Voice of the Lost : Medair Part 2 (21 page)

"These last few days–"  He paused, and she could almost see him think on all that had happened in such a short time.  "I know that what we have shared will make my death harder for you, but I cannot regret choosing my moment to speak."

"No."  Medair determinedly set aside the selfish, petulant part of herself which regretted ever having met him.  And the part which told her that no good could ever have come of lying with a White Snake.  "I'm glad you did," she said, meaning it.  "I–"  How to say everything she had not?  "I have been happy with you," she said, finally, and watched his eyes smile.  That made it nearly impossible not to cry, so she followed Islantar's example and hid in Illukar's embrace.  So much easier to simply hold him and try to pretend it wasn't for the last time.

Immediately, her memory served up to her the expression on Illukar's face when he had bowed to Ieskar.  Such straightforward respect.  Did he admire the man who had destroyed her Empire to save his people's pride?  Had he been raised on stories of the
Niadril
Kier's war, just as Medarists followed the legend of Medair?  What would Illukar have done, in Ieskar's place?

"What is it?" he asked, catching her off guard.  He must have read some tension in her body, unless he truly could see into her mind.

"This isn't the moment," she said, aching more with every word.  She didn't want to ask him, not now.

"It is the last moment, Medair," he said.  Almost wry.  "Speak."

Would it be better not to know, and live with the uncertainty?  Or should she risk tarnishing her memory of him?  She drew back, enough to look up into that faintly glowing face, and saw a shadow of concern.  That made it harder to refuse, for she would not leave him wondering as he went off to die.

Her tongue was heavy and reluctant as she spoke.  "Kier Ieskar...told me that he invaded because the Ibis-lar would have become a pauper race if they'd accepted the Emperor's mercy.  Feared, hated, separated..."  She trailed off.

"I have heard the
Niadril
Kier's reasons," Illukar said.  His voice had gone quite soft, as if someone held a knife to his heart.  Medair stared up at him, a knot in her throat she couldn't swallow.

"Do you think he was right?" she asked, faintly.

"Not for Palladium," Illukar replied, immediately.  But his eyes were unhappy.  "It was disastrous for the Empire, and so many centuries later there is still division because of it.  It is the one great wound in our past that Farakkan cannot forget.  As Ibis-lar..."  The care with which he weighed his words was answer in itself.  "It may not have happened as he forecast.  Grevain had offered aid, shelter: a generous welcome.  There was no certainty that they would have devolved into hearthless outcasts.  I do not doubt they would have been feared for their power, that inevitably they would have been at odds with some Farak-lar, perhaps persecuted.  We are not the most flexible people, and the laws which bound us at that time were astoundingly rigid.  Being divided, as refugees must be, among those who could house them, they would have been powerfully disadvantaged, overwhelmed by Farakkan's numbers.  A vulnerable position."  He stopped, then continued grimly.  "In the longest of terms, yes.  It was not an honourable thing to do, but for the Ibis-lar as a people, I think he was right."

There were so many implications to this admission that Medair's head spun.  And yet, it barely mattered.

"Strange how little difference that makes to the way I'm feeling now," she said in astonishment, and kissed him because it was true.

Too soon someone – Sedesten – came near them and said: "It is ready."  When Illukar drew back she had to force herself not to cling to him, and instead tried one last time to conjure some plan for his survival out of need and nothing.  All she could manage was a wretched attempt at hiding the way her breath sobbed in her throat.

"I will miss you, always," she said.  His attempt at a smile was sadly awry, out of place on Illukar's beautifully drawn features.  It was her pain, her loss, which was doing that to him.

"I will love you always, Medair," he said, a stark statement which did not pretend that his 'always' would not be longer than that night.  He brushed her cheek once with those slender white fingers, then turned and walked away.

Hidden by the dark, Medair curled down to hug her knees, closed her teeth on the hand pressed to her mouth, and howled.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was the longest stretch of nothing she'd ever known.

Illukar had been planning to travel near to the centre of the Blight, to try to avoid destroying Finrathlar's western hills, but Medair had no idea how long the journey would take.  Such drawn-out tenterhooks had left her with a conflicting desire for it to be over, and for it to never happen.  Sitting forever in the dark, on chill, marshy earth, would be a small price to pay for Illukar's life, wouldn't it?  But she supposed that would mean he would be eternally traveling to his death, and she wouldn't have that, either.

