"At dawn." Her tone warned him not to argue, but he made no attempt. Of course, she had little doubt that someone would be set to follow her, once she’d left Athere. But with her ward against traces and her ring of invisibility, she refused to be concerned.
"I still owe you a great debt," Cor-Ibis said.
"I sorrow for you."
She thought he smiled, and found that she wished she could see his expression. It was suddenly hard to believe that she would never see him again. She had saved his life, and he had – what?
"Is there anything I can do to help, Kel?" he asked. His voice was grave, genuinely concerned. Strangely young. "Captain Vorclase is a formidable man, and I cannot like leaving you undefended."
"He’d have to find me first," Medair said, off-balance. This didn’t feel like another ploy to extract her secrets.
"I fear he is quite capable of that. At the very least, do not forget the debts owed to you. Call on Palladium’s protection, if there is need."
"I will remember, Keridahl. But I don’t think there’ll be a need."
And still he didn’t go, just stood there in the dark looking at her. The hesitation was so out of character, she wondered if he were debating keeping her prisoner. But then he said: "As you wish, Kel."
His voice was oddly constrained, and he took a sudden step back, glancing at Athere’s lights. "You will speak to Avahn?" he asked, sounding more like himself.
Medair’s turn to hesitate. Then she shook her head. "Avahn is correct. He has wronged me. Perhaps in future he’ll be able to distinguish a person from a puzzle. But you may tell him that I lay the blame firmly at your door, if you wish."
"I will do that."
The Keridahl inclined his head in a gesture of sincere respect.
"Goodbye, Medair," he said, and walked away without a backward glance, leaving her staring in confusion after him. The ineffably correct Illukar las Cor-Ibis, using someone’s personal name without formally asking for it? She would sooner expect Jedda las Theomain to kiss her good morning.
It was a long time before Medair left the balcony, and half the night was gone before she succeeded in capturing sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
An oppressive, insubstantial weight pressed down on Medair’s chest, but was not there at all. Confused by dreams of a bellowing ocean, she blinked at the edge of light outlining the door to her room, trying to understand what she was feeling.
Magic. Someone, somewhere, was casting a spell of such immensity that it had woken her from sleep. She struggled from the tangle of sheets, and uncovered the mageglow. A few moments to dress, then she opened the door to her room.
Light blazed in the Cor-Ibis apartments, and Medair could see knots of people in various states of undress gathered together in the large area beyond the empty sitting room adjoining her hallway. She ignored them, turning left to her balcony once again. South. It was in the south.
Sensing magic was like smelling colour. Indefinable and impossible to adequately explain. It came in pulses, flashes, waves and, as with her charm against traces, steady hums. Like noise, it grew fainter the further it travelled. What Medair felt was distant, impossibly distant. Her limited abilities would allow her to sense a truly strong spell within Athere’s limits, but not much more. An adept such as Cor-Ibis would be able to sense powerful magic a dozen miles away. Without being able to say why, Medair knew that what she sensed originated at a much greater distance than that.
"Impossibly strong," said a soft, awed voice. Ileaha joined Medair, her eyes fixed on the southern horizon. "It’s been building for half a decem, according to Avahn. The entire city’s awake. Even those with no trace of mage gift know something’s wrong."
"I’ve never felt anything like it. Not even rahlstone enhanced spells have this effect."
Ileaha shifted restlessly. "They’re attempting to scry," she said. "Cor-Ibis, the Kier, Keridahl Antellar. No-one’s willing to guess what they’ll see, if they manage it. It’s as if the AlKier has descended upon Farakkan."
"Beyond the scope of mortals."
"Yes. I can’t imagine anyone, not Cor-Ibis, not every adept in the city, casting this. Beyond the scope of mortals."
There wasn’t anything else to say. Neither woman was inclined to useless speculation, and could only stare out at the stars and the line of darkness where the sky met the earth. The weight of power increased slowly and steadily, crushing in its intensity, and Medair imagined that she could see a faint glow limning the jagged southern mountains.
"Dawn," Ileaha whispered, as if the sun would rise somewhere other than the east.
The words broke some of the hypnotic fascination which kept their eyes drawn south. Medair looked down at the city, which was ablaze with restless light, and Ileaha turned her eyes to where the sun should truly rise.
As if taking advantage of their distraction, a slight wind tugged at Medair’s hair. With the soughing of an indrawn breath, the force of magic which had woken Athere contracted and fled from their senses, leaving them chilled and shaken in the pre-dawn blackness.
There followed a moment of complete silence, and Medair caught her breath in unison with Ileaha. Across the city, she imagined, every eye would be widening, every face turning towards the south.
"AlKier!" Ileaha gasped, flinching as a lance of golden flame shot up from beyond the far-distant mountains to pierce the sky. The power of it was a typhoon, an earthquake which did not stop as the line of fire thickened and steadied, became a column to the stars. It had to be huge beyond reckoning to be visible over so many miles. At the apex, the golden fire spread and dispersed, like smoke which has reached the ceiling of a cave. It wavered, too, a swaying snake of light. The threat was unmistakable. The menace of a giant, so large that injury need not spring from malice, only ignorance. All were ants in the face of this power, insignificance to be crushed underfoot.
And then Medair knew what it must be. The Conflagration. It was the end.
She registered, but did not properly recognise, the sound of someone wailing around the curve of the tower. All she could do was watch, stunned into nothingness, as that pillar of gold began to expand.
"It is wild magic," Ileaha said. "It has to be."
"Yes."
"As Sar-Ibis was consumed, so shall we be."
"Yes."
"How can you be so calm, Medair?" Ileaha asked, fear turning to anger in her voice.
Medair had to drag her eyes away from the flames. It was as if she was looking down a tunnel, with Ileaha at the end. Nothing seemed real. It couldn’t be real.
"With what would you have me greet the Conflagration?" she asked, lips numb. "Anger? Despair? The question of whether this would be happening, if I had given Captain Vorclase the rahlstones instead of your cousin?"
Ileaha made a tiny noise of protest.
"He warned me," Medair said, following a line of reasoning too dreadful to contemplate. "Asked me to consider what his king would do, if the prizes he sought in Kyledra slipped beyond his reach. I never thought that it would come to this." She turned her back on the column of fire. "This is the last in a long series of disasters for me, Ileaha. Perhaps, even a single day ago, I would have railed against it, wept, but just now…" She shook her head. "I’m tired of caring. I have cared too much, lost so much, that it seems only natural that I should lose what little is left." She smiled bitterly. "Think of it as escaping a lifetime’s service to las Theomain, Ileaha. Goodbye."