The Silence of Medair (31 page)

"There is always hope.  Athere faces a great threat – her walls are strong and woven with magic, but we deal with an unknown quantity along with strength of numbers and casting to equal our own.  The fruits of wild magic, as yet not fully known.  Why does Estarion hunt you, Kel?"

"Not to fire his troops with tales of Medair an Rynstar reborn," she replied, sourly.

"No.  Answer my question, Kel.  I am not able to allow you the luxury of continued evasion."

This was better.  Threats would make it easier.  "Would you force me then, Keridahl?"

"If you were allied with Estarion, then I would be wise to at the very least restrict your movements."

"I've never met the man," Medair protested.  "Besides, why would he hunt me, if I worked for him?"

"Why would he offer you protection?"

"I doubt it's concern for my health and well-being."

As an attempt to rile a White Snake, Medair's answers failed miserably.  He just looked at her, pale eyes stripping away her veneer of carelessness to the confusion beneath.

"Kel, we face a battle beyond the scope of any before brought to these walls.  War to be waged on young and old alike, with the promise of slaughter without mercy.  We will not bargain with Estarion, for the reward he sets upon your life is none we would care to accept.  But such a demand can only mean that you have a value we have not yet realised.  If there is some knowledge you hold, I would ask that you share it."

 "I have no knowledge of Estarion," Medair replied.

"You know why he wants you," Cor-Ibis countered, with complete certainty.

Medair hesitated, then nodded minutely.  "Yes."  She stared down at the map in her hand, found she had crumpled it, and carefully smoothed it out again.  She knew that she needed to give him something and let out a breath.  "A True Seeing.  Estarion has no idea who or what I am, but follows a Seer's pronouncement that to possess me is to gain some advantage in this war."

"And is this true?"

"Where would Athere be without the rahlstones, Keridahl?  Arguably, the Seeing is already proved.  Estarion's magics may be formidable, but the rahlstones have ever made Ibisian mages an army in their own right."

"He seeks you still, and you no longer possess the rahlstones, Kel."  But Cor-Ibis had been struck by this twist, she could tell.  His eyelids had dropped completely for a moment, and now were open much wider than before, as if he had suddenly woken.

"Does he necessarily know my role in that misadventure?" she asked, the picture of reason.

Cor-Ibis rose to his feet with slow grace, and stood looking down at her.  "Perhaps not.  This is not the whole truth, Kel.  If it were, if you were that blameless passer-by you posited, you would not have any reason for mystery."  He held up a pale hand to arrest speech.  "You need not try to convince me you have a love of playing games.  It is not so.  Tell me this, Kel ar Corleaux.  Will you remain silent as Athere's walls fall?  Are your secrets worth so much?"

"This is not my war, Keridahl."  A tight, small, obstinate voice.

"You are here.  It is your war."  As soft and calm as ever.

"No."

"Will you maintain this stance as you watch children cut down in the streets, Kel?  It will not only be warriors, not only Ibis-lar, who die after dawn."

Medair could only sit silent, angry and ashamed and frozen by vows to the dead.  And the part of her which could not forget that Kier Inelkar sat a stolen throne.  Cor-Ibis studied her face, his own a mask which betrayed no emotion.  Then he turned and walked away, pausing at the door to look back.  In the shadows, away from the window, the subtle difference which had teased Medair's perception earlier suddenly became clear.  Faintly but surely, Illukar Síahn las Cor-Ibis was glowing.

"I thought better of you, Kel ar Corleaux," he said, cool voice turned to ice.  Then he was gone.

-oOo-

 "Medair?"

This time it was Ileaha.  Medair raked the girl from head to toe with a searching glance, then closed her eyes.  "Would you ever betray your Kier, Ileaha?"  Her voice was harsh.

"I–"  Ileaha took two steps forward, then stopped.  "No," she said flatly, as if Medair were inviting such an action rather than asking a question.  "Inelkar is Kier.  I would give my life for her."