The Blight was getting close.  Drained and weary, she stared out into the night.  Few birds flew past now, but the supply of insects seemed never-ending.  Medair pictured all Farakkan's inhabitants, every species, crowding to the edges of an ever-expanding lake, then discarded the thought.  Hardly a happy thing to picture Illukar's sacrifice as futile.

"Keris an Rynstar."

She watched dispassionately as Islantar approached, carrying a glowstone.  "I'm not going to hurl myself in, if that's what brings you." 

"No.  You would not do that to him."

Islantar sounded more certain of that than Medair was herself.  She didn't bother to gainsay him, watching him arrange himself into an attitude of polite attention.  Court posture.  This was more than solicitude, then.

"There is one who wishes to speak to you," he said.

"I have no wish for company, Kierash."

"I am aware of that.  I ask this of you, Keris."

Again that was the kind of request Emperor Grevain had been wont to make: refusal was not easy.  Medair looked up into Islantar's young, resolute face and sighed silently.  "Very well," she said, standing.  Islantar waited a moment, then gestured with the glowstone.

Two figures approached along the bank, gradually resolving into dark-haired, copper-complected young men of similar build.  There was, Medair noticed, a similarity in their features which suggested blood ties.  Tarsus and Thessan.  She supposed it was not improbable that Xarus Estarion might have decided to join his own line with the Corminevars, but these brotherly countenances were the first suggestion she'd encountered of such a union.  What, she wondered, had happened to Tarsus' mother?  And what were the implications for the succession of the Decian throne?

Those questions, however, were not why these two had come to see her.  Prince Thessan looked like he'd rather be anywhere else.  Tarsus, only marginally less ragged than her previous sighting of him, was evidently the one who wanted to speak to her.  Behind the two young men emerged a half-dozen guards, headed by Kel ar Haedrin.  They remained just at the edge of the circle of light cast by Islantar's glowstone, none of them completely hiding their concern.

Tarsus sketched a gesture of courtesy.  He seemed to be as high in formal ropes as Islantar.  Thessan just looked sour.

"Herald an Rynstar–" Tarsus began, and Medair shook her head.

"I lost my role as Herald, Lord Tarsus."  The title she gave him sat awkwardly on her tongue, but it would take too long to decide the correct formal way to address someone who might be the true descendent of an ousted Emperor.  She would rather they just went away.

"Forfeited it, you mean," put in Thessan, at no pains to hide the anger and disdain in his voice.  "When you sided with White Snakes over Palladians."

Medair shook her head, ignoring the sick knot which had instantly formed in her stomach.  "It was not a matter of choice, Prince Thessan.  I stopped being a Herald of the Empire when I woke five hundred years after the Palladian Empire's fall."

"How convenient for you," Thessan snapped.  "With your oath magically dissolved, you're free to take up with whatever White Snake catches your eye."

"Leave to, Thes," Tarsus said, putting a restraining hand on Thessan's arm.  He appeared torn between agreeing with the Prince and the knowledge that Illukar – a White Snake – was giving his life to stop a disaster Tarsus had sparked.  "Lady an Rynstar, then," he said.  "I wished to ask you of Emperor Grevain.  You knew him–"

"I was sworn to him," Medair said, softly.

"Yes.  You served him."  Tarsus brushed at his curly hair, as if looking for a delay.  "It has been put to me that...to press my claim to the Silver Throne is not in Palladium's best interests.  I would know–"

"You would let yourself be talked out of what is yours by right!" Thessan said hotly, subsiding only when Tarsus gave him a pained, pleading look.  It was obvious that there was considerable affection between the pair.  And that Thessan would happily throw Medair and Islantar into the Blight, if not for the guards who watched.

"Let me do this, Thes," Tarsus muttered, then met Medair's eyes squarely.  "I would know what Emperor Grevain would do, at such a pass.  Whether he would approve of my quest."

"I can't answer for the Emperor," Medair said, dismayed.  "Nor," she added, glancing at Thessan's angry face, "would you have any way of knowing if I was honest in any opinion I gave you."

