The Silence of Medair (30 page)

"At such a time.  Selfish, I suppose, but if this is to be the end, I don't want to spend it running errands for Jedda las Theomain."  Ileaha grimaced.  "I didn't mean to say anything.  The entire Court has been chaos since they returned from Ahrenrhen, and running errands would probably be the most useful thing I could do.  We are not ready for this war, and the Keridahl had better things to do than debate my wants and needs."

"Debate?"  Medair stood up, a sharp, violent movement.  "I doubt it, Ileaha.  That one rarely needs to debate things.  I have encountered his kind before, and know enough to recognise the methods."  She smiled stiffly, her eyes on one of the young would-be warriors, who had gone so far as to pull her arm from the grasp of an elder and was now pushing her way steadily out of the confines of the crowd.  "He tests you, certainly.  Keris las Theomain was your test.  I suspect the task of finding me was by way of being a reward."

Ileaha rose, and smoothed down the linen robe she wore as if it would somehow grant her control.  She took a deep breath, but still sounded woefully young when she spoke.

"Why are you angry, Medair?"

By this time, Medair was no longer angry.  If she were able to sustain such an emotion for any appreciable time, she would be able to focus herself around it.  She continued to watch as the crowd began to break apart.

"Do you think they should stay, or go, Ileaha?" she asked, as the small group marched resolutely away from home and family.  "Who preaches wisdom here?  Do the young chase glory, or are they simply better able to make sacrifices?"

"I think both of them are right," Ileaha replied, with the air of one unable to follow the conversation.  "There is no clear path, and wanting glory does not lessen the fact that they are needed."

"Or change the impossibility of the task."  Medair offered the confused woman an apologetic smile.  "We are alike, I think, Ileaha, for neither of us trusts ourselves.  Did Cor-Ibis tell you merely to find me, or to bring me back?"

"To find you.  But returning with you was implied, I think.  You don't wish to come back?"

"Not really.  But I don't suppose it will make much difference."

"No."  Fear and sorrow chased personal concerns from Ileaha's eyes.  "There is little hope, though few dare to say that the end is a forgone conclusion.  The world has been remade, it seems, to Estarion's specifications.  He wanted victory over us, and the fire of wild magic he caused has given him just that.  And made him monstrous."

"Do you think he knows?" Medair asked, following Ileaha as she started out of the square.  "Perhaps being the cause of the Conflagration will have allowed him to escape the changes."

"I don't know.  There's so much we're ignorant of, in this new world!  We cannot even guess who this person is he seeks."

"What does the Mersian Herald say?"

"That the Isle of Clouds is a sacred place in the Shimmerlan, where, as far as she knows, no-one lives.  Or, rather, it is the home of Voren Dreamer, Lady Night, also called 'Lady Death', and that no mortal would dare go there."

"Lady Night?"

"One of this Four she keeps talking about.  Maddening, the way things have been reshaped.  The AlKier and your Farak have been joined by two others gods.  Just conjured up, for everyone to believe in.  There is, and always has been, only one God.  The AlKier has no equal, and shares Her burden with no others."

Ileaha sounded personally offended by the suggestion, and Medair was forced to smile.  She had never heard of the Isle of Clouds, let alone Voren Dreamer, but had little doubt who it was King Estarion demanded be surrendered to him.  Possibly, Cor-Ibis had made a similar deduction, though he could not understand how important the woman he had geased might be to the coming battle.  He had not heard the result of the Decians' true-speaking.

She didn't know why she was willing to go back, or what her answers would be if he questioned her.  How could she judge the right thing to do, when her feelings were so suspect?  They were all Ibisian.  The pale invaders.  White Snakes.

She wished she wasn't so glad he was alive.

Chapter Eighteen

"Kel ar Corleaux."

Medair looked up and found Avahn standing in the doorway of the sitting room.  "So formal?"

"I didn't know if you'd still allow me use of your name," he replied, with a solemn smile.

