After only a short eternity, she heard the scrape of a boot on stone, the sound of panting breath, and there he was. He staggered to a stop, arms full of faintly glowing glass, and stared at the people who blocked his way.
No-one had mentioned how young Tarsus was: not more than sixteen years, with curling dark hair, a smudged face and a jutting chin. With that jaw, he could well be of Grevain Corminevar’s blood, though the resemblance was not otherwise remarkable. And he was terrified, teetering on the verge of both hysteria and exhaustion.
Eyes wide, he whirled, only to find the guards who had pursued him approaching, swords drawn. For a moment it looked like he would try to run through them. Then he took a deep breath, visibly pulling himself together, and pivoted on his heel. His dark eyes found Vorclase’s.
"I would never have believed that you would stand at the side of a White Snake, Jan," he said. A Decian accent, and a careful way of speaking which was apparent despite his ragged breathlessness.
Vorclase looked briefly wry, not unaware of ironic repetition. "So I can read the lay of the land," he said, unexpectedly gruff, and Medair realised that he cared for this boy. "War’s over; we lost. Sendel will scuffle about trying to keep the country out of Palladian hands. And you’re still alive. I want to keep you that way."
"By handing me to a White Snake?" The boy shook his head, grieved. "You are trusting, Jan."
"Desperate." Vorclase broke the line, stepping forward with a hand held out. "I’ll do what I don’t like if the result’s worth the effort. Put that thing down, lad. Don’t you see what it’s doing to you?"
Tarsus glanced down at the heavy piece of glass he held against his chest. The size of a dinner plate, with a frame of dark wood, it seemed relatively innocuous until he clutched it closer and it sank through cloth and flesh to give them a brief glimpse of pink and white and something which fluttered and pulsed. The sight didn’t seem to faze the youth; he simply moved it out of his chest, then tightened his fingers on the frame. Into the frame.
"You’re delivering this to them as well," he said, earnestly. His gaze shifted to Illukar, who was standing quietly at Medair’s side, and Tarsus looked him up and down with open horror. "A thing of such power, to White Snakes. Jan, you have run mad."
His disbelief was palpable and, as he glanced down at the glass again, a bright shimmer flashed across its surface. That was all that happened, and Medair could barely sense the whisper of power which meant he must have tried to activate it. The effect on Tarsus was more notable: he shuddered and staggered, sweat bringing a slick and waxy sheen to his skin.
Vorclase took the opportunity to take a few more steps forward, but Tarsus backed into the wall as the Captain approached, lifting the heavy glass to chin-level. The Decian guards stirred and Vorclase gestured for them to be still.
"I’ll break it," Tarsus said, in a faint, breathless voice. "Get back, Jan, or I’ll smash it at your feet."
"Would that be bad?" Vorclase asked Illukar, as he took a reluctant step away.
"It could be disastrous," Illukar replied, then released the set-spell he had prepared. Tarsus flinched away with nowhere to go, and briefly the glass merged with his chest again. And nothing else happened.
Tarsus looked down at himself and smiled with uncertain triumph. "You can’t touch me, White Snake!" he said, eyes wide and voice incredulous. "Farak protects her own."
"The device absorbed the casting," Illukar said, glancing at Vorclase.
"Well, that’s helpful." Vorclase was disgusted, but spared little of his focus. "Tarsus, we can’t stand here all day. Tell me what you want us to do."
"Leave." The young man was collecting himself together again. "Leave me, clear me an exit and give me a horse."
"That’s what I’m trying to arrange, boy." Vorclase sounded frustrated. He looked at Illukar. "Better than stalemate."
"The device must remain," Illukar replied, sedately.
"I will not give it up! Not to a White Snake!"
"It must be unmade," Illukar said, ignoring the affront in Tarsus' voice. "It is fashioned from wild magic, it draws on wild magic. You, who would rule Palladium, must see the only course open."
The youth looked uncertain, shifting the glass in his arms. "Wild magic?"
"I won’t pretend that there are not reasons for Palladium to wish you dead, or at least in custody," Illukar said, blunt and cool. "Still, you have my word that you may leave, if that is your wish. But not with the device."
Tarsus stared, dark eyes wide. He looked terribly young, hopelessly driven. What had he done, after all, to reach this point? Controlled by Estarion, raised to hate Ibisians, to believe Palladium his by right?
"How can I possibly trust you?" Tarsus asked now, cradling the glass into his chest once again. "You are my enemy."
"I am Illukar Síahn las Cor-Ibis." Illukar said his name as if it was important to fix it in Tarsus' mind. "I have no animus toward you."
Strange how so profoundly Ibisian a speech could have the desired effect. Tarsus was considering it. Medair took a slow breath as he looked from Illukar to Vorclase and back.
"Were you there?" he asked abruptly, his voice high and strained. "At the slaughter?"
"I was on Ahrenrhen Wall," Illukar replied.
"Then I brought you here." Tarsus took a sideways step, toward the middle of the tunnel. "I meant to get the heir, the one called Islantar. You would have bargained for his life, wouldn’t you?"
"Certainly."
Tarsus looked down. "He has what is mine," he said, forlornly. "What I would have, now, if the Horn had not sounded." He looked with sudden suspicion at Medair, standing at Illukar’s side. "Were you the one who took that from me?" he asked, flatly. "Were you?"
Medair hesitated, aware that Tarsus' anger had returned in full. Denial might be worse than the truth, especially if Vorclase took it into his head to correct her.
"I sounded the Horn of Farak," she said, not wanting it to sound like an admission. This boy had been out there, when the Decian army had been cut down. He had been in the midst of that incredible slaughter, when certain victory had turned into overwhelming defeat. She had killed all who stood with him, who claimed to be fighting for his cause. If he had held a weapon, she would have killed him as well. This boy who might be Corminevar.
For a moment, it looked like Tarsus would simply throw the glass at her. He flushed with furious betrayal, but his disbelief seemed stronger than his anger. "How could you?" he asked, voice breaking. "How could you turn your face from the true Corminevar line to side with White Snakes?"
He pressed the glass so deeply into his chest that Medair could see his spine: a pale, sinuous gleam in a bloody mount. It was a horrible, immensely distracting sight. If he let go of it now, she thought, it would be completely inside his chest. They would have to cut him open to get it out. And she did not want that, did not want this boy to die. True Corminevar or not, there had to be something she could do to alter the course Estarion had set.
"Why do you want the Silver Throne?" she asked, slowly. "Why do you want to rule Palladium?"
The question had confused him. He shifted the glass again and now it was his pulsing heart they watched. How he held the thing at all, she couldn’t guess. It was like no artefact she’d ever seen.