The Silence of Medair

That had been last Spring. She’d travelled blindly south, heading toward the city which had been the Emperor’s last defence: Athere. By the time she’d reached the old capital of the Empire, she was sure she didn’t want to see it. The whole north-east of Farakkan was under Ibisian control, and White Snakes were everywhere, calling themselves Palladians.

But, because she did not know what else to do, because she had to look, Medair had walked through the city she had thought to return to in triumph. There were more walls, but the palace still stood, and much of the city was all too familiar. A Corminevar even sat the Silver Throne: a pale-skinned, snow-haired descendant of Kier Ieskar and the Emperor’s only daughter. It was unbearable. She hadn’t been able to stay more than a day in that monument to defeat.

Medair hated the White Snakes, for it was impossible to feel anything else for the people who had wrought such destruction in the Empire. Not that it had been difficult to hate: they were arrogant and over-civilised, mannered and cold. Despicable in their greed.

She’d been told her own history in Athere, even listened to stupid tales about how she would be reborn, would come back to save Palladium from the White Snakes. The ballads knew the start of the story well enough. Two years after the Ibisians had arrived on the continent of Farakkan, it became obvious that the Emperor’s armies could not hold. In a month, perhaps two, Athere would surely fall. So Medair an Rynstar, Imperial Herald, had left to find the Horn of Farak.

They couldn’t tell the end, those ballads of futile heroism. Only Medair knew that her quest for a weapon to defeat the White Snakes had been successful. She’d found the Horn of Farak and brought it back to the Emperor’s city. Five hundred years too late, five hundred years after Grevain Corminevar had lost.

-oOo-

How easy it would be to use it on the White Snakes anyway, in memory of the Empire she had served. She’d certainly considered it, after buying an afternoon of answers from a scholar, and listening to the facts of the fall of Athere in the driest and most enervating of terms. She’d stood just within Cantry Wall and stared up at the White Palace and pictured herself taking the Horn from her satchel, raising it to her lips. No-one, nothing could have stopped her. And the White Snakes would have died.

But it was impossible. During the war, she would have done anything to defend her home from the Ibisians. She had dreamt of a world where White Snakes did not exist to destroy her peace, where she had never heard one voice in particular: cool, tranquil, hateful. But to use the Horn on the Ibisians who now dwelled in Athere? Who were Palladian?

She’d run away from the desire to do just that. Away from White Snakes and the part of her which demanded that they be driven out of the city they’d stolen, that they be punished, wiped out of existence. Because no matter how much she hated them, she’d known it was wrong.

After she left Athere last Summer, Medair had carried the Horn with her and tried not to think. The Duchy – now Kingdom – of Kyledra had been her first home, and she had travelled to her family lands north of Kyledra’s Bariback Forest, only to find no trace of the Rynstar demesne. From there, stewing in hatred which no longer had a true focus, she had ignored warning of plague and headed for the mountain. Its lofty solitude had been a balm of sorts, and, until now, a refuge. With these Decians on her trail, she needed to find somewhere else.

Medair’s oath had been to the Empire’s heartland, Palladium, and to the people who had, over the centuries, mixed blood with their invaders. She could not let herself be involved in Decian plots, when Decia intrigued against Palladium. She could not use the Horn without killing the descendants of true Palladians. Perhaps – perhaps she should return the Horn to the place she had found it, deep in a maze beneath the far northern mountains, out of the reach of anyone searching for her.

Medair nodded to herself. Yes, it would be safest to put the Horn and everything else out of the reach of these Decians and whoever had sent them. And, just maybe, she would go to sleep there again and dream away another five hundred years, until the world had become wholly unrecognisable, and not quite so painful.

Or she could sleep forever and be done.

Chapter Three

Dramatic thoughts of suicide were nothing new to Medair. Waking early, she set about packing in the relative cool of dawn. The pile of saddles and bags she had taken from the other horses would mark the place she’d spent the night, but she didn’t think it worth the effort of hiding them. She would do better to simply stay ahead of her Decian pursuers.