The Silence of Medair

"Farak’s Daughter," Medair murmured. It was a Spring game she had played when she was a child, though there had been no calias. A celebration of the end of Winter, with Farak’s Daughter decked out in the green of Farak’s gifts and paid a day’s courtesy in thanks for the land’s bounty.

Cor-Ibis glanced at her; mirror-grey eyes. "A cloak is constructed of the blossoms, a bruised and fragile thing which rarely lasts the morning. While the Land’s Daughter is robed, the children hide in the park, and one is given the AlKier’s cup. Before midday, the Land’s Daughter must capture that child, wrest away the cup, or the year is not thought blessed."

He was testing her again, Medair realised, and kept her face relaxed and mildly interested. A tale like this, which mixed one of Farak’s customs with the White Snake god, was a distortion which would surely infuriate the Medarist they thought she might be.

"So many variations," Medair said, with just enough of a dry edge to her voice to show she thought he was fencing. This time his faint smile was appreciative, and he did not press the point further.

How different they all were! And so the same. Avahn behaved like no Ibisian she had ever imagined, and still she saw in him a core of tradition which had barely altered since the invasion. Even Cor-Ibis managed to somehow be unutterably like the White Snake she had hated the most, and yet Farakkian at the same time.

Medair could only count the hours till Athere.

Chapter Thirteen

Palladium’s capital, the innermost sanctums of the palace, had been Medair’s home for a large portion of her adult life. She had first come to Athere full of excited expectation, then, a year ago, trembling to see how it had changed. This time she felt divorced from her surroundings. She was concentrating on a time past now, on her return to the north, and oblivion.

The land around the city was flat, the fields interrupted only by breaks of trees. Those who approached enjoyed an uninterrupted view of concentric rings of pale grey stone climbing to the massive fort: a blockish collection of squat towers on a tall, table-top hill. It was an excellent site. Easy to reach for trade, amidst fertile farming land, with a protected water supply from springs buried deep within the hill and the Tarental River curving toward the steep eastern slope. Medair had first known a city of four walls. Arren Wall had fallen five hundred years ago, but the Ibisians had rebuilt it, and erased the scars on the Cantry wall, whose gates had not held. Centuries without peace had added two others: Ariensel and Ahrenrhen. Ibisian names, Ibisian design. Ahrenrhen crossed the river, which showed how far the city had expanded.

Athere’s architecture had never been harmonious. It was cramped, full of conflicting styles, but the city possessed a majesty all its own thanks to its size and variety and the sheer weight of ages. Athere had been old when Medair had first visited it. Five hundred years later, it was ancient.

"Home," Avahn murmured, and Medair looked at him.

"Not Finrathlar?" she asked.

He glanced briefly toward his cousin, then raised one shoulder. "Perhaps they both are. Like two parents or two siblings. Both bind me with ties of affection and familiarity. Two loves, who enchant me for different reasons. I don’t think I could give up either."

"Two worlds become one."

She said it thoughtfully. The previous year she had seen the Ibisian alterations as a blow against all she held dear, a distortion of the Athere of old. She had told herself she would rather see Athere razed by the Conflagration than inhabited by White Snakes.

No doubt the way she looked away from him and the city confused and intrigued Avahn, but Medair did not care. She stared at her hands, longing to be past Athere, to be able to abandon this time altogether. The need to seek oblivion grew the closer she came to the city. It was the focus of too much, had meant too much to her.

Cor-Ibis, who had a knack of approaching without drawing attention to himself, said: "You will stay as my guest while you are in Athere, Kel ar Corleaux."

"I will not be in Athere long, Keridahl."

"We will try not to detain you unreasonably. The Kier will wish to consider you."

Consider, study, interrogate. Medair was not certain the debts owed to her would afford her complete protection against the suspicion that she might be an operative of the Hold or something equally doubtful. Not in the climate of approaching war. The Ibisians had rigidly followed their codes of honour in the past. Could she be sure expediency would not overwhelm obligation? Cor-Ibis named her guest, had acknowledged triple-debt. He would be in a dangerous position if his Kier was one to place Palladium above personal honour. And Jedda las Theomain would have had first word to the Kier about the woman called Medair, who denied the politics of that name and yet carried a symbol of its past.