Andrea Höst - Voice of the Lost

She tried to make out what it was he was looking at, and thought she could see a darker outline directly above. The prospect of finding a place to shelter for the night did not cheer her, not when she would be alone with Cor-Ibis.

Before heading up, they took advantage of the muffling quality of the mist to relieve themselves, then Medair coiled the rope and tucked it back into her satchel. The ascent proved relatively easy, though Medair’s shins gained several bruises in the process because they could not risk going slowly.

Keridahl-glow did little to help Medair navigate the cave entrance, which gave them room to move side by side, but not quite enough for Cor-Ibis to stand upright. He motioned for her to wait, and felt his way blindly forward, head lowered. She could see from the way he bent further that they had not found anything sizeable.

"The base is almost level," he said, returning, "but it lowers and narrows, and I believe ends shortly beyond the point I could reach." He glanced at a spike of rock on the ramp side of the cave’s entrance, which cut off view of the watching-posts. "We will wait here for dawn."

Medair turned to practicalities, because there were an overwhelming number of things she did not want to think about. They could not stand comfortably in the cave, and the fact that Cor-Ibis had not cast a simple night-sight enchantment told her how very near the edge of exhaustion he was. She groped in her satchel, knowing she would have to stand guard while he rested.

Bedrolls and blankets served to pad the uneven floor, and they sat on the rim of the cave entrance to eat the modest meal fished from the depths of Medair’s satchel. Dried fruit, nuts and stale biscuits. But now that they were out of the wind, and were no longer focused on moving, black memory threatened to crush her. The weight of it was exhausting. How long had it been, since she had woken? She’d lost track of time after the Horn.

"Do you want to go through Bleak’s Hoard tonight?" she asked, searching for some useful occupation.

"Describe it to me."

Medair made a soft noise in her throat. No small task. "There are twelve rings," she said. "No, eleven now, since the invisibility one shattered. One gives strength, along with recklessness. One controls animals – much in the manner of the vellin spell. One teleports the wearer to a place within sight. I haven’t the sensitivity for divination, so the others remain unknown, just as I don’t know the function of four bracelets, seven swords, twelve knives, sixteen amulets, and a necklace and crown which appear to be part of a set. There’s a shield-caster which will cover, oh, a circle four feet in diameter. Dozens of small objects – a set of cards, tiny scales, statuettes – which I never even attempted to understand. The necklace and crown, one of the swords and a statuette are all so extraordinarily powerful that I wouldn’t suggest even taking them from my satchel. Any strong mage in the castle would sense them, for they proclaim their power almost as loudly as the Horn."

"Divination would best be left for the morning," Cor-Ibis said. If he was surprised at how little she knew about the Hoard, he didn’t reveal it. "When our minds are clearer and it is possible to see without attracting attention with mageglows." He lifted one faintly shining hand, perhaps ironically. "Do you have strength enough to cast wend-whispers, Keris? We can try to coordinate rejoining in the morning, though it will not be a simple matter, particularly if the mist rises again."

"To Avahn and Ileaha, yes. The Kierash, perhaps the Mersian, I will try." While not a complex spell, a wend-whisper required an exact mental impression to mark the recipient.

They settled the wording of a brief message, and Medair lost herself to the precision of casting. It was worth an attempt, though there was no guarantee the bubbles of words she was creating would reach even Avahn and Ileaha. Wend-whispers were described as relentless butterflies : they would keep on until they found their goal, but their course might be far from linear, and any careless foot could crush them. With their missing companions so close by chances should be high, but the cloaking mist would be poorly designed if it did not interfere with exactly this sort of communication.

"Could you cast a trace, if we can’t find them?" she asked, when the last of the messages blundered into the night.

"I might, with some difficulty, establish a link to those most familiar to me without having some object of theirs to focus upon. The chances of failure are high."

Medair stiffened. He had lifted his hands, and his fingers brushed her collarbone, her throat, then found the cord of the invested spell she wore.

"You have worn this long enough that I could use it to trace you if we are separated," he said, lifting it over her head. "My chances certainly increase when you are not wearing it."

He slid the ward into his robe. Then, after the most minute of pauses, reached out and took her hands in his.

"Don’t."

It was a feeble protest, and his long fingers only shifted a fraction in response. He was silent and she couldn’t say anything more, knowing how much she needed to pull away, and completely incapable of making that tiny, tremendous effort. They sat there, hand-in-hand at the mouth of the cave, while futility chased its tail around Medair’s mind.

She had admitted some of her feelings to herself, but to do anything about them was impossible. He would never stop being Ibisian and she would always be Medair an Rynstar. Loyal Palladian, failed hero. Butcher.

"Do you remember our last meeting before the Conflagration?"

"Y-yes," she said, uncertainly. That had been on the balcony, when he had theorised about her past.

"I have never regretted a moment more than that," he said. His voice was as soft and calm as ever, and so bare in its sincerity that she had to stop herself from flinching.

"I knew that my people had given you reason to hate," he went on, choosing his words with eggshell care. "I know now that to you I am a man who might be Palladian but is foremost a White Snake, one of the people who brought down the Empire you served. I am everything you should hate, and if you do not, you will feel in your heart that you have turned your face from all you failed to save."

He glanced at her, and she couldn’t say anything, because he had put her feelings into words exactly.

"That night, I wanted to tell you that nothing would please me more than to name you mine, to have between us a certainty which banished distance. And I did not. I thought it too cruel. It is my eternal fortune to be allowed to make that choice again and, though the moment is perhaps harsher still, this time I do not bow down to the hold of the past."

"I am the past," she said, finally gathering the will to pull her hands from his, but his fingers tightened and held her still.

"You are from the past," he said, firmly. "I doubt I will ever succeed in freeing you completely from that cage, from the weight of circumstance crushing you. But you are not failing the dead by living, Medair. You are here, now, and I would be–" He stopped and she heard him take a breath; the imperturbable Illukar, struggling for words.

The thousand arguments she needed to fling in his face would not come to her, sabotaged by a pathetic need.

He looked down, then traced a question on her palm. "Even without your past, we did not have an auspicious start," he said, and she was again conscious of the excruciating care with which he spoke. "A geas by way of introduction and spell-shock to exacerbate matters. You had so many reasons to be angry, and you did not quite hide that there was an old enmity to spice the mix. And you were so meticulously, so scrupulously just. When every feeling must have urged you against it, you returned the rahlstones to me. Purely because you believed it the right thing to do. I have rarely met such honour." He paused again, then raised his head. "I have loved you from that moment," he said, and his voice was raw.