The Silence of Medair (10 page)

Medair watched Jedda las Theomain's departure, then shifted her attention to the young Keris and Kerin.  The youth was still smiling, and the girl had erased any expression, but they could not hide a certain tension.  Obviously now aware that Medair was someone to whom they already owed a debt.  She wondered if they'd follow Jedda las Theomain's lead and depart from the strict Ibisian codes of courtesy.

"Are you going to drag me upstairs now?" she asked, and felt sorry when the girl flushed: a delicate pink colour which made her seem more Farakkian.  "No.  Sit down," she said when they would have made denials.

She gestured at chairs and waited while they sat.  It gave her a brief sense of being in control, and an opportunity to decide what tack to take.  These were people she would be associating with until Athere.  She might try to remember that, instead of just damning them as White Snakes.

"I suppose Keris las Theomain is a bad enemy to make?" Medair asked, with less bite. 

"She can be inopportune," the youth replied.  "Allow me to make introductions, in the hopes that we do not all end up at odds.  This is Ileaha Teán las Goranum and I am Avahn Jaruhl las Cor-Ibis."

"Medair ar Corleaux," Medair replied, resigned to the reaction she knew would follow.  After a moment of shock, Avahn las Cor-Ibis laughed aloud, while Ileaha las Goranum looked first disconcerted, then disbelieving, then guarded.

"A Medarist!"  The Kerin had just wit enough to keep his voice down.  "Oh, too rich!  A Medarist geased to assist Cor-Ibis!  What splendid irony.  I am very glad I came now."

More ironic than you could guess, Medair thought, but only waited out his laughter.  She had not been fool enough to introduce herself as Medair an Rynstar since that first village, had since used the family name of the father who had never given her the right of claim.  But she would not name herself other than Medair.

"I'm glad you enjoy the joke, Kerin las Cor-Ibis," she said, struggling to keep her even tone.  "I'm almost sorry to tell you that the name is merely one my mother gave me and no reflection of my political beliefs."

The girl called Ileaha remained doubtful, but Avahn las Cor-Ibis shrugged and made a smiling gesture as if he was disappointed, but did not disbelieve.  Medarists, after all, did not deny their cause.

Medair had been annoyed, then angry, when Medarists had been explained to her.  It was not so much that a group of loyalists to the old Empire had decided to use her name as some sort of banner.  It was that they were such fools.

A little less than five centuries ago, with its heartland conquered by arrogant White Snakes, the shattered Empire had turned the name Medair an Rynstar into a legend, into a myth.  It had somehow become widely known that she was questing for the Horn of Farak and, hope of the slimmest sort, the conquered Imperials clung to the belief that she would return and summon an army to drive out the invaders.  Her name became a talisman and there were many ballads which depicted her as some sort of sword-wielding hero, or, at least, someone mystically significant.  This Medair could shrug off, embarrassed as it made her.

The Medarist movement had begun several centuries into Ibisian rule.  Someone had had the bright idea of adding the name Medair to her own, and trying to raise an army.  She hadn't succeeded, but she set an example for a stubborn core of resentment in Palladium, struck a chord with those to whom the Ibisians would always be invaders, no matter how many centuries they had dwelled in Farakkan.

The dry facts of the Medarists were something Medair had learned in Athere.  It had explained a great deal, for her entire journey from the north had been doubly marred by the reaction to her name.  In Morning High, that first village, she'd introduced herself as Medair an Rynstar and been treated as a madwoman.  And she
had
been half mad with grief, till they'd tried to lock her up.  But it wasn't until the border town of Burradge that she'd discovered why the name 'Medair' alone would provoke such repulsion.  It had been incomprehensible to her, the way strangers would stare at her, disbelieving, when she said she was called Medair.  Vendors would suddenly refuse to sell to her, and children were hurried out of her way.  She'd even been turned out of an inn, before she'd learned to keep her mouth shut.

