The Silence of Medair

Chapter Nineteen

Even stone ages.

The Hall of Mourning was a place of high ceilings and dark shadows. It covered several echoing chambers, tiered and separated by balustrades. Telsen had called the Hall the Gallery of the Dead.

Centuries had added hollows to the shallow stairs, and stains of damp on the walls. She bent to touch the depressions in the cold, grey stone and marvelled at the number of feet which must have passed this way since Telsen took her on tour.

Gazing out over the sarcophagi of generations of Corminevars, Medair saw that the Hall had been extended. Through a wide new opening to the right of the second tier she could dimly make out stone railing and marble. Built to house five hundred years of Ibisians who had ruled from a stolen throne.

The Hall was not permanently lit, and she felt suddenly uneasy about venturing among the dead. Waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, she hesitated at the foot of the entrance stair. Light reflected past her off the polished floor of the Hall of Ceremony, where several large mageglows provided a steady, clear illumination. It only served to make the shadows deeper.

Voices prompted her to edge to one side, where must and dust waited to assail her nostrils. The palace seemed overfull of guards today. They had watched her suspiciously as she’d made her way down from Cor-Ibis' rooms. She’d had half a mind to don her ring, but was tired of the vague sensation of illness. Besides, there was no ban of which she knew against visiting the Hall of Mourning. Skulking around invisibly would only make her seem guilty of something.

The source of the voices proved not to be guards, but a group of young nobles, walking in a tight cluster. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, and waited until they had passed through the Hall of Ceremony. Then a series of careful gestures served to conjure a bobbing mageglow bright enough to keep the shadows at bay without drawing the attention of passers-by.

Her footsteps echoed as she walked across the first tier, where the earliest kings and queens of Palladium lay in stone-wrapped state, their likenesses carved by hands long turned to dust. The second tier was larger, but held fewer sarcophagi. It had once been considered fitting for the coffins of monarchs to be more than a container for their bodies, for their lives to be reflected by some tribute. So there were friezes, columns, crypts within crypts. They ranged in complexity from the wrought iron fence around Iriane the Just, to the miniature palace which housed the remains of Varden the First.

She paused momentarily at the entrance of the new extension. A corner of pale stone was visible in the light of her glow, but the rest was little more than black shapes in darkness. Ibisian dead: she had no wish to look upon them. Gritting her teeth she went onward, to the third tier. This was where Grevain Corminevar’s mother had been laid to rest, where the last true Palladian Emperor would surely lie.

White, pure, unembellished. Her mageglow heated its milky depths. Medair stumbled to a halt, having discovered not the resting place of her Emperor, but the one who had destroyed him. There were no markings of any kind on the tomb, not even his name, but Medair knew it could be no other. Standing alone at the very end of the Hall, an achingly simple box of near-translucent marble which held the mortal remains of Ieskar Cael las Saral-Ibis.

Twenty-three and dead. She refused to think of it, of him. He had destroyed the Empire and deserved no thought at all.

With grim determination she dragged her eyes from the soft marble, sought and found the carved, grey face of the man to whom she had sworn her life. Grevain Corminevar’s sarcophagus lay in the shadow of two of Farak’s handmaidens. The statues towered some seven feet high, leaning out of the wall at the head of the sarcophagus, each holding a stone arm forward, hands resting on the shoulders of his image. Their heads were bowed in sorrow or contemplation.

A lump lodged itself in Medair’s throat and she went to one knee in the traditional obeisance. He had not been a handsome man. Stocky, bearded, dour. Whoever had been set the task of recreating his likeness had been skilled: the prominent Corminevar jaw was visible beneath the curling outline of beard. The stone face was at peace, despite the sword clasped to his chest to indicate he had died in battle. Medair could not remember ever seeing him wear such an expression. He had been a brisk, impatient man, used to dealing with problems quickly and efficiently, always thinking on to the next trouble brewing on the horizon.

"I’m sorry," Medair choked out, inadequately. She brushed at tears suddenly streaking her cheeks. The enormity of her failure overwhelmed her and she was barely able to hold her ground, wanting to collapse into wails, to crawl away in shame. "One stupid mistake," she told indifferent stone. "I – it could have been so different, if I hadn’t – Excellency…"

The futility of it all strangled further words. Grevain Corminevar was dead, the Empire had fallen, and nothing Medair could do could change that. She could not even ask his forgiveness.

