Voice of the Lost : Medair Part 2 (6 page)

"Clasp hands," Cor-Ibis said, his voice as muffled as a man speaking from beneath ten blankets.  Medair thought he said something further, but could not make it out.  The mist closed around her like a cage.

Reaching out, she tried to find Islantar, who had been closest, but her fingers touched only icy vapour.

"Hello?" she said, then repeated herself, more loudly.  Her voice sounded distant to her own ears, and she could hear nothing from those who had been only a few feet away moments before.  She was alone in a still and silent world of white, the wind cut off as completely as the Keridahl.

oOo

Being literally muffled made Medair feel far less detached from the question of present and future.  Resisting a panicky impulse to run forward groping for her companions, she stood still, attempting to orient herself.  She had been facing Gyrfalcon Castle – or Falcon Black, as Herald N'Taive called it.  If she could somehow continue in a straight line, she should find her way to the hill's base.

Spreading her arms wide in the hopes of encountering the others as she moved, Medair took two steps forward.  Her right fingers brushed something and she gasped, but it was only the bark of another tree.  It was fortunate that Falcon Hill was a large target, as she doubted that she could keep to a straight line through thick forest.  She could only hope to head in the same general direction until she found something other than trees and mist.

Concentrating on keeping to a straight line, Medair walked directly into someone's back, merely a dim shape through the shrouding mist.  Her heart leapt in fright, even though she knew it had to be one of her companions.  A face came close to hers, the outline barely recognizable as Avahn.

"Medair," he said, voice muted even at close range.  A shape loomed at his shoulder, easily identifiable by the faint luminescence which clung to him.  They formed a loose triangle, both Cor-Ibis men taking one of her arms, as if the mist might snatch her away.

"You were closest to Kierash Islantar, Keris," said Cor-Ibis.  His clasp on her wrist seemed unnecessarily firm.  "Can we hope to retrace your steps?" he continued, and she took reassurance from his businesslike tone.

"He was directly before me," she replied, shaking her head uselessly in the gloom.  "I walked through the place he had been standing and there was no-one in reach."

"The mist disorients as well as obscures," Cor-Ibis said.  At close quarters, the glow of his skin clearly revealed his drawn face.  Had he rested after the enormity of the shield-casting?  The set-spells he'd cast on the wall could have been prepared over the last handful days, but more likely only in the previous few hours.  And then he'd released them in rapid succession, each instance an additional drain on his reserves.  They were in the heart of Decia, and he had none of the advantages of his adept's strength.

Nor did he quite retain his usual calm, not with Palladium's heir brought to the enemy's stronghold.  "The Kierash could be two feet from us and we would not know.  A dispell may help, but I doubt it could vanquish this mist."

"If it cleared a small area, we will at least be able to collect any others, like Medair, who have not travelled far."

"Avahn, are you as close to having exhausted your reserves as your cousin?" Medair asked, trying to make out his face in the tiny amount of light Cor-Ibis emanated.

"Not quite."  She thought he smiled.  "It's not often I can expect my casting to be more powerful than yours, Illukar."

"Just do not overestimate your reserve," Cor-Ibis replied, looking about them as the mist seemed to close more tightly, filaments of white threading through strands of hair escaping his once neat plait.  "If you do not have another set, cast quickly, before they move on."

Avahn nodded, releasing Medair's arm but staying so close his elbow brushed her as he made rapid passes.  A dispell did not take long to cast, but every moment gave the others the chance to move out of range.  While Avahn worked, Cor-Ibis cast a set spell mageglow, which gave the cloaking mist a warm glow but by no means cut through it.

A rush of air accompanied the activation of Avahn's dispell, and they found themselves at the centre of a large dome beneath the mist.  Standing at the very edge, in the direction Medair was facing, was the Mersian Herald.  She held an arm protruding from the mist and Medair felt Cor-Ibis' grip on her own arm tighten as N'Taive pulled a young Ibisian woman dressed in the uniform of a kaschen into the clearing.  There was no trace of Islantar, Ileaha, Kel ar Haedrin or the other kaschen.

"Do you have rope?" Cor-Ibis asked, already moving beyond his disappointment to practicalities.  His voice seemed loud in the absence of the mist. 

