burdens – and wanting to focus on anything but the possible price of wild magic.  "The disease, rather than the symptoms."  He smiled at her apologetically.  "You are suffering, I know, and I should not press you, but possibly you do not understand how important you are to what I strive to see.  Of all I have known, you have the greatest cause to hate the Ibis-lar as invaders.  You experienced the loss of the Empire, you were its Herald.  You lived what Estarion and the Medarists and the Hand all try to revive.  Yet you set it aside, and used the Horn to defend Athere.  If you can heal that wound, how can they not?"

Medair shook her head.  "You don't understand, Kierash.  I'm no more healed than they.  I've merely seen my way to choosing not to mire myself in acts too old to change.  But there is no forgiveness in me, not for the invasion."

The words fell from her lips as if it wasn't she who formed them.  Something had stepped into the light as she spoke, and she could neither look at it nor hide from it, only feel its anger.  It stood stony and uncooperative at the back of her heart; that part which would not stop hating.  Did she really think to start a life with Illukar while it lurked there?  But she had neither the will nor energy to try and understand it, to attempt to face it.

Her words had quelled Islantar a little, and she felt immediately sorry for him, sitting so alone on the far end of the seat, trying to shoulder the burdens of a kingdom.  But he was not easily defeated.

"How then did you make that choice?" he asked.  "For that is certainly more than the Hand or Estarion have managed.  It is not something which came easily to you, I think."

"No.  It did not.  Does not.  Will not."  Medair flinched away from her memories of the previous year.  She had certainly not been able to deal with the chasm between past and present when she had first discovered her five hundred year delay.  "I didn't want to accept reality and I worked very hard not to.  But by the time of Estarion's attack, I had seen too much to continue telling myself that this wasn't my war."

"What changed?" Islantar asked, watching her fixedly.

Medair shook her head sadly.  "It was what had not changed, Kierash," she said.  "For all I saw of Avahn and Ileaha, for all I came to feel for Illukar, I gave your mother the Horn of Farak because I was still sworn to defend Athere.  I forced myself to keep to the letter of my oath, despite the part of me which did not object to Ibisians being thrown down, because if I did not then
my
people, Farak-lar, would have been killed."

"Will you always think of us as White Snakes, then?"  Such a quiet question.

"How can I answer that?" she said.  "The anger is not always there.  When it rises I press it down, and give myself more and more reasons not to let it up again."

"Forbearance, rather than forgiveness."

"I suppose so," Medair said.  "But Tarsus, who would rule Palladium, cleaves to this idea of cleansing it first.  He believes it the right thing to do.  The only way."

The carriage jolted around a corner, reminding Medair just how tired and aching she was.  Islantar leaned across to steady Avahn, then looked down at his hand.  Against custom, though no longer against law, for him to touch.

"Perhaps, for Tarsus to rule, that would be necessary," he said.  "I do not know enough of him.  Or Prince Thessan, who is in truth the greater threat, since he is Decia's heir.  Do you know," he added, those clear eyes widening in faint amazement, "Queen Sendel had left him locked in those cells?  She sent someone to let him out, before we came down."

"They don't seem close," Medair commented, as they at last rattled through the gates of The Avenue.  "King Xarus' influence, perhaps."

"Perhaps."  The Kierash lapsed into thought, and Medair was glad to give up thinking of any futures beyond getting clean and finding somewhere to rest.

oOo

A pair of Illukar's over-efficient servants had taken charge of Medair.  They had scrubbed her and bandaged her, poured hot sugary liquid down her throat and treated her much like a two-year child.  The petite Farakkian woman who cleaned and salved her grazes acted like she and Medair had met before, and her attitude, beneath the bland mask of service, was not entirely friendly.  Uncertainty was stretching Medair's weary nerves, and she was very glad to see Ileaha, who arrived just as Medair was being wrapped in a voluminous robe.

Looking strangely naked without her braid, Ileaha waited a moment for the two women to tie the sash about Medair's waist, then dismissed them from the room.

"Do I know either of those women?" Medair asked, the moment the door to the guestroom had closed behind them.

Ileaha paused for consideration.  "You have been to The Avenue before, so it is likely you have at least seen them.  Keris Arona is 'Lukar's selvurgeon – one who heals without magic.  The other is Lekmet, who is fourth in the House's order of attendants.  They exist in both my memories, but I don't know of any connection with you."  Ileaha lifted an equivocal hand.  "Despite knowing two worlds, I don't have every answer you seek."

