The Irda

by Linda P. Baker

  Unfortunately, the latter eluded him. Igraine might smile at Jyrbian and nod approvingly, but his daughter seemed oblivious to Jyrbian, impervious to all his smiles and courtly bows.

  As the party rode into Nerat, down the middle of the main street, all human eyes, hostile and cold, turned on them. This burg was nothing like Thorad. It was a poor, dusty collection of unmatched buildings, a few made of stone, some rotting wood, and some apparently made of nothing more than mud and sticks.

  Lyrralt and his people were accustomed to humans as slaves, dispirited and harmless, their wills broken, all resistance crushed. These humans didn’t appear to be any of those things.

  Lyrralt chose a ramshackle building that appeared to be a merchant center and motioned for half his party to accompany him and the other half to remain with the animals.

  The inside of the wooden building smelled abominably of human sweat and unclean flesh, of unfinished, weathered wood and mysterious human spices. It was dark, lit by only the light from two dirty windows and lanterns in each corner. The single room was piled with bags and boxes of merchandise, shelves stacked with unmarked earthen containers.

  “We don’t want your kind in here,” a harsh, guttural human voice said from behind the counter, which ran the width of the back of the room. Behind it were more shelves, these containing bottles of ale and wine.

  Lyrralt, whose eyes were still adjusting after the noon sun’s brightness, could barely make out the lean figure of a male human, fists propped on the bar. The human had long, dark hair curling about his shoulders and shorter hair across his entire face.

  Because of the hostility, the outright hate in the human’s voice, Kaede, hand on the hilt of her sword, started forward. Lyrralt stopped her unobtrusively.

  Igraine and Everlyn had both spoken with him on the trail, warning him of reacting too severely to the hostility they were sure to encounter in Nerat. They had been extremely forceful in their opinion that the humans should be dealt with fairly and respectfully.

  Lyrralt said coldly, “We have coin. We require supplies and information. We can pay handsomely. And we offer information in return.” Igraine had told him to say that, too.

  “I said we don’t—” The human who had spoken first began again, his tone even more rude, even louder than before, but another cut him off.

  “Turk … Let’s hear what he has to say.” The speaker was taller and leaner than the first human, and even uglier. He had a small circular hat perched on his thin head.

  He motioned for the angry human to step back, then turned to the group of Ogres. “We don’t get many Ogre customers. The only time your kind visits Nerat, it’s to steal our children.”

  Everlyn stepped forward, her palms extended. “Please, we mean no harm. We’re not like that. We are …” She paused, obviously searching for some way to explain. Finding no single word, she used many, quickly explaining the actions of Eadamm, the philosophy of Igraine, and how they had happened to be on the plains.

  The human grunted when she had finished. “Uh. I’d heard something like that. Didn’t believe it, though.”

  “We need horses, five or ten, as many as you can sell us,” said Lyrralt. “And supplies. Dried meat, flour, sugar, salt.”

  “Wine,” said Tenaj from behind him.

  “And we need to know about the land around here. What lies north? And east?” As he was speaking, Lyrralt pulled money from his pocket, displaying a handful of steel and copper coins.

  The human’s eyes, which had grown narrow and suspicious at his questions, now glinted. He was no different from an Ogre merchant in that respect. “Get the supplies.” He motioned for the one named Turk to bring the items Lyrralt had listed. “There’s maybe three horses in the village for sale, I guess. No more.”

  Turk, who had stomped away to do as he was told, now returned. He slammed a heavy, dusty sack onto the counter, and glared at Lyrralt and Everlyn with such anger in his eyes that Lyrralt would have liked to hack his eyeballs from his head.

  He touched the dagger hidden at his waist inside the flowing folds of his cloak. The movement was not lost on the humans.

  “Turk was a slave in Thorden,” the taller human explained without any hint of apology in his voice. “He has better reason than most to hate your kind. He lost his fingers during his slavery.”

  As Turk slammed another sack onto the first, he laid his arms on the top of it. It was true; he had no fingers on his left hand and only two on his right.

  “Lost them?” Turk growled and held up his scarred hands, first in the human’s face, then waving them toward Everlyn and Lyrralt. “My master”—he spat the word, forming his right hand into a fist—“ate them. While I watched.”

  Everlyn flushed. Lyrralt shrugged. An Ogre might do as he or she pleased with property. Just the same, he turned away from the sight of the man’s missing fingers.

  “Get someone else to serve them.” Turk slammed his fist into the bag of flour once more before stomping away.

  “We’ll do it ourselves,” Tenaj said softly, moving toward the sacks.

  Lyrralt was surprised to see that her face bore the same compassion as Everlyn’s.

  * * * * *

  Khallayne sat on a row of rocks at the edge of the camp and stared at the flat line of the horizon. Even after days of existence on the plains, she wasn’t accustomed to the eternal flatness.

