Andrea Höst - Voice of the Lost

"Funeral clothes," she said inanely, and everyone looked at her, then followed the direction of her gaze.

Kier Ieskar didn’t move. He was, as she had said, wearing funeral clothes – the unrelieved black Ibisians reserved for the dead – and his face was thin and drawn. This was how he must have looked when he was placed in his tomb.

When he stepped forward – one of those statue-come-to-life movements which had made him so inhuman to her – she caught a glimpse of stone and leaf directly through him. He was an insubstantial shade from the past, nowhere near as real as he had been when she met him in the crypts, yet every bit as overwhelming as the first time she had laid eyes on him.

"What magic is this?" Queen Sendel asked, and was ignored. Even her vigour was thinned, diminished by the intensity of the dead Kier’s presence.

Ieskar’s gaze fixed on Illukar’s face as he stopped before him. It was a shock to see them together, to mark the similarity of their features and, worse, the duplication in their expressions and their way of holding themselves. Medair clutched at differences. The most apparent was their height, but that observation only made her remember a time, back in Thrence, when she had realised Illukar was not so tall as she expected. A moment of dissonance she now understood: he was shorter than Ieskar.

"My brother," Ieskar said.

" Ekarrel ." Illukar bowed, the same degree of courtesy he would award Kier Inelkar, but with an added note of veneration. Niadril Kier. She had never asked herself what Illukar would think of the man who had destroyed her peace, had not even allowed herself to consider the question. Far more than a historical figure for both of them.

As Ieskar turned to look at her, Medair forced questions out of her head through sheer effort of will. She knew she must be almost as pale as an Ibisian, but she refused to look as sick as she felt. It was a relief, and something of a shock, when he only inclined his head and moved to study Islantar. Then that pale, piercing gaze returned to Illukar.

"You have little time," Ieskar said, in the most calm and unhurried tone imaginable. "This occurrence is not a precise duplication. By the next sunset, this city will be gone."

"What is it saying?" Queen Sendel asked in Parlance, as both Islantar and Avahn drew in their breath. Illukar did not break the gaze of the ghost who had named him brother.

"Will you tell us how to stop it?" he asked.

Ieskar lifted his hand, a move which would have made Medair flinch if it had been directed at her. Long fingers passed through Illukar’s cheek before coming to rest against – or under – his temple. They stood that way ten breaths or more, while their small audience stared and wondered. Medair closed her eyes, because this was Illukar’s death sentence and she could only hate Ieskar more for making it possible.

When she looked back, it was as if Ieskar had never been. Queen Sendel had moved to take his place, and was questioning Illukar tersely. Islantar stood at Illukar’s shoulder, his composure not equal to hiding tight misery. Avahn had covered his eyes.

It was what Medair could see in Illukar’s face which was worst. A certain amount of relief. And resignation.

Water, reeds, mud, and myriad small islands. Wetter than a swamp, but far too shallow to be a lake. In late twilight, the Shimmerlan was a murky, uncertain expanse of shadows and subdued reflections. It felt threatening and unpleasant and smelled of damp and rot. And everything which could scurry or jump or crawl was running from it.

Insects whirred past Medair’s face and birds flew overhead making strange forlorn cries. In the short time since they’d reached the Shimmerlan’s border, at least three snakes had slithered by her feet, and there had been frogs and water rats and many things she’d never seen before. All heading away from the oppressive advance of what must look like nothing more than a pool of dark water.

They were waiting for the tracking party, returning ahead of the spreading Blight. With Tarsus, apparently. Medair spent her time watching Illukar’s face as he discussed some sort of levitation spell with Sedesten; working out ways for him not to die just long enough to banish the Blight. Medair was taking in little things, like the way Illukar would tip his head ever so slightly to one side when he was considering a request, and the way he held his hands loose and relaxed at his sides, not shifting them about as so many people did.

She couldn’t quite believe she was doing this. Cataloguing her lover, snatching at minutiae before he went and saved the world and died. Now should be when she produced another Horn of Farak, another artefact of stupendous power, and this time it wouldn’t be too late and she would save what was most important to her and it wouldn’t all end in tears.

But artefacts were nothing to wild magic. The Horn of Farak would be little more than a bright firefly against this arcane sun, and all that ridiculously large collection she had brought from Kersym Bleak’s hoard were useless dross. All Medair could do was watch, with the rest of the muted crowd who had followed to the Shimmerlan’s edge. The sum of her choices now were to make Illukar’s departure as hard or easy as possible. To meet loss bravely or to curse it and wail.

That was no choice, either.

"They’re coming," said Kel ar Haedrin, though how the woman had seen through the post-twilight gloom Medair couldn’t imagine. Still, she was right. A blot of darkness shifted, became distinct figures accompanied by the sound of sloshing boots. And preceded by one of the inhabitants of the Shimmerlan.

Herald N’Taive had called them Alshem. The swimmer-folk. The woman who lifted herself from the water was the size of a ten-year child, though noticeably mature beneath a tightly wrapped leathery sheath. Slender and lithe, with a fine pelt of brown-black covering head, neck, shoulders and arms, she was still far more human than Medair had expected. The eyes were strangest: liquid black, lacking any sign of white, and with a transparent inner lid which slid up instead of down.

The Alshem woman carried herself with an effortless dignity as she approached Illukar, who towered above her looking as distant and remote as only Ibisians can. She made a fluid gesture with her hand and bowed her head to a degree which Medair interpreted as honour without servitude.

"Strange doings, cold one," the Alshem said in precise Ibis-laran. "We have brought the one you required."

"My thanks, sun skimmer," Illukar replied, managing not to sound the least bit uncertain. He’d obviously found a chance to mine Sedesten for information about these neighbours he did not remember. And would only meet once.

Medair looked away, breathing deeply. He was going to die, and she had to sit here and let him. She felt cold and frozen inside, her chest clogged with the effort of not wailing and screaming. So hard not to weep.

"Ibisian."

It was Tarsus' voice, urgent and imperative. He came tramping out of the swamp trailed by the search party. Wet and haggard, the boy looked like the survivor of a shipwreck, his eyes filled with a different kind of agony than that which had consumed him in Falcon Black. There was less anger to it, but a depth Medair recognised.

"He says there’s nothing I can do to stop it," Tarsus said, shortly. "Is it true? "

"There is nothing." Illukar’s expression was not welcoming.

"Are you certain ?!" Tarsus mastered desperate anger with evident difficulty. He swallowed a gasping breath, staring at Illukar’s face, then straightened. "What then? You have something planned. I can see it in your eyes. What can I do to help?"

Bald anguish, overmastering guilt and a childish horror warred in his voice, all subdued by stern determination. How do you live with the knowledge that the world is dying by an act of yours? That because you could not trust, because you had been taught to hate, to never forgive, you had caused the worst thing possible?