Andrea Höst - The Silence of Medair

But the invaders had been hopelessly outnumbered. They couldn’t have won. Couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t have won if the West hadn’t betrayed Grevain. That had been the worst moment of the war, more horrible even than that first battle at Mishannon, when the White Snakes had taken the city without losing a single warrior. Destal an Vesat had delivered the message, unable to hide his gloating. The western kingdoms were throwing off the yoke of the Empire. They would not support Palladium against the Ibisians, for the Ibisians were now their allies.

It had become only a matter of time before the White Snakes took Athere, Palladium’s capital. Unable to bear the destruction of the Empire whose peace she had been raised to venerate, Medair had turned to the past, when mages more powerful than any White Snake had waged their own battles. Those mages might have long since departed Farak’s breast, but the artefacts they’d created remained, at least in legend. There was one which would surely save them: the Horn of Farak, hidden among the Hoard of Kersym Bleak. Medair’s Emperor had given her leave to seek it, but few had thought she had any chance of success.

Telsen, half-delighted, half-angry, had turned up from nowhere the day before she’d left. The last time she’d seen the man she no longer loved or hated.

"You’re not really going to chase that children’s tale?"

"You have an unfailing ear for gossip," she’d replied. Maintaining her dignity around Telsen had always been of primary importance. If he knew how much he’d hurt her, he’d probably work it into his music and she’d find her heart being sung to the world. Such had been her logic.

"You can’t know that the Horn still exists, Medair, if it ever did. Can’t know if it’s in Bleak’s Hoard, can’t possibly hope to find the Hoard just when we need it most, when so many have sought it before you."

"You’ve always told me to trust in coincidence. That Farak will provide."

"Maybe." He had smiled, tilted eyes lighting with that particular fire which told her he was inspired. "Maybe. What a tale it would be! The Horn of Farak, fashioned from the bones of the Goddess Herself. Athere under siege, surrounded by White Snakes, and you appear, raise the Horn to those kissable lips, summon a mighty army and save us all."

He’d hugged her enthusiastically, as ready as ever to forget that he’d fallen out of love with her years ago, and gone through a dozen women since. She’d answered half his questions, only hinting at the clues she’d discovered in the archives. She knew better than to tell him her conclusions. He’d been planning verses for her epic when she left him.

During the long journey north, Medair had daydreamed often of the song Telsen would write for her victory. The Hoard of Kersym Bleak was legend, true, but legend based on fact, and she’d planned to destroy the White Snakes with what it contained. She was not certain if even Telsen could put into words how she felt when, in the heart of a dripping limestone maze, she’d lifted the Horn from a cushion of silk and quailed to think how many deaths would stain her hands when she used it.

She still blamed that moment of self-doubt for the disaster which followed. If she’d been more certain, more eager to strike down the invaders, she would not have rested at the heart of the maze, and slept away any hope of success.

It had taken two days after leaving the cave for Medair to realise the cost of that night. Her missing horse she’d put down to an inadequate knot. The confusing, indefinable difference of five hundred years of forest growth she did not recognise for what it was until after she understood what had happened, until after she’d reached Morning High. Never before or after would the sight of a ploughed field bring such confusion. She’d stared at the neatly churned earth which had not been there two of her days ago, and stumbled on to discover a village she knew full well didn’t exist. And people who were strangely tall and blond. Her reaction to their concerned questions – uttered in a mix of Parlance and Ibis-laran – had nearly caused her to be locked away as a madwoman. Because one night in the maze had become five hundred years in Farakkan, and the world had moved on without the victory Telsen had prematurely set to music.

That had been last Spring. She’d travelled blindly south, heading toward the city which had been the Emperor’s last defence: Athere. By the time she’d reached the old capital of the Empire, she was sure she didn’t want to see it. The whole north-east of Farakkan was under Ibisian control, and White Snakes were everywhere, calling themselves Palladians.

But, because she did not know what else to do, because she had to look, Medair had walked through the city she had thought to return to in triumph. There were more walls, but the palace still stood, and much of the city was all too familiar. A Corminevar even sat the Silver Throne: a pale-skinned, snow-haired descendant of Kier Ieskar and the Emperor’s only daughter. It was unbearable. She hadn’t been able to stay more than a day in that monument to defeat.

Medair hated the White Snakes, for it was impossible to feel anything else for the people who had wrought such destruction in the Empire. Not that it had been difficult to hate: they were arrogant and over-civilised, mannered and cold. Despicable in their greed.

She’d been told her own history in Athere, even listened to stupid tales about how she would be reborn, would come back to save Palladium from the White Snakes. The ballads knew the start of the story well enough. Two years after the Ibisians had arrived on the continent of Farakkan, it became obvious that the Emperor’s armies could not hold. In a month, perhaps two, Athere would surely fall. So Medair an Rynstar, Imperial Herald, had left to find the Horn of Farak.

They couldn’t tell the end, those ballads of futile heroism. Only Medair knew that her quest for a weapon to defeat the White Snakes had been successful. She’d found the Horn of Farak and brought it back to the Emperor’s city. Five hundred years too late, five hundred years after Grevain Corminevar had lost.

How easy it would be to use it on the White Snakes anyway, in memory of the Empire she had served. She’d certainly considered it, after buying an afternoon of answers from a scholar, and listening to the facts of the fall of Athere in the driest and most enervating of terms. She’d stood just within Cantry Wall and stared up at the White Palace and pictured herself taking the Horn from her satchel, raising it to her lips. No-one, nothing could have stopped her. And the White Snakes would have died.

But it was impossible. During the war, she would have done anything to defend her home from the Ibisians. She had dreamt of a world where White Snakes did not exist to destroy her peace, where she had never heard one voice in particular: cool, tranquil, hateful. But to use the Horn on the Ibisians who now dwelled in Athere? Who were Palladian?

She’d run away from the desire to do just that. Away from White Snakes and the part of her which demanded that they be driven out of the city they’d stolen, that they be punished, wiped out of existence. Because no matter how much she hated them, she’d known it was wrong.

After she left Athere last Summer, Medair had carried the Horn with her and tried not to think. The Duchy – now Kingdom – of Kyledra had been her first home, and she had travelled to her family lands north of Kyledra’s Bariback Forest, only to find no trace of the Rynstar demesne. From there, stewing in hatred which no longer had a true focus, she had ignored warning of plague and headed for the mountain. Its lofty solitude had been a balm of sorts, and, until now, a refuge. With these Decians on her trail, she needed to find somewhere else.