The Silence of Medair

Chapter Four

The boy was still alive, and even looked a little healthier, when dawn and dripping leaves woke Medair. He wasn’t inclined to respond to her attempts to rouse him however, so she ate and cleared the shelter, then attempted the novel task of dressing an unconscious child in almost dry clothing. The weather had turned cool in the wake of the storm, so she kept a blanket out to wrap about him and, with an efficiency born from a desire to get the business over, had them underway while the air was still in the half-tones of very early morning.

It was awkward to go at speed with him cradled against her chest, and she experimented with various positions until noon, when they reached Nodding, a tiny village centred about a farm which had once been a Rynstar holding. Medair had established on her trip through in Autumn that there was no trace of her family home, and today she refused to be sidetracked into thinking about the fate of her mother and sister after the war.

With a few casual questions Medair learned that a great many people had headed into Bariback Forest recently, but none had returned. Nor was anyone interested in whether they did or not, so long as they didn’t linger in Nodding. Fear of years-old plague made the villagers unwelcoming and she realised it would have been difficult to leave the boy in their care as she’d originally planned. She was not quite run out of town, but no encouragement was given for her to tarry. It was only when she was back on the horse that she realised that she’d talked with someone for the first time since Autumn. If nothing else, being geased had distracted her from her empty misery.

Thrence was at least another day’s travel. Surely the geas would allow them a day there to rest and recover, so that the boy could ride his own horse? But then there were the Decians. Was Thrence big enough to hide her?

Mulling over alternatives, Medair was surprised by a curl of power emanating from her charge. He groaned, and raised his head. Really, he must be a phenomenal mage indeed. Spell shocked people were supposed to be days or weeks in recovering. Power would accrete to them only slowly and relapses were common if casting was attempted. He’d be mad to cast now.

The boy muttered something, lifting a hand. But not summoning power. Some sort of spell was disbanding, wearing thin through lack of renewal, like a set-spell. Not her geas, unfortunately. She reined in as he shifted against her chest. How many pre-set spells did this boy have on him?

"Bratling," she said, as he slid to the right, "stop wriggling about or you’ll – "

Medair broke off, jaw dropping for what seemed the tenth time in the last few days. The boy was growing as she held him!

Having in moments gained considerable height and a mass of white hair, the boy – man – did as she had been warning and overbalanced them both. Medair impacted first, discovering wet stony ground. The man – the Ibisian – landed on top of her with a complete lack of grace, bruising those portions of her anatomy which had so far been neglected. Gasping for breath, she blinked through tearing eyes as a pale face wobbled before hers.

"Clumsy," said a wry, soft voice.

She hit him, landing a creditable right direct to his jaw. His head snapped back, then he collapsed again. On top of her, of course. Sobbing more than gasping now, Medair rolled him off her and struggled to sit up. She stared first at him, next down the road, then put her hands over her face and indulged in a brief but violent storm of tears.

It wasn’t so much that the tiresome boy who had geased her had been a shape-changed Ibisian, or that he had fallen on her, or that they were both mud-coated in a puddle, or that her back appeared to be one hundred bruises, loosely joined together. Nor was it the sight of her mean-tempered steed galloping gleefully riderless down the road. Rather, it was that soft voice and the particular shape of this Ibisian’s face. For a brief, anguished moment she had seen and heard Kier Ieskar and been caught between believing that she had gone mad and trying to comprehend how he, too, was living five hundred years after his death.

She’d first seen the Kier at the heart of the massive Ibisian encampment, in an elaborate tent; a palace of cloth. Its throne room had been large enough to hold two or even three dozen willowy Ibisians. They shimmered in silk of colourful if muted hues, and all seemed to have acres of straight white hair flowing down their backs. She had followed First Herald Kedy into the room, had been distracted by the height of the Ibisian nobles, then transfixed by the one who sat at their centre. Ieskar Cael las Saral-Ibis.

White on black, a striking image after the colourful sea of the court. Ebony birds with long necks and longer curved beaks had framed the head of the Kier, and he had sat as statue-still as those carvings. His slender hands had been curled over the end of the armrests of his throne, his white robe was arranged precisely about his feet, and that moonlight hair had been divided neatly into twin falls past his shoulders. There had been only three points of colour anywhere about the man: a single fiery stone hanging from his left ear, silver in his right, and pale blue eyes which cut straight through Medair’s composure and left her awkwardly trailing in Kedy’s wake instead of striding proudly forward on behalf of her Emperor.

They had made their bows and the Kier’s response had been to lift one long finger a tiny fraction from the black wood of the throne: a minutely eloquent signal for Kedy to begin. If Medair’s mentor had felt at all unnerved, he had given no hint of his discomfiture. That professional poise had been something Medair longed to own, continually attempted to emulate, but in that throne room of cloth she had felt it forever out of her reach.

