Andrea Höst: The Silence of Medair

Medair gaped.

"You little wretch !" she gasped, not believing what had happened. A geas. He had put a geas on her. This scrawny, filthy, half-dead scrap of a boy had geased her!

Medair’s vision swam with unaccustomed fury. It was a spell the White Snakes had introduced to Farakkan. They had geased their prisoners in droves, bound them with magic so the invaders need not fear the conquered. It had been in many ways a merciful approach, but Medair would never forget the frustrated impotence in the eyes of the people of Mishannon, the first Palladians bound not to harm Ibisians. One of them had described it as living with your heart in a cage.

Trembling with anger, she paced about the confines of the shelter, glaring at the grimy face above the matching grey blanket. A geas. The little rodent had geased her. Geased her!

Eventually, since the little rodent was now both defenceless and unconscious, she calmed down enough to sit sulkily on her own blanket, still glaring. There had to be a way out of this.

The geas had not been spur-of-the-moment. He had had it set, just waiting to spring on someone. Not an uncommon practice – many spells took too long in the casting to be useful, but they could be prepared, set, ready to be triggered, and would last up to a couple of weeks before they had to be renewed. She couldn’t tell a great deal about the geas which he had placed on her, though she could feel the power of it like a snake coiling about her spine. She doubted it was as simple as the verbal command he had given. Very likely it had the usual clauses about not harming the caster and so forth, so she couldn’t kill him to free herself and she could not break it. Medair was too minor a mage to even begin to cast such a spell, and the Empire had learned some hard lessons about how much stronger than the caster you needed to be to break a geas.

Despite her limited magical defences, she might have been able to withstand the geas if she’d guessed for one moment that he could or would cast such a spell. Instead, having nursed this viper back to relative health, he had surprised her with a bond she didn’t have the ability to break.

Medair grimaced. Relative health indeed. He looked on his way to giving up the ghost. Most of the power for the geas would have been in the preparation, but what he had used in triggering it had obviously sent him close to the brink. Well, there wasn’t anything she could do for him. He would die or he wouldn’t and it would serve him right if he did!

After a further spate of glowering she pulled another blanket from her satchel and tucked him up more firmly. There was still a hint of power about him and, at this stage, she wouldn’t be surprised if he had a whole sackful of tricks ready and waiting for unwary rescuers.

"A twelve year-old adept. My luck is running true to course." Medair stared out at the storm, which was now driving in through the door. With difficulty she shut out the weather, and carefully fed damp twigs into the fire to alleviate the gloom. Smoke lurked about the ceiling, but didn’t grow too suffocating. Small mercies.

Medair wasn’t particularly good at being angry, so she grew resigned instead, plotting her course to Palladium’s capital on the map she kept in her head. The quickest route would be east from Thrence through Farash, but nothing was ever that simple. As Herald she had been used to travelling without bar or threat through an Empire where quarrels between duchies were settled in the Silver Court. Now Farakkan had broken into myriad little kingdoms clustered into alliances about four major realms: the Ibisian Palladium in the north-east, Decia to the south, Mymentia in the west and Ashencaere in the north-west. Kyledra, Lemmek and Farash enjoyed an uneasy existence in the centre of these four groups, battling not to be swallowed up or overrun in the hostilities between their powerful neighbours.

Strange to think of the once ardently loyal Duchy of Farash at odds with the Empire’s heartland, but she’d found on her way to Bariback that the border between Farash and Palladium was not an easy one to cross. She doubted it would be any simpler on the way back, especially with a semi-conscious mage-child in her care and who knew how many different groups searching for someone with rahlstones.

Grumpily, Medair decided on a route north to the generally neutral Ashencaere, which had remained inward-looking since the fall of the Mersians – a kingdom far older than the Palladian Empire. There was nothing else to do but go to sleep. Resisting a geas once it had taken hold usually resulted in painful bouts of nausea, headaches, all manner of nasty maladies right up to total paralysis. If she didn’t take the boy to Athere "as directly as convenient," she’d have cause to regret it. Fortunately the wording of the compulsion wasn’t wholly unreasonable. She would not be forced to travel through the night until she dropped in exhaustion, but she doubted she would be given too long a grace period.

Nothing ever seemed to work according to her plans. She should stop making them.

The boy was still alive, and even looked a little healthier, when dawn and dripping leaves woke Medair. He wasn’t inclined to respond to her attempts to rouse him however, so she ate and cleared the shelter, then attempted the novel task of dressing an unconscious child in almost dry clothing. The weather had turned cool in the wake of the storm, so she kept a blanket out to wrap about him and, with an efficiency born from a desire to get the business over, had them underway while the air was still in the half-tones of very early morning.

It was awkward to go at speed with him cradled against her chest, and she experimented with various positions until noon, when they reached Nodding, a tiny village centred about a farm which had once been a Rynstar holding. Medair had established on her trip through in Autumn that there was no trace of her family home, and today she refused to be sidetracked into thinking about the fate of her mother and sister after the war.

With a few casual questions Medair learned that a great many people had headed into Bariback Forest recently, but none had returned. Nor was anyone interested in whether they did or not, so long as they didn’t linger in Nodding. Fear of years-old plague made the villagers unwelcoming and she realised it would have been difficult to leave the boy in their care as she’d originally planned. She was not quite run out of town, but no encouragement was given for her to tarry. It was only when she was back on the horse that she realised that she’d talked with someone for the first time since Autumn. If nothing else, being geased had distracted her from her empty misery.

Thrence was at least another day’s travel. Surely the geas would allow them a day there to rest and recover, so that the boy could ride his own horse? But then there were the Decians. Was Thrence big enough to hide her?

Mulling over alternatives, Medair was surprised by a curl of power emanating from her charge. He groaned, and raised his head. Really, he must be a phenomenal mage indeed. Spell shocked people were supposed to be days or weeks in recovering. Power would accrete to them only slowly and relapses were common if casting was attempted. He’d be mad to cast now.

The boy muttered something, lifting a hand. But not summoning power. Some sort of spell was disbanding, wearing thin through lack of renewal, like a set-spell. Not her geas, unfortunately. She reined in as he shifted against her chest. How many pre-set spells did this boy have on him?

"Bratling," she said, as he slid to the right, "stop wriggling about or you’ll – "

Medair broke off, jaw dropping for what seemed the tenth time in the last few days. The boy was growing as she held him!