"Even if it seemed the right thing to do?  If it would prevent deaths?"

"What seems the right thing to do is not always the best path, Medair," Ileaha replied.  She was uncertain of the ground she was venturing onto, but sure of her convictions.  "On my name day I gave oath to serve, to obey, to protect.  There are no ifs or buts or half-measures.  That is like being a little bit pregnant."

Medair lifted the corner of her mouth in a weak smile.  "Partly a traitor.  You are very certain.  And if your Kier were killed, and the survivors surrendered, would you serve Estarion?  What do you do when everything has changed but you, Ileaha?"

"If my Kier were killed, my life would already have been spent."

"Matters do not always arrange themselves so conveniently."

"Perhaps not."  The young woman stood behind the couch recently vacated, trying to find hidden meaning in Medair's questions.  "We will not surrender, Medair, even if the opportunity were offered to us.  If I survived my Kier, I would avenge her, or die in the attempt."

"Like a Medarist, fighting on when the cause is lost?"

"That's no comparison," Ileaha objected.  "The Medarists fight over something long past, something they did not participate in.  Like Estarion, they ground their violence in the dead, lay blame on the living, and have motives based in greed rather than justice."

"Some of them think it just,"  Medair said, and frowned down at the paper in her hands, not truly seeing it.  Cor-Ibis hadn't changed anything, except by making her feel a little unhappier.  Baiting Ileaha as a way to lash her own wounds was pointless.  She couldn't decide how her oath bound her, could not resolve the conflicting voices of conscience.  She wanted so much to give in, to relinquish the burden she carried to those who needed it, but could not bring herself to take a step she knew she would always regard as a betrayal.  Give the salvation of the Empire to those who had destroyed it?

"For you have to ask, Ileaha," she said, wearily.  "What is justice?  Whatever Estarion's motives, can you deny the very core of his arguments?  That the Ibis-lar stole Palladium, that an Ibisian on the Silver Throne will always cause dissension, that the hatreds will not die?"

"I stole nothing, Medair," Ileaha replied, skin splotchy with anger, hurt in her eyes.

"No."

Medair retrieved her satchel from underneath the couch, then handed Ileaha the crumpled map.  "This is the Mersian Herald's, I believe."

She left without farewells, tired of talking to people who could not understand because she dared not explain.  Ileaha did not try to stop her, and the guards did not seem to know she was not supposed to go.

With no help amongst the living, Medair decided to search for it in the halls of the dead.  Her oath had been to Grevain Corminevar.  She would seek counsel from his grave.

Chapter Nineteen

Even stone ages.

The Hall of Mourning was a place of high ceilings and dark shadows.  It covered several echoing chambers, tiered and separated by balustrades.  Telsen had called the Hall the Gallery of the Dead.

Centuries had added hollows to the shallow stairs, and stains of damp on the walls.  She bent to touch the depressions in the cold, grey stone and marvelled at the number of feet which must have passed this way since Telsen took her on tour.

Gazing out over the sarcophagi of generations of Corminevars, Medair saw that the Hall had been extended.  Through a wide new opening to the right of the second tier she could dimly make out stone railing and marble.  Built to house five hundred years of Ibisians who had ruled from a stolen throne.

The Hall was not permanently lit, and she felt suddenly uneasy about venturing among the dead.  Waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, she hesitated at the foot of the entrance stair.  Light reflected past her off the polished floor of the Hall of Ceremony, where several large mageglows provided a steady, clear illumination.  It only served to make the shadows deeper.

Voices prompted her to edge to one side, where must and dust waited to assail her nostrils.  The palace seemed overfull of guards today.  They had watched her suspiciously as she'd made her way down from Cor-Ibis' rooms.  She'd had half a mind to don her ring, but was tired of the vague sensation of illness.  Besides, there was no ban of which she knew against visiting the Hall of Mourning.  Skulking around invisibly would only make her seem guilty of something.