Listening to Telsen's perfidious song seemed aeons ago.  "I'm not angry with you, Avahn."

"No.  Disappointed."  He sighed, and sat down opposite her.  It was necessary for him to make a minute adjustment to the sleeve of his robe of shimmering dark blue before meeting her eyes.  "I apologise, Medair.  I'd told you that same day that I wouldn't keep treating you like a puzzle it was my privilege to solve, and then did precisely that.  I'm not ordinarily so ill-mannered."

"No?" she asked, then shook her head.  "It doesn't matter, Avahn.  We will forget it happened.  Perhaps, instead, you can explain to me why the Ibisian Court tolerates a song with such a subject?  Waiting for the hero of the conquered to return and drive you out?  Even if it is Telsen's masterwork, I find it difficult to understand why it hasn't been banned in Athere."

"Tradition," Avahn replied, his eyelids drooping as he studied her.  "You must have lived a sheltered life indeed, never to have heard the song or the story behind it."

"You can't help but probe, can you?" she chided, and the faintest flush lent a delicate violet to his cheeks.  "I suppose you believe that bizarre tale Cor-Ibis produced, of me being raised in isolation to pretend to be the past reborn."

"He told you that?  Well, we have not found any other explanation which fits.  I don't suppose it really matters any more.  So much else has changed, I wouldn't be surprised if they no longer even have that legend, outside Athere."

"I sincerely hope not.  Have you spoken with the Mersian Herald?"

"Tried to.  But many others wish to claim her attention, and I am not able to pre-empt them."

"Not even as one of those who shielded the city?"

He made a dismissive gesture, but looked pleased.  "That disconcerted a few."

"Your act won't be as convincing, any more."

"Perhaps not.  I think I shall have to abandon it, though it would be possible, I imagine, to have some believe that high-adept casting was mere luck."

"Just stumbled into doing the right passes.  I'm sure."  Medair sighed, and rubbed her left temple.  "Tell me the story behind that song, Avahn," she commanded.

"Without trying to provoke revealing reactions," he said as if put-upon, and smiled charmingly.  "Very well.  It's a short tale, after all.  Telsen, with typical daring, asked the
Niadril
Kier for permission to play the piece, and a dispensation was granted.  Speculation over why was naturally rife, but the
Niadril
Kier was famed for keeping his own counsel."

"Ah."  Medair shook her head, feeling ill.  "No wonder your cousin thought nothing of suggesting an affair.  It would have become almost an accepted fact, for those who did not understand."  And those who had known Medair would have berated Telsen for those inferences, seen Kier Ieskar's silent acceptance, and wondered angrily if it could be true.  The Ibisians of the time would have known it wasn't possible, but those of her friends and family who had survived her might well have believed she had betrayed them.  Consequences unrolled in her mind and she sat staring at her knees, not caring about Avahn's steady gaze. 

Hero or traitor?  She felt like she'd been led through a series of decisions where she'd had no choice at all, just so she could betray her people.  It seemed fitting that her name had come to represent both things.  Doubtless "The Silence of Medair" was guaranteed to make any Medarist foam at the mouth, for the implications of both its lyrics and history.  How a woman raised to believe herself Medair an Rynstar reborn would react was another question.

"Most do not believe as Adlenkar does," Avahn offered, in a conciliatory tone.  "The
Niadril
Kier's motives are unknown, and you were right to point out the stain it would be on his honour, if the speculation was true.  Perhaps he shared my admiration for Telsen."

Medair tried to picture Kier Ieskar allowing such a lie to be spread, no matter how prettily presented.  It seemed terribly unlikely, and spawned possibilities Medair did not care to think about at all. 

"I have long since given up trying to comprehend the motives of Ibisians," she said, almost too softly for him to hear.

"We are just like you at our core, Medair," he replied, solemnly.

"That's probably what's so frightening."  She sighed, and sat a little straighter.  "Could I bring you to believe that I am no-one in particular?"

