Andrea Höst: Voice of the Lost

He began to walk, summoning fragile poise with such effect that she was reminded of the time he had shown her around Pelamath. Even wet, exhausted and bedraggled, Illukar could be beautiful. And his shield of Ibisian courtesy could not begin to hide the effort it cost him to walk away.

He was trying to make it easy for her. Such unbearable grace. She had to blink hard to stop tears when she saw through the web of his unbound hair and his thin, wet shirt the mottled pattern of the bruises he’d earned during their arrival at Finrathlar. It was like seeing straight through to the pain beneath that determinedly upright carriage.

"Wait," she said, catching up, not quite able to touch him. He paused and she faced him, feeling like the world was not really there as she said through a strangling throat: "I’m not willing to simply give up."

His face was a mask as his eyes flickered from blue-grey to grey, to icy blue. It was Ieskar who lifted his hand, his right hand with that thin scratch across the back of the fingers, until it brushed her stomach. Medair took a deep, fluttery breath as he settled his hand against her ribs, below her left breast. Her heart was racing as if she had run all the way to Athere, and she had to struggle to hold that icy gaze. And he just stood there while her body betrayed her feelings.

"You have hated me for years," he said, in the most obviously controlled voice she’d ever heard from him.

She felt tears sting, because it was true. Her own argument. She refused to give in to it, to the part of her which could not believe what she was doing. "I hated you for a reason that no longer exists."

His only reaction was the tiniest drop of his eyelids. "I will always be the one who ordered Palladium’s invasion."

"And the one who made it possible to save Farakkan. And Illukar. Yes, I hated you. And wanted – wanted more of you. Those two things couldn’t exist together, so I gave into one and ran from the other. I thought I would kill every single Ibisian in Farakkan, given the chance."

She felt her face heat and took a deep breath. "I don’t have the right reasons to hate you, any more. Habit is not enough."

The hand on her ribs shifted, sending shivers all through her chest and stomach. She straightened, an involuntary reaction not entirely negative, and his hand dropped. The blue eyes flickered to grey, then blue again, but not a muscle shifted. Ieskar gave so little away.

"Medair." He said the name with the conscious awareness that she’d never given it to him to use. He even took a breath before going on, a near-hesitation she’d never seen before. "You cannot even bear my touch. How can you think to marry me? Hold me each night in your arms? Bear my children? Can you truly tell me, you with your heart leaping over itself in fright, that you can be my lover? My friend and helpmeet, my comfort and passion? Because I would not accept less."

His eyes were frightening and she realised it was because he held them so fully and absolutely on her, never wavering. She had every scrap of his attention.

"I’m telling you that I want to try," she said, in the faintest of voices, and his eyes flicked suddenly to grey. Illukar, frowning, took both her hands and led her to a pair of rocks. He was fighting exhaustion to have this conversation, and as they sat down it showed as clear as morning.

Before letting go of her hands, he squeezed them tightly, then asked: "Are you saying this for my sake?"

Her throat tightened, but she thrust back the wholly inappropriate sense of insult. There was still a little of the proud herald in her it seemed. "I have never spoken more truth in my life," she said, steadily. "I mightn’t be able to simply choose to forgive, but I can work at it. And I am going to. For you, yes, but also because–" She looked down, then back at him and watched as they shifted back to blue. "For my sake, don’t you see? I have loved you for as long as I’ve hated you, Ieskar. I wanted you and I could not stop, though I tried. Now – it’s long past time for me to acknowledge that you did what was best for your people instead of mine. And let myself do what’s best for me. I don’t want to lose either of you."

He just looked at her, the statue Kier she knew so well, trying to stare into her mind as if for the first time he was uncertain what he would find there. His eyes changed back to Illukar’s grey, but he did not speak.

"What do you think we should do, Illukar?" she asked.

Those grey eyes lit with the elusive amusement she found so special. "Medair, there is no force in this world which could urge me to argue you out of sharing my bed. If you truly feel yourself capable of it, I think we should go home."

The smile she should have given him in response went all awry and she pressed the base of her palms into her eyes to try and stop them from stinging. "I very much want to hold you to the understanding we had."

But Illukar’s face had become Ieskar’s blue-eyed mask, shadowed and unyielding.

"You don’t believe me," she said. "Do you?"

He didn’t reply straight away, examining her expression in minute detail. "I believe you do not wish to lose my brother," he said finally.

Medair blinked. Did he really think she would lie? When she had already admitted that it had been his tears which had driven her away? Did he think she would be able touch him, if her hate was stronger than the love it had tried to kill? She stared at his statue-still face and realised what a very thin thread was holding that mask of composure in place. Even Ieskar’s self-control had its limits.

"And you told me I ran from things."

His face didn’t change but his chin lifted, just a little. That was something she’d seen Illukar do, but it was Ieskar who had reacted. It made her feel strange, to see Ieskar react to anything at all, and an immense rush of feeling forced her to snatch at breath. She wanted to do that again, to crack the mask. She wanted to touch.

"I’m not lying," she told him, in a voice which sounded shocked to be genuine. She was trying to imagine Ieskar smiling at her. The very idea made her tremble.

Ieskar just sat there, expression once again completely blank. "Then how?" he asked, at last. "How did you come to love me, Medair an Rynstar? For I saw very well that you hated."

Medair tried to channel all that morass of emotion into speech, to make him understand the feelings which had endured despite her hate, to become the kind of wordsmith Telsen had been. And said, "I don’t know." The words fell out and a gasping kind of laugh followed. She shook her head, cheeks hot, and pressed on. "It was an unpleasant shock, when I understood. Hate was a great deal easier, and for a long time I called everything I felt hate, even when it wasn’t."

He tilted his head just a fraction to one side. She wasn’t sure if he did it deliberately, and decided it meant he was listening. Illukar’s grey eyes flashed at her, and she struggled on, face growing ever warmer.

"You are beautiful, Ieskar," she said, with stilted honesty. "And you looked straight through me. And you were so alone." She closed her eyes, dismayed at how wrong that sounded. "I hated the rules which bound you. Could not understand how you stood them. I used to watch your hands turning the marrat pieces. The grace – it, I – I would only let myself think of stopping you. Hating you. I would have used the Horn of Farak on the Ibis-lar. I would have killed you. And it would have–" She looked away, remembering the stinging of the Horn, and the way her chest had seemed to vibrate like a struck gong, when she knew that she had the power to kill the Ibis-lar. "I would have done it, and it would have destroyed me," she whispered.

After a long silence, she lifted her head and stared into those pale eyes, willing him to accept. He seemed to be gazing past her, and she looked over her shoulder at a huge, hazy lake fringed by the border of reeds and islets which had escaped the Blight. Tiny ripples reflected the pale sunlight creeping over the hills, and turned it all into a thing of vast and delicate beauty. It would sparkle at midday and burn at sunset, but in the dawn it earned its name: Shimmerlan.