Her own plummeting dismay was complicated something she should say, a thing she should suggest. It seemed impossibly unfair that she was faced with another double-barbed choice – to lose Illukar quickly or slowly – and she was scrabbling frantically for ways to avoid it. Surely they could first try other means of stopping the Blight, try those dispells and nullifications and containments in the hopes of hitting on some combination which all of Sar-Ibis' adepts had failed to find. Or they could send someone else, send Sedesten, Islantar, anyone but Illukar. Craven solutions. If she were mage enough, she would go herself, because it seemed far easier to sacrifice herself for him, than the other way around.
But there wasn’t any choice. Nor, she discovered as they descended the main stair, any time for prevarication. Islantar was among those crowded into the entry hall, and his eyes fixed on her with typical determination. He alone would be able to see the same solution to this lost knowledge. Silence wasn’t an option for her, if it ever had been.
She was given the briefest of respites, as Illukar swept straight out to the portico at the top of the doubled entrance stairs. The move was some measure of how he was feeling, for there was little to gain by going outside to look in the direction of the raging power. The Blight would not tower into the sky as the Conflagration had. Just dissolve Farakkan quietly into water.
Still, he looked, and she did as well, and saw Falcon Black silhouetted against the sunset above the hills. The half-wrecked castle was grim and ugly and striped incongruously in gold and pink. The Blight was somewhere beyond, an unseen presence shouting its advance.
"Can you call him back?"
When she didn’t respond immediately, Islantar went so far as to touch her arm. "I don’t know," she said, struggling against her reluctance to call upon the only person who might know how to stop the Blight. She recognised that her hesitation wasn’t only due to what it would mean for Illukar, but also because that person was Ieskar.
She didn’t want to see Ieskar again, didn’t want to try and summon him up, certainly didn’t want to ask for his help. In the face of the Blight, that seemed contemptible. But she wasn’t certain she knew how to summon him, for she hadn’t done so consciously, back in Athere. He had simply arrived, possessing Islantar – the nearest of his descendants – and told her things she did not want to hear. And offered to haunt her, if she would not touch his hand.
"Call him back?" Illukar repeated, turning to look from Medair to Islantar. "What do you mean?"
Islantar glanced at the mix of servants and others crowding the doorway, then led Illukar and Medair down to the foot of the twin stair, and the entrance of the lavender-filled garden between them. Only two people followed: Queen Sendel, who wore a most pugnacious expression, and Avahn, slow and unsteady, but awake and on his own feet. Illukar’s innate courtesy asserted itself, and Medair was given a few moments more while he saw his injured heir settled on one of the stone seats. It was sufficient time for her to notice, in the shadow of the stair, how that slight glow still clung to Illukar. And to see, like some daemon conjured by thought alone, another tall, luminous figure, wearing clothes so dark that only his face and the straight fall of his unbound hair distinguished him from shadow.
"Funeral clothes," she said inanely, and everyone looked at her, then followed the direction of her gaze.
Kier Ieskar didn’t move. He was, as she had said, wearing funeral clothes – the unrelieved black Ibisians reserved for the dead – and his face was thin and drawn. This was how he must have looked when he was placed in his tomb.
When he stepped forward – one of those statue-come-to-life movements which had made him so inhuman to her – she caught a glimpse of stone and leaf directly through him. He was an insubstantial shade from the past, nowhere near as real as he had been when she met him in the crypts, yet every bit as overwhelming as the first time she had laid eyes on him.
"What magic is this?" Queen Sendel asked, and was ignored. Even her vigour was thinned, diminished by the intensity of the dead Kier’s presence.
Ieskar’s gaze fixed on Illukar’s face as he stopped before him. It was a shock to see them together, to mark the similarity of their features and, worse, the duplication in their expressions and their way of holding themselves. Medair clutched at differences. The most apparent was their height, but that observation only made her remember a time, back in Thrence, when she had realised Illukar was not so tall as she expected. A moment of dissonance she now understood: he was shorter than Ieskar.
"My brother," Ieskar said.
"Ekarrel." Illukar bowed, the same degree of courtesy he would award Kier Inelkar, but with an added note of veneration. Niadril Kier. She had never asked herself what Illukar would think of the man who had destroyed her peace, had not even allowed herself to consider the question. Far more than a historical figure for both of them.
As Ieskar turned to look at her, Medair forced questions out of her head through sheer effort of will. She knew she must be almost as pale as an Ibisian, but she refused to look as sick as she felt. It was a relief, and something of a shock, when he only inclined his head and moved to study Islantar. Then that pale, piercing gaze returned to Illukar.
"You have little time," Ieskar said, in the most calm and unhurried tone imaginable. "This occurrence is not a precise duplication. By the next sunset, this city will be gone."
"What is it saying?" Queen Sendel asked in Parlance, as both Islantar and Avahn drew in their breath. Illukar did not break the gaze of the ghost who had named him brother.
"Will you tell us how to stop it?" he asked.
Ieskar lifted his hand, a move which would have made Medair flinch if it had been directed at her. Long fingers passed through Illukar’s cheek before coming to rest against – or under – his temple. They stood that way ten breaths or more, while their small audience stared and wondered. Medair closed her eyes, because this was Illukar’s death sentence and she could only hate Ieskar more for making it possible.
When she looked back, it was as if Ieskar had never been. Queen Sendel had moved to take his place, and was questioning Illukar tersely. Islantar stood at Illukar’s shoulder, his composure not equal to hiding tight misery. Avahn had covered his eyes.
It was what Medair could see in Illukar’s face which was worst. A certain amount of relief. And resignation.
Water, reeds, mud, and myriad small islands. Wetter than a swamp, but far too shallow to be a lake. In late twilight, the Shimmerlan was a murky, uncertain expanse of shadows and subdued reflections. It felt threatening and unpleasant and smelled of damp and rot. And everything which could scurry or jump or crawl was running from it.
Insects whirred past Medair’s face and birds flew overhead making strange forlorn cries. In the short time since they’d reached the Shimmerlan’s border, at least three snakes had slithered by her feet, and there had been frogs and water rats and many things she’d never seen before. All heading away from the oppressive advance of what must look like nothing more than a pool of dark water.
They were waiting for the tracking party, returning ahead of the spreading Blight. With Tarsus, apparently. Medair spent her time watching Illukar’s face as he discussed some sort of levitation spell with Sedesten; working out ways for him not to die just long enough to banish the Blight. Medair was taking in little things, like the way Illukar would tip his head ever so slightly to one side when he was considering a request, and the way he held his hands loose and relaxed at his sides, not shifting them about as so many people did.