The source of the voices proved not to be guards, but a group of young nobles, walking in a tight cluster.  She couldn't make out what they were saying, and waited until they had passed through the Hall of Ceremony.  Then a series of careful gestures served to conjure a bobbing mageglow bright enough to keep the shadows at bay without drawing the attention of passers-by.

Her footsteps echoed as she walked across the first tier, where the earliest kings and queens of Palladium lay in stone-wrapped state, their likenesses carved by hands long turned to dust.  The second tier was larger, but held fewer sarcophagi.  It had once been considered fitting for the coffins of monarchs to be more than a container for their bodies, for their lives to be reflected by some tribute.  So there were friezes, columns, crypts within crypts.  They ranged in complexity from the wrought iron fence around Iriane the Just, to the miniature palace which housed the remains of Varden the First.

She paused momentarily at the entrance of the new extension.  A corner of pale stone was visible in the light of her glow, but the rest was little more than black shapes in darkness.  Ibisian dead: she had no wish to look upon them.  Gritting her teeth she went onward, to the third tier.  This was where Grevain Corminevar's mother had been laid to rest, where the last true Palladian Emperor would surely lie.

White, pure, unembellished.  Her mageglow heated its milky depths.  Medair stumbled to a halt, having discovered not the resting place of her Emperor, but the one who had destroyed him.  There were no markings of any kind on the tomb, not even his name, but Medair knew it could be no other.  Standing alone at the very end of the Hall, an achingly simple box of near-translucent marble which held the mortal remains of Ieskar Cael las Saral-Ibis.

Twenty-three and dead.  She refused to think of it, of him.  He had destroyed the Empire and deserved no thought at all.

With grim determination she dragged her eyes from the soft marble, sought and found the carved, grey face of the man to whom she had sworn her life.  Grevain Corminevar's sarcophagus lay in the shadow of two of Farak's handmaidens.  The statues towered some seven feet high, leaning out of the wall at the head of the sarcophagus, each holding a stone arm forward, hands resting on the shoulders of his image.  Their heads were bowed in sorrow or contemplation.

A lump lodged itself in Medair's throat and she went to one knee in the traditional obeisance.  He had not been a handsome man.  Stocky, bearded, dour.  Whoever had been set the task of recreating his likeness had been skilled: the prominent Corminevar jaw was visible beneath the curling outline of beard.  The stone face was at peace, despite the sword clasped to his chest to indicate he had died in battle.  Medair could not remember ever seeing him wear such an expression.  He had been a brisk, impatient man, used to dealing with problems quickly and efficiently, always thinking on to the next trouble brewing on the horizon.

"I'm sorry," Medair choked out, inadequately.  She brushed at tears suddenly streaking her cheeks.  The enormity of her failure overwhelmed her and she was barely able to hold her ground, wanting to collapse into wails, to crawl away in shame.  "One stupid mistake," she told indifferent stone.  "I – it could have been so different, if I hadn't – Excellency..."

The futility of it all strangled further words.  Grevain Corminevar was dead, the Empire had fallen, and nothing Medair could do could change that.  She could not even ask his forgiveness.

Did death release the bonds of oath?  Medair was running out of time in which to struggle with her own conscience.  She did not want to stand by and watch the inhabitants of Athere slaughtered, for all they were Ibisian.  But to give the Horn of Farak to those whom she had originally sought to use it against?  No, that was beyond her.  She would not betray her people to the benefit of another.  She would rather...

Medair placed her satchel on top of the stone hands of her king, and slowly opened it.  Reaching in, she found a heavy silk cord and pulled it gently, not enough to expose the Horn, not yet.  It was so rich in power that every Ibisian in the palace would likely be able to feel it.  Instead, she found the bone handle of a knife, a sliver of metal which would cut flesh cleanly.  Fear and uncertainty washed over her, but she pushed second thoughts to one side.  It was better this way.

Winding the cord about one wrist, she closed her eyes and sent a silent prayer to Farak.  The Horn would be pulled from her satchel when she fell, and she would be free of choices she did not want to make.