Medair nodded, and opened her satchel.  Avahn crossed the clearing to take a firm grip on the Mersian, scanning the edges of the mist as he went for any more disembodied limbs.  Then the dome collapsed, instantly cutting Medair and Cor-Ibis off from Avahn and the two women.

After a moment's complete stillness, Cor-Ibis took the rope Medair had pulled too late from her satchel, coiled it first about his own waist, then bound a triple loop about Medair.

"Could you cast another dispell?" she asked.

"I could, yes.  But I will not risk spell shock at this juncture.  Avahn will take them to the castle and, if the AlKier is with us, we will be able to meet near the road after this mist lifts."

"If any of them still have their bearings," she pointed out as he took her hand.

"The castle is heavy with power," he said.  "More than enough for Avahn or Islantar to detect, even through the hazing effect of this forest's enchantments.  Kel ar Haedrin, the other soldier and Ileaha, however, will need a great deal of luck."  He started forward slowly.

Medair was certain that she would remember this short journey as the worst in her life.  Falcon Black had not been far away, but pushing blindly through a dense wood on a cold, damp night was a nightmarish experience, exacerbated by the cottony silence which buried even the rustle of fallen leaves beneath their feet.  It made her feel impossibly alone, reminding her endlessly of the world which had been twice cut away from her.

The rope binding her to Cor-Ibis did not help: snagging on bushes and branches.  At one time it stopped them in their tracks as it caught firmly on some invisible obstruction.  Medair prayed silently to Farak to guide Ileaha and the others safely and tried not to think of the obstacles which lay ahead of them, even if they could reunite.

Clear air.

Medair let out her breath, barely suppressing a cry at the suddenness of the change.  Cor-Ibis had brought them to a corridor between the steep, jagged base of Falcon Hill and the smothered forest.  The mist formed an improbable wall, only a few tendrils venturing into the open space.  The moon, high in the sky, lit the corridor like a festival light.

After endless blind stumbling, Medair found the sudden transition wholly disorienting.  The sharp wind cut through her clothes while barely stirring the white wall from which they had emerged.  The back of her neck ached with tension, and she took slow, steady breaths to try and quell her shaking.

Cor-Ibis dismissed his mageglow, then produced a swatch of cloth from within his demi-robe.  Dabbing at a bleeding scratch which stretched from the corner of his eye down his cheek, he surveyed their surroundings.  Medair had not fared as badly, though her hands were marked with tiny slashes and there was a painful welt on the side of her throat.  She was cold and damp, with no hope of a hot bath or warm bed in the near future.

Cold, at least, she could try to do something about.  She fished a thick jacket from her satchel and then her lambs wool cloak for Cor-Ibis, who donned it without comment.

"Should we wait for the others?" she asked, her voice sounding loud and unfamiliar to numbed ears.  She started to untwist the rope about her waist.

"No.  Even if we could be sure they had not reached this point before us, this is too exposed."  He was gazing upwards to towers and walkways, then noticed her untying the rope and held out a deterring hand.  "We may need to retreat to the mist, if there are patrols or watchers."

They had barely started circling east when they discovered the first cave, the opening nearly ten paces across and twice Medair's height.  A gate of dull black metal blocked the way, and Medair could see little in the inky blackness beyond the bars.  Then she heard something move within, and backed away.  The gate appeared to be designed to raise up into the rock and there was a faint scent of animal, not wholly unpleasant.

"Something which snatches," Cor-Ibis suggested.  "Whoever is meant to raise the gates when the mist descends has not been attending his duty."

Medair stared at his cool profile, then continued walking.  She felt a brief resistance on the rope before he too moved away from the cave.

"Had you been in Decia, before the Conflagration?" she asked, turning her mind from the ordeal she had just endured and whatever was within that cage.  There were too many things she couldn't bear thinking of.

"Not officially."

More shape-changing.  "Was it as...foul?"

"No.  Estarion was simply a greedy man.  Competitive, domineering, but not cruel.  A capable leader, although he left much of the practicalities of his rule to his sister, preferring to treat and deal and scheme for expansion.  He had a hatred of losing, for it rocked his belief in his own superiority.  It is not altogether surprising that he was arrogant enough to turn to wild magic, though I might wish I had anticipated it."

