"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."
Ileaha shook her head. "Worship of the land. It is –" She paused. "Probably it is best not to become embroiled in a discussion about the AlKier or your land which provides."
"No," Medair agreed, studying the girl. Farakkian and Ibisian both – there had been none of her kind during the war. "Who are you? A name tells so little."
"Your name is one which usually tells everything."
Medair would not be drawn. "My misfortune."
"I am one of Cor-Ibis' wards."
"One? He has many?"
"A half-dozen. He is Cor-Ibis. Dependants are inevitable."
"You don’t seem a child. How long do you remain a ward?" This girl was at least twenty, which was the Ibisian majority.
"I am no longer in care," Ileaha replied carefully. "But, being without family, a suitable trade, or sufficient property, I am not quite disposed of."
The traditional poor relation. "So…the Keridahl Avec, Illukar las Cor-Ibis, travels to Kyledra with a cousin, an ex-ward, a singularly impolite woman, a couple of Farakkians and remarkably few servants. He settles them in an inn in Thrence, shape-changes into a Farakkian child and somehow ends up spell shocked at the site of a battle in Bariback Forest, an area essentially under-populated and dull, too far west of the Lemmek Pass to be of interest even to the merchants who died there, let alone the Kyledran Kingsmen, various mercenaries and oddly dressed Decians. And I see you’re not going to tell me what it’s all about."
The girl shook her head, mutely.
"Very well, then. Who is this Jedda las Theomain, who seems to be in charge of Cor-Ibis' people? She’s an adept, isn’t she? Don’t tell me she’s another ex-ward or cousin? His wife?" No, las Theomain had not had a second piercing in her right ear.
After a pause, the girl replied carefully: "Keris las Theomain is an adept, yes. Her family head is Keriel Theomain. The Keris is strong in arcane power, more so than most, and has made a name for herself acting on the Kier’s behalf and as a close friend of the Kier. She is not in charge of Cor-Ibis' people, but had authority in his absence."
Medair decided to pry. "Over you in particular?"
Ileaha was inspecting the tablecloth again. "I believe Keridahl Cor-Ibis has discussed the possibility of my being given into service to Keris las Theomain as secretary. I have a small amount of mage skill, which would be useful to an adept."
"Someone for her to snap orders at?" Medair interpreted. "Couldn’t you serve the Keridahl in that capacity, if you must serve? Or is the carefully dressed cousin already filling the role?"
"Kerin Avahn is Cor-Ibis' heir," Ileaha replied, again startled at Medair’s ignorance. A frown came into her eyes and she closed her teeth on whatever she had been about to say. It was apparent she did not approve of Avahn. Something to remember.
Medair drained her glass and stood.
"Well, shall we go and see if your ex-guardian has woken up? I assume Keris las Theomain has not gone to rouse him expressly for the purpose of telling him I have no manners."
"You did not display such self-command yesterday," Ileaha commented.
"I was tired, yesterday, and I knew it was unlikely that Cor-Ibis would be going anywhere immediately. All haste to get here, knowing that he would fall down by journey’s end. I suppose he wanted Keris las Theomain to send a wend-whisper, knowing that he could not."
Ileaha did not reply.
Chapter Seven
More than a decem passed before Medair was summoned into the presence of Cor-Ibis, and she had to work hard not to stoke her resentment. There was very much an air of a royal audience in the manner in which she was finally conducted, after much to-ing and fro-ing by the attendant Ibisians, into a large, gently lit bedroom which smelled of sandalwood. Jedda las Theomain and Avahn waited until she had stepped past them, then positioned themselves on either side of the door, almost as if they thought she would try to escape.
Illukar las Cor-Ibis had been transformed. Silk-clad, he was propped against a mound of cushions: an impromptu throne of brocade and tassels. His hair flowed in two shining streams, breaking into little rivulets which pooled on the coverlet and came close to dripping off the bed. Single braids before each ear shaded a triple set of tigers-eye, and Medair fixed her eyes on those banded stones, the one thing very different to an image in her past. He was shockingly reminiscent of Ieskar, not as Medair had first seen the Kier, but after the capture of Iskand.
It was all in the skin. Ibisians would at times peel, but never tan, and their skin went through whole ranges of white. Cor-Ibis was at present an unhealthy milky colour, a white-blue shade no Farakkian skin could manage, with the addition of pronounced circles beneath his eyes. And that wonderful black-violet splotch marring his jaw. He appeared alert, but decidedly fragile, as Ieskar had been after Iskand. She’d thought at the time that the Kier had been injured taking the city, and had learned the truth only last year.
He had been dying. All the time, he had been dying.
Resolutely, Medair focused on the present, but it did not help that this shape-changing Keridahl wore the same mask of neutrality which had served Kier Ieskar so faithfully.
"Kel ar Corleaux," Cor-Ibis said, sending a shiver down her spine. "Please be seated."
Medair carefully settled into the chair, a large, wing-backed piece drawn up to the bedside. Determined not to show how unsettled she was, she pushed all shadow of the past at least from her face as he studied her. His pale grey eyes were reflective and silvery in the light of the mage-glows, and the effect was enhanced by the blue, green and silver robe he wore. He successfully gave the impression that there was nothing unconventional in receiving visitors while enthroned in bed. The muddy battered creature she’d dropped into a horse trough was a long way in the past.
"I hope you were not too badly punished when Arcana House failed to break my geas, Kel ar Corleaux," he said.
Medair, busy keeping hostility and discomfiture from her face, was nearly overset by this apparent reading of her mind. Surely he could not have had her followed?
"What is this?" Keris las Theomain asked in Ibis-laran, her voice sharp. No-one answered her.
"I had been taught that once a geas is cast, the caster has no connection to it," Medair said. "That it becomes a thing entirely unto itself." That was what the Emperor’s mages had decided, when they investigated the hold the Ibisians had over their captives.
Cor-Ibis inclined his head, muted light shimmering over his hair and robes. "That is so. But an attempt at geas-breaking announces itself clearly enough. A loud magic, sufficient to wake me, especially in its failure. Arcana House is the only place you could have gone for the attempt."
"Keridahl?! You did not–"
"Jedda, be so kind as to use a tongue our guest understands," Cor-Ibis said, not even looking at the woman. Medair decided this was not the point at which to admit to a very reasonable comprehension of Ibis-laran.
"I shall remember that you are sensitive indeed to the arcane, Keridahl," she told him, testing her way across a quagmire. "It was a particularly bad headache, yes, but it passed."
Sensitive and disturbingly intelligent. Certainly the geas-breaking would have been detectable by Thrence’s magi, but it would have been felt merely as a surge of power, not as anything specific. Cor-Ibis had linked her day’s absence to the surge and correctly deduced the cause. He was proving a little too like Ieskar for her comfort.