"I am aware of that, Lady an Rynstar," said Tarsus.  "But you alone of all the world have met the Emperor.  You witnessed the invasion, you quested to stop it, no matter what the outcome.  Truth or lie, I feel I need to hear what you have to say.  What kind of man was he?  Would he have surrendered his crown to benefit his people?"

Medair blinked, trying to bend her mind away from her grief, to think along unfamiliar courses.  The intensity of power emitted by the Blight made it impossible to forget that Illukar was out there, preparing to die because of this boy.  Grevain Corminevar seemed so impossibly long ago.

"I...cannot really picture him as anything but Emperor," she said, slowly.  "He was born to the rule.  If he had survived Athere's fall, if he had been – if he had been allowed to live after Kier Ieskar took the Silver Throne..."  She shook her head blankly.  "No, the situations are too dissimilar.  If the Emperor, instead, had woken as I did, five hundred years too late, would he have raised an army to take back his throne?"  She thought about the ever-busy, abrupt man she had sworn her life to, and realised how little she knew of him.  To her, he was Lord and Law and there was no bond of friendship.  Simply Emperor, the ruler she had so admired.

"This is useless," Thessan muttered, and Medair searched her memory, not willing to leave Tarsus completely unanswered.

"He was a proud man," she said, carefully.  "Wise to the political games.  He offered his opinions rarely, for his every word was weighted.  He disliked intensely things not going to order.  He would give second chances, but never a third."  She remembered Grevain's manner when he sat in judgment over some dispute.  It gave her more confidence.  "If he had found himself in today's Palladium, he might well have sought his throne," she said, looking directly into Tarsus' eyes.  "If he believed that it would benefit Palladium, if he thought Ibisian rule, in practice, was unjust.  But I don't believe he would feel that way."

"That's just what
you
would say," Thessan snapped, predictably.  "But Ibisian rule is anything
but
just.  How many true Palladians do you see in power?  How many rise from beneath the White Snake boot?"

Medair stared at him, realising that Thessan knew less of the reality of Palladium than she did, no matter what changes the Conflagration had made.  How could she tell him that very few Palladians seemed to object to Ibisians?  That those who still nurtured hatreds were a minority, no matter how powerful their effect on their land.  It was obvious that, whether it had been greed or justice which motivated Xarus Estarion, Thessan truly did believe Decia's war had been to benefit Palladians.

"I won't pretend that most of those who rule aren't of Ibisian descent," she said, trying to be absolutely fair.  "That is hardly surprising, when titles are hereditary.  And Ibisians are not thought arrogant merely by accident.  But I have seen no suffering.  Or any indication that laws are interpreted in the favour of Ibis-lar over Farak-lar.  Though hampered by Medarists and perhaps the pure camp of Ibisians, Palladians as a whole are prospering.  It is only my opinion, but I do not think Emperor Grevain would overset that, simply to replace Kier Inelkar on the Silver Throne.

Tarsus' reaction was overwhelmed by Thessan's.  "You could hardly give us any other answer," he said, in a low, trembling voice.  "I will not forget what you have done.  You killed those who would have redressed the old wrong–"

"No."  Medair said the word flatly, angrily.  "I defended Athere against an invasion.  Stop trying to fight a five-hundred year past war."

Tarsus again restrained his fellow, gripping Thessan's arm tightly, then asked in a quieter, but no less accusative tone: "Can you deny that there are those in Palladium who wish to be freed from White Snake tyranny?"

Medair had to force herself not to simply send them away so she could return to mourning.  Or give in to the very large part of her which wanted to slap Tarsus, to shriek and tear his hair and ask him how he dared to show himself before her when he had ignored their warnings, when he had run with that mirror, and let it fall and brought Illukar's death down on him and left her with no way out.

She took a breath, slow and deep.

"Of course I can't.  What you refuse to let yourself acknowledge is that they are not the only 'true' Palladians."  Medair gestured past Tarsus, to the row of guards silently watching them, and flame-haired Liak ar Haedrin with her Ibisian uniform and creamy skin.  "Were you going to liberate her from Ibisian rule?  Or kill her along with the White Snakes you hate so much?"