Voice of the Lost

CHAPTER NINE

The spasms always started with a trembling in the hands, which gave them just enough warning to reach the bed before Avahn’s back snapped into an arch. His feet drummed against the bed-board, the veins stood out in his throat, and his face turned an alarming purple shade. Then, just when it seemed as if he would vibrate off the bed despite their best efforts, he would go limp and they would anxiously check to see if he was still breathing. It had gone on all day.

"They’re getting weaker," Medair said this time, as Avahn turned from iron to jelly beneath her hands. Ileaha didn’t answer. Exhausted, her eyes swollen pink from exhaustion and the effects of the poisons Avahn’s body was trying to purge, she was focused on her task to the exclusion of all else. Filling the basin again, she silently handed Medair a cloth and together they bathed him, washing away the oily sweat. Then they soaped and cleaned their hands, over and over, until they no longer felt quite so numb and the acrid odour was almost gone.

They’d had no help from a Royal Physician, who had been rousted from some hidey-hole to do little more than tell them all the things he didn’t know and make contradictory guesses. Amid suggestions to keep Avahn warm and keep him cool, and cup him and dose him with purgatives, all they could do was keep him clean and pray.

Were weaker seizures a good or bad sign? Medair tried to decide, anxiously watching Ileaha watching Avahn. It was easier to see her as Ileaha now that the change in colouring was not so new. She had almost the same face, even if the height was all wrong, and that hair. Her attention never drifted for an instant, as if she were intent on capturing every moment of Avahn’s ordeal. Every moment of–

That train of thought was interrupted by the door opening, and Cor-Ibis, followed by Kel ar Haedrin, entered. He crossed to Avahn who, after only a few decems, seemed to have already lost weight. Cor-Ibis' face became particularly blank as he studied his heir, whose colour was a sickly greenish-white shade that made him look like he was decaying inside his own skin.

"Kel ar Haedrin will watch over Avahn now."

Despite Ileaha’s obvious reluctance, he led them to a room where the rest of the Palladians waited to sit down to a meal delivered by Decian servants who made little effort to conceal stony animosity.

"Hold," he said when they were alone, and quietly cast. Poison detect, which made every sort of sense. Queen Sendel might have declared them guests, but no Queen had the power to order her people to forgive and forget a field of blood. He followed it with a second casting, one which brought a hush which reminded Medair of the muffling effect of the mist. Something to prevent eavesdropping.

"Queen Sendel has accepted a geas," he said, nodding to give them permission to eat. "That in no way binds the rest of Decia, so we will continue to take as many precautions as is feasible. I have recovered the rahlstone which was in Avahn’s custody, and tomorrow morning when we are both rested, the Kierash and I will attempt to construct a gate to Athere. All will return but Kel ar Haedrin and myself." He added a glance at Islantar which was an order, absolute no matter what their ranks. "I cannot move from Falcon Black until we are certain that the device used to create the gates – for Queen Sendel has confirmed the existence of a device – is not here, and that any information King Xarus may have collected regarding the summoning of wild magic is destroyed."

"A wend-whisper from my – the Kier – reached me during the afternoon," the Kierash put in. "Sent shortly after our disappearance. Others may arrive with further information, particularly if the gate-caster was discovered outside Athere’s walls."

"We will use the rooms alongside Avahn’s," Cor-Ibis continued. "The entrance to that corridor can be effectively guarded, and the kaschens and Kel ar Haedrin will mark shifts overnight."

"I can help with that," the Mersian Herald offered. "My skill with the sword is only moderate, but I will at least serve as a second pair of eyes."

Medair ate with a sense of unreality, listening to Cor-Ibis answering a handful of questions from Islantar regarding the search of the castle. She could not argue with the basic sense of his plan, but wanted to. To leave him here! But he was right, absolutely right, that the gate device needed to be found. Not only so it could not again be used against Athere, but because the question of how it had been created needed to be settled. And Medair had to go, for though they had taken some small precautions against making clear her identity to the majority of Falcon Black’s occupants, she knew it would be as great an act of stupidity for her to stay as it would be for Islantar.

