Voice of the Lost

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Medair did not flinch or cry out. Too much had happened for her to even be startled. She clenched her jaw and took a deep breath, but was able to stand quietly while Ieskar looked in Islantar’s direction. He was as he had appeared in the garden of The Avenue: transparent and luminescent, clad for death. When the glow of Islantar’s stone had been swallowed by the night, Ieskar turned on Medair the unfeeling gaze she had long thought to hate. He was drawn and wasted, the fine bones of his face standing out clearly beneath his pale skin, but the cold expressionless mask was the same.

"Did I summon you this time," she asked, unsteadily, "or is this excursion on your own account?"

"A little of both, perhaps." His soft, composed voice was exactly as she remembered it. "I wish to mark my brother’s passing. You would like very much for me to find a way for Illukar to live."

"And will you?"

"I cannot." There was a ghost of honest regret in the words, and the knot of hope which had clutched Medair’s chest unravelled. She turned away to look out at the night, wishing for miracles. None came, of course. The Blight still beat invisibly at her across the ever-decreasing Shimmerlan. Ieskar didn’t suddenly produce a solution, or even go away and leave her alone. She felt poorly served.

"He’s not your brother," she said abruptly, unable to stand his silent presence at her back.

"Merely a descendent of his line?" Ieskar was unperturbed by her denial. "You are wrong. Illukar does not remember the past, but that does not make him any less my brother."

She looked over her shoulder at him, but that was pointless. There was never any expression on Ieskar’s face. "He was reborn to face the Blight?" The idea sickened her.

"Perhaps." Ieskar gazed out over the water. "It is the fourth time he has lived, only to have that life cut short. As if the first sacrifice was imprinted onto the world itself."

"Born to die."

Ieskar did not deny it. "The cycle may be broken this time. He has no children, and it is unlikely that he would be reborn outside the direct path of descent."

"Is that meant to be comforting?"

"No." Ieskar’s cold blue gaze did not waver from the dark water, but he moved one of his hands, a gesture she could not interpret. "Illukar faced the Blight because I did not," he added. "It was my place to do so."

"What? Then why–?"

"Sar-Ibis was dying," he said, as if that would explain it. When she only stared, he went on. "The Ibis-lar ensured the health of the land by binding it to the Kier. As Sar-Ibis failed, so did I, until I did not have strength enough to face the Blight, though it was my role. Eventually I had not strength enough to live." There was still no flicker of expression on his face. "It is possible that the substitution is the reason why I endure and Illukar dies and dies again."

"Why you endure?" Medair repeated, feeling ever less capable of dealing with this encounter. "You are not–?"

He looked at her then, shifting first his gaze then turning so he faced her. Tall and upright and eternally composed. "I am not a construct of Estarion’s Conflagration."

It was something which she had not properly thought about, but which had lurked at the back of her thoughts. She’d half-believed this ghost Ieskar to be conjured from her own memories, given form by wild magic. But then, like Finrathlar, he would not even know the truth of his own existence.

"My memories are those of the past known to you," Ieskar said, reading either her thoughts or the expression on her face. She stood staring at him, at the trailing sleeves of his funeral robe and the way his pale hair was untouched by the wind, and that unwavering gaze which had haunted her longer than he’d been dead. And she had to turn away.

"Will Islantar succeed?" she asked, to stop herself from thinking of either Illukar or Ieskar. She felt like she’d been running. Ieskar didn’t oblige her with an answer, so she covered her unease by finding herself another rock to sit on, too aware of his steady gaze.

"He appears determined to try," Ieskar said, after an interminable pause. "There are routes other than conciliation."

This provided her with a revivifying spurt of anger. "Should those who can’t forgive the invasion be driven out, then? Or simply be suppressed, ignored? You would watch Tarsus relinquish his claim to the throne, but have nothing given back? Shouldn’t Islantar make some meaningful sacrifice?"

The mask gave her nothing. "You are adept at both sides of this argument, Keris."

"I have seen both sides," she said, hotly. "I don’t see a solution."

"It is possible that there is no solution," Ieskar replied, serenely. "Not for every side, every interest. Islantar will try to find some balance, a way of easing the hatreds. I think it likely that he will be more inclined to listen to matters of redress than many of his predecessors. As for sacrifices–" He turned again to look out over the Shimmerlan. "He has already begun to pay."

Medair felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. She drew in an unsteady breath and tried not to lose herself. Her anger was gone as if it had never been and she felt only helpless hurt. For a bare moment anger had taken her thoughts from Illukar, from that fact that he was going to die, that there was no way to save him.