  A few feet away, Jelindra and Nomryh worked at starting fires and extinguishing them. Jelindra had progressed at an amazing pace, but her brother was having more trouble with the fundamentals of magic.

  “No, no, Nomryh,” Khallayne admonished. “You’re depending too much on the incantation. Try to feel it. Try to forget the words and feel the power.”

  He nodded and bent to a small, cleared space with a pile of dry grass in the center.

  Khallayne went back to gazing at the horizon. For all her life, she’d lived in the mountains, where even the largest valley was ringed with mountains. She found the flatness of the land, the infinity of it stretching away, frightening and fascinating.

  She felt what the gods must have felt, looking down on Krynn in the beginning. Away from the camp, with only her two charges and the soft murmuring of the spells for company, she felt small and inconsequential.

  “Khallayne?” Jyrbian slid down on the rocks several feet away. “I was watching you work with the children.”

  “Are you having trouble with your magic?” She patted the rocks closer to her, beckoning him closer.

  He nodded, looking so dismayed that she laughed. “It took me two hundred years, Jyrbian. You can’t expect to master it in a few weeks.”

  “I know.” He shifted nearer. “It’s just that I’ve come so far …”

  She understood exactly. “For two hundred years, I tortured human mages, extorting their knowledge from them. But until the battle in the forest, I didn’t understand.” She turned sideways, drawing her knees up. “Human magic and Ogre magic are vastly different. I didn’t realize that I was hampering my own abilities by relying on the human requirements for incantation and spell components.”

  He was following every word, but she saw that he didn’t really comprehend.

  “I’m sorry, Jyrbian. I can’t explain any better than I already have. You just have to let go. You must trust your own intuition.”

  She held out her fist and popped her fingers open. Puffballs danced in her palm, like those on the tops of the nearby grasses, except that hers glowed at the center. “Try to feel it. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

  He held out his fist, concentrated, and opened his fingers. There was nothing there.

  She smiled at his crestfallen expression. It was harder for him than most. The mighty warrior Jyrbian was not accustomed to failure.

  “It’ll come, Jyrbian. It’ll come the way it did for me. And Jelindra.”

  He was no longer paying her any attention. He was looking eastward, where the line of sky and land was broken by a group of r
iders on horseback.

  “Look!” she called to her students, pointing.

  “It’s only Lady Everlyn and the others,” Nomryh protested.

  Khallayne looked at him sternly. “Yes, I believe so, too. But what should we do?”

  “Run and alert the sentries. Sound the alarm.” He spoke in a tired voice, by rote.

  “Very good.” Khallayne took pity on them, shooed them away. “Go tell the sentries as you’re supposed to. Then go and play for a while before supper. You’ve done enough for today.”

  The two hurried away, their energy already renewed.

  Jyrbian, too, stood. “I’d better go and see what they’ve found out.” He held out his hand to help her to her feet, but she demurred.

  “I think I’ll stay a while longer.”

  The clamor of the camp rose as Lyrralt and his group rode in, leading three new horses loaded with supplies. Everyone came over to see what had been brought back, to hear the news, everyone except for Kaede. She left the camp, a shawl folded over her arm.

  Khallayne watched lazily, observing the ebb and flow of the crowd, Kaede’s wandering. Kaede roamed far out onto the plain, then bent down.

  Khallayne sat up straight and shaded her eyes with her hand. She could see Kaede’s arms moving up and down, as though digging.

  Kaede must be digging for roots. Some of the Ogre cooks had been experimenting with roots and berries and grasses, looking for something to flavor the monotonous meals. So far, dried meat, boiled and mixed with greens and herbs, still tasted like dried meat.

  Still, Khallayne sat there, staring out over the plains, waiting for the golden disk of the sun to slowly drop toward the dark meeting point of land and sky.

  The humans attacked at dusk.

  For a moment, Khallayne’s mind refused to be drawn away. The violent sounds seemed unreal, far away.

  Humans erupted from the grass, screaming and yelling, like fish leaping from beneath the peaceful waters of a pool. The pounding of horses, the screams from camp, the sudden peal of blade against blade, all were background.

  Then reality intruded, and Khallayne leapt to her feet with a gasp. Humans were attacking!

  She ran, the pumping of her blood thrumming in her ears, fuel to the coursing of the magic. By the time she reached the encampment, the humans were fiercely engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with the Ogres. They had attacked the east perimeter of the camp.

  Power coiled in her belly, ready to be unleashed. The fighting was so close, there seemed no way to set it free without danger to her own.

  This was no ragtag band of runaway slaves, wielding homemade weapons and crude spears. These warriors rode into the line of Ogre defense, laying about with axe and mace. They ran, sword in hand. Archers knelt just outside the light of the campfires and let fly arrows feathered with the colors of the prairie.

