The Silence of Medair

Chapter Twelve

"How did the rahlstones come to be stolen in the first place?" Medair asked, resisting the temptation to look self-consciously away at green, sprawling Pelamath, their journey’s halfway point. They were resting a day in the city, a major trade junction sitting squarely on the border of the massive Cor-Ibis Dahlein. Only a week’s ride from Athere, it had once been a herding town called Pelladon.

Cor-Ibis' eyelids dropped a fraction, a mannerism she still suspected betrayed otherwise hidden amusement. Conversation with the man was like walking through a forest full of snares, with the trapper following behind to study her fumbles. She kept falling over questions like the one he had just asked – what she thought of the Simonacy – and having to abruptly change the subject to hide her complete ignorance of who or what he was talking about.

Was the Simonacy some dreadfully obscure topic he had dredged up from the far reaches of his memory, just to see whether she would weasel out of answering? Or the equivalent of the Western Kingdoms, or the Korgan Lands, or Farak herself? The sort of thing about which no normal person would not have some opinion. Even ambiguous answers could be treacherous, so she had to resort to a transparent change of subject.

"It is not a story which depicts Palladian security in any favourable light," Cor-Ibis said now, accepting the shift from Simonacy to rahlstones without demur. He never challenged her when she squirmed from one topic to another, just made her feel hopelessly clumsy in the light of his eternal courtesy. She wished Avahn had breakfasted with them, instead of deserting her to Cor-Ibis on the balcony of yet another ducal mansion while he gallivanted off to visit friends.

"As is boasted, the vaults of the White Palace are protected by gates, guards and glamour," Cor-Ibis continued. "Gates are the easiest to circumvent, and do not even require magic for the feat. The guards themselves are kel-sa rank mages, and suffer the usual scrutiny levelled at such sentinels."

"Geases and truth spells," Medair murmured. If it weren’t for Cor-Ibis' unwavering scrutiny, this would be a pleasant place to breakfast. The Pelamath residence was less secluded than The Avenue, and this balcony offered a view over a public park with a small lake and, distantly, the surge and bustle of a busy marketplace.

"Even so, Kel. The guards were not suspect. A thief aspiring to the vaults must overcome the physical impediments, along with several layers of detection and reinforcement spells. Without alerting guards sensitive to magical interference."

"As well shoot the moon. Yet it was done?"

"It was done. And I cannot tell you how, because I still do not know. A routine inventory revealed the rahlstones' loss something on the order of two months ago. Nothing else was missing, the wards and trips were all in place, and the guards had not reported a single unusual occurrence. A remarkable thief."

"Who was not, I take it, among the victims of that blast?"

"Not from my observation. But Thern Mara – the merchant attempting to sell the stones on – kept secrets close to her chest. Since nothing else was taken, I can only presume the thief was hired specifically for the task."

"Quite a commission." Medair toyed with the slices of apple and cheese she had so busily carved while avoiding his gaze.

"Have you been to Pelamath before, Kel?"

"No." She didn’t imagine that the dozen times she’d passed through Pelladon counted.

"Then I will show you the city." His eyes were veiled when she looked up. "It is a place of many moods, Pelamath, and I rarely have a chance to see them. Ever a crossroads."

That didn’t sound like an attractive prospect for a number of reasons. "I–" Medair began.

"You would rather not traipse about Pelamath in my wake," Cor-Ibis said, and a corner of his mouth curled up. She looked away, for she found these rare, wry smiles highly distracting.

Medair had no doubt about his motives for playing the courteous host. Avahn had quite certainly told Cor-Ibis what he had learned on their outing in Finrathlar and so both Cor-Ibis and his heir were more intent than ever on prying loose her secrets. She supposed she should be grateful that they chose to do this by trying to lure her into betraying herself in conversation, but keeping her wits about her through every minor exchange was truly wearying. She wished more than anything for an end to this sojourn among White Snakes.

Taking her silence as acquiescence, Cor-Ibis arranged for their excursion and Medair found herself at least not refusing. She didn’t change to go out, only washed her hands after breakfast and went to wait at the front door. It was not too long before he appeared, walking down the stair of the main hall.

