The Silence of Medair

"Mother’s different, Jaith. I don’t understand. I’m just back from Callamere – delivering the kabli-man’s order, you know. There are all these people roaming about outside the city walls, looking as stunned as pole-axed cows. I avoided them, as best I could. And something has killed all the grass around the walls – at least a hundred feet out. Inside the walls, it was just the same – people roaming about aimlessly and talking all the while about something called the Conflagration and fires and who knows what? I thought Mother would explain, but she… she…"

"Is part Farak-lar," Jaith finished. He stared deep into the woman’s eyes. "You were outside the walls," he said.

"Well, I could hardly travel to Callamere inside the walls, Jaith!" Esta snapped. "What does that matter? What’s happened here?!"

"You – Esta, you are Farak-lar," Jaith told her, sounding miserable.

The woman frowned, looking faintly hurt. "My mother has some hot blood, it’s true. You’ve always told me that it didn’t matter, Jaith."

"It doesn’t! Esta, Esta. Ah, AlKier, I don’t understand this. Esta, you are not…as you were."

There was a stricken little silence.

"It’s not me who has changed," she said, eventually, voice small. "Mother is different, and Tehan. And…" She trailed off, gazing at his face. "I’m not Farak-lar. Mother is not Farak-lar. We have that blood, yes, but so does half Athere. The cold blood is dominant, Jaith. You know that!"

Seeing only incomprehension in his face, the woman’s self-control broke and she tore herself from his arms.

"It’s you who have changed!" she cried, stumbling backwards. "You!"

Then she was gone, the bartender running after her. Medair left amidst a buzz of horrified speculation.

The cold blood was dominant. The girl had only been quarter or half Ibisian, but there had been no sign of Farakkian blood. She obviously remembered the bartender and her family and everyone within the walls, but all as slightly different people. What would Athere be like if the flames of the Conflagration had been allowed to sweep over it? Who would Medair be now?

Lassitude had claimed her by the time she found an inn with a spare room, the same deadly apathy which had followed her visit to Athere the previous year. She went to bed, and lay thinking of the Conflagration and black denans and the threat of war. And a soft, eternally courteous voice.

Chapter Seventeen

Another pale and beautiful dawn. The dew-studded hills were stained with jewels of colour beneath a sky of streaked pastel. It slowly brightened to reveal what had been moving in the shadows for a full-measure or more. Black specks, like a flock of crows which had settled on a meadow. But no flock of birds was so orderly, or endlessly numerous. Or so formidably armed. The hills south of Athere were blanketed with an enemy army, come to lay siege in the night. Their black and white pennants fluttered in the wind.

Magic had again woken Medair and she had travelled back to the watchtower, joining the same kaschen and Das-kend in a silent vigil in the pre-dawn dark. They could all sense the distant throb of power, and could only wait to see what daylight would bring them.

"It isn’t possible," the kaschen suddenly said, speaking for the first time since Medair had entered the watchtower.

"Of course it is possible, Mira. We have done it ourselves, in a time of great need."

"Not without aid. Not to make war."

Yes, to make war, Medair thought, viciously. But no, the Ibis-lar had fled to Farakkan. It was only once there that Ieskar had decided to make the land his own.

"We would do it in war if it did not mean exhausting our adepts buildings gates." The Das-kend turned a brass-bound spyglass over and over in her hands. "To take the enemy unprepared, that is a great advantage. To overextend yourself in doing so, that is a great foolishness. Estarion – the Estarion we knew – could not build such gates. He had adepts, true, and could gate a sizeable force, just as we can. But we could not do this. At the fall of Sar-Ibis, we drew on the very magic which was destroying the island, but the Conflagration is already fading. He should not have the strength to gate an entire army. We certainly do not."

"Then how?"

"The Herald spoke of a weapon. It may be what builds them the gates, or it may be that he has adepts which now surpass us. What can one say to this new world? Decia was by no means ready to make such a move, before the events of yestermorn. What I see here…" The Das-kend shook her head. "We may be outmatched."

"Almost I wish the Conflagration had left the world a charred ruin, rather than this."

The Das-kend looked at her daughter. "Do you really?"

"No. I wish it wasn’t happening, though. We don’t even know our home territory. Probably those who come against us have a better idea of these hills and that forest."