Kier Ieskar had been much younger than Medair had expected, at least a year or two her junior, barely out of his teens. His hair had been waist-length, and cut to neatly frame a slightly pointed face. A small nose and precisely formed lips afforded him a hint of prettiness which was almost entirely lost beneath his eyes, ice-blue and penetrating. He had not moved at all as Kedy addressed him. He had listened in silence to the faithfully repeated message, and sent them away without a word.

Medair didn’t know precisely what the Ibisian court discussed after hearing the Emperor’s offer. She and Kedy were given an introductory language lesson, a meal, and had no intimation of how wrong things were going to go when they were brought back to the throne room.

Nothing had altered. The members of the court remained on either side of the entrance, allowing the Imperial Heralds unimpeded passage to the throne. If even Kier Ieskar’s eyelids had changed position since they’d been dismissed, she’d not been able to tell it as they bowed before him. She had seen his chest move slightly, and taken a breath of her own in response. It felt very much as if it were an event for him to inhale.

"I have considered your Emperor’s words," Kier Ieskar had said, speaking Parlance without the slightest trace of an accent. "It is an offer of great generosity, and does him honour. I will not do my people the disservice of accepting it. If there is a home for the Ibis-lar in this land, it is one which we must take by force of arms, not as a gift."

The Kier had a soft, very measured voice which effortlessly commanded attention. His announcement had been delivered with such tranquillity that it had taken Medair a moment before she understood the import of his words.

"In five days," Kier Ieskar had continued, as the world dropped out from beneath Medair, "we will march south. Those who do not stand against us will be spared. That is the answer I must give, in return for Grevain Corminevar’s noble offer."

The man lying tangled in a blanket in the mud, his shirt shredded and his trousers split, was not Ieskar Cael las Saral-Ibis. In other circumstances, she would not have mistaken them, though there was resemblance enough to think them brothers. The voice had been the thing, that soft voice so like the long-dead Kier’s. Ieskar had not often been wry – never while he sat upon the Ibis Throne – but sometimes, over the marrat games he had required her to attend, his voice would take on just the tone, the very inflection, this man had used. It was the most expression Medair had ever seen the immensely controlled Ibisian ruler allow himself.

Five centuries later, having stopped weeping soon after she started, Medair sat on wet, stony ground, knees held to her chest and studied the unconscious White Snake and the cloudless sky and the grass studded with flowers on the verge. The drifting seed of a dandelion caught her attention and she watched that until it had floated beyond sight. Then she listened to the lowing of cows, and birds calling beyond the field beside the road. Distantly, something clanked and she had the impression of voices. They must be near the next village. The horse, typically, had run back toward the mountain.

Rising to her feet, Medair began to walk: away from the forest and the horse and the White Snake. The day was beautiful, the sky washed clean by the storm, the air filled with birdsong. Bucolic bliss. Almost two hundred feet down the road, just after Medair turned a corner to discover a glimpse of buildings, the ever-increasing tightness in her chest became too much and she dropped to her knees, gasping. Spots fuzzed her vision and she wondered if she could be drowning in nothing but twisting coils of magic. She closed her eyes, trying to overcome the pain with hatred. White Snakes. The pale invaders. She would have no truck with them, would not aid one of their kind. Cold, arrogant, unforgiving Ibisian destroyers.

A pathetic and futile gesture. The geas was just as effective, whatever shape the caster wore. At least this explained the twelve year-old adept, which Medair had thought abominably precocious. Eventually, weary and calmer, she stood and wiped her hands on mud-smeared trousers. Sucking a bleeding knuckle, she walked back to where she had left the White Snake.

He looked worse than she felt, not even counting the rapidly darkening violet bruise she’d given his jaw. If the geas had punished her for that blow, she had been so busy hurting everywhere that she hadn’t noticed. The circles beneath his eyes were equally striking, and he looked drawn and wasted. An unravelling transmogrification would have drawn on his reserves whether he willed it or not. And his reserves had to have been as good as empty. If she could overcome the geas, leave him in a ditch by the side of the road, he would probably die.

Deliberately, she turned her back on him. White Snake. She opened her satchel, found a water-skin, and emptied it over her head, trying to sluice off the mud. Clean clothes were the next step, pulled on hastily, though there was no-one in sight. She left the mud-caked garments abandoned. She would buy new ones. Somewhere on the way to Athere.

Slowly, she turned around.

Problem. Large, good-as-naked, unconscious man. White Snake. He might be willow slim, but six foot whatever was definitely not going to be as easy to handle as the undergrown boy he’d been pretending to be. With considerable distaste and just an edge of curiosity, she cut away the shirt and ruined trousers, then stopped to look. So it was true that Ibisians had a thick blue line running the length of their spines, a curiosity which had been the subject of much discussion in Athere during the war. She sternly tried to ignore the naked male factor and treat him as inconvenient cargo. Tried to ignore the way her skin crawled when she touched him. White Snake. His pubic hair was downy-fine corn silk.