Cor-Ibis had found the time to exchange outfits and no doubt this affair of shot silk beneath a fine linen demi-robe was the precise thing for a quick tour. He hadn’t spent the time for travelling braids, merely clasped a band of black and silver above the last foot or so of that extravagant fall of hair. Its pendulum weight swayed with each graceful step, as mesmerising as a cobra.

She thought he looked at her rather strangely as she stared up at him, so she pretended interest in the arrangement of magelights suspended from the ceiling until he reached the foot of the stair. After constructing some excessively civil apology for keeping her waiting, Cor-Ibis ushered her out the main door. It seemed only Liak ar Haedrin and a single guardsman were to accompany them. And the Keridahl proposed to go without horses.

For someone of his rank and wealth, Cor-Ibis exhibited an extreme lack of pomp. They had travelled to Pelamath with only four guards and three servants to see to the needs of Cor-Ibis, his heir and his guest. Since they were no longer attempting to keep a low profile in enemy territory, Medair could only presume subdued was to his taste.

It occurred to her that Cor-Ibis must not be in any way concerned about attacks against his person, here in Pelamath. To wander through a once-conquered city on foot, with only a pair of attendants, spoke of a certainty that only the most-loved of the Emperor’s Hands had enjoyed. Or the most feared. Few dukes of her time had been adepts.

They crossed the small formal garden to the gates and were duly released into the tree-studded park. "Ourvette’s Lake," Cor-Ibis said, as they followed a flagstone path around the northern bank. The lake was a featureless circle, dully reflecting high grey clouds. "Ourvette," her guide continued, "was a Mersian mage of considerable ability, if chancy temper. And a would-be suitor to the youngest nephew of Keridahl Tanikar las Cor-Ibis. She was not favoured by the family and was given to understand this in no uncertain terms."

"How did the youngest nephew feel about her?" Medair asked, curious.

"Less unfavourably than many, I would presume, since he abandoned Pelamath to travel in Ourvette’s company."

Medair glanced at him and saw only that tranquil mask. "How does the lake come into it?"

Cor-Ibis paused and turned to look out over the water. "Ourvette had a certain artistry. And a desire to make a point. This parkland was once the site of the Spring Fair, and the elopement took place the night before. She left a casting which triggered with the dawn, cutting down to the bedrock. A large portion of the result was Ourvette’s family crest, and the rest – stories range from the salacious to the seditious, but details have remained uncertain since it was not yet full light before Tanikar las Cor-Ibis had covered the entire thing with water. The pattern remains there to this day, beneath the lake." Which was as unreadable as Cor-Ibis' eyes as he watched the wind make ripples across the surface. "It was not long after the creation of Ourvette’s Lake that Finrathlar became the central seat of the Dahlein," he added, and Medair decided that he simply couldn’t be telling her this as a homily on the Cor-Ibis family’s ability to come out on top. She was almost certain he was thoroughly amused.

"A very Mersian revenge," Medair said, and all he did was incline his head in agreement and stroll on toward the market.

Pelamath, or at least the copious portion currently visiting market, proved to be very Farakkian. There were a great many blonde people who showed some portion of Ibisian ancestry, but more than half of those they passed were the same range of sandy and freckled or copper-brown and creamy as she’d encountered when the place was called Pelladon. And they seemed utterly delighted to see Cor-Ibis.

Not that everyone would mean it, Medair thought sourly, watching people turn and smile and bow a very formal and correct Ibisian observance to their lord. Searching the crowds, Medair saw a man who turned abruptly away, and a woman who bowed prettily enough, but wore a frown when she busied herself over a stall of fine-worked leather. No-one was universally popular.

Somehow, it didn’t please her to see those shadowed faces among the mix of the curious and admiring. It turned her thoughts to the Medarists, the most vocal and violent of those who did not care for Ibisians. A movement like that didn’t grow out of nothing. It was fuelled by never-ending skirmishes and long-standing injustices. The south-west of Palladium had been Earl Vergreen’s lands. The Vergreens and the Corminevars and too many others had been displaced by the invasion, had lost their lands and their fortunes along with those who fell in battle. And though the Ibisians did not seem to have proven tyrannical rulers, the initial blow was not balmed by subsequent fair dealing.