Did death release the bonds of oath? Medair was running out of time in which to struggle with her own conscience. She did not want to stand by and watch the inhabitants of Athere slaughtered, for all they were Ibisian. But to give the Horn of Farak to those whom she had originally sought to use it against? No, that was beyond her. She would not betray her people to the benefit of another. She would rather…

Medair placed her satchel on top of the stone hands of her king, and slowly opened it. Reaching in, she found a heavy silk cord and pulled it gently, not enough to expose the Horn, not yet. It was so rich in power that every Ibisian in the palace would likely be able to feel it. Instead, she found the bone handle of a knife, a sliver of metal which would cut flesh cleanly. Fear and uncertainty washed over her, but she pushed second thoughts to one side. It was better this way.

Winding the cord about one wrist, she closed her eyes and sent a silent prayer to Farak. The Horn would be pulled from her satchel when she fell, and she would be free of choices she did not want to make.

"One last place to run, Keris an Rynstar."

Medair gasped, entire body jerking with shock. She stared around her at the shadows lurking at the edges of her mageglow, but could not see the source of that entirely too familiar voice. It couldn’t be him.

She cautiously unwound the cord from her arm and took a step forward, knife held at ready. Another step and she was able to see the stair, and the tall man watching her. His eyes were serious, his pointed face the same grave mask he’d worn for an entire war. Pale hair fell neatly over the shoulders of a shimmering robe of Kier’s white.

The knife fell to the ground with a clatter. Medair backed away until her ribs connected painfully with a corner of white marble and she stopped, trapped.

"A most convincing display of horror." Kier Ieskar descended the last few steps into the room and paused.

"How–?" Medair rasped, lifting one hand as if to fend him off. At the same time she began sidling sideways, to remove herself from the vicinity of the white marble which she had thought housed his body.

He inclined his head to one side, lids lowering as he followed her progress. White Snake. When he spoke again, it was in Parlance, a concession he had not made since their first meeting.

"Wild Magic," he said, and looked down at himself, as if to confirm his own existence. "The shield held off the reshaping of the Conflagration, but the world is still saturated with unfocused power. It collects in pools, sinks into the ground, is carried on the wind. It will be a long time before there ceases to be unpredictable changes."

"Changes!!? The dead coming back to life is not–"

"Not what has happened here. Calm yourself, Keris an Rynstar. You have summoned my shade from beyond the veil, not returned me fully to this world."

"I –?!"

"Yourself."

He came forward and she managed not to cringe, or even leap to snatch her satchel to safety as he approached her Emperor’s sarcophagus. His long fingers touched the blood-red cord which trailed from the satchel’s mouth.

"I did not summon you," she whispered.

"You did. You know that, within yourself. Do not argue against it." He lifted the tasselled end of the cord. "You sought this to kill me and my kind. To revenge yourself for what we, what I, had done to your Empire. And I was not here. You cannot assuage your sorrow in belated apologies. You want justice, a clear choice, for it all to be right again, and, failing that, you want to rail at me for my role in your loss."

Silence. Medair could not answer him.

He looked at her, cord still in his hand. "You do not like to face certain truths, Medair an Rynstar. Unwilling to help my people, unable to ignore their plight, you decide to kill yourself. And, not wanting to die, you reach out to pull me here, to convince you not to. It is an unusual form of cowardice."

"I don’t want to live," she protested, numbly. "There’s no place for me here."

"You do not want to lay claim to your name, yet you refuse to give it up. You do not want to face the world as yourself, to have history record the breadth of your failure, but nor are you willing to create a new identity for yourself."

It was a cold, precise, unforgiving denunciation of her faults. Medair turned away, hugging her arms around herself.

"Go away," she said. "If I summoned you here, then surely I can banish you. You have no reason to stay – the power of the Horn will alert your people to its presence, and they will be saved. It is not necessary that I personally hand it over to them. I want to die more than I fear death."

"If that were true, I would not be here," Kier Ieskar countered, calm as ever.

"I don’t even know if you are what you seem to be," she replied, trying to rouse anger, hurt, anything but numb fear and apathy. And shame.

"My identity is not at issue." She could hear him moving, and looked cautiously over her shoulder to find him gazing pensively at the marble which encased his body. "I did not wish to live," he said. "To struggle against the wounds of my body, the losses I had incurred, to lead my people in war. But the easy route is not often the best."

"An unnecessary war," she accused, still searching for anger. Why was it she could not feel as she should, when she looked on him?

"Not so."

"The Emperor offered you safe haven. You chose to make war."

"Tell me, Keris an Rynstar," Kier Ieskar said. "Why do you imagine my people refused the offer made to them this day – why pass up an opportunity to ensure their children, our race, survived?"

