Andrea Höst: The Silence of Medair

"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."