Andrea Höst - Voice of the Lost

"A trace can be established, whether he is under or beyond the castle." Illukar sat down beside Medair, looking as if the movement pained him. "There is surely some personal item in Falcon Black which can be used as a focus."

Vorclase grunted. He was fading, and she had to strain to hear when he spoke. "When he stays in the castle, it’s in Westring Tower. You’ll find bits of that halfway to your market square." He lifted his hand to gesture at the stone-strewn hillside.

Sparing a glance for the fallen tower, Illukar turned his attention to Medair, tearing a strip of cloth from his demi-robe to tie around her elbow.

"I am not steady enough to attempt to mend this," he said. "But there is certain to be a useful adept in Finrathlar." He looked down at the city again, as if searching for some change. But, so far as Medair could tell, it was Finrathlar exactly as she had last seen it. Peaceful, very Ibisian. No sign of fire, no sign that the flames of the Conflagration had swept over it.

The useful adept soon arrived, in excess. For a moment, it seemed that half of Finrathlar had turned out, with spells at ready and hastily snatched weapons. The sudden appearance of a massive, if crumbling, castle had evidently been interpreted as an attack. Illukar set the first few people who spotted him to searching the immediate area for Tarsus. Then a group of formally dressed Ibisians came striding up the hill, and at the sight of them Illukar’s face lightened.

"Sedesten." Sounding positively relieved, he gripped the arm of the person at the fore of the group: a very tall, quite pretty man with eyes an unusually dark shade for an Ibisian. His earrings identified him as Keriden and adept, and every one of his companions wore the silver sigil of adept attainment in their right ear.

"Quite an entrance, 'Lukar," said Sedesten, in a sweet, husky voice. "What do you want done?"

It had never occurred to Medair that Illukar would have friends. He had always seemed so distant in his dealings with others, separate. She watched his face as he summarised the situation, and saw the confidence there. This Sedesten was someone Illukar not only liked: he trusted the man implicitly.

"Have every possible trace-focus picked out of the rubble of the tower," Illukar said, after he had laid bare the situation. "Captain Vorclase may well be able to identify something belonging to Tarsus." He glanced at Vorclase, only to discover the Decian had lapsed into unconsciousness. "To which end, your skills in bone-knitting will be useful. As for Falcon Black, we will discuss methods of stabilisation once it has been evacuated."

As soon as Sedesten turned away to delegate tasks, Illukar began casting another wend-whisper. Medair occupied herself with trying to pick bits of gravel out of the palm of her battered hand, a task so engrossing she started when Sedesten knelt before her.

"First something to dull the pain," he said, nodding a greeting. "Unless you would prefer to be unconscious?"

"No." Medair wasn’t planning to let Illukar out of her sight if she could help it. She had not forgotten how his namesake had died.

Sedesten simply inclined his head and began to cast. All sensation in her arm vanished, with a suddenness which left Medair dizzy. She still felt like she was going to faint, and her heart raced, skipping beats with an unnerving lack of predictability, but she might well have had only one arm for all the sensation remaining in her broken limb.

The other hurts of her body stepped forward to claim Medair’s attention. She had skinned her knees, and felt like one dusty bruise, but there was nothing so bad as the break. The adept trickled water and a small vial of greenish liquid over her forearm, systematically sluicing away blood and dirt until the area around the protruding bone was clean. Medair looked away, and saw that two other adepts were working on Vorclase. They had a more difficult task, for his leg was broken many times. Even the most skilled of mages would need to work many small miracles to return it to anything close to its former strength.

Tilting her head back, she stared up Falcon Black. There were people moving up there now, a couple of men making an uncertain attempt to descend the shorn entrance ramp. The castle was not tilted so severely as Medair had initially thought: ten or, at most, fifteen degrees. Enough to make moving about awkward, but not deadly perilous. But it was a long way to fall.

Watching the attempted descent allowed Medair to not think about the casting Sedesten was working, and the way he was moving her arm about, for all she could not feel his touch. She was also deliberately not looking at Illukar, just for these few moments. That uncomfortable sense of certainty and dread had not returned, but she was beginning to suspect those moments were a change which had been made to her by the Conflagration, less obvious than Ileaha’s appearance, but no less difficult to deal with.

The strength of her qualms made it impossible to keep her fear from her eyes, and so she did not look at him. It had taken so much to reach the point where she could hold him. The idea of him being snatched away was too much.

But if Tarsus released the Blight, she could not think of a single way to stop Illukar sacrificing himself to it, as the first named Illukar las Cor-Ibis had done during the fall of Sar-Ibis. So it was necessary to find Tarsus, quickly, and ensure that the mirror was safely taken from him. She began to catalogue the contents of her satchel, wondering if anything there would fit her purpose, but then she realised that she didn’t have it. She didn’t even remember where she’d left it.

All that she had been was now truly gone.

It was some time before Medair realised that Sedesten had stopped casting. She looked down and saw that the bone was no longer projecting, though she still had plenty of cuts and grazes. Healing was a difficult, finicky crafting and one best done in stages, because it drained both caster and recipient. Sedesten, oddly, was simply kneeling in front of her, watching her face.

"Thank you, Keriden," she said, disconcerted.

"The bone will be weak still." He touched one side of the half-closed hole in her arm, not shifting his gaze. "After a thorough cleaning, you should have it and the fingers strapped." Then he added, with a delicate but completely un-Ibisian forthrightness: "I have eyes enough to see that my lord and friend counts your every breath. Take care of him."

He was climbing to his feet before Medair could react. She watched blankly as he picked his way across the hillside to where Illukar stood. They both glanced at her, but were caught up with queries from a dozen sources. The hillside was now swarming with helpers.

Medair watched as Illukar extricated himself and returned to her. He was wearing that customary non-committal expression, and gave no sign of counting anyone’s breath. Sedesten must know him well indeed, or was guessing wildly. His words had been a gesture of approval, she thought, and wondered how many in Finrathlar would be glad to see their Keridahl happy, and how many would feel as Jedda las Theomain had.

"Islantar will be down soon," Illukar said, sitting decorously on the rock beside hers. "With Avahn and Queen Sendel. The descent should not be dangerous."

"And Tarsus?"

"No sign. Riders have been sent to search, but this place called the Shimmerlan now abuts the border. I am told it would be possible for Tarsus to have reached the water already. This branch of the Shimmerlan is apparently a marshy place, all islets and reed beds. He could go a long way without a boat."

The sprawling lake which had replaced Farakkan’s five central kingdoms was something Medair could still scarcely credit. The kingdom of her birth, her mother’s property, all under water. There would never be a time she could let herself think of that.