Medair looked around at smiling faces and wondered who was wrong. Those who plotted a revenge less amusing than the slighted Ourvette’s, or the ones who accepted the present without care for the distant past? Medair could hardly blame those who could not forget, when she was unable to do so herself.

A familiar rattling clatter sent icy fingers of recognition skittering beneath her skin. She turned, searching among the stalls until she found a sturdy table wedged between a milken vendor and a display of early harvest. Two women, their dark hair streaked with grey, were just sitting down, sipping bowls of steaming milken as a young girl finished turning a cloth bag the ritual three times and up-ended the contents into a specially indented section of the table. Dozens of flat black disks cascaded out and the girl nimbly began sorting them into piles, turning them so that they would all be face down. It was a scene achingly familiar and jarringly wrong. It was marrat.

Medair had been in Sevesta the first time she had spoken to Kier Ieskar outside an official audience. It was after Kedy’s death, and the fall of Holt Harra. She’d been sent to winter at Holt Harra’s ducal seat, newly conquered by Ibisians. Sevesta had put up a better fight than Mishannon, and there had been captives on both sides to exchange, interminable negotiations, and Medair had almost become used to standing before the Ibis Throne and speaking the Emperor’s words.

The audiences had been so formalised that the evening summons had taken her completely off-guard. Imagining all kind of disasters, she’d stared at the white-clad boy who waited to escort her, then hurriedly snatched up her cloak and satchel. The room he’d led her to was not the starkly bare chamber which housed the Ibis Throne, but a sitting room with a single shuttered window and warm braziers burning in the corners, each with an attendant child wearing the black-trimmed white uniform of the Kier’s household.

Her escort had whisked away while she wasn’t looking and Medair had known better than to try and question the attendants, who were always so careful not to even raise their eyes from their appointed task. She’d stepped forward to inspect the table which took pride of place in the centre of the room. Old, dark wood, inlaid on one side with a square of slightly paler material, and on the other a neat depression almost large enough to rest her satchel in.

"Please sit down, Keris."

How hard it had been not to jump, when she’d heard Kier Ieskar’s sublimely even voice directly behind her. She knew she’d stiffened and, because the idea of him standing behind her had made her skin crawl, she’d crossed to the far side of the strange table. Only then had she turned to look at him.

"Ekarrel?" she’d asked, her throat dry. The word meant most cold, and was used the way the Empire employed Your Majesty. He had certainly looked like ice, standing in the doorway in a robe of colourless silk with all that white hair neatly arranged across his shoulders, and those pale blue eyes looking straight through her assumption of calm. She’d never even seen him standing before, had only ever seen him seated on the Ibis Throne during formal audience. She remembered being shocked by the very fact that he walked, as he crossed the short distance to the table and drew out the chair opposite her, then inclined his head in patient courtesy, waiting for her to take her seat.

The attendants came forward as she settled into the chair, pouring out bowls of the sweet, herbed drink Ibisians called vahl. It gave her a moment to collect, to remind herself that she was an Imperial Herald, that she represented her Emperor among the enemy.

"How can I assist you, Ekarrel?"

"I would ask you of the people of Farakkan, Keris." His voice had been as expressionless as ever and his eyes had looked straight through her Herald’s formality to the frantic suspicions this unexpected audience had roused. "For I must know those whom I would rule."

The feeling of being backed into a corner was still strong, years – centuries – later. She had wished desperately for Kedy’s advice, convinced that the Kier intended to trick Palladium’s secrets from her. The thought of her mentor had at least given her the strength to lift her chin and say: "I can only tell you what my Emperor disposes, Ekarrel."

He had inclined his head, just the tiniest amount, as if that had been the answer he was expecting. "Then I request of Grevain, Emperor, that his Herald be given dispensation to speak," he’d replied. "I will await his answer."