When the meal was over, Ileaha joined Kel ar Haedrin caring for Avahn. The doors of all the rooms along the corridor were standing open and, aware that Cor-Ibis was dividing his attention between her and Islantar, Medair walked randomly through one and closed it behind her, to sit blankly and try to force herself to think.

Her role had run its course. She no longer had the Horn. She no longer had the secret of her past, and no-one would think of rallying around her name. Herald no longer. But she did not want to die. So it became a matter of choosing how to live.

Outside, doors closed. After a long pause she could hear Cor-Ibis talking to the Mersian Herald and the first of the kaschen who was to guard the corridor leading to their rooms. A long night for them on top of a tense day, but there was no-one else to trust. Medair listened to one last door close, and then she stood by her window remembering a soft voice say: "Please, Medair."

He had made his position very clear. And she could hardly deny that she wanted to be with him. She was past any self-delusion on that front. But wanting him and making a life with him did not follow in easy progression and she was not cruel enough to go to him now unless she had conquered these interminable doubts. He didn’t deserve to have her taking temporary solace from him.

And she was undoubtedly the coward Ieskar had named her, because what held her back now was not any belief that she was still bound by vows to the past, but what others would think of her. Awful as using the Horn had been, she still did not see how she could have done anything except support Palladium over Decia. But though she did not believe that decision was pinned to her feelings for one particular Palladian, there would be all too many who would never accept any other explanation.

Her old pride hated the idea. Medair an Rynstar turning her back on the true Corminevar bloodline because she wanted to spread her legs for a White Snake. Seduced by the enemy. She was already so detested, so loathed, and doubted she was equal to standing before people like Thessan Estarion as they embroidered their hatred for her with such an ugly embellishment. There was no way to make them see that what she felt for Cor-Ibis truly was separate from her decision about the Horn of Farak.

And some part of her must believe it to be true, for she was still so frantically trying to draw back from him that she continued to think of him as Cor-Ibis. He was Illukar. He had held out his hand and she longed to take it and did not. What reason was there? Only this need to wallow in guilt, and cling to an image of honour unsullied by failure. Not wanting to die, but not able to move beyond the past. Caring what people like Thessan Estarion would think was pointless and craven and she could not help it. Proud little Herald, putting on a show for the crowd. Former Herald, false hero, counterfeit legend.

Nor could Medair deny that, quite aside from anyone else’s opinion, it still mattered to her that he was Ibisian. He was a White Snake.

Deep down, she knew his greatest fault was that he was too like Ieskar for her to ever be quite comfortable wanting him. "You do not like to face certain truths," Ieskar had said, standing dead in the Hall of Mourning. He’d made her take his hand, and told her she had no reason to hate the people of this time, and it was a thing she knew in her head was true and in her heart was at least mostly true. The war was long over and Ibisians weren’t the enemy any more. She closed her eyes and pictured her hand against Ieskar’s, and his eternally calm voice telling her that what she felt was hate.

It was a line of thought she simply could not pursue, and she consoled herself with the fact that Ieskar had never smiled as Illukar did. And she was still standing here by the window.

Had she let desire influence her decisions? Would she have given the Horn of Farak to Ibisians if Illukar las Cor-Ibis had been something other than everything she admired? Because if it was true, then she already had cause to be ashamed and it did not matter if no other person ever knew that she loved a White Snake, for she knew herself. And if her decision to give up the Horn was not tainted, because the Palladian Ibisians were not accountable for the past, then how could loving a Palladian Ibisian be any less free from taint?

And could she go round the circle of doubt yet again? What was a little extra scorn to add to the loathing she had already earned? The Medarists, the Hand, the Decians. Did she imagine that anything she did could actually make them hate her more? The only question was what she wanted to be, for what remained of her life. Did she want to be so small as to turn away from what Illukar las Cor-Ibis offered her, just because half the world might disapprove? Just because it was easier not to try and stop hating herself?

This was enough to get her into the hall, walking quietly so as not to give the two on guard reason to turn. But she paused at his door, trying to face the enormity of this decision. This wasn’t just for the night. Did she want to be known as Cor-Ibis' leman? Or was it to be a marriage, full formality, everything? Did she actually contemplate having his children?