He was incredibly dirty, mud completely overwhelming the last remnants of the layer of ash. Even if she’d had trousers which would fit him, she wouldn’t have grubbied them by the association. Instead, she knotted the equally filthy blanket about his waist and draped another one over her shoulder before drawing a simple iron ring from her satchel. Medair and her bottomless bag of tricks. This was the third ring whose function she had discovered, and it had an unfortunate side-effect.

Knowing what was to come, she decided that she couldn’t deal with him waking up. She glanced down the road toward the village, then drew a glyph on his soft, hairless cheek. Much better for his health if he has a long, uninterrupted sleep, she told herself – and the geas – piously as she chanted under her breath. And doesn’t have to wonder how someone at least seven inches shorter than his six feet whatever could manage to pick him up with such apparent ease and set off at a trot down the road with him slung awkwardly over her shoulder.

Along with physical strength, the ring gave her an emotional buoyancy. Her problems became petty things, and what was important was that it was a glorious day. Having to deal with a White Snake was a minor matter, a trivial problem she’d soon have out of the way. She jogged along hoping to meet a traveller just to see the look of astonishment. The initial drunken recklessness which came with the strength was one of the reasons not to use the ring, but she couldn’t say it worried her at the moment. Even the pain in her back had gone.

Hiding the Ibisian under a hedge outside the village, Medair walked in with a swagger and spent an unnecessarily long time haggling over the few riding animals available, merely because their owner had a fetching smile. Neither of the two she could convince them to spare were nearly fine enough to match her spirits.

She also bought some clothing to fit her burden, but did not dress him until she had found a horse trough to dump him in. The ring was handy for overcoming her distaste enough to scrub him thoroughly, until the water was polluted with mud. She laughed at the disgust of the yearlings which investigated the trough after she lugged her now slippery-wet Ibisian away to a bed of chewed clover.

He really was like Ieskar. Something wrong about the cheekbones, and the jaw was a touch stronger, but he possessed the Kier’s small nose and there was only a slight variation of the precisely-cut mouth. Those white-lashed eyes would probably dominate his features as the Kier’s had, if they were open. This man’s long, delicately-boned hands were just as fine as those she had watched move marrat pieces over too many games, though the right lacked the thin scar across the back of the fingers. And, of course, he was tall and slender and pale. Ibisians simply didn’t come in short, stocky or dark variations.

His hair was much longer than the Kier’s had been, quite past his knees, though very damp and tangled at the moment, the drying strands like spun silk to the touch. Immensely impractical. She sorted it absently into a braid, wondering why this Ibisian adept had been masquerading as a Farakkian boy.

Athere was the last place Medair wanted to go, and certainly not in the company of an Ibisian. To be obliged to shepherd a man who reminded her of Kier Ieskar was a cruel twist. She had had too much of him.

When Herald Kedy had died during the early stages of the war, while the Ibisians had been taking Holt Harra and Laskia with an ease which was almost insulting, Medair had been the only envoy to the Ibisian court halfway fluent in the language. The Kier would not again condescend to speaking Parlance during official audiences, though he was perfectly capable of using the Imperial tongue when he wanted. Instead, he’d had one of his court, a woman named Selai las Dona, teach the Imperial Heralds Ibis-laran.

Medair’s training had been tested to the limit listening to the Kier’s exquisitely polite words of war, whatever language he delivered them in. It had been so much worse when Kier Ieskar had departed from the formality of his throne room and decided to play marrat with the Imperial Herald. He’d just summoned her one day, at the beginning of the first winter, and informed her that he would teach her the game.

Medair had lost count of the times she had matched with him during the months after the first stage of the invasion. Often the games had been completely silent, as they concentrated on the complex patterns of disks. Infrequently, Kier Ieskar would ask her a spate of questions on some facet of life in Farakkan, so that he could "know whom he must rule". Once, having observed that the Imperial Heralds wore different colours according to the kind of message they carried, he asked her what colour she would wear when she brought him words of surrender. She had managed a courteous reply even to this, unable as ever to read the thoughts behind his pale eyes. And silently prayed to Farak that she would never again wear anything but the mulberry-red of war in his presence.

She never had. Athere, betrayed by the West, was finally overwhelmed by the invaders, but Medair was not there to witness the defeat. Herald Jorlaise had carried out the formalities of surrender. Jorlaise had been the last person Medair had seen before heading north, rueful with the necessity of improving her Ibis-laran. "If anyone can pull this off it’ll be you, Medair," she’d said. "You’ve always had the luck of a cat. We’ll be waiting to hear from you."

