The Silence of Medair (27 page)

The Das-kend smiled reassuringly.  "They have almost completed the individual castings, Mira.  See, the Kier makes the passes of
shel-toth
, to bind what she has been creating, so she need not release it at once.  The joining of their casting, that will take a matter of a measure or two more, and the shield will manifest without great delay once they have joined.  It is creating the shield too early, rather than too late, which poses the risk, for no matter how many rahlstones are involved, a shield covering all Athere cannot be held for more than a handful of ten-measures.  It would need the intervention of the AlKier to make it permanent, even if we wanted that."

"We don't?"

"No matter what the condition of the land after this fire has passed, we will wish to venture beyond the confines of the city gate at some point," the Das-kend said.  The kaschen looked down, a faint flush colouring her pale cheeks.

Leaning forward, Medair was able to see Avahn standing in the same pose as the Kier, far to the right of her position.  She still did not understand how they proposed to link over such a distance.  Avahn would barely be able to see the Kier, let alone the other mages who must be stationed at, presumably, equal points around the city.

The Kend straightened, turned and walked to the opposite side of the guard tower to stare up at the towers of the palace.  The Das-kend joined her after a moment, but Medair and the young kaschen were captives of the burning horizon.  Everything in the south was alight – there was no longer sky nor earth, only fire, swallowing the world.  The wind was stronger too, hot and harsh.  Medair shuddered.  What would it be like when the flames were upon them?

Some tiny sound she had made caught the kaschen's attention and the young woman stared at the spot Medair occupied, frowning.  A questing hand came out, but Medair leaned carefully beyond reach, watching the uncertainty on the young woman's face.  Even if she had mage-gift, the kaschen would be unlikely to sense the murmur of the ring, drowned by so much ambient magic.  Her glances toward her two superior officers revealed indecision.

"It is a fated name," the Kend announced, successfully distracting the kaschen from Medair's invisible presence.  "It must be a grave matter to give it to your only child."

"A tradition of honour and sacrifice," the Das-kend replied.  "But inapposite in this case, Ke, for dying during the casting would end the last hope of our people."

"The casting could easily overwhelm him."

"Yes."

The kaschen, after one final glance in Medair's direction, joined the Kend and Das-kend in examining the view from the other railing.  The Kier also seemed to be gazing up towards the White Palace's towers, so Medair could do nothing but join in.

She could not see him.  He would be on the viewing tower atop Fasthold, by far the highest structure in Athere, but the distance was too great to be sure of anything up there.  Keridahl Illukar las Cor-Ibis, the solution to the problem of linking a massed spell across such a great distance.

Irrationally, Medair felt a surge of anger.  She'd carted this man out of Bariback Forest, cleaned, fed and sheltered him, just so he could kill himself.  The idea bothered her, and she linked it to her dislike of the concept of being 'fated'.  But then, as the Das-kend had pointed out, he would have to go against the tradition of his name and survive while saving the lives of his people.  This was not the simple shield of pure power he had used against the blast of fire.  A massed spell, precisely focused and hopefully enduring, would have to be cast perfectly, or there would be nothing to hold back the flames.  If the focus of the spell crumbled during the casting, it would fall apart.  And probably take Athere with it.

Medair thought of the message Cor-Ibis had sent her through Jedda las Theomain, and heard his voice saying goodbye to her last night.  She remembered how angry she had been to be geased by a White Snake, and had to turn away, only to be shocked by how much further the fire had advanced while she had been gazing up at Fasthold.  She stared, mesmerised, at the wall of leaping red-gold, orange and yellow until a distraction appeared in the form of a small cloud of dust on the southern road.

People from surrounding farmland had fled into the city.  Medair had heard the crowd on the wall discussing arrivals, and those who would not be able to make it.  This, it seemed, was one of the latter.  A person on a horse, too far away for clearer detail.  The fire was still at least a full day's ride from Athere, but that was by far too close.  Would they have time to cast the shield?