In Burradge she'd sent a too-persistent admirer on his way by finally answering when he asked what he could call her.  He'd let her be, with the alacrity with which she was becoming familiar.  And Medair, returning to her inn, had found a young woman blocking her way along an alley.

"Medair?" the woman had said.

"Yes?"

The wary note in Medair's voice must have been expected.  The woman had smiled and stepped forward, a hand outstretched.

"Welcome sister," she'd said, gripping Medair's hand firmly.  "You come in good time."

"Thank you," Medair had replied, more than a little blankly.  She'd become aware that they were not alone in the alley, that another two people stood behind the woman, and more were behind Medair.  "In time?"

"Amelda an Vestal, who holds the Braesing Reserve under Empire Right, is planning to wed into the las Dormednar line," the woman had said, to Medair's complete confusion.  "We are too readily known in Burradge to venture into the wedding feast, but the cause would be well-served if you would take on the task.  We have a charm prepared, which will make the bride's hands run with her own blood, if only it can be got to her at the feast."

The lengthening silence which had followed that little speech was one of those things which would always be imprinted on Medair's memory.  It had been a cool night.  The wind had whisked at her throat, and she'd heard a dog bark in the distance as she searched her mind vainly for something to say to the woman.  And, after weeks fixated on loss and a blind determination to reach Athere, all Medair had managed was: "I think you must think I'm someone else."

"You said you took the name Medair!" the woman had said, recoiling as much in shock as anger.

"My name
is
Medair," she'd protested.  "But I don't know what that has to do with this wedding.  I've never heard of these people."  Memory of the note of pleading in her voice still made her writhe.

"A Hand's heir taking a White Snake and you don't know what that has to do with one named Medair?"

They had pressed forward, but Medair had simply said: "No."

"How
dare
you!" the woman had spat then, only intensifying Medair's confusion.  "How
dare
you claim Her name, and turn your back on Her cause.  Can you tell me that your name is Medair, and yet you don't yearn to see every White Snake dead and gone?!"

The stupid thing was, Medair's answer to that question would not have been 'no'.  They hadn't waited to hear what she would say, had started forward with fists and heavy boots.  Medair was a stranger to combat, and without the strength ring she might never have left that alley.  She'd been bruised for weeks after.

Quelled.  That's what she'd felt when she found an explanation for what had happened.  Five hundred years into Ibisian rule there were groups where women called themselves Medair and men Medain.  They lived violent and uncomfortable lives, spitting in the faces of White Snakes and letting the world know they thought that all Ibisians should be cast out, that the people – the Farakkian people – should rise up.  That none of Ibisian blood should be tolerated to live.

Medarists aped some of the codes of the Heralds and forever spouted their fury in the name of Medair an Rynstar.  As if she had somehow founded their order.  They usurped both her name and history and talked constantly of the stories of how Medair an Rynstar would be reborn and would lead a war to drive the White Snakes out.  And, much as Medair hated Ibisians, the idea revolted her.

Certainly she would have done anything to prevent the invasion, perhaps rebelled against Ibisian rule in those early years, when they had still
been
invaders.  But, considering that it was sometimes impossible to tell if a person had Ibisian ancestry or was merely tall and pale, she thought it the height of idiocy to go around saying that all of Ibisian blood were evil and deserved to die, and to beat people in back alleys because their hair was white-blonde.  Or because they introduced themselves as Medair.  The Medarists were one of the reasons she'd retreated to Bariback.

"You should consider changing your name," Avahn las Cor-Ibis told her, still full of laughter and not in the least off-put by her stiff face and eyes full of painful memories.  She blinked away the past and looked at him.  How very different from any other White Snake she had met, this youth.  How, she wondered, did that flippant attitude go with the remnants of such a strict and formal culture?  He was even wearing white, a shade which had been reserved for the Kier alone in her time.

"I'm afraid that I've grown attached to it," she said, managing to shrug. "It's only a bother when I travel, since my home lacks both Medarists and people who don't know me well enough to not know my beliefs."

