Andrea Höst - Voice of the Lost

It was hard to resist touching him, but Medair scarcely let herself breathe in case he woke up and felt he must immediately go take up the reins of his Dahlein. It was a soap bubble moment.

On cue, he opened his eyes. Clear grey, with a scattering of darker crystal flecks. She was glad he didn’t sit up immediately, but lay looking back at her. He shifted his hand, so his fingers just touched her splinted ones, and his eyelids dropped as if he was overwhelmed by that simple act. The soap bubble didn’t break, and they lay there until a whisper of power trickled into the room and Illukar looked away.

"They are attempting to stabilise Falcon Black," he said. "The majority of the task was to be done with stone, and this casting will be to fuse the supports. The first of many, for it is the work of several days. Weeks, perhaps."

He didn’t get up, despite the continuing increase of arcane noise . Medair, feeling glad, shifted her fingers so they brushed back against his, and watched his expression change. It meant a very great deal to him that she wanted to touch him.

"And Tarsus?" she asked reluctantly, not certain she wanted to know any answer.

"No sign. The traces have seemed to fix on him, and then dissipate. Likely, the device absorbs them as it did my own casting. The physical searches continue and Sedesten has spoken to a representative of the Shimmerlan’s inhabitants to arrange a hunt in their territory."

"What will you do with him, when he’s captured?"

Illukar’s brows drew together. "His ultimate fate is a matter for the Kier. Even without Estarion to fuel his ambitions, there are too many who would use him to challenge us, or who would appoint themselves champions of his welfare. Impolitic to kill him, imprudent to let him live."

"Would the Kier be…prudent, then?"

His gaze shifted back to their hands, the tips of her fingers still only grazing his. "I have never known the Kier to be unjust," he said, but continued past prevarication. "He warred against us, no matter that Estarion worked the strings. It is possible the Kier might choose to have him executed. But imprisonment is more likely. I expect it will be a country estate: constant guards, little freedom. And for us, a lifetime of denying that he has been disposed of more permanently."

That would be easier to deal with than an execution. Medair sighed softly, wishing that Tarsus had proven to be an obvious charlatan, the painfully greedy kind who would not rouse such conflicting emotions. "I will never be sure if he was truly Corminevar," she said. "Before the Conflagration."

"No."

Medair watched shadows cross Illukar’s face, speculating on their meaning. "Finrathlar is very much the same, isn’t it?" she said.

"Its proximity to the Shimmerlan seems to be the greatest change," Illukar replied, and she saw that she had guessed correctly. Something about Finrathlar disturbed him.

"What is it?" she asked.

His lashes swept down again, then he closed his eyes briefly. "It is very much the same," he said, and there was a thread of loss in his voice. "I am in the room which I have long called mine, in the city which is my home and my charge. My mother is buried in the grounds of this house. I recognise it all and cannot mark out something which is not as I left it. Yet today my oldest friend spoke of having travelled with me through a place I have never seen, dealing with a race I have never met." He flattened his hand on the bedspread. "Is this my home, or something which merely resembles it? Did the true Finrathlar die in flame? Did Sedesten? Was The Avenue burnt to the ground and a copy erected in its place? Am I trying to save a place which is not even mine? Am I an impostor in my own home?"

Tiny lines had formed on either side of his mouth. He looked as if he were in physical pain.

"You are Illukar," Medair said, slowly. "And–" She hesitated, then covered his hand with hers. His long, slender fingers made hers look stunted. "I think this is not quite your home. The Conflagration seemed to be–" She chewed her lip, trying to decide just what she thought the Conflagration had done. "I don’t–" She paused again, uneasily. "If there had been no shield wall around Athere, and we had been altered to Estarion’s purpose, I don’t know what I would be. Medair, evidently, but would I have been a Medair who, when she blew the Horn of Farak, destroyed defender instead of invader?"

"I do not think that likely," he said, and she smiled at him, but continued even though she did not like where her thoughts were leading.

"Whether the Conflagration truly killed them or not, those who were outside Athere must have experienced the change as death." Medair looked away from those clear eyes. She wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t already concluded, merely speaking out loud what weighed on his heart. "They would have felt the flames on them, they would have run screaming and been overwhelmed. Is it something other than death, to be reborn the same day in almost exactly the same situation? Those horse-people certainly aren’t the people they were before, and nor is Kyledra and all the other lands drowned in the Shimmerlan. Finrathlar looks the same, but it is not. And yet, that doesn’t change anything."

"No?" Illukar’s hand had closed into a fist beneath her fingers.

"No." Already distanced from the modern world, Medair could not react to its alteration in the same way. She felt helpless in face of his hurt, but stumbled on regardless. "You mourn the Sedesten who was, and the home you remember, but the Sedesten who is doesn’t stop being Sedesten for having the Shimmerlan incorporated into his memories. He certainly knows you . You are as much a part of this world as you were of the one before the Conflagration. I can’t tell you not to mourn that terrible day when Finrathlar watched the Conflagration sweep over it, but don’t reject what is here in the meantime. This is still your Dahlein and you are still you. It is still Finrathlar and it will always be your home."

She could tell she had not been very convincing. "Just as it was still Athere for you?" he asked, eyes still hooded.

Medair took a deep breath, thinking through the comparison. "Will you feel you are turning your face from the true Finrathlar if you defend this new one?"

That had been closer to the mark. He looked away from their hands and shifted gingerly onto his back. "In a way. Yes. This is not my Finrathlar. My home and my friends and those in my charge died in flame. I cannot just put that aside, even if their death was not precisely final."

It was difficult to imagine Illukar responding as she had: running off to sulk on a mountain because she could not come to terms with what had gone wrong.

"Then don’t put it aside," she suggested, feeling his sense of loss more acutely. "Mourn them. Remember them. The important part is to go on." It had taken her far too long to understand that.

He didn’t respond, gazing at the ceiling. It wasn’t something he was going to come to terms with instantly. She wondered how he would have felt about her, if she’d been outside the wall.

"How is your arm?"

At times he was suspiciously telepathic. "How is your back?" she asked in return, and he lifted one corner of his mouth, acknowledging that there had been a cause for his stiff movement and winces.

"Bruises on bruises," he said. "But if I were to admit to injuries, a glancing blow to my head was my real concern. I had no wish to try and cast anything of moment while suffering concussion, but it seems that the rap inspired nothing more than a headache, and the rest has rid me of that."

"My arm feels exactly as if it was recently broken and healed," she said. "A dull ache, stiff with bandages and cuts and grazes, but no longer the sort of thing to make me want to keel over." She shook her head. "A castle fell on us. We’re lucky to be alive."