Had Jorlaise thought of her as she’d stood before the Kier wearing black, delivering the words of surrender? Luck of a cat. Medair had seen too many cats starving on the street to see that as the compliment Jorlaise had obviously intended. Her luck to rescue a shape-changed Ibisian adept.

It was much more difficult to dress a damp, fully-grown man than it had been to deal with a dirty, undersized boy. His skin was very warm beneath her fingers, but she kept to business, trying to estimate the extent of his spell shock and puzzle out his role in the battle which had left so many dead. Tranced into deep sleep, he did not so much as stir.

His presence was doubtless something to do with the rahlstones. That made possibly six interested parties. Well, the rain would have washed away the physical traces of her foray through the charred circle in the woods, but there was always magic. More pursuers? She sighed, wondering if she could keep ahead of the Decians and whoever else without killing her charge.

This Ibisian was older than Ieskar had been. The Kier had been a mere twenty-one when he’d declared war on Palladium. And dying. She’d learned that on her visit to the new Athere; that he’d taken some sort of wound involved with the destruction of Sar-Ibis. He had been slowly failing all the time he’d been conquering Palladium, a fact which cast a new light on some of his comments over the marrat table. Dead by twenty-three.

Her helpless captor was nearer thirty, perhaps four years Medair’s elder, though several centuries her junior. He looked about ready to expire at her feet. The lobes of his ears caught her attention and she silently counted the number of currently empty piercings which had been made to hold the earrings Ibisians used to signify rank. The right ear of every Ibisian she had ever seen sported decoration of some sort, for ornament or to signify ranks of magecraft. The second piercing in this man’s right ear meant he was married.

It was the left ear which told her that he was an important Ibisian. There were six major gradations of rank below the current Kier and her heir. A Keriden, the lowest titled noble, would wear a single polished bloodstone; the next rank two, the next three. They were fixed to studs or dangled from silver chains according to the obscure dictates of fashion and taste. The fourth highest rank wore only one left earring, but of a stone they called tiger’s eye rather than bloodstone. Medair had never seen a tiger, but it apparently had some resemblance to the banded gold-orange and black stone she knew as charlamine. The Kier had worn a single fire opal.

There was no further system to delineate differences of rank within rank. Children, spouses, anyone who could claim nobility without currently holding a title, wore a single piece of pale green jade. They were addressed with an honorific similar to "lord", and did not strictly outrank any other wearing jade. Only the Kierash, the son of the Kier who now sat the Silver Throne, was a titled heir and Medair understood that even he would still wear only the small carved piece of jade which proclaimed him of cold blood, as it was called. Ibisians placed a great deal of emphasis on the difference between one who held noble office and those related to that person. With three piercings, it was evident this man held a title. Either Kerikath or Keridahl, depending on whether he wore tiger’s eye or bloodstone.

Fascinating as it was to be able to learn so much from an unconscious man, Medair would rather he still wore the shape of a boy. She would so much rather not have anything to do with Ibisians.

Would she have helped him, if she had found him in this form? Or left a white-skinned man to die in the ash? The Ibisians of this time had done her no harm, but it was impossible for her to divorce them from their ancestors. The idea of having to travel with a White Snake, all the way to Athere, made her sick to the stomach.

But the geas prevented her from abandoning him, and all she could do was get the journey over with. His change had made it necessary for the second horse, since it would be too cumbersome to try and ride double with an unconscious person bigger than herself. She had no wish to be dumped into every second puddle all the way to Thrence.

Manoeuvring him into a sitting position on the big grey, she wondered what people would think when they saw an unconscious Ibisian with his arms tied around his mount’s neck. Kyledra was not officially hostile to Palladium, and she could not hope to get through Thrence without someone taking an interest. She’d have to find a place to rest and hope that after another night’s sleep he’d be able to ride on his own.

Setting off at a spanking pace, she made the next town – a real town this time, not a cluster of buildings servicing surrounding farms – before dark. With a choice of two inns, she picked the one closest to the northern edge of the town, and asked the ostler and a stable boy to carry her friend upstairs, not making an attempt to explain his condition. They were not eager, and the silence which fell over the public room when he was carried through spoke its own story. Every eye was upon them as they mounted the stair. To Kyledra, Ibisians were a symbol of the threat of war.

As she had requested, there were two beds. Medair covered the Ibisian with a light blanket, and muttered a quick charm against infestation over both beds. Then she abandoned her boots, and took off the ring. And groaned.

She was not as spent as she would have been, attempting the day’s feats without magical aid, but this particular item took a great deal out of her in compensation. Bruises whose presence she had entirely forgotten reminded her of their existence, but she was too tired to investigate them. Sliding the ring into her satchel and sealing it firmly, Medair climbed into the second bed, tucking her satchel between her shoulder and the wall. After punching the lumpy pillow, she grimaced across the darkening room to where the Ibisian was little more than the gleam of pale hair in the darkness. A White Snake. The sooner she was rid of him, the better.