And then, to confuse her further, the Kier had gestured to one of his attendants. The boy had carried a heavy velvet purse to the table, turned it over three times while what sounded like a thousand tiny rocks clattered inside, and then emptied it into the table’s depression. Coin-like disks of dark stone had poured out, each marked on one side with complex symbols in gold, red, silver and blue. The attendant’s fingers had darted over the stones, turning all face-down, then arranged them into piles of ten. Rows and rows of disks.

Then, for the rest of the evening, Kier Ieskar had lectured her on marrat. He had not asked one single question about Farakkan. He had not asked any questions at all, merely began a week-long explanation of the fiendishly complex game.

The questions had come eventually, of course. Medair had sent a wend-whisper to her Emperor and Grevain had obliged his enemy. It had been a precarious position for a Herald, and she had been relieved when the questions had focused on customs and traditions which could only be remotely useful in a tactical sense. Death rituals and marriage laws, harvest festivals and the worship of Farak: she’d explained them all over innumerable games. So he could know whom he would rule. She wondered if he’d found any use for it all, in the short time before his death.

Feeling old and out of place, Medair watched the two women laugh as one placed a stone, changed her mind, and shuffled it to a different part of the table with careless indecision. That was not marrat. Marrat was ceremony, and questions after long silences, and the constant sick dread which Kier Ieskar had always seemed to inspire in her. He’d had a way of not moving at all while she drew her stones and tried to decide what use to make of them. Then he would reach out without even seeming to look at the table and pick up one of the stones between his thumb and the third finger of his hand. As he placed it delicately in his chosen pattern, he would turn it over twice. There had been a thin scar across the back of his fingers and, countless times, she had thought of beheading snakes as she watched him make that precise movement.

It had been Kerikath las Dona who explained the gesture, during one of Medair’s own lessons on the language and customs and binding laws of the Ibisian invaders. That had been the first time Medair had really taken in the significance of the ceremony which surrounded Kier Ieskar’s every act. She had been told during her first lesson that it was against custom for the Kier to do things like speak in the Palladian language, as he had when he declared war. Over the months, the Kerikath had provided Medair with an increasing list of things which were against custom. And things which were against law. When Medair had questioned the Kerikath about marrat, she had been warned not to turn the stones in the same way, for it was against custom for any but the Kier to do so. For the Kier not to do so was against law.

Faintly disbelieving, for she had long since formed the opinion that the Ibisian Kier’s will was absolute among his people, Medair had pressed her tutor for detail and been treated to a list of restrictions which only scratched the surface of what was forbidden the Kier.

"There is only one person the Kier is permitted to touch," the Kerikath had said in the measured voice which had described so much of the Ibisian world to Medair. "Since his brother’s death, the Kierash Adestan is the only other of the direct Saral-Ibis line. The Kier is forbidden contact with any outside that line."

The Kerikath had calmly described the difficulties posed by a childless Kier, and the good fortune that his brother had left an heir to ensure the succession. Otherwise, the Kier would be obliged to arrange a conception by magic alone, forbidden from touching any woman he married. Kerikath las Dona had only broken off her description of the purification rituals anyone who would bear such a child would have to endure when she noticed Medair’s disbelieving face.

"But why?!" Medair had asked, incredulously. "Why these rules? What purpose can they possibly serve?" It had perplexed Medair that for all his power, the Ibisian Kier would live such a rigidly ascetic life, following laws which dictated the games he could play, the food he ate, the very dishes and cups he ate from.

The pause which had followed was one Medair had come to recognise as her tutor adjusting her mind to her pupil’s immense ignorance.

"The Kier is more than merely one who rules," Selai las Dona had explained, as if trying to put into words what rarely needed clarification. "The Kier is the focus of the land’s protections, the convergence of all enchantments to ensure health and fruitfulness. The Kier is the focus of the AlKier’s regard. If the Kier ails, the land ails, and so the Kier’s life is paramount. To do anything which would threaten that life would be to betray the trust of the kiereddas."

"But why the turning of the stones?" Medair had asked, confusedly. "How could that possibly serve any purpose?"

"Marrat stones are onyx," Kerikath las Dona had replied. "They possess a capacity for becoming imbued with the essence of those who handle them, particularly one who is a powerful lok-shi. By turning the stone, the Kier prevents any accumulation of resonance, which could lead to a dilution of his essence."

