Voice of the Lost : Medair Part 2 Read Free

this wall, tall and too pale, with his ridiculous length of hair neatly bound in braids, was the fourth to be named Illukar las Cor-Ibis.  Descended from the first Illukar's child, with no drop of Farakkian blood to sully him, he was the epitome of a traditional Ibisian: measured, powerful and reserved.  Medair was ashamed to be so glad he had survived acting as keystone for the shield.
    That, above all else, made her every decision suspect.  Had she given the Horn of Farak to the Ibisian Kier, to Ieskar's descendant, because she did not want Illukar las Cor-Ibis to die?
    "The Horn is in that chest," Ileaha murmured.  "The shielding isn't so complete as that on your satchel, but it serves."
    "The air feels thick," Medair said, not certain if that was due to the unbound power lingering in the wake of the Conflagration, or to the enchantments of two armies.  "It's different than – different to other sieges."
    "Other–"  Ileaha's gaze wavered, and the hand she rested on her sword hilt twitched.  "It takes some adjustment, knowing who you are, realising what you have seen.  I don't imagine that in any of those past battles blood magic would have been used by either side, and I fear that is part of what we are feeling.  Look."
    She stepped closer to the parapet, but Medair was slow to follow, reluctantly moving to gaze down at what had driven her, finally, to take up her name.
    A most orderly army.  The Ibisians had been the same way: arraying themselves before the walls of the Empire's cities with care and precision. Five hundred years after Athere fell to the Ibisian invaders, the Decian King, Estarion, used wild magic to give himself the strength to drive them out.  Now his forces were placed safely out of the range of combat casting, and in the tinted light there was an almost pleasant symmetry to their serried ranks.  Sewn with an even hand among them were giants, near half again as tall as ordinary Farakkians, their horned helmets increasing that height further.  Had they been human once, before the transformative power of wild magic had swept over everything outside Athere's shields, and changed their entire world and all its rules?
    "Not all blood magic is foul," Ileaha was saying.  "It's very closely related to the healing arts and, used with care and good conscience, a portion of life force can be sacrificed without permanent injury.  But that is not what we feel now, what is stifling the air.  If that truly is blood magic, then people are dying out there, before the first blow of this battle has fallen."
    "Was he known to use it?  The Estarion before the Conflagration?" Medair was finding some slight comfort in Estarion's lack of morals.  She had called the invading Ibisians 'White Snakes', thought them cold and greedy, but they had prosecuted their war with an aim to minimise losses, taking advantage of their disproportionate strength in magic to capture their first city without the loss of a single life.  Estarion threatened the opposite, promising to slaughter every Ibisian down to the smallest child.
    "Known?"  Ileaha lifted both hands to measure her lack of certainty.  "Not in the world which was mine.  But is one who is willing to risk the possible consequences of drawing on wild magic less likely to directly sacrifice lives to his cause?"  She lowered her voice.  "You – you must not continue to blame this on yourself, Medair.  If you had given the rahlstones to Decia instead of us, they still would not have granted Estarion enough strength to take Athere with any surety, let alone place himself before her gates so abruptly.  There is every chance he still would have turned to wild magic to gain the strength he lacked."
    "Unless he had the Horn," Medair pointed out, and Ileaha fell silent because it was true.  The whole reason Medair had set out to find the Horn of Farak was that it promised easy, overwhelming victory; a single weapon to lay low an entire army.  Lacking that,