The Silence of Medair

"The signal!" gasped the kaschen, and half Athere turned from the fire towards the point of light which had appeared on Fasthold’s apex. A heartbeat, two heartbeats, then a shaft of blue rose from beyond the western reach of the city. It was joined by eight others, a many-sided pyramid whose apex burned and flamed like a sapphire sun. At the heart of the blaze was a soft-voiced man whom Medair had bathed in a horse trough, and she found that she preferred to watch their destruction bearing down upon them, rather than their prospect of salvation.

The wind had become a gale, harsh as a desert in drought, drying sweat as soon as the heat conjured it. The flames were closer again, leaping miles in moments. And then the shield solidified and shut the world away. The gale vanished, blocked by a transparent blue wall. So did the noise, the roar of the fire and the wind. Instead, it seemed to Medair, she could hear an entire city take in unison a single, sobbing breath.

"Thank the AlKier," the Das-kend said softly, her voice shaking. She returned to the outer side of the watchtower and craned forward for a better view of the shield. Medair could see the Kier unhurriedly walking toward the city gates.

"But will it keep the fire out?" the Kend wondered. "Stupid to ask, I know, since we won’t know the answer until it’s here. Ah, I could kill that man!"

The southern king, Medair assumed. Had he had a moment to understand what he’d done, before the fire took him? Had he at least regretted the gamble?

"Mama, I’m scared," said the kaschen in a small voice, and was folded into the Das-kend’s arms.

"We all are, Mira. But we have done what we can, and perhaps the shield will hold. It will be a hard future, with Farak’s Breast burned away, but we will face it together. Else…at least it will be quick."

On the southern road, the person on the horse, still too distant to be recognisable as male or female, made a despairing, desperate motion with its hands towards the translucent blue pyramid which covered Athere. Then it was lost, a mote swallowed up by the fire which swept relentlessly across the land.

The shield would have stopped anyone else from getting in, anyway, Medair thought, and sent a silent prayer to ravaged Farak as the flames, a burning fog, flowed over Athere.

Chapter Sixteen

Incredible as it seemed, in the teeth of the Conflagration they would probably all die of suffocation. The shield kept out the fire, the wind, most of the heat. And the air. The exclusion had been deliberate. It had been important that the shield be complete, not semi-permeable like the one Medair had used in Finrathlar. After all, there was nothing beyond the shield but fire.

She wasn’t sure how long it had been. The soldiers had left the watch-tower soon after it was certain the shield would hold, and Medair had stayed to watch the flames. They took on a greenish tinge, through the blue of the shield, and showed no sign of abating. Enough heat came through to keep Medair sweating, and there was not so much as a hint of breeze.

Medair’s first concern had been that the shield would not last as long as the fire, but she’d had time to think it through, now. How long would it take for a city full of people to use up all the air trapped within the shield? How long before Athere became an expensively preserved tomb?

Even if they survived the Conflagration and the shield released before everyone suffocated, what would they find? Anything at all? Charred earth, the scorched beds of rivers? No crops, no stock, no wild game to hunt. There should be, in Athere, stores enough to do some planting. There might be horses to breed, but few cattle and sheep and birds. Frogs? Dragonflies? Let alone the fodder to maintain what survived. Faced with the prospect of starvation, Medair thought of the Bariback violet, tiny and delicate, and lost forever.

"The sky!"

A single voice from the crowd still lining the walkways. It sparked a series of outcries as eyes sought the apex of the glimmering pyramid and found, as proclaimed, the sky. So commonplace a sight to inspire such a groan of unbridled relief. The shield still held and the fire was waning. Athere had survived the Conflagration.

Like water, the fire drained slowly down the sides of the shield. Medair followed its progress sadly, not wanting to see what it had left behind, not wanting to see the–

–verdant hills. Manicured woodlands. Fields of gently waving corn and wheat. A road paved with stones of lambent silver instead of the familiar, worn grey. In the distance there was a rider, racing towards the city.