"Do you have the answers
you
seek?" Medair asked, then added: "You seem less distressed."

"Less?"  Ileaha looked down at herself.  She was wearing another variation of what Medair thought of as the uniform of a Velvet Sword – the most abbreviated of demi-robes over workmanlike shirt and trousers.  "Seeing Falcon Black above Finrathlar made my own divides seem...petty.  I cannot undo what has been done to me, and there is no gain in running from it.  I am two halves of a third whole."  She shook her head.  "I will not waste my energies repining."

"And Avahn?"

Ileaha's face tightened, then she sighed.  "I know it wasn't his intention to hurt me, yet he did.  But, if I take his current protestations at face value, his fault was only that he saw too late.  And...in either life, there was a bond between us.  I can't change that either."

"What was he like?  The Avahn from this remade world?"

"Much the same."  Ileaha paced about Medair, glancing at the tub of water which had not yet been removed from the room.  "In both cases, Avahn turned somersaults to avoid winning Illukar's approval.  There were many different incidents, but at core he is the same person.  It is on an errand of his that I am here."

"Yes?"  Medair was surprised.  "He's conscious again?"

"He drifts in and out.  One of Sedesten's students is tending him, so there is little chance of a further decline."  Ileaha found Medair's satchel and picked it up.  "He was most insistent I see to you."

Ileaha wouldn't elaborate further, simply leading a weary and reluctant Medair out of her room and up a flight of stairs to the third level of the house, a place she hadn't been before.

"You are not very different, either," Ileaha said, opening a heavy door of near-black wood.  "I have been hoping for this in both my memories."  She stepped aside to allow Medair to look into the room.

The covering on the bed immediately captured attention.  If someone had taken a dozen armfuls of dragonflies and dropped them onto a mossy hill, it would have something of the same effect.  Thousands of embroidered insects seethed together in the centre of the spread and dripped down its sides to hover above the floor.  They were delicately rendered in pale, shimmering colours, which saved the bed from overwhelming the rest of the room.

A wide, flat bowl of translucent porcelain, beautiful for the extreme perfection of its proportions, was set upon a black table to her left.  It was filled with water, with a scattering of rose petals on the still surface.  White screens were set before sun-filled doors of glass, each panel glowing with light so that every fleck in the material was clearly outlined.  Two pens had been placed neatly on a block of heavy paper sitting in the exact centre of an ebony writing desk.  The room was spare and balanced and inexpressibly Illukar, in a way which made Medair feel his absence acutely.

Ileaha crossed to the chair before the writing desk and set Medair's satchel in its lap.  The movement had an air of confirmation and finality about it, as if Ileaha was declaring a homecoming.  Medair walked into the room far less certainly, feeling stupidly shy.

"You are wanting to sleep, I know," Ileaha said, and left her, closing the door firmly.  The air of light conspiracy was unexpected, especially when Ileaha had been so furiously wounded that very morning.  It felt like decades ago, but the sun was not far past midday.

The depth of Ileaha's hurt, and how much of her apparent recovery was merely brave show, was difficult to judge.  Medair had not missed the way she had altered course when speaking of Avahn, and her departure felt abrupt.  But it was apparently Avahn who had sent her.  Could she believe Ileaha had simply chosen to accept and move on?  The very thing Medair had struggled so long to achieve.  She supposed the important thing was to make the attempt.

Too tired to speculate further, Medair crossed to the bed and sat down.  She felt out of place, but pushed the uneasiness aside.  Sleep would dull the edge of some of her doubts, and if she was to find any way to help, to think of some solution, she needed rest to clear her mind.

oOo

There were tiny blue smudges on the very outer edges of Illukar's eyelids.  Medair lay staring at them, trying to remember if they had always been there.  They might be a symptom of fatigue, or something every Ibisian had, and she had never noticed because she'd never before had the occasion or the desire to study the details of a sleeping Ibisian's face.

It was still the same afternoon, though the angle of the sunlight suggested it was closing in on evening.  She'd woken listening to his steady breathing and found him lying next to her, arranged on his side in a position loosely symmetrical to her own.  The scratch down his cheek looked older, though it would be a long time before it faded completely.  He was dressed in linen, as if he had meant to go out and only stopped for a short rest which weariness had prolonged.  That mass of pale hair shone in two neat braids, and he smelled very clean.  Quite captivating.