Andrea Höst - Voice of the Lost

Hidden by the dark, Medair curled down to hug her knees, closed her teeth on the hand pressed to her mouth, and howled.

It was the longest stretch of nothing she’d ever known.

Illukar had been planning to travel near to the centre of the Blight, to try to avoid destroying Finrathlar’s western hills, but Medair had no idea how long the journey would take. Such drawn-out tenterhooks had left her with a conflicting desire for it to be over, and for it to never happen. Sitting forever in the dark, on chill, marshy earth, would be a small price to pay for Illukar’s life, wouldn’t it? But she supposed that would mean he would be eternally traveling to his death, and she wouldn’t have that, either.

The Blight was getting close. Drained and weary, she stared out into the night. Few birds flew past now, but the supply of insects seemed never-ending. Medair pictured all Farakkan’s inhabitants, every species, crowding to the edges of an ever-expanding lake, then discarded the thought. Hardly a happy thing to picture Illukar’s sacrifice as futile.

"Keris an Rynstar."

She watched dispassionately as Islantar approached, carrying a glowstone. "I’m not going to hurl myself in, if that’s what brings you."

"No. You would not do that to him."

Islantar sounded more certain of that than Medair was herself. She didn’t bother to gainsay him, watching him arrange himself into an attitude of polite attention. Court posture. This was more than solicitude, then.

"There is one who wishes to speak to you," he said.

"I have no wish for company, Kierash."

"I am aware of that. I ask this of you, Keris."

Again that was the kind of request Emperor Grevain had been wont to make: refusal was not easy. Medair looked up into Islantar’s young, resolute face and sighed silently. "Very well," she said, standing. Islantar waited a moment, then gestured with the glowstone.

Two figures approached along the bank, gradually resolving into dark-haired, copper-complected young men of similar build. There was, Medair noticed, a similarity in their features which suggested blood ties. Tarsus and Thessan. She supposed it was not improbable that Xarus Estarion might have decided to join his own line with the Corminevars, but these brotherly countenances were the first suggestion she’d encountered of such a union. What, she wondered, had happened to Tarsus' mother? And what were the implications for the succession of the Decian throne?

Those questions, however, were not why these two had come to see her. Prince Thessan looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. Tarsus, only marginally less ragged than her previous sighting of him, was evidently the one who wanted to speak to her. Behind the two young men emerged a half-dozen guards, headed by Kel ar Haedrin. They remained just at the edge of the circle of light cast by Islantar’s glowstone, none of them completely hiding their concern.

Tarsus sketched a gesture of courtesy. He seemed to be as high in formal ropes as Islantar. Thessan just looked sour.

"Herald an Rynstar–" Tarsus began, and Medair shook her head.

"I lost my role as Herald, Lord Tarsus." The title she gave him sat awkwardly on her tongue, but it would take too long to decide the correct formal way to address someone who might be the true descendent of an ousted Emperor. She would rather they just went away.

"Forfeited it, you mean," put in Thessan, at no pains to hide the anger and disdain in his voice. "When you sided with White Snakes over Palladians."

Medair shook her head, ignoring the sick knot which had instantly formed in her stomach. "It was not a matter of choice, Prince Thessan. I stopped being a Herald of the Empire when I woke five hundred years after the Palladian Empire’s fall."

"How convenient for you," Thessan snapped. "With your oath magically dissolved, you’re free to take up with whatever White Snake catches your eye."

"Leave to, Thes," Tarsus said, putting a restraining hand on Thessan’s arm. He appeared torn between agreeing with the Prince and the knowledge that Illukar – a White Snake – was giving his life to stop a disaster Tarsus had sparked. "Lady an Rynstar, then," he said. "I wished to ask you of Emperor Grevain. You knew him–"

"I was sworn to him," Medair said, softly.

"Yes. You served him." Tarsus brushed at his curly hair, as if looking for a delay. "It has been put to me that…to press my claim to the Silver Throne is not in Palladium’s best interests. I would know–"

"You would let yourself be talked out of what is yours by right!" Thessan said hotly, subsiding only when Tarsus gave him a pained, pleading look. It was obvious that there was considerable affection between the pair. And that Thessan would happily throw Medair and Islantar into the Blight, if not for the guards who watched.

"Let me do this, Thes," Tarsus muttered, then met Medair’s eyes squarely. "I would know what Emperor Grevain would do, at such a pass. Whether he would approve of my quest."

"I can’t answer for the Emperor," Medair said, dismayed. "Nor," she added, glancing at Thessan’s angry face, "would you have any way of knowing if I was honest in any opinion I gave you."

"I am aware of that, Lady an Rynstar," said Tarsus. "But you alone of all the world have met the Emperor. You witnessed the invasion, you quested to stop it, no matter what the outcome. Truth or lie, I feel I need to hear what you have to say. What kind of man was he? Would he have surrendered his crown to benefit his people?"

Medair blinked, trying to bend her mind away from her grief, to think along unfamiliar courses. The intensity of power emitted by the Blight made it impossible to forget that Illukar was out there, preparing to die because of this boy. Grevain Corminevar seemed so impossibly long ago.

"I…cannot really picture him as anything but Emperor," she said, slowly. "He was born to the rule. If he had survived Athere’s fall, if he had been – if he had been allowed to live after Kier Ieskar took the Silver Throne…" She shook her head blankly. "No, the situations are too dissimilar. If the Emperor, instead, had woken as I did, five hundred years too late, would he have raised an army to take back his throne?" She thought about the ever-busy, abrupt man she had sworn her life to, and realised how little she knew of him. To her, he was Lord and Law and there was no bond of friendship. Simply Emperor, the ruler she had so admired.

"This is useless," Thessan muttered, and Medair searched her memory, not willing to leave Tarsus completely unanswered.

"He was a proud man," she said, carefully. "Wise to the political games. He offered his opinions rarely, for his every word was weighted. He disliked intensely things not going to order. He would give second chances, but never a third." She remembered Grevain’s manner when he sat in judgment over some dispute. It gave her more confidence. "If he had found himself in today’s Palladium, he might well have sought his throne," she said, looking directly into Tarsus' eyes. "If he believed that it would benefit Palladium, if he thought Ibisian rule, in practice, was unjust. But I don’t believe he would feel that way."

"That’s just what you would say," Thessan snapped, predictably. "But Ibisian rule is anything but just. How many true Palladians do you see in power? How many rise from beneath the White Snake boot?"

Medair stared at him, realising that Thessan knew less of the reality of Palladium than she did, no matter what changes the Conflagration had made. How could she tell him that very few Palladians seemed to object to Ibisians? That those who still nurtured hatreds were a minority, no matter how powerful their effect on their land. It was obvious that, whether it had been greed or justice which motivated Xarus Estarion, Thessan truly did believe Decia’s war had been to benefit Palladians.