"It is a possibility we have considered, Kel," said Cor-Ibis, from the doorway.  "But one, like many, we have dismissed.  You may leave, Avahn."

Avahn, dismissed like the many possibilities, rose without protest and offered his cousin a slight inclination of the head as he passed him at the door.  Medair, who had been convinced that seeing Cor-Ibis again would answer some of her most difficult questions, watched as he crossed the room and found no solution within her.  That she cared about this Ibisian she had no doubt.  Something which had been clenched painfully in her chest had relaxed when Ileaha had told her that he lived, and since then Medair had doubted her every motive, her every action.

As he arranged himself opposite her, she tried to sort through what she was feeling.  Apprehension, mainly, for she had too much respect for his mind not to know that this interview would be difficult.  She had come in part hoping that she could make herself hate him, see him as an adversary still, as a White Snake, as wrongness made flesh.  And to see for herself that he was uninjured.

If possible, he was even more impeccably presented than usual.  She tried without success to isolate what it was that seemed different as he withdrew a slender cylinder of parchment from one sleeve of his robe.  Not a hair was out of place, not a single crease marred his full robe of pale green and blue.  She wondered how he made it shimmer so, whether he had the vanity to use magic to enhance his appearance.  She was distracted from such speculation when he leaned forward and offered her the parchment.

Unsure what this signified, she accepted it cautiously and unrolled the tight cylinder as he settled himself back with that characteristic absence of expression.  A map, not much wider than her two hands side by side.  Drawn in detail with a fine hand, it was immediately recognizable as Farakkan.  And all wrong.

Medair noted the forest grown larger in the north-west and the dark border which surrounded most of the lands south of the Girdle of Farak.  She frowned over the absence of borders between Farash, Kyledra, Mymentia, Corland and Northern Histammeral, unable to understand the significance of the irregularly-shaped blobs outlined in the midst of these lands.  "The Shimmerlan" was written across the entire area.  Then she gasped.

It couldn't be.  Medair counted the scattering of blobs, most numerous where the western reaches of the Girdle of Farak...had been.

"Islands," she whispered.

"Just so," Cor-Ibis agreed.  "I asked Keris N'Taive, the Herald from Ashencaere, for a map to ascertain the location of the Isle of Clouds.  I imagine you will not be surprised to learn that we were not long ago very close to it."

At that moment, Medair was less concerned with his attempt to shock her into an admission than the fact that her homeland was covered with water.

"What about the people?" she asked, still stunned.  "Has everyone drowned?"

Cor-Ibis made a complicated gesture with his hands: negation and lack of knowledge combined.  "Keris N'Taive speaks of beings called Alshem, who dwell in the waters of the Shimmerlan and trade with those on the islands.  Mer-folk, if you will.  Many of the islands correspond with the cities of the lands which have vanished: Thrence, Varden, Sarenal."

"Dwell?  Mer-folk?"  She shook her head, studying what little detail such a small map was able to give of this inland ocean.  "Half Farak's Girdle seems to be gone."

"But not Bariback," Cor-Ibis replied, returning to the point.  "The Isle of Clouds, where Lady Night, Voren Dreamer, makes her home and the Four have been known to hold Council.  Kel, why does Estarion hunt you?"

"Out of idiocy, it seems to me," Medair said, twisting one side of her mouth.  She studied this man who owed her his life, who was the blood of her enemy and innocent of their crimes.  Who held to the same Ibisian honour which had destroyed the Empire.  He watched her in return, his eyes silver mirrors, his demeanour too like one she hated for comfort. 

"I would be on Bariback Mountain now, if it were not for Decian interference.  Or the Isle of Clouds, whatever it's called."  She glanced with some awe at the parchment she held.  "I don't care to think what I might have become, out there.  Mer-folk and flying horses."

"Despite the Conflagration, you are still hunted."

Medair shrugged.  What could she say to this Ibisian who was important to her?  Should her undefined feeling for him make any difference to the greater question?  "Do you hold out hope of surviving this attack, Keridahl?"