"You must live in a very small town," Avahn said, dubiously.  Medair knew she was behaving in a contradictory manner, sometimes poised and sophisticated, and by the next turn haunted and hostile.  She told herself sternly that she would do well not to arouse their suspicions further.

"I settled in a very under populated area," she said, striving for neutrality.  Wanting to move the conversation along, she looked at the mix-blood woman.  "I can guess where you are supposed to bring me and why," she said, "but perhaps I am wrong?"

Avahn chuckled, returning her attention to him.  "You played the innocent well," he commented.  "It was something to watch the inimitable Jedda's face when Cor-Ibis told her to fetch you.  She dug herself in so nicely too, going on to say you'd been paid off adequately, that she'd made certain you knew nothing of import and that your word had been extracted not to speak of the matter.  Neatly trapped.  I compliment you."

"I didn't set out to trap Keris las Theomain," Medair replied.  "She achieved that on her own.  I did abet her, however, and I wonder if that might have been a mistake."  Ileaha las Goranum had grown only more subdued during the discussion.  "The Keris has no authority over me and I am in no demesne of hers.  I will not be the one suffering the consequences of going against her will."

"The Keris can give cause to regret," the girl agreed tonelessly.

"Oh, show some backbone, Ileaha!" Avahn said, impatiently.  He obviously knew more about whatever weighed on the girl, but spared it little regard.  "The lovely Jedda is hardly of concern now that Cor-Ibis is back with us."

"You think not?"

The girl had the blood to match that ornament of jade, Medair decided.  No-one without
some
breeding and background could manage quite that note of contempt.  The youth felt it and looked annoyed, then cooled, and began acting a good deal more like a proper Ibisian.

"The matter is of little import," he said, and deliberately turned away from Ileaha.  "Kel ar Corleaux," he continued, awarding her the form of address suitable for commoners.  "My cousin wishes speech with you.  He was asleep when word came of your return, so you need not hurry your meal.  Keris las Goranum will, I hope, be capable of escorting you when you have done."  He rose and bowed exquisitely to Medair, not at all to Ileaha, and left.  Very much on his dignity.

There was a short silence while Medair continued eating and Ileaha played with the edge of the tablecloth.  "What is Cor-Ibis' title?" Medair asked when she was finished.  She was feeling more in control of herself now, able to think about what to do next.

Ileaha looked at her, not quite startled.  "You do not know?"

"He didn't introduce himself," Medair replied.  "And Keris las Theomain took pains, last night, to be vague about his identity.  A stupid thing, since the stable hands seemed to know who he was and would be happier than I to spread the tale.  The way his cousin referred to him made it obvious that he is head of that family." 

'las' meant 'of the line' and was only dropped from reference when the person was the active controller of the line, title and fortunes of the family.

"He did not know even your name," Ileaha replied, fencing.

"I didn't introduce myself either.  Considering his first words to me consisted of a geas, I can surely be forgiven for feeling less than friendly.  Being drawn out of my way for something which, from the body count, looks to be more than dangerous, does little to put me in a good humour.  Without even an explanation, which I suppose you would not supply if I asked."

"Better not," Ileaha replied, and allowed the silence to stretch before answering.  "He is Illukar Síahn las Cor-Ibis, Keridahl Avec."

High Lord Right of the Cold Blood.  Medair had always found Ibisian titles clumsy in translation.  Kier was a title which meant Highest 'Ruler' more than High King, since the word was not specific to a gender.  Keridahl was High Lord, something similar to a Duke.  Avec was an extra title awarded to only one Keridahl at a time.  The man was the current Kier's second most favoured lord.  She had guessed the Keridahl, from those absent earrings, but not the Avec.

Medair, after a short pause, recited: "Keriel, Kerivor, Kerikath, Kerikal, Keriden, Keridahl, Keridahl Avec, Keridahl Alar, Kierash, Kier."

"And AlKier," Ileaha finished, softly.

"That I've never quite understood, this idea of a Ruler of All.  Farak does not rule, she provides, nurtures."