Medair left Ileaha to stare after her and returned to her room, which would serve as well as any as a place to die. But, once there, she found her detachment slipping away, and she sagged against the door, shaking. It couldn’t be. The Conflagration, the complete destruction of Farakkan. And she could have prevented it.
The Decian King had to be the summoner. What had Vorclase said? "Failing you, and without the rahlstones, he will tread a more dangerous path to cleansing Palladium. Think on that." Medair had given the rahlstones back to the Ibisians. Medair had chosen not to side with the Decians and their putative heir. Medair had blocked Decian ambitions.
She made a keening noise, thrusting her hand in front of her face as if to push away what followed. She had not forced the Decian King to break the laws against summoning wild magic. She had not led him to discover a means to do so. She was not responsible for this. She was not.
Someone tried to open the door. It jarred Medair from the blank, empty place she had gone, and she blinked dry, burning eyes. Whoever it was pushed the door again, knocking her shoulder and the side of her head, but then they gave up. She could hear their footsteps recede down the corridor.
How long had it been? Forever or a moment. The flames had not yet come. She was still on the floor in her room, satchel clutched against her chest and the world burning outside. The smothering force of power hadn’t gone away. It was still happening.
She couldn’t stay here. She needed to see. Levering herself to her feet, Medair opened the door onto hot scorching wind. Her ears thrummed with a distant, bellowing roar which could only be the Conflagration and she found herself staring over the balcony at a storm of flame. Fully half the southern horizon was burning, bringing day as would a foundering sun.
Gripping the stone of the balcony, Medair could only stare. She had not done this, but she was indirectly responsible. Her decisions had led to this. Her choices. The thought made her angry. She had had no way of knowing. Estarion of Decia had gambled and the whole of Farakkan would pay. He was culpable, not Medair.
Blame seemed such a pointless concern when the fire continued to advance. She couldn’t make out the distant peaks of Farak’s Girdle, which meant the flames were already over the border. She thought they were almost near enough to have covered Finrathlar. The flame trees would burn in truth. Then it would be Pelamath. Then Athere.
A desire to do something, anything, sent Medair back into her room. She hefted her open satchel, thinking of the artefacts she’d brought from the Hoard, but at the same time aware that it was a futile hope. Powerful as they were, they could not stop the Conflagration. Useless as ever.
She left her room and looked around. There was not a soul in sight, only sharp-relief shadows cutting into the edges of walls made golden by fire. The noise of the Conflagration filled all the empty spaces, muffling what would otherwise be abandoned silence. It made Medair feel like she was the only one left alive in all the world.
Waiting for death in the palace suddenly seemed insupportable. Not in this Ibisian cage. She didn’t have friends to seek out and make her goodbyes to, but if this was the end, she would say farewell to the city which was still in some way her home.
The guard who had been at the entrance to the Cor-Ibis apartments was gone, but Medair had not taken two steps out the door when a cold voice said: "Kel ar Corleaux."
Startled, Medair turned. Jedda las Theomain had followed her out of the Cor-Ibis apartments. The adept’s face was set into the mask of an Ibisian exercising careful control, and she carried a thick, heavy book in her arms.
"Keris las Theomain?" Medair’s confusion showed, and tight lines of strain briefly made the woman look older.
"Keridahl Cor-Ibis requested that I caution you against leaving the city, Kel," las Theomain said, flatly. "There is to be an attempt made to shield Athere, and he wished to be certain you were warned not to pursue your intention to depart."
Without another word, las Theomain turned and walked away, leaving Medair to stare after her. The message had been stiff and awkwardly phrased, the tone no more or less precisely cold than anything else las Theomain had said to her. Yet, of a sudden, Medair felt Jedda las Theomain bore her active ill-will.
Disconcerted, Medair tried to shrug off the entire incident. It wasn’t as if her plans to leave Athere were relevant any longer. The Conflagration wasn’t something you could begin to run from. But what did it mean, they were going to attempt to shield Athere? How could that be possible?
Thrusting confusion to the back of her mind, Medair pressed on. She hesitated only briefly near the stables before deciding that her horse would probably not benefit from a better view of the flames. Simpler to just get out of the palace, to walk instead of thinking or feeling.
In the half-decem it took her to pass Cantry Wall, Medair found herself caught up, not in her own reflections, but Athere’s reaction to the end. People gathered at windows and on the streets; friends, families and strangers facing the fire together. Some wept and some held each other and a few muttered in angry whispers. Most just stared, eyes wide and despairing, reflecting the ever-approaching blaze. Medair could understand that response, for there was no mistaking the futility of action.
"Clear the way!" called a voice from her left and Medair barely ducked aside as a man in a cart drove past, his wild-eyed horses surging frantically in the traces. A pair of frightened children clung to a mound of baggage spilling out of the back of the cart. Trying to outrun the blaze, though any fool could see it was moving faster than a horse ever would. Medair stood watching until he was hidden by the curve of the street. Contagious fear gibbered at the back of her mind, but the numbness kept it at bay. There was nowhere to run to. Nowhere to go. Everyone in Farakkan would soon be dead.
Beyond Shield Wall, Medair walked into a riot.
She heard the babble first but was not quick enough to resist the tide of people flowing through the gate. Before she realised her danger, she was in the fringes of a crowd pressed up against the very wall. People were all around her, shouting, pushing, trying to go in all directions at once.
Most were surging towards an unlucky building, their eyes scared and angry and determined. Medair almost fell as they pushed forward and then eased backwards, jostling bystanders. She caught herself and automatically steadied a young boy losing his own battle to stay upright. Shock broke through the numbness, and she clutched at him.
"Thank you, Kel," he said, gripping her arm. Never mind the Conflagration: they were in immediate danger of being crushed against the wall.
"What’s going on?" she asked, keeping hold of his sleeve as she tried to squeeze sideways. She couldn’t make out individual words in the roaring gabble which was assaulting her ears. Something about burning.
"Southerners, Kel," the boy replied, then gasped as the surge reversed abruptly, swallowing them both. The boy staggered and Medair received an elbow in the ribs. An arm supported her for a moment, then a shoulder spun her around and she staggered, almost lost her satchel at the same time as her hold on the boy’s arm.
"Let them burn first!" someone yelled, and the crowd roared. It brought Medair straight back to the alley in Burradge, but without the will to fight as the surge overwhelmed her.
Then her elbow was caught and she found herself being hauled unceremoniously out of the crush by a man of wholly disreputable appearance. Farakkian, round face liberally stubbled, clothes half rags and blond hair matted beneath a greasy kerchief. The Ibisian boy was tucked beneath his shoulder, and his expression was abstractly businesslike as he searched for a safe eddy in which to deposit them.