The memory of Cor-Ibis' marriage, and the fact that it was widely believed he could not father a viable child, quite disrupted her ambiguous feelings. There was considerably more disappointment than relief tangled in that morass, and she thought that maybe it was simpler to accept that she wanted to spend her life with him and save the details for less uncertain times.

The door handle turned silently and she moved forward to see him standing candle-lit at his window. He was combing his hair: a mundane, everyday act made magical as much by his innate poise as the glow which had lit him since he shielded Athere. Medair stood motionless, watching the elegant tilt of his head, those long fingers holding the comb, and his cool, delicate profile. The painful scratch across his cheek was no longer so livid and did not stop him from being utterly beautiful.

The latch clicked as she closed the door and he turned and looked at her, his expression not changing one iota. But he held himself so very still. Naturally, she couldn’t begin to think of what to say next and deflected the subject of the future with questions about now.

"Have they found any sign of Vorclase?"

"No." Cor-Ibis put the comb down on a desk, expressionless. Her own face felt stiff and unhappy and she knew she could still walk out, but if she did she should never come back.

"Falcon Hill is a warren," he went on, smoothly enough. "And Estarion has traps and trips laced throughout. It may take days to find him."

"Do you trust Queen Sendel?" Her voice quavered, making her feel stupidly young. She wanted to touch him and was suddenly, unreasonably, afraid of rebuff.

"I took care in forming the geas." Cor-Ibis raised an equivocal hand. "Her previous incarnation was less forthright, but equally pragmatic. Herald N’Taive tells me this version has long been at odds with her brother, yet unwilling to act directly against him. I trust Sendel’s grasp of the situation, at least. Turning on us would only make matters worse for Decia. But there are others here who will see less clearly. The Kierash is a natural target." He moved to one side, offering her the chair from the desk. It was easier to sit than to continue to shift from foot to foot, trying to hide her nervousness. Cor-Ibis sat on the bed. "And you are in danger, of course," he said. "If word of your identity spreads."

"I know. And Avahn–" she began, and stopped, for it was no better a topic. She could not quite contemplate talking about Avahn’s possible demise. Like too many people, she had not had a chance to say goodbye to him.

"I examined him before I came here," Cor-Ibis told her, his attention never wavering from her face. "What little I could do, I have done. He seems to be breathing easier."

Medair nodded, then looked down at his hands, resting lightly on his knees. There was an awkward pause.

"Gates are beyond the Kierash’s casting rank," he said, again filling the breach. "But he is exceptional, and I believe there is a good chance we will succeed tomorrow morning. If not, I have sent a wend-whisper to the Kier, suggesting a gate be opened from Athere."

It was stupid to sit here making conversation. She cast about for some way to ease into talking about overcoming the past. And found herself asking, with appalling bluntness, "Why did your wife hate you?"

Shocked at her own words, she jerked her eyes up to meet his, and saw sudden distance. He took a moment before he replied.

"It is something you need to know," he said, and there was only the barest hint of reluctance in his voice. He shook his head when she started to stammer a denial. "Amaret. My mother recommended her to me. A sha-leon marriage, a business contract. They are still common. Amaret was an accomplished adept and, most important to my family, her blood was pure." He glanced at Medair. "My mother chose my father on the same basis. There are arguments that it keeps the blood more powerful, but it is essentially founded on a belief in Ibisian superiority, and entrenched tradition. At twenty–" He shrugged minutely. "I had never thought of love and saw no reason not to marry this particular woman."

"Did she feel the same way?" Medair asked. Her throat was tight. This was not how she had wanted to do this.

"Before the marriage, she gave no sign of wishing anything else. She was little interested in me, and apparently willing to treat the arrangement like the contract it was. In some sha-leon marriages, the couple comes together only for the making of children and I cannot say we did more than that. It was an alliance of convenience.

"Early on, I suspected she was unhappy, but it was not until she lost the second child that I realised it was more than dissatisfaction." He met her eyes again, his own frank. "I will not pretend I was not at fault. I was caught up in my studies, cared for little else, and was quite simply not interested in her. I was polite to her when I should at least have tried to make her my friend. After the second child’s loss, I tried to reach out, but she made it clear she considered it an intrusion. I thought she was mourning the miscarriages, as only natural, and I let her be." He paused, and she saw a muscle jump in his cheek. That mild voice was even softer than usual. "I did not know how truly she hated me until after my mother’s death."

