Andrea Höst - Voice of the Lost

"You’re delivering this to them as well," he said, earnestly. His gaze shifted to Illukar, who was standing quietly at Medair’s side, and Tarsus looked him up and down with open horror. "A thing of such power, to White Snakes. Jan, you have run mad."

His disbelief was palpable and, as he glanced down at the glass again, a bright shimmer flashed across its surface. That was all that happened, and Medair could barely sense the whisper of power which meant he must have tried to activate it. The effect on Tarsus was more notable: he shuddered and staggered, sweat bringing a slick and waxy sheen to his skin.

Vorclase took the opportunity to take a few more steps forward, but Tarsus backed into the wall as the Captain approached, lifting the heavy glass to chin-level. The Decian guards stirred and Vorclase gestured for them to be still.

"I’ll break it," Tarsus said, in a faint, breathless voice. "Get back, Jan, or I’ll smash it at your feet."

"Would that be bad?" Vorclase asked Illukar, as he took a reluctant step away.

"It could be disastrous," Illukar replied, then released the set-spell he had prepared. Tarsus flinched away with nowhere to go, and briefly the glass merged with his chest again. And nothing else happened.

Tarsus looked down at himself and smiled with uncertain triumph. "You can’t touch me, White Snake!" he said, eyes wide and voice incredulous. "Farak protects her own."

"The device absorbed the casting," Illukar said, glancing at Vorclase.

"Well, that’s helpful." Vorclase was disgusted, but spared little of his focus. "Tarsus, we can’t stand here all day. Tell me what you want us to do."

"Leave." The young man was collecting himself together again. "Leave me, clear me an exit and give me a horse."

"That’s what I’m trying to arrange, boy." Vorclase sounded frustrated. He looked at Illukar. "Better than stalemate."

"The device must remain," Illukar replied, sedately.

"I will not give it up! Not to a White Snake!"

"It must be unmade," Illukar said, ignoring the affront in Tarsus' voice. "It is fashioned from wild magic, it draws on wild magic. You, who would rule Palladium, must see the only course open."

The youth looked uncertain, shifting the glass in his arms. "Wild magic?"

"I won’t pretend that there are not reasons for Palladium to wish you dead, or at least in custody," Illukar said, blunt and cool. "Still, you have my word that you may leave, if that is your wish. But not with the device."

Tarsus stared, dark eyes wide. He looked terribly young, hopelessly driven. What had he done, after all, to reach this point? Controlled by Estarion, raised to hate Ibisians, to believe Palladium his by right?

"How can I possibly trust you?" Tarsus asked now, cradling the glass into his chest once again. "You are my enemy."

"I am Illukar Síahn las Cor-Ibis." Illukar said his name as if it was important to fix it in Tarsus' mind. "I have no animus toward you."

Strange how so profoundly Ibisian a speech could have the desired effect. Tarsus was considering it. Medair took a slow breath as he looked from Illukar to Vorclase and back.

"Were you there?" he asked abruptly, his voice high and strained. "At the slaughter?"

"I was on Ahrenrhen Wall," Illukar replied.

"Then I brought you here." Tarsus took a sideways step, toward the middle of the tunnel. "I meant to get the heir, the one called Islantar. You would have bargained for his life, wouldn’t you?"

"Certainly."

Tarsus looked down. "He has what is mine," he said, forlornly. "What I would have, now, if the Horn had not sounded." He looked with sudden suspicion at Medair, standing at Illukar’s side. "Were you the one who took that from me?" he asked, flatly. "Were you?"

Medair hesitated, aware that Tarsus' anger had returned in full. Denial might be worse than the truth, especially if Vorclase took it into his head to correct her.

"I sounded the Horn of Farak," she said, not wanting it to sound like an admission. This boy had been out there, when the Decian army had been cut down. He had been in the midst of that incredible slaughter, when certain victory had turned into overwhelming defeat. She had killed all who stood with him, who claimed to be fighting for his cause. If he had held a weapon, she would have killed him as well. This boy who might be Corminevar.

For a moment, it looked like Tarsus would simply throw the glass at her. He flushed with furious betrayal, but his disbelief seemed stronger than his anger. "How could you?" he asked, voice breaking. "How could you turn your face from the true Corminevar line to side with White Snakes?"

He pressed the glass so deeply into his chest that Medair could see his spine: a pale, sinuous gleam in a bloody mount. It was a horrible, immensely distracting sight. If he let go of it now, she thought, it would be completely inside his chest. They would have to cut him open to get it out. And she did not want that, did not want this boy to die. True Corminevar or not, there had to be something she could do to alter the course Estarion had set.

"Why do you want the Silver Throne?" she asked, slowly. "Why do you want to rule Palladium?"

The question had confused him. He shifted the glass again and now it was his pulsing heart they watched. How he held the thing at all, she couldn’t guess. It was like no artefact she’d ever seen.

"Because it is my birthright," he said. Utter sincerity. True or not, he believed it. And he was as out of place as she was, in the Palladium of today.

"And did you agree with Estarion, that the only way for Palladium to achieve peace is by killing all of Ibisian blood?"

"Yes." Tarsus looked at Illukar briefly and his eyes hardened. "Yes, it’s the only way. The rift is too deep, their crime too great."

"How much of Palladium do you think would be left, after that?"

"Enough," Tarsus replied, with only the faintest hint of uncertainty.

"And do you think they’d forgive you?"

"What?"

"You would be the invader, you see." Medair tried to fill her voice with the same inescapable certainty which had kept her from using the Horn a year ago. "You would have killed their friends, wrested the throne by force. No matter how true your bloodline, there is no just path to forcing your way onto Palladium’s throne. Five hundred years ago, the cause would be just, but it’s too late. That was what I had to accept, when I came to Athere, centuries late. That Palladium is Ibisian now." She couldn’t keep the sorrow out of her voice. That fact would always hurt.

"You’re wrong," Tarsus said, with a frantic pitch to his words. He backed into the wall again. "There are many in Palladium who would throw the White Snakes down, who would see them crushed into the dirt."

"Yes." Medair looked at him across that gulf of hate. "There are. But why do you think that they’re the ones who should choose the present? How more or less right are they than the ones who love the Palladium of today? Why should the will of the ones who can’t accept, who dwell in the past instead of living–"

"Stop talking!" Tarsus ran at her, tears streaming down his face, the glass raised as if to strike her down. Everyone moved at once, hoping to wrest the thing from him before he remembered himself and made good his threat to smash it. "You’re wrong!" he shouted, as Illukar moved between them. "You’re–"

The bloom of power was overwhelming, as like to the Conflagration as anything Medair had experienced. Bright light flashed, and she heard Illukar gasp, then the world dropped out from beneath her feet once again.

She was sliding.

In the first moment Medair was completely disoriented, as she fell down a steep, rocky slope. She seemed to be underneath some sort of huge overhang, for she could see hills and blue sky to either side of her but only blackness above and shadow beneath. Around her she could hear men’s startled voices, almost entirely drowned by a massive grinding and an explosive fracturing of rock.