The Silence of Medair

"We should have thought to consult you about transporting supplies," Avahn said as he accepted the double-folded cloth which held his portion. "We will not be eating this well again until we are over Palladium’s borders."

Medair shrugged, deciding there was no point in offering the supply of dry food she had stocked in Thrence. "It’s not the most stable storage," she said, not wanting to encourage him. "If it were, it would have been merchants, not Heralds, who had used it."

Avahn was inclined to discuss the difficulties of creating dimensional pockets and the many failed experiments to recreate the method used by the Empire, but Medair simply ignored him. They did not press her.

Cor-Ibis had acknowledged debt, a triple debt. He, and those who obeyed his commands, would accord her guest rights until the debt was paid or she did something which broke the Ibisian codes applying to guests. She was not in the slightest way obliged to answer their questions and though they might surmise all manner of things from what she did and did not say, might suspect her even of being allied to an enemy, they would not offer her anything but courtesy and questions while she behaved as a guest. Once in Athere, she should be able to leave without hindrance.

Guests, however, had their obligations as well, and she was wondering if she should tell Cor-Ibis that the Decians had a trace on her. It took until the end of the meal for her to reason that since they were operating under the possibility that a trace might be set on one of the Ibisian party, it made little difference knowing for certain there was one on her.

Depending on the power of the Decian mage, the trace would slip in a week or two and with the charm she wore they would be unable to establish another. The charm also lessened the danger of the current trace, dispersing it over a large area. But the Decians would know that she was heading into Farash.

There didn’t seem to be a way to fix the situation.

Chapter Nine

The city called Finrathlar hadn’t existed in Medair’s time. Her recollection of the area just south of the triple border of Palladium, Ashencaere and Farash was of ruins: an ancient and decaying fortress at the entrance of a large valley sheltered by a ring of hills. There’d been a small but useful Imperial base hidden in caves among the western hills, but most only knew Vatch Fort as an abandoned outpost.

No more. Unlike Athere, the Ibisians had not converted the existing structures to their own use. The decaying fortress had been razed to the ground, and the stone employed in the construction of a thing part wall and part castle which had withstood the test of several centuries of intermittent aggression from Farash. Huge vaulted arches led to a city covering half the valley.

They rode between houses which were alien to Medair’s eye. Most were multiple stories with a great deal of glass shining from too many windows. For some reason, each building had two stairways curving up to a balcony-like entrance. Within the shelter of these stairways there were tiny gardens, statues, crests, even fountains. It gave Medair a glimpse of what Sar-Ibis must have been like.

During the past few days it had been decided that Keris las Theomain would take the rahlstones with a suitable guard on to Athere. Cor-Ibis would remain in Finrathlar until he had recovered from a journey whose only drama had proved to be his declining condition. They had spoken of staying at The Avenue, which Medair had assumed would be another expensive inn, but at the end of a street lined with tall flame trees they stopped at the bronzed double gates of a large private residence surrounded by a high wall. A dragonfly motif decorated both gates and pillars, and Medair had seen enough dragonflies worked into Avahn and Cor-Ibis' clothing to guess it was the family symbol. The Avenue must be part of the Keridahl’s holdings.

Through the gate she found an airy grove where shafts of sunlight shone on soft hillocks and small ornamental pools. Clover and verbena covered the ground with a riot of tiny white blossom. A drive of dark, broken rock made a question mark from the gate to the front of the house, and was mirrored by a curving wall of rockery terraces dripping with greenery. Both stone crescents were backed by an honour guard of flame trees fluttering with fresh Spring leaves. In Autumn, when the small leaves turned dark red against the pale branches, they would become walls of fire.