"Why would he remake Decia into
this?
" she asked, staring up.  The castle was like the backdrop to a mummer's play: lowering, evil, and wrong.

"I doubt he had any thought of transformation.  Certainly no considered scheme of any would-be conqueror need include the resurrection of the Mersians' capital, or the creation of inland seas – or gods.  Estarion merely opened a door."

"If he does so again, what determines if there'll be another Conflagration, or the creeping blackness which took Sar-Ibis?"

He didn't answer, looking ahead at another cave closed off with an iron gate.

"This is different," Medair said, stopping some distance from the gate and wrinkling her nose at the rank scent.  A high, whining growl whipped into the night, redolent with hunger and frustration, and Medair was hard put not to step back.  "Not what was in the last cave."

"No.  I do not recognise the cry, but this is obviously a predator.  The last cage was not a meat-eater, unless I miss my guess.  Perhaps food for this one, or for some other purpose."  He took her arm and they edged past the cave, then several more without gates as they made their way around to the eastern face of Falcon Hill.

A ramp stretched down from the southern corner of the hill toward the road east.  Medair and Cor-Ibis, at the northern corner, were able to gaze directly along the ascent as it rose through two blockhouses to the massive castle gates.  Great braziers on either side of the gates held tapering mounds of fire, reminding Medair inevitably of the Conflagration.  Orange light gleamed off brass bindings.  Both of the blockhouses were also alight, huge bowls of leaping fire on the flat roofs of the watching posts, casting the heavy portcullises below into deep shadow.

"The road east is likely also blocked," Cor-Ibis said.  "When the moon drops the shadow of the hill would shield us most of the way to the first fortification, but we will not risk going so close.  That rock bluff three-quarters of the distance along is ideal, for we will need to cross unseen in the morning."

"Through the forest again?"

"That remains to be seen.  We will need to keep to the edge of the mist along here."

That was hard, to step back into the muffling chill, and walk almost wholly submerged.  The corridor, clear of  both mist and trees, drew her toward exposure, but though the watching-posts were distant, whoever manned them would surely have been alerted by the rise of the mist.  Anyone striding along the gap would be asking for notice.

Before reaching the spur, Cor-Ibis stopped again.

"Can you climb this?" he asked, gazing across the corridor to the shadowy rocks rising upward.

The hill was not a sheer wall, closer to ladder than slope, but the sharp-cut moonlight created inky shadows which would make footing more than uncertain.  "Probably," she said, touching the rope which bound them.  His faint glow was nothing in the mist, or even the corridor, but would stand out against the black and silver of the rocks.

She tried to make out what it was he was looking at, and thought she could see a darker outline directly above.  The prospect of finding a place to shelter for the night did not cheer her, not when she would be alone with Cor-Ibis.

Before heading up, they took advantage of the muffling quality of the mist to relieve themselves, then Medair coiled the rope and tucked it back into her satchel.  The ascent proved relatively easy, though Medair's shins gained several bruises in the process because they could not risk going slowly.

Keridahl-glow did little to help Medair navigate the cave entrance, which gave them room to move side by side, but not quite enough for Cor-Ibis to stand upright.  He motioned for her to wait, and felt his way blindly forward, head lowered.  She could see from the way he bent further that they had not found anything sizeable.

"The base is almost level," he said, returning, "but it lowers and narrows, and I believe ends shortly beyond the point I could reach."  He glanced at a spike of rock on the ramp side of the cave's entrance, which cut off view of the watching-posts.  "We will wait here for dawn."

Medair turned to practicalities, because there were an overwhelming number of things she did not want to think about.  They could not stand comfortably in the cave, and the fact that Cor-Ibis had not cast a simple night-sight enchantment told her how very near the edge of exhaustion he was.  She groped in her satchel, knowing she would have to stand guard while he rested.

Bedrolls and blankets served to pad the uneven floor, and they sat on the rim of the cave entrance to eat the modest meal fished from the depths of Medair's satchel.  Dried fruit, nuts and stale biscuits.  But now that they were out of the wind, and were no longer focused on moving, black memory threatened to crush her.  The weight of it was exhausting.  How long had it been, since she had woken?  She'd lost track of time after the Horn.