Medair frowned. "If you are trying to make a comparison, you over-reach yourself, Ekarrel. Grevain Corminevar would not have enslaved your people. He was an honourable man."

"He was. He would have aided my people in any way possible, given us shelter, provided us with food. And we would have been lost, a pauper race with no land to call our own, feared for our strengths, hated for our differences. Chained by our own laws. Our culture has been irretrievably altered through exposure to the peoples of Farakkan, but it would have shattered us, or been lost altogether if we had allowed ourselves to be separated, broken apart as we would have been as petitioners."

"That still doesn’t make it right!" Medair groaned, finding that this was an explanation she would rather not have heard.

"The salvation of my people to the detriment of my honour. It is a price I would pay again, and willingly."

"I hate you."

"I know." Impossible that there could almost be a hint of humour in his voice. She stared at him, at that perfect mask and the blue eyes which could still look straight through her, despite his death. "Tell me, Keris," he went on. "Why did you seek out this Horn, so unexpectedly? The odds were against your success, and it is not a task usually given to Heralds."

Medair did not answer.

"Keris?"

"What does it matter? If you are here to convince me not to kill myself, why don’t you do that?"

"Because I do not need to, Keris. The moment has passed, and you will not take up the knife again. You will go from this place of the dead to the halls of the living and admit your name and your past. Because you know that that is right."

"Is it?" She shook her head. "From your perspective, just as, from your perspective, it was better to invade Palladium than be its pensioner."

"Your replacement was much less adept with Ibis-laran."

He said it in the same even tone that he’d used to condemn her, and she felt it just as strongly. It was beyond comprehension, how she could be standing in the bowels of Athere having an argument with Kier Ieskar. Medair, moving away from the man or ghost or whatever he was, carefully collected her satchel from the hands of her Emperor. Tucking the cord inside, she sealed it gently. She could feel Ieskar watching her.

"Why did you allow Telsen to play that song?" she asked, in a tiny, thready voice.

"A question for a question?"

"If you wish." Medair closed her eyes. She could not think about this.

"An interesting man," Ieskar said, with unshakeable equilibrium. "Soulless, turning the hearts of others into music. His saving grace was the skill with which he did so. That song – Telsen may not have felt it, but eternal longing for the impossible has never been better expressed."

Medair started, blinked, but his face was still a mask, and before she could react further he continued. "I believe, at the time, it was a form of apology."

"Apology?" She seemed able to do nothing but stare at him. He was still gazing down at his tomb, as motionless as the statues which guarded Grevain, but at that he lifted his eyes.

"Not for making war, Keris. When a new Herald brought me Corminevar’s next message, I sought your location, and learned that you quested for an artefact which might well cost me victory. I sent a handful of my best to find you and ensure you did not return."

Medair laughed, unable to stop herself. She clamped her jaw when she heard an edge of hysteria. "How appropriate," she managed, through quivering lips. "In attempting make amends for murdering me, you succeed in destroying my reputation."

"I learned, later, that they had not found you, but by that time my end had nearly come and I could only charge my regent to be on her guard." He did not appear in the slightest way remorseful about ordering her death, his voice thoughtful, introspective. "It is perhaps appropriate that it is now my people who wait upon the silence of Medair."

"They can wait forever, for all I care," she said, hotly.

"You are too just for that, Keris. Answer my question now. What sent you on this quest?"

She looked at him from the corner of her eye, wondering why he wanted to know. What he had meant, about Telsen’s song. He had tried to have her killed. He had died. And she couldn’t begin to tell him something she refused to admit even to herself.

"Your brother’s daughter," she replied eventually.

"Adestan? Ah, of course. The last game of marrat. It is hard to hate a child, is it not?"

"It is hard to hate."

"All too easy." He walked towards her, measured, implacable. "This is your war, for this is Palladium, Athere, which you are sworn to protect. This is your war, because you cannot stand by and watch innocents slaughtered alongside warriors. This is your war, because you are here. Give me your hand."

Medair stared, fingers curling into fists. She had never touched him. It was forbidden, and even if it were not, she would never have been able to bear such contact. He lifted his hand, and she flinched.

"Give me your hand, Keris an Rynstar. Consider it my price. Perhaps I could even haunt you, if you deny me. In this new world, it may well be possible, and I do not think you would like such a thing."

Not at all. She stared at him, at the pale blue eyes glittering behind hooded lids, and could not ask why he wanted this. There were some things that had to be left unspoken.