"The signal!" gasped the kaschen, and half Athere turned from the fire towards the point of light which had appeared on Fasthold's apex.  A heartbeat, two heartbeats, then a shaft of blue rose from beyond the western reach of the city.  It was joined by eight others, a many-sided pyramid whose apex burned and flamed like a sapphire sun.  At the heart of the blaze was a soft-voiced man whom Medair had bathed in a horse trough, and she found that she preferred to watch their destruction bearing down upon them, rather than their prospect of salvation.

The wind had become a gale, harsh as a desert in drought, drying sweat as soon as the heat conjured it.  The flames were closer again, leaping miles in moments.  And then the shield solidified and shut the world away.  The gale vanished, blocked by a transparent blue wall.  So did the noise, the roar of the fire and the wind.  Instead, it seemed to Medair, she could hear an entire city take in unison a single, sobbing breath.

"Thank the AlKier," the Das-kend said softly, her voice shaking.  She returned to the outer side of the watchtower and craned forward for a better view of the shield.  Medair could see the Kier unhurriedly walking toward the city gates.

"But will it keep the fire out?" the Kend wondered.  "Stupid to ask, I know, since we won't know the answer until it's here.  Ah, I could kill that man!"

The southern king, Medair assumed.  Had he had a moment to understand what he'd done, before the fire took him?  Had he at least regretted the gamble?

"Mama, I'm scared," said the kaschen in a small voice, and was folded into the Das-kend's arms.

"We all are, Mira.  But we have done what we can, and perhaps the shield will hold.  It will be a hard future, with Farak's Breast burned away, but we will face it together.  Else...at least it will be quick."

On the southern road, the person on the horse, still too distant to be recognisable as male or female, made a despairing, desperate motion with its hands towards the translucent blue pyramid which covered Athere.  Then it was lost, a mote swallowed up by the fire which swept relentlessly across the land.

The shield would have stopped anyone else from getting in, anyway, Medair thought, and sent a silent prayer to ravaged Farak as the flames, a burning fog, flowed over Athere.

Chapter Sixteen

Incredible as it seemed, in the teeth of the Conflagration they would probably all die of suffocation.  The shield kept out the fire, the wind, most of the heat.  And the air.  The exclusion had been deliberate.  It had been important that the shield be complete, not semi-permeable like the one Medair had used in Finrathlar.  After all, there was nothing beyond the shield but fire.

She wasn't sure how long it had been.  The soldiers had left the watch-tower soon after it was certain the shield would hold, and Medair had stayed to watch the flames.  They took on a greenish tinge, through the blue of the shield, and showed no sign of abating.  Enough heat came through to keep Medair sweating, and there was not so much as a hint of breeze.

Medair's first concern had been that the shield would not last as long as the fire, but she'd had time to think it through, now.  How long would it take for a city full of people to use up all the air trapped within the shield?  How long before Athere became an expensively preserved tomb?

Even if they survived the Conflagration and the shield released before everyone suffocated, what would they find?  Anything at all?  Charred earth, the scorched beds of rivers?  No crops, no stock, no wild game to hunt.  There should be, in Athere, stores enough to do some planting.  There might be horses to breed, but few cattle and sheep and birds.  Frogs?  Dragonflies?  Let alone the fodder to maintain what survived.  Faced with the prospect of starvation, Medair thought of the Bariback violet, tiny and delicate, and lost forever.

"The sky!"

A single voice from the crowd still lining the walkways.  It sparked a series of outcries as eyes sought the apex of the glimmering pyramid and found, as proclaimed, the sky.  So commonplace a sight to inspire such a groan of unbridled relief.  The shield still held and the fire was waning.  Athere had survived the Conflagration.

Like water, the fire drained slowly down the sides of the shield.  Medair followed its progress sadly, not wanting to see what it had left behind, not wanting to see the–

–verdant hills.  Manicured woodlands.  Fields of gently waving corn and wheat.  A road paved with stones of lambent silver instead of the familiar, worn grey.  In the distance there was a rider, racing towards the city.

