Voice of the Lost

CHAPTER TEN

A sharp tink startled her awake. The room was full of sunlight and the scent of wood polish. Illukar, warm at her side, lifted himself to one elbow. He was looking at the door, frowning, then he tensed as a key turned in the lock. Their own key, falling to the floor, must have been what woke her. Medair sat up, trying to disentangle herself from Illukar’s twining hair. She had no chance to do more before the door opened and Vorclase walked in.

As Medair suppressed a startled gasp, Illukar made a sharp movement with one hand and was suddenly holding a ball of glowing gold. In another moment he would have thrown it, but Vorclase held up a hand and said, with a tolerant air: "Surely you’ve heard the war is over, Keridahl? I’m not here to attack you. I’m well aware what it would cost Decia if we tried to revenge ourselves."

"Then why are you here?" Illukar asked, his voice colder than Medair had ever heard it. The glowing ball remained steady, and she breathed deeply to try and slow her racing heart. What had happened to the kaschen supposedly guarding their rooms?

"To offer my help," Vorclase said. He seemed to be the same man who had chased her from Bariback. She could see he was wary, beneath an assumption of ease. He kept his hand at a pointed distance from the hilt of his sword. "Or to ask for yours, perhaps. There is something which must be dealt with, and soon."

Medair, reduced to clutching a sheet to her chest, shifted as Vorclase moved away from the door. He looked at her, his expression difficult to read. Someone had told him where they were, and given him a key. Whatever Sendel’s decree, they could not simply treat Decians as allies.

"King Xarus left me on guard duty because I failed to retrieve you," Vorclase said. "Medair an Rynstar. I begin to see why you were so adamant against joining us."

"Speak your piece, Captain," Illukar said. Tranquillity was still absent from his voice, and Medair guessed how much he resented the intrusion on their privacy. But he released the golden ball, apparently believing that they were not immediately threatened. "I presume you have not killed our guard?"

"A tap to the head, nothing more," Vorclase said, smoothly. Then he frowned. "You know, of course, of Tarsus. It was he who told me of the King’s defeat. He fled here after the battle, if you could call that slaughter a battle, and had lost himself in the catacombs. I found him yesterday, and he told me what had happened." He looked at Medair again. "One side or the other had to die, I suppose."

"That is war." Her voice was steady. She had made her choice, and would live by it. Or at least try to deal with it without breaking down every time the subject was raised.

"It was decisive, at any rate." Vorclase sat down on the chair Medair had used the night before. "Does it count as blood on your hands, or on Farak’s?"

"I think you had better return to the subject of Tarsus," Medair said, tightly. He was alive, then, the supposed descendent of Grevain Corminevar’s eldest son. The discovery made her feel tight and panicked, and her stomach fluttered.

"Yes, so do I." Vorclase’s gaze shifted over her shoulder to Illukar. "I want immunity for him, Keridahl. Your word that he will not be killed, that he will be allowed to go to asylum in the West."

"I am intrigued to know why you come to me with this," Illukar said. He sounded concerned now, not angry. For Vorclase, who was obviously no friend of Sendel’s, not to take the opportunity to flee suggested a major problem. "He has the gate device, doesn’t he?"

"You’ve always had a way of seeing to the heart of an issue, Keridahl." Vorclase did not quite hide a savage bitterness, but the problem at hand was evidently more important than old enmity. "It’s destroying him. He broke it somehow, getting back here, and it–" He shook his head. "He is truly the heir, Keridahl. There was no trickery. And I, for my sins, am sworn to defend him. I could hardly miss what that thing’s doing to him, so I tried to take it from him. Now he’s running from me as well and I don’t think anyone but an adept can hold him. I can’t do it on my own at any rate."

"Tell me more of the device."

"King Xarus conjured the thing. And it did all that he wanted – summoned those gates, took the army to Athere, gave him his chance to strike before Palladium could gather its strength. It looks like a big piece of glass mounted in ebony and now it’s cracked. Perhaps he just dropped it; I don’t know. Tarsus doesn’t seem able to put it down. He clutches it to his chest, trying over and over to get it to transport him out of here."

