The Silence of Medair

There wasn’t anything else to say. Neither woman was inclined to useless speculation, and could only stare out at the stars and the line of darkness where the sky met the earth. The weight of power increased slowly and steadily, crushing in its intensity, and Medair imagined that she could see a faint glow limning the jagged southern mountains.

"Dawn," Ileaha whispered, as if the sun would rise somewhere other than the east.

The words broke some of the hypnotic fascination which kept their eyes drawn south. Medair looked down at the city, which was ablaze with restless light, and Ileaha turned her eyes to where the sun should truly rise.

As if taking advantage of their distraction, a slight wind tugged at Medair’s hair. With the soughing of an indrawn breath, the force of magic which had woken Athere contracted and fled from their senses, leaving them chilled and shaken in the pre-dawn blackness.

There followed a moment of complete silence, and Medair caught her breath in unison with Ileaha. Across the city, she imagined, every eye would be widening, every face turning towards the south.

"AlKier!" Ileaha gasped, flinching as a lance of golden flame shot up from beyond the far-distant mountains to pierce the sky. The power of it was a typhoon, an earthquake which did not stop as the line of fire thickened and steadied, became a column to the stars. It had to be huge beyond reckoning to be visible over so many miles. At the apex, the golden fire spread and dispersed, like smoke which has reached the ceiling of a cave. It wavered, too, a swaying snake of light. The threat was unmistakable. The menace of a giant, so large that injury need not spring from malice, only ignorance. All were ants in the face of this power, insignificance to be crushed underfoot.

And then Medair knew what it must be. The Conflagration. It was the end.

-oOo-

She registered, but did not properly recognise, the sound of someone wailing around the curve of the tower. All she could do was watch, stunned into nothingness, as that pillar of gold began to expand.

"It is wild magic," Ileaha said. "It has to be."

"Yes."

"As Sar-Ibis was consumed, so shall we be."

"Yes."

"How can you be so calm, Medair?" Ileaha asked, fear turning to anger in her voice.

Medair had to drag her eyes away from the flames. It was as if she was looking down a tunnel, with Ileaha at the end. Nothing seemed real. It couldn’t be real.

"With what would you have me greet the Conflagration?" she asked, lips numb. "Anger? Despair? The question of whether this would be happening, if I had given Captain Vorclase the rahlstones instead of your cousin?"

Ileaha made a tiny noise of protest.

"He warned me," Medair said, following a line of reasoning too dreadful to contemplate. "Asked me to consider what his king would do, if the prizes he sought in Kyledra slipped beyond his reach. I never thought that it would come to this." She turned her back on the column of fire. "This is the last in a long series of disasters for me, Ileaha. Perhaps, even a single day ago, I would have railed against it, wept, but just now…" She shook her head. "I’m tired of caring. I have cared too much, lost so much, that it seems only natural that I should lose what little is left." She smiled bitterly. "Think of it as escaping a lifetime’s service to las Theomain, Ileaha. Goodbye."

Medair left Ileaha to stare after her and returned to her room, which would serve as well as any as a place to die. But, once there, she found her detachment slipping away, and she sagged against the door, shaking. It couldn’t be. The Conflagration, the complete destruction of Farakkan. And she could have prevented it.

The Decian King had to be the summoner. What had Vorclase said? "Failing you, and without the rahlstones, he will tread a more dangerous path to cleansing Palladium. Think on that." Medair had given the rahlstones back to the Ibisians. Medair had chosen not to side with the Decians and their putative heir. Medair had blocked Decian ambitions.

She made a keening noise, thrusting her hand in front of her face as if to push away what followed. She had not forced the Decian King to break the laws against summoning wild magic. She had not led him to discover a means to do so. She was not responsible for this. She was not.

-oOo-

Someone tried to open the door. It jarred Medair from the blank, empty place she had gone, and she blinked dry, burning eyes. Whoever it was pushed the door again, knocking her shoulder and the side of her head, but then they gave up. She could hear their footsteps recede down the corridor.

How long had it been? Forever or a moment. The flames had not yet come. She was still on the floor in her room, satchel clutched against her chest and the world burning outside. The smothering force of power hadn’t gone away. It was still happening.