Medair could only count the hours till Athere.
Chapter Thirteen
Palladium’s capital, the innermost sanctums of the palace, had been Medair’s home for a large portion of her adult life. She had first come to Athere full of excited expectation, then, a year ago, trembling to see how it had changed. This time she felt divorced from her surroundings. She was concentrating on a time past now, on her return to the north, and oblivion.
The land around the city was flat, the fields interrupted only by breaks of trees. Those who approached enjoyed an uninterrupted view of concentric rings of pale grey stone climbing to the massive fort: a blockish collection of squat towers on a tall, table-top hill. It was an excellent site. Easy to reach for trade, amidst fertile farming land, with a protected water supply from springs buried deep within the hill and the Tarental River curving toward the steep eastern slope. Medair had first known a city of four walls. Arren Wall had fallen five hundred years ago, but the Ibisians had rebuilt it, and erased the scars on the Cantry wall, whose gates had not held. Centuries without peace had added two others: Ariensel and Ahrenrhen. Ibisian names, Ibisian design. Ahrenrhen crossed the river, which showed how far the city had expanded.
Athere’s architecture had never been harmonious. It was cramped, full of conflicting styles, but the city possessed a majesty all its own thanks to its size and variety and the sheer weight of ages. Athere had been old when Medair had first visited it. Five hundred years later, it was ancient.
"Home," Avahn murmured, and Medair looked at him.
"Not Finrathlar?" she asked.
He glanced briefly toward his cousin, then raised one shoulder. "Perhaps they both are. Like two parents or two siblings. Both bind me with ties of affection and familiarity. Two loves, who enchant me for different reasons. I don’t think I could give up either."
"Two worlds become one."
She said it thoughtfully. The previous year she had seen the Ibisian alterations as a blow against all she held dear, a distortion of the Athere of old. She had told herself she would rather see Athere razed by the Conflagration than inhabited by White Snakes.
No doubt the way she looked away from him and the city confused and intrigued Avahn, but Medair did not care. She stared at her hands, longing to be past Athere, to be able to abandon this time altogether. The need to seek oblivion grew the closer she came to the city. It was the focus of too much, had meant too much to her.
Cor-Ibis, who had a knack of approaching without drawing attention to himself, said: "You will stay as my guest while you are in Athere, Kel ar Corleaux."
"I will not be in Athere long, Keridahl."
"We will try not to detain you unreasonably. The Kier will wish to consider you."
Consider, study, interrogate. Medair was not certain the debts owed to her would afford her complete protection against the suspicion that she might be an operative of the Hold or something equally doubtful. Not in the climate of approaching war. The Ibisians had rigidly followed their codes of honour in the past. Could she be sure expediency would not overwhelm obligation? Cor-Ibis named her guest, had acknowledged triple-debt. He would be in a dangerous position if his Kier was one to place Palladium above personal honour. And Jedda las Theomain would have had first word to the Kier about the woman called Medair, who denied the politics of that name and yet carried a symbol of its past.
Medair was wholly oppressed by the mere idea of seeing the Ibisian Corminevar. She remained silent and distant as they passed farmland townlets, crossed the Lapring Bridge and approached Athere. Only a small part of her mind was free to catalogue the wide gates, the guards who watched but did not interfere, the passers-by who halted in their day’s tasks to follow the progress of a Keridahl and his company. Athere was more crowded than it had been, but cleaner, for Ibisians were fastidious beasts. And it was very blonde.
Medair tried to ignore it all, her mind wavering between taking in her surroundings and memories of previous journeys through the great city. Ahrenrhen. Ariensel. Remembrance, once called Arren. Cantry. Shield. Patrin.
The nature of the city changed beyond Patrin Wall. The hill sloped steeply. The houses were fewer, terraced, some with towers to mimic those which crowned the hill. There were five main roads, spokes with the palace as hub, but the rest of Patrin was a tangle of winding, secluded streets. Entire blocks were sectioned off by their own gates, exclusive domains of wealthy families.
They’d called this the Shadowland in Medair’s day, eclipsed as it was by the palace. The middle and upper rungs of the aristocracy dwelled here, the most exalted also claiming apartments within the palace itself. Now, she saw Ibisians everywhere, and fewer of darker complexion. Athere might be home to both races, but she would do well not to forget that it was the White Snakes who held the reins.
There. She had been trying not to think of them by that name, but it was a difficult habit to break. Parts of her were too obstinate to accept that these were not invaders, but inhabitants of this land. Born and bred here, knowing no other home. Was it self-indulgent to stoke her resentment by thinking that to be a full Farakkian in Athere could be a disadvantage? Or only too reasonable? Was anger not preferable to loss and hurt? Medair tried to empty her mind, to be detached and analytical, to feel nothing as the pale grey stone of the palace loomed ever larger. Last year she had avoided the palace. She had known she would not be able to bear all which should have been.
She swallowed, keeping her eyes resolutely on her hands, refusing to look at the gates they approached. Guards in uniforms she didn’t recognise stood beneath the south portcullis, which was still surmounted by an ancient carving of the Corminevar Crown. She had ridden this way in a dream, a fantasy of victory and acclamation. She had been astride a foam-flecked horse whose heart was near to bursting. Clad in her Herald’s uniform, with the thunder of an approaching army dinning in her ears and a thick, tasselled cord of silk wrapped around one hand. Athere’s defenders had felt the power of the Horn, and were gathered to wait. They had raised a cry of exultation at the sight of her, toiling up the last rise to this stone archway with the crown of the Corminevars carved above. In a dream.
Five hundred years too late, Medair an Rynstar finally crossed into the fastness of the White Palace. Her face was as pale and weary as the stone which mocked her loyalties and the company she kept. She took a harsh breath, like a swimmer coming up for air, and her chestnut tossed his head, for her grip on the reins was too tight. Aware of the gaze of fellow travellers and palace guards alike, she clenched jaw and hands and willed a blankness to her mind. How to survive this last distance?
Riders, coming the other way, scattered in the face of a party of higher rank. A cluster of men and women gathered around a hay wagon stopped unloading and stared. The horses' hooves set up an echo in the bailey yard. It was too much like coming home.
Telsen had taken her on a tour of the palace, when she’d first arrived in Athere. He’d been starting to gain respect for his work then, and she’d been flattered and suspicious, forewarned of his reputation and disarmed by his fascination with the past and his love of the palace. He’d known everything about the city, and he would probably be capable of loving even the changes the Ibisians had made. He had flirted and charmed and bedded and moved on from her, all in quick and easy succession.