"And he is in the tunnels beneath Falcon Black?" Illukar had evidently heard enough. He slid out of the bed and collected discarded clothing, paying little attention to Vorclase’s sardonic gaze. Medair kept to her sheet. "When did you last see him?"

"Less than a decem ago. I’ve been chasing him half the night, but he knows the catacombs too well to let me hunt him into a corner, and alone I can’t block him off."

"You also know the catacombs?"

"Better than anyone else up here, I’d wager." Vorclase grimaced. "Sendel is not known for her tolerance of me. I trust you’ll be able to make her see the importance of rescuing Tarsus over clapping me in chains for not running to let her out of her box."

Illukar ignored him, crossing to the bed to touch Medair’s hand. "Will you check on Avahn?" he asked. "And then bring Kel ar Haedrin to the room Queen Sendel was working out of yesterday?"

"Of course," Medair said.

Vorclase watched them derisively, but kept to business. "And your word, Keridahl, that he’ll not be harmed? That he’ll be given free passage?"

"He will not be harmed," Illukar said. With two practiced loops, he gathered his streaming hair into a loose tail. "His freedom is another question. It can be settled after we have him in hand."

"He’s not a pigeon, Keridahl." Vorclase followed Illukar to the door, then glanced back at Medair. His mouth twisted, and he shook his head. Then they were gone.

"Medair." Avahn attempted a smile. His eyes were swollen into slits and his voice was a hoarse fragment, but he was conscious, propped up against a mound of pillows. Ileaha, who had opened the door for Medair, nodded briefly and left, her face particularly blank.

"I can’t really say you’re looking better, Avahn," Medair said, settling onto a chair by his bed. She felt quietly relieved by his alert, if fragile air.

"Can’t say I feel any better," he croaked, and then took a couple of deep breaths, imperfectly hiding his distress at his own weakness. "Physician says lung never same. Keeps telling me not talk," he added with a stubborn grimace, and looked at the door.

"It’s good advice. Listen instead." She told him what Vorclase had revealed. "It explains a lot. Why we arrived in the forest, why the castle guards didn’t seem to be looking for us."

"Trust Vorclase far as throw him," Avahn griped, then shook his head. "Not true. Plays by rules, just different ones. How soon?"

"Right away, I expect. You, however, can look forward to an attempt from Athere to open a gate here."

"Won’t happen." Avahn shrugged feebly. "Changed too much. Enjoy Decian hospitality." A strange expression flickered across his face and he fell silent. Medair watched him, knowing that she couldn’t just sit here and not tell him that she had agreed to marry his cousin. He would be the first person she should tell, and perhaps the most important. She wasn’t altogether certain how to go about it.

"Have you grown very used to being Illukar’s heir, Avahn?" she asked, awkwardly.

To her surprise, Avahn immediately crowed with delight, then fell into a fit of painful coughing. It took a glass of water to settle him, but he smiled all the while and wheezed, immediately he was able: "Accepted him? Knew something there. Care less about being heir."

Medair tried to control her conflicting expressions, then shook her head, passing over agony and exasperation both. "You would have made an excellent Keridahl, Avahn."

"Bosh," Avahn said, succinctly. "Congratulations, Medair. Happy for you both."

"Thank you." She was going to cry if she wasn’t careful. But it felt good.

"Recruit you for match-making," Avahn added, looking at the door again. A frown further distorted his swollen, ravaged face. New emotions touched his voice: longing, uncertainty. Ardent desire. "Bad timing. Not at best."

"No." He certainly wasn’t, but Medair couldn’t help but be pleased that Avahn was apparently ready to reach out to Ileaha.

"Won’t even tell me her name," he added, with an edge of frustration, and Medair’s heart sank. "Wasn’t with us after gate. Velvet Sword?"

"Yes, I rather think she is."

"Doesn’t like me much. Or not. When I woke, the look in her eyes!" He coughed again, waved away water. "Always told too rash – but I mean to have her."