There was.

The odd certainty which had preyed on her at Falcon Black returned. There was something which could be done. She knew it like she had known that Vorclase had been waiting. But how? Had Ieskar told her the truth, when he’d said there was nothing he could do to save Illukar? She’d never known the Ibisian Kier to lie, but Medair was certain she would not be able to read him one way or the other: Illukar was transparent by comparison. If there was something Ieskar knew, how could she winkle it out of him?

The idea of trying to manipulate the Kier was ludicrous. She looked at his luminescent figure out of the corner of her eye and decided that she would not attempt it. But she would ask.

"Did you tell me the full truth," she began, hesitantly, "when you said there was no way to stop Illukar’s death? Is there, perhaps, something I could do? Someone who is – who is not dead?"

Ieskar turned his head minutely. "Did you tell me the full truth, when I asked why you hunted the Horn?"

Medair tried to say something. Her mouth worked, but nothing came out. What could she say? Could she not answer, when Illukar’s life was in the balance? But Ieskar was not bargaining for a response.

"Yes, there is something which could be done," he said, evenly. "As I am, I cannot cast. I have no reservoir of power, no means of impacting the world about me. But I could possess one of my blood, even one of limited strength, and be able to face the Blight. Whom do you suggest?"

Medair immediately thought of Islantar, and was forced to shake her head. "Illukar wouldn’t accept that," she said, unhappily.

"No." He didn’t say any more, simply watched her. Waiting for an answer to the question he had asked.

"It was true," she said, faint protest to a demand she wished she was only imagining. "I decided to hunt for the Horn after your brother’s child came to you."

Ieskar still didn’t respond, just stood there, eyes cutting through her as if she held the gate device to her chest. How she hated this man. The man who, if he had not been leading an invasion – but even then all the laws which constrained a Kier–

Medair wrenched her mind away. It wasn’t so. The similarities to Illukar meant nothing: they were different at core. Ieskar had never smiled, not once; he lacked one of the things she treasured most about Illukar.

And, whispered a traitorous voice at the back of her mind, what reason did Ieskar have to smile? His home had been destroyed. He was leading an invasion against overwhelming odds. He was dying. And you hated him.

Taking a shaky, shallow breath, Medair stared into pale blue eyes. "When you carried Kierash Adestan away…the light reflected from your cheek."

She thought she’d never seen a face more utterly closed. "You left because I wept." So soft she was unsure she’d heard the words correctly.

"I left because I wanted to stop you."

"I understand."

There was absolution in the words; exactly what Medair didn’t want to hear. She lashed out rather than accept. "Why is there nothing you can do? If he died in your place before, why can’t you find a way to stop it from happening again? Why are you here with me instead of saving him?!" Medair couldn’t look to see the expression on his face and lifted a hand, fingers splayed, to hide her tears. She didn’t know if she was crying because Illukar was going to die, or because Ieskar already had.

When she could finally bring herself to look up again, Ieskar was gone. Perhaps she had managed to wish him away. Or had he been released somehow by her admission that it had been the sight of his tears which sent her questing for the Horn? Because it was the foundation of a harder truth: if he hadn’t been on the wrong side of a war she would have more than admired him.

Now there was no war. Ieskar was dead. And Illukar was about to die. Even on Bariback Mountain, she’d never felt this alone.

At that moment, the sound of the Blight faltered. Out in the dark, a white spark was struck to life, and Medair gasped: a pointless intake of breath which did little more than show how stupidly she’d clung to hope. Illukar had begun his counterspell, and all Medair could do was dig her fingernails into the palms of her hands and watch.

What kind of life would she have had anyway, married to Illukar? Hated by two extremes for allying herself with the Ibisians. The Medarists would never forgive her for turning her back on the legend they had built up around her name. The Ibisian purists would do all they could to ensure the Cor-Ibis line remained unsullied. And all the people in between could not help but regard her as a curiosity, a political hot potato. Marriage to Illukar would have inevitably meant that even those protecting her would have reason to kill her.

Medair smiled painfully at the point of light in the far distance. She was not succeeding in convincing herself that she was better off.

The force of the Blight seemed to inhale, growing more intense and more distant at the same time. Medair refused to close her eyes or look away as a white sun flared into being, bringing with it a peculiarly flat dawn. He was too far away for her to see more than the light and the narrow band of reeds and muddy tussocks which separated her from an unbroken stretch of water reaching to the blaze on the horizon.

The pyre of his destruction.