The Silence of Medair

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.

-oOo-

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.