"Did you actually look at her?" Medair asked. "Listen to her voice? You must have–"

"Must what?" Avahn asked, catching her distress. He tried to sit up and she hastily pressed him back down. "What is it?"

"Oh, Avahn." Medair shook her head, not knowing where to start. Gravely injured, he had opened his eyes to see a beautiful stranger, her face suffused with the love Ileaha had hidden so long. And he had fallen, tumbled into passion, whether true or fleeting. Shown his desire to an Ileaha he thought was a stranger, because her Ibisian blood was now dominant. Medair could hardly picture a worse misstep.

"She’s promised, isn’t she? Or var-ma? But she looked at me, like, like–" He began to cough again, helplessly. For a moment it seemed he was on the verge of another fit, but gradually he regained control. His breathing moved from ragged to shallow, and he was able to drink water. She sat by his bed, watching him until, finally, he turned his head to look at her again.

"What, then?" The coughing had reduced his voice to the barest whisper. "Who is she?"

"Ileaha."

Medair had found Ileaha behind the sixth door she opened. She was standing by a window overlooking the eastern forest. Tall, slender, with that straight, perfect braid only a breath from sweeping the floor. She could be a portrait of a model Ibisian, but for the taut anguish in her stance.

"I told him," Medair said softly, when Ileaha didn’t turn from the window.

"And was he much dismayed?" The north wind could have spoken.

Thinking on Avahn’s horrified reaction, Medair nodded. A futile gesture, when Ileaha’s gaze was fixed so rigidly on the forest outside.

"Even Illukar did not recognise you at first, Ileaha," she said. "I certainly didn’t, and I’m not injured."

"You did not try to quote one of Telsen’s love sonnets at me either," Ileaha replied, and the bitterness in her voice could have blighted generations. Medair closed her eyes.

"There is little I can say to that," she said, searching for something which would not make it worse. "I can’t blame Avahn for responding to what he saw in your face, but he has scant excuse for never having looked before."

"Not till I was this." Ileaha gestured at herself, the coiled intensity of the movement reminding Medair horribly of when she had leapt across the bed to kill Jedda las Theomain. Moving to her side, Medair saw that her eyes were fixed on nothing.

"There was never a moment of desire, before. Avahn might pretend to care little for his role, play feckless, heedless, eschew the demands of his role, but he is as traditional at his core as any of the blood. He would never consider a half-breed."

Savage. But was she right? Avahn had certainly been inclined to mock Ileaha, had shown a disdain which might have been due to her mixed heritage. But he had not been the least bit perturbed by the prospect of a child of Illukar and Medair’s succeeding the Dahlein, and his taunts has revolved around Ileaha’s lack of spine. "You never showed yourself to him, either," Medair said, quietly.

"Don’t pretend that he has been hiding forlorn hopes about me," Ileaha spat back. She was practically vibrating with tension.

"I’m not. He said–" Medair hesitated, terribly afraid of making things worse. She had been Herald, not diplomat. But Ileaha seemed to be on the verge of doing something truly drastic. "He said that it had never even occurred to him."

"No. Not a yellow-haired pauper. Not warm blood."

"Not, according to him, until I woke out of a nightmare and saw a woman who looked on me as if I were the dawn after a thousand year night," Medair said, taking excruciating care, just as Avahn had.

Ileaha’s pale brows drew together. "Fine words," she said, scathingly.

"But quite true."

For a breath or two, it seemed that Ileaha would listen. Then, tormented beyond endurance, she recoiled. A knife, glass-sharp, appeared in one hand and she caught up that long tail of white hair with the other. Before Medair could so much as gasp, she had sawn off the braid as close to her scalp as possible, leaving herself a ragged, abbreviated bob. The nape of her neck looked painfully exposed.

"Don’t!" Medair protested inadequately, and earned herself a defiant, frantic glance as Ileaha flung the braid out the window. It twisted in the air like a living creature, then fell to the rocks below.