Andrea Höst - Voice of the Lost

"But he had a hill fall on top of him, just like us," she pointed out, grimacing at her arm. "After a night with little sleep. He was exhausted." She shook her head at the idea of anyone making any kind of escape after what they’d just been through. "Do you think he knows this lake country? I can’t think of any reason for him to transport us to Finrathlar."

Illukar looked up at the looming castle. "I am the cause of this, not Tarsus," he said, the faintest hint of exasperation rising through the bald admission. "Or both of us together, for we were both touching the device. He does not have the reserve of arcane power the device seems to need, like the spark for a fire. That came from me, though the will to leave was his. The destination was most definitely mine."

"Does that mean we need not be concerned with wild magic?" she asked, sitting up straighter. "That he could not unleash the Blight, no matter what he tried to do with it?"

"I do not know, Medair." Illukar’s face was a blank mask again. "The device is very unstable. We cannot trust to chance."

They were distracted by a murmur from the crowd, and Medair saw that the first of Falcon Black’s occupants were making their way down the slopes. They were holding onto ropes for balance, but the path seemed safe enough after the initial drop from the end of the entry ramp. Sendel was in the forefront, and quickly spotted Illukar, who had risen to his feet. Medair stayed on her rock, not quite certain she was steady enough to stand.

The Decian Queen didn’t return Illukar’s gesture of greeting. "This is the work of Xarus' device?" she asked, tersely.

"Yes. Tarsus is still unaccounted for."

"Then how and why are of less importance than what next ," Sendel said, still curt. Hardly pleased to have her castle transplanted. "I will leave searching for the boy to you, but those in my command are at your disposal in seeing to Falcon Black." She gave the castle one expansive glance. "It seems unlikely to fall now, but I would have it preserved, no matter its location."

Illukar inclined his head, then his gaze went past Sendel to Islantar, leading Ileaha, Kel ar Haedrin and the two kaschen, who each had a corner of a blanket serving as a stretcher for an unconscious Avahn. Herald N’Taive followed at the rear.

Islantar was carrying Medair’s satchel. He handed it to her wordlessly, and she looked down at the familiar leather, which she had once been so proud to carry. It was as if it was fated to always return to her, as if it was impossible to leave it behind.

Ileaha had fallen asleep cradling Avahn’s head on her lap. Even dozing she managed to steady him against the jerking of the carriage, and it was typical of the young woman that, no matter how furious she had been, she was still taking every care for his safety. Medair and Islantar shared the opposite seat, packed off to the Cor-Ibis manor, The Avenue, as soon as a carriage could be procured. Illukar had promised to follow soon after, and Medair had gone without demur, not willing to distract him from organising the search for Tarsus. But good sense would not stop her from silently fretting.

"Twenty years. Perhaps thirty. The south will regain its strength, and we will do this again."

Adjusting her numb arm, Medair looked at Islantar. There was a small graze on his chin, suggestive of a fall, but his mouth was firm. Medair was not certain how cloistered the Kierash’s existence had been, but she had seen enough dismay in the eyes of those who recognised him to guess how completely out of his experience these extraordinary circumstances must be. Yet he was already looking to the future.

"Do you think it that inevitable?" she asked. "Given Sendel’s geas?"

"At least likely. And there are those who will argue that it would be wiser, safer, to annex Decia, make it part of the Palladian Empire once again." Islantar was watching her reaction, as if he thought he could gauge the mood of Farakkan from her face. "And perhaps it would dull the weapons of those who wish to keep wounds open. Perhaps make it more difficult for an organised force to be massed."

"I don’t have your answers, Kierash," Medair said. In the aftermath of her fall, it was all she could do to keep a peevish snap out of her voice.

"And are in no mood to find them?" The look he gave her was all Emperor, the sort of survey Grevain would turn on those who offered excuses instead of action. Medair struggled against a sense of injury, thinking him unfair to be pushing her now. But the thought of Grevain stiffened her back, reminding her that she had abandoned the pretence of being an outsider uninvolved in the problems of the present.

"Do you think that question so urgent, then?" she asked. "Above Tarsus and wild magic and a castle threatening to fall on our heads?"

"It is the one urgent to me," Islantar replied, shifting back from Emperor to boy. A grave, serious youth willing to shoulder his burdens – and wanting to focus on anything but the possible price of wild magic. "The disease, rather than the symptoms." He smiled at her apologetically. "You are suffering, I know, and I should not press you, but possibly you do not understand how important you are to what I strive to see. Of all I have known, you have the greatest cause to hate the Ibis-lar as invaders. You experienced the loss of the Empire, you were its Herald. You lived what Estarion and the Medarists and the Hand all try to revive. Yet you set it aside, and used the Horn to defend Athere. If you can heal that wound, how can they not?"

Medair shook her head. "You don’t understand, Kierash. I’m no more healed than they. I’ve merely seen my way to choosing not to mire myself in acts too old to change. But there is no forgiveness in me, not for the invasion."

The words fell from her lips as if it wasn’t she who formed them. Something had stepped into the light as she spoke, and she could neither look at it nor hide from it, only feel its anger. It stood stony and uncooperative at the back of her heart; that part which would not stop hating. Did she really think to start a life with Illukar while it lurked there? But she had neither the will nor energy to try and understand it, to attempt to face it.

Her words had quelled Islantar a little, and she felt immediately sorry for him, sitting so alone on the far end of the seat, trying to shoulder the burdens of a kingdom. But he was not easily defeated.

"How then did you make that choice?" he asked. "For that is certainly more than the Hand or Estarion have managed. It is not something which came easily to you, I think."

"No. It did not. Does not. Will not." Medair flinched away from her memories of the previous year. She had certainly not been able to deal with the chasm between past and present when she had first discovered her five hundred year delay. "I didn’t want to accept reality and I worked very hard not to. But by the time of Estarion’s attack, I had seen too much to continue telling myself that this wasn’t my war."

"What changed?" Islantar asked, watching her fixedly.

Medair shook her head sadly. "It was what had not changed, Kierash," she said. "For all I saw of Avahn and Ileaha, for all I came to feel for Illukar, I gave your mother the Horn of Farak because I was still sworn to defend Athere. I forced myself to keep to the letter of my oath, despite the part of me which did not object to Ibisians being thrown down, because if I did not then my people, Farak-lar, would have been killed."

"Will you always think of us as White Snakes, then?" Such a quiet question.

"How can I answer that?" she said. "The anger is not always there. When it rises I press it down, and give myself more and more reasons not to let it up again."