"Why not just make a marrat set out of something other than onyx?" Medair had asked, reasonably, but the Kerikath had only looked at her blankly and repeated that marrat stones are onyx.

The dissonance between a people who could efficiently handle such a massive upset as the destruction and complete evacuation of their homeland, yet would not make marrat stones out of anything but onyx because "marrat stones are onyx" had made Medair dizzy. She had asked only a few questions as the Kerikath had told of the Kierash Adestan’s circumscribed but less enduringly restricted life. Until she ascended the Ibis Throne, the Kierash was permitted to touch any who had undergone the appropriate purifications, although custom again restricted that number to a select few. The rules were without end.

Much as Medair had hated the White Snakes, it had felt senselessly cruel to prod at the wound of their loss, so she had forborne to point out that, given the destruction of Sar-Ibis, it was surely futile to continue to enforce laws born out of the Kier’s protections of that land. She was not altogether certain it would make any difference to them. Tradition was not something the Ibisians seemed anxious to question.

"Kel?"

She had by now learned to distinguish between their voices. Cor-Ibis' was a trifle lighter, and he accented words differently. And, though many would find it hard to believe, he was infinitely more expressive than Kier Ieskar. But his eyes cut through her the same way, stripping away shields and lies until she was naked and squirming. He was looking at her now, watching her stare at the two women. Farakkian women, playing with stones too light to be onyx.

"Do you play marrat, Keridahl?" she asked, clutching at her bystander guise rather than betray the tidal wave of her past.

"At times," he replied, after a tiny pause to underline what wasn’t said. "It is a useful aid to thought, once the patterns become second nature. I do not compete."

"Compete?" she asked, blankly, and immediately knew she’d blundered.

His lids dropped, then he inclined his head. His voice struck that particular cool note which she interpreted as Cor-Ibis at his most dangerous. "I imagine the Tournament will be missing a few of the major players this year," he said, watching her. "Given the hostility between Palladium and Decia. But it will certainly continue in the Western Kingdoms. Sooner hold back the sea than keep Seochians from the marrat tables."

The idea of the Seochians, the people of Western Farakkan, being proverbially linked to marrat made Medair blink. She had no doubt Cor-Ibis was adding her reaction, her ignorance of marrat tournaments, to his list of strange things about Medair ar Corleaux. And there was nothing she could do but ask some question about a thing wholly inconsequential and walk on.

He did not object, or even pursue the subject of marrat. Instead he launched into a story about the trees of Pelamath, which were covered in purple flowers in spring. "They are calias," he said, indicating the nearest bushy, pale green tree. "A native of Sar-Ibis, brought out during the exodus. Pelamath is one of the few places where they have flourished, and for a short space each year it is clothed in scent and blossom. The young girls of the city make coronets of fallen petals and one is chosen as the Land’s Maiden."

"Farak’s Daughter," Medair murmured. It was a Spring game she had played when she was a child, though there had been no calias. A celebration of the end of Winter, with Farak’s Daughter decked out in the green of Farak’s gifts and paid a day’s courtesy in thanks for the land’s bounty.

Cor-Ibis glanced at her; mirror-grey eyes. "A cloak is constructed of the blossoms, a bruised and fragile thing which rarely lasts the morning. While the Land’s Daughter is robed, the children hide in the park, and one is given the AlKier’s cup. Before midday, the Land’s Daughter must capture that child, wrest away the cup, or the year is not thought blessed."

He was testing her again, Medair realised, and kept her face relaxed and mildly interested. A tale like this, which mixed one of Farak’s customs with the White Snake god, was a distortion which would surely infuriate the Medarist they thought she might be.

"So many variations," Medair said, with just enough of a dry edge to her voice to show she thought he was fencing. This time his faint smile was appreciative, and he did not press the point further.

How different they all were! And so the same. Avahn behaved like no Ibisian she had ever imagined, and still she saw in him a core of tradition which had barely altered since the invasion. Even Cor-Ibis managed to somehow be unutterably like the White Snake she had hated the most, and yet Farakkian at the same time.

Medair could only count the hours till Athere.