Medair, who had suffered many shocks in the last day, swayed invisibly in the watch-tower.  She had looked upon the land around Athere countless times, and this was somewhere else.  Five hundred years had changed certain features of Palladium, but it had still been the same place.  This sculptured landscape of quiet hills and soft curves was...  She shook her head.

In the far distance, the mountains which formed the eastern reaches of Farak's Girdle rose as they always had, yet they seemed higher and darker than before.  The glitter of the Tarental River curved to the east, but surely that bend shouldn't be there?  And that bridge, an elegant arch which led to the beginnings of a dark forest where farmland should be?  Everything was different and oddly familiar.

"I finally have run mad," she whispered.

The verdant world did not go away.  The shield remained, locking out the scene like an image behind glass.  It was better, surely, than the ashen char everyone had been expecting, but Medair still stared in blank dismay.  She could hear cheers from the wall below, but they were muted, nervous.  Frightened.

There was something strange about the rider still racing toward them.  No, not the rider, the steed.  It took only a moment to isolate why: not only was the animal travelling faster than any horse Medair had ever encountered, it was doing so at about a foot above the ground.

It
looked
like a horse.  A black horse which cantered along with great, smooth strides.  Its rider was a woman, dressed in green, black hair flowing in a mass down her back.  Long before horse and rider were in hailing distance of the shimmering blue shield, Medair knew she wanted a much closer vantage point.

The Kier's armed escort, their own horses missing, were holding the crowd back from the open gates.  Medair was quick to slip invisibly past and hurry out to the shield.  The Kier, with the Keridahl Alar and a cluster of attendants, was standing before the shield, lost in casting.  Even as Medair came up, the blue wall dissipated, and a cool, scented breeze swept over the city.

It was all real.  Medair stopped where she was, only a short distance from the Kier.  Beneath her feet, the grass was withered and brown, a testament to the heat which had beat upon the shield.  A few feet away, beyond where the shield had stood, the grass grew lush and moist.  She took a few steps forward and then knelt to touch it.  Grass, cool beneath her fingers.  It smelt real.  There was magic everywhere, the lingering remnants of the Conflagration, but the grass was not an illusion.  The fire had destroyed Farakkan, then remade it.

The rider on her floating horse was drawing close.  Why its hooves should make any noise when they didn't touch the ground, Medair couldn't guess.  And didn't try, as she had her first good look at the rider.  She had Mersian features, almost exaggeratedly so.  Her hair was a mass of thin braids wound with glittering threads.  And she wore the uniform of a Herald.

Medair put her hands slowly down on the grass and simply stared.

It wasn't until the woman dismounted that she was sure it wasn't the same uniform.  In outline it was almost identical to an Imperial Herald's, but there was no silver badge, no satchel, and there was a device of a tree stitched on the breast.  And it was green.

Long before Medair been born, Heralds had worn a thousand combinations of colour to complement every kind of message.  That was why the colour-change enchantment had been created.  The system had been deemed overly complex during the reign of a former Emperor, and the Heralds had been restricted to three colours.  White, red and black.  Dark green would have been...marriage tidings?  Medair shook her head, numbly.  This wasn't an Imperial Herald.  It wasn't.

"It was a marvel to look upon,
Ekarrel
," the rider was saying.  Medair had missed part of their conversation, while she had crouched on the ground trying not to scream.

"Tell me more of Queen Valera," the Kier responded.

The Mersian looked frankly bewildered, but then, so did most of the Ibisians.  "
Ekarrel
," she said, "I have carried messages between you and My Lady Valera these past five years.  I was in My Lady's escort when she visited the White City two years ago.  I do not understand what it is you wish to know."

The horse, a black mare, swung its head in a strangely alert fashion as Medair climbed unsteadily to her feet.  The animal seemed to be looking directly at her, and Medair shifted uneasily, not certain whether to be concerned.  At least the black's hooves were for the moment planted firmly on the ground.