"When she told you she was carrying someone else’s child." How must he have felt?

Cor-Ibis shook his head. His gaze was on his hands, lashes shading grey eyes which were strangely blank. "I knew of her affairs, suspected that the third child was not mine. No. That was when she told me she had not miscarried. That she had aborted them."

Medair could only stare at his lowered head. Then, when she could bring herself to speak at all, the only thing she could say was: "Why?"

"Because they were mine." The delicate mouth twisted and he looked abruptly tired, like someone who had risen with the dawn in enemy territory and not had a moment to stop since. "She had a secret, Amaret. Her family had some tiny strain of Farak-lar blood, and to them the keeping of that secret was the most important thing in existence. They bleached their brows, as a courtier would say. Then my mother approached them with a sha-leon proposal, with the Cor-Ibis fortune and title at her back.

"Amaret loathed me because she lived in eternal fear of being discovered by me. The babes were part of me, and would almost certainly reveal her. She told me that she had killed her own children as if it were the proudest thing she had ever done, and wept while she told me because killing them had wounded her so deeply she no longer cared who knew her blood."

He stopped, breathing deeply. Swallowed. His head was bowed to shield a naked hurt kept to himself for too many years. When he spoke again, his voice was uneven. "If she had only asked me, I could have told her how little her blood mattered to me. That it was a tradition I have never embraced. But she did not, and I looked to her only often enough to fulfil my role, not to see how frightened she was. It is the greatest wrong I have ever committed.

"After that, I could not contemplate another contract. There were heirs in other branches of the family, though if I had anticipated the pressures which would be brought to bear on some of my younger cousins, I might have arranged matters differently."

His voice trailed away and he sat watching his hands. She could feel his anguish and lashed herself for making him relive such a horrible discovery. She did not know whether to hate Amaret or pity her.

"Illukar," she said, barely managing to get the whole word out. He looked up quickly, the movement wholly disjointed. He had laid himself bare, scoured his reserve because he loved her and she had asked. It was impossible not to reach out in return. "I will never find this easy," she said, and her throat was full of tears. "But I want to try. I want to stay, to–"

She kissed him so he would know how much she meant it. Passionately, frantically, as if she could wipe out the memory of Amaret with her touch.

The room was lost in shadows, the candles reduced to guttering flames which danced countless reflections through a spider web drift of hair. Medair let strands slip through her fingers, and shifted so she could better see Illukar’s back, and the blue line which ran down his spine. She had discovered how very sensitive he was there, and traced the line now, down to the small of his back, watching his reaction. He turned to catch her hands.

"We will not sleep at all, if you follow that path," he murmured. She answered this by kissing him until his heart was beating faster, but she knew that tomorrow would be inordinately wearying, so she eventually subsided. It should feel wrong to be so happy, but she did not.

"I am content to keep Avahn as my heir," he said abruptly, and she guessed that, like her, his head was too full of thoughts of the future to let him sleep. After hearing the truth of Amaret’s miscarriages, the question of children had become impossibly daunting. The association alone would be soul-destroying, and she desperately wanted to protect him from hurt.

"I would like settle into this role before thinking about taking on another," she said, touching his arm. His skin was velvet-soft.

"It is not an issue." He could not quite manage a reassuring tone. Moving back, Medair looked into his eyes, at the ghost destroying the contentment of a moment before. This was a part of his past which would not rest quietly while she put off thoughts of tomorrow. They couldn’t hope to just push it to the back of their minds.

"It is an issue," she told him, her voice shaking. "I’m probably the worst woman in the world for you to love. Because I can’t pretend bearing an Ibisian child will not be complicated for me." She shook her head. "But your child, Illukar. I do want that. I am not ready for it, but I want it. Fiercely. I want to spend all my life with you and I want to have children by you." She swallowed any hint of tears, refusing to be so selfish as to cry on him again. "I never find my path a clear one, but I know that I don’t want this decision to be made for us by Amaret."