Tentatively, she lifted one hand and placed it against his, palm to palm. Her hand looked small and muddy against his white flesh. Icy fingers, colder than death, closed around hers and she shuddered.

That soft, imperturbable, unbearable voice went on. "It revolts you to touch me. That is hate. Remember this feeling, Keris, for it is not what you feel for those who live in this time, who had no part in the downfall of your Empire. There is no betrayal in alliance with them."

She stared at slender white fingers, livid against her skin.

"Take your place in this world, Medair," he said, very softly. "Goodbye."

As she watched, the pale fingers blurred and changed, became smaller, more delicate. She gasped, and went to her knees as the person attached to that hand sagged against her. She found herself holding a boy of fifteen or so, in the throes of shivers so violent they were practically convulsions. White hair spilled across her arms as she tried to hold him still, and she could hear his teeth chattering. Awkwardly she pulled open her satchel, dragged out the lambs' wool cloak which she resorted to on the coldest days, and wrapped it around his shoulders.

He clung to her, decidedly disconcerting until she realised how warm her body must be in comparison with his own. So she held him close, this Ibisian boy she suspected must be a descendant of Ieskar, and wondered if the Niadril Kier had known this would happen. Deliberate contrast. Like the attempt on her life, it would be characteristic.

"Who are you?" she asked, when his shudders had finally subsided to the occasional quiver, and he lay exhausted against her chest.

"Islantar." His voice was a breathy sigh.

"The Kierash."

"Yes." He spoke in Ibis-laran. Eyes rose to peer at her through a disordered fringe. "You are Medair an Rynstar. That was…"

"Kier Ieskar."

"Yes." The boy hid his face against her chest, trembling. "He was so sad," he whispered.

Medair could not think about that. She disentangled herself and found her feet. "Can you stand?" she asked.

"No," the Kierash replied. Then, with her aid, he levered himself upright, swaying.

"Medair an Rynstar," he repeated, as she began to guide him towards the exit. She did not reply. "Forgive my weakness, Keris," he continued, switching languages.

"Hardly your fault," Medair replied, shortly.

"The centuries have been kind to you, Keris," was the boy’s next foray into conversation, as they crossed the second tier of the Hall of Mourning. A round-about Ibisian way of asking how she came to still be alive. She wondered how much of the conversation he remembered, what else he had learned from briefly housing the Niadril Kier.

"You don’t know how wrong you are," she replied.

Islantar shook his head, then made an effort to stand on his own, and failed. The chill which had gripped him had faded, but he was as ungainly as a newborn colt.

"What were you doing among the crypts?" she asked, at least in part to stave off further questions.

"I don’t know. We were going to ask permission to go to the wall, then…" He frowned. "I don’t know."

Medair thought she should probe him on how much he remembered, but found she didn’t want to know. Such was the pattern of her life.

Emerging into the Hall of Ceremony, she winced at the sudden, alarmed shout of a guard and waited, resigned, as one of the patrols rushed towards them. The Kierash made an effort to stand upright, gripping her arm tightly. His change of stance must have made some impression, for the approaching guards stopped looking quite so inclined to cut her down, and slowed their charge to a merely hurried advance.

"Kierash?" The young woman in the lead pressed a hand to her chest in salute. "Do you require assistance?"

"I would be obliged if you would lend me an arm, Kaschen," the Kierash replied, very dignified.

"Kierash," the kaschen murmured. Taking over the role of vertical support, she assumed a weirdly cross-eyed and awed expression. It served to remind Medair that this was the heir to all Palladium and that even now there were protocols about whom he could touch. The man and woman at the kaschen’s back were eyeing Medair, ready to spring into action if their Kierash in any way indicated that she was the cause of his sudden indisposition.

Looking at the boy properly for the first time, Medair was unsurprised to discover a distinct resemblance to his distant ancestor. There were also marked differences, including a more determined jaw-line, possibly a remnant of his Corminevar heritage. He was considering her in return, blue eyes a shade or two darker than Ieskar’s.

"I would like to accompany you, Keris," he said. "But fear I would be a distraction." He attempted to shrug, and swayed perilously, sending a momentary flash of panic across the face the woman trying to support him without intruding on the royal person. "I can only…thank you."

He wasn’t referring to her assistance in his attempts to stay upright. He inclined his head to a more than courteous depth, without further allusion to her secrets. Then he handed back her lambs' wool cloak, turned, and led the trio of highly confused guards down the length of the Hall of Ceremony. Medair watched them go. Then she looked down at the satchel depending from her right shoulder.

She could do nothing but accept her fate.