"Then it will not be." His voice was breathy, and he touched her face delicately. A stark acknowledgment that children would never be a non-issue with him, and he was overwhelmingly glad that she did not reject the idea. "When this hunt is over, we will talk of what comes next," he went on. "Children are something we need not embark upon for many years, but I would like to marry you soon, Medair."

"When this is over," she agreed, almost without quaver. Naked in his arms, marriage seemed only a small step further, and she was light-headed in the aftermath of finally giving up chasing her own tail about what was the right path.

"I am still sending you to Athere tomorrow," he added.

"I have a feeling there might be almost as many people in Athere inclined to kill me as there are in Gyrfalcon Castle. Falcon Black." She touched his face, revelling in her freedom to do so, and the pleasure such a tiny act gave them both. "The purists on top of everything else. At least I think I know, now, why Keris las Theomain tried to kill me."

"Because of this." His eyes were grave.

"Because of you. When you sent her to make sure I didn’t leave Athere."

He closed his eyes. "I was not unaware that Jedda had ambitions centred on me. If she hid purist sentiment along with that, then it may well be that her ambitions were mixed with the whispers that the Cor-Ibis line should rule because the Saral-Ibis line has been corrupted with Farak-lar heat. Foolishness."

"I see we will make possibly the most unpopular marriage of the century," she said lightly, and then had to grip his hand hard, because all her doubts hadn’t gone away just because she was trying not to listen to them.

"Medair–" he began, but she shook her head. It wasn’t the moment to air her fears.

"I wonder if and how the purist cause has been changed by the Conflagration," she said. "With the cold blood less…liable to dilution, they might not care so much."

"Difficult to say. Those within the shield wall of Athere have not been changed." He paused. "I do not…I do not know what, in this remade world, became of Amaret. With the reason for her self-destruction altered, did our marriage run a different course? I am not equal to asking Ileaha that."

The wound left by Amaret cut to his core. And Medair doubted she could find any response which did not sound wrong, so she simply pressed closer to him, thankful that she had spoken to Ileaha long enough to be confident that Illukar would not find himself still married. Any remnant of contentment lost, they held each other as if locked arms could keep back all threat of hurt.

Gradually the rigidity of Illukar’s muscles eased, until Medair felt he was ready to move through painful territory. "I don’t know if I will ever truly grow used to the world being remade," she said. "Let alone the possibility of further changes. I suppose it’s unlikely Ileaha’s will be the only transformation."

"No." Control regained, Illukar shifted back, and held up a hand, frowning at it. "I have been casting spells which I do not have set, without any preparation, without any incantation at all. A change more subtle than Ileaha’s, but quite as profound."

World-shaking. Casting time was an adept’s greatest weakness. Without the need to prepare in advance, an adept’s effectiveness would be ten-fold. They looked at each other and didn’t need to name the implications. Nor was Medair slow to wonder if she, too, had been changed and simply didn’t know it.

"I don’t yet control it consciously," Illukar went on. "Merely find myself casting some of the simplest spells as if I have never needed to prepare them. Something for me to experiment with, when time permits."

"When we get home," Medair whispered, preferring to focus on another aspect of their shared future. She had meant to move them to a less difficult topic, and she was surprised to see Illukar’s eyes darken.

"I don’t even know if Finrathlar exists," he said. "Or what form it takes in this new Farakkan." He gathered her closer. "You had to do that, didn’t you? Go home, to find out if it was still there and what it looked like?"

"Yes." She struggled against the inevitable plunge of spirit that memory conjured, but succeeded only in worrying herself further. They were not even close to home territory, problems with purists, or the frightening prospect of Medair an Rynstar going so far as to marry an Ibisian. She remembered her strange feeling of certainty regarding Vorclase, and it obligingly revisited her. Vorclase was still in Falcon Black and they would see him yet.

Medair slid out of Illukar’s arms, but only so she could cross to lock the door. She blew out the last surviving candles before returning to the bed. He still glowed. If the effect remained, it would never be truly dark when he was there.

"We will find out together," she said, feeling wrong and pleased and sad all at the same time. Out of so many contradictory emotions, all she could do was choose the best one.