  Khallayne wheeled in time to see a female Ogre run down by a grinning, snarling human on horseback. He crushed her skull with one blow of his heavy mace, then wheeled his mount toward other fighters.

  She snatched up the fallen Ogre’s sword and ran toward the human. He swung at her, and she felt air whistle past her face. His horse danced sideways, and he jerked it around.

  As he charged again, she darted in under his weapon and grabbed his leg, sent magic whooshing out through her fingertips. She had no idea what she was doing. She felt the power, as she had in Khal-Theraxian, as she had in the forest. And as before, the power served her without direction.

  The human screamed, fell from his horse, and lay writhing in the dirt, begging for mercy as he died. Without a backward glance, Khallayne threw down the sword.

  Another sword sliced through the air. Materializing as if from thin air, Tenaj met the low, whistling swing and deflected it from Khallayne with her sword. Her next movement ripped open the gut of the man, left him standing with his hand pressed to his bleeding stomach, his expression comically surprised. Before Khallayne could say anything, Tenaj had wheeled toward an opening in the line of defenders, blocking to prevent another attacker from slipping through.

  Khallayne pivoted. In the thick of the fighting she saw Jyrbian. He was standing his ground, seemingly invincible. Lyrralt fought near him, meeting the human attackers with the same ferocity as his brother.

  All around them, the others were rallying to him. She ran toward them. The humans were being driven back!

  As Khallayne struck out at the nearest human, Everlyn ran past, weaponless. Khallayne darted to intercept her, past sword thrusts and under swinging axes, but Everlyn reached Jyrbian first. She threw herself between him and the human he was fighting, a husky, hard-muscled human who held his weapon awkwardly because of missing fingers on his sword hand.

  Jyrbian dropped his guard, and the human was so surprised at seeing an Ogre throw out her arms to shield him, that he didn’t take immediate advantage of the situation.

  “Please stop!” Everlyn cried.

  “Everlyn! Get out of the way!” He reached out to snatch her aside.

  She evaded him, still using her body to protect the human. She reached out and shoved the human who was fighting Lyrralt. The woman warrior was so surprised, she almost dropped her weapon.

  Lyrralt, however, didn’t. He stepped in, lifting his mace high over his shoulder.

  Before he could knock the woman’s head from her shoulders, Igraine stopped him. He stepped in front of Lyrralt, raising a hand in front of Lyrralt’s mace.

  With a glance at her father, Everlyn dropped her arms and said simply, “We have to stop the fighting.” Despite the softness of her voice, the words carried to the others.

  On both sides, the attacks slowed until, all along the line, humans and Ogres stood warily still, breathing heavily, weapons frozen but held at the ready.

  “Please …” Everlyn turned to Turk, the human who had shown her his crippled hand in Nerat. “This is not what we came here for. Please, stop the fighting. We mean you no harm.”

  “Ogres always mean harm!” he snarled, thrusting his maimed hand into her face.

  Jyrbian growled as Everlyn closed her fingers over the man’s hand, showing him tenderness. Disgusted, Jyrbian reached for Everlyn, but Igraine stepped between them.

  “We aren’t like that,” Everlyn told Turk, meeting his shocked gaze unflinchingly. “That’s why we’re here, because we—we choose not to keep slaves, not to harm others. That’s why we’ve been driven from our homes.”

  Turk pulled his hand away from her. “You’ll not find a welcome here. Too many have died, or worse, at the hands of your kind.”

  “Then we’ll go,” Igraine spoke for the first time, laying a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Put away your arms. Leave us, and tomorrow we’ll be on our way. We want no more killing. We want only a place to make a home in peace.”

  Khallayne looked up and down the line and saw that Igraine’s words found support, even among the humans. They had begun to lower their weapons, to stand down from their tense posture. She felt the pressure easing.

  Turk looked at Everlyn. “Is this the truth?” he demanded of her. “Will you leave, without further harm to any of my people?”

  Before Jyrbian, or any of the dozen or so others who seemed about to answer, could speak, she nodded emphatically. “Yes. I promise.”

  Turk gestured abruptly, and the humans began to withdraw.

  “I’ll take your word on this,” Turk warned Everlyn, “though I may be crazy to do so. But if you break your word …”

  Without completing the sentence, he backed away. As quickly, as silently, as they had come, the humans melted back into the plain, taking their fallen with them, leaving behind a band of dazed Ogres. If not for their few dead and wounded, Khallayne could almost believe the fight had never happened.

  “What …?” Even Jyrbian, usually so authoritative, so sure of himself, was at a loss.

  “What have you done?” Lyrralt asked finally, in a silence so profound that all could hear his words. “Why did
you stop the fight? We should have killed them all!”

  “Is that what you’ve learned from my father? Is that who you want to be, after all we’ve been through?” Everlyn asked with quiet strength.

  Obviously struggling to understand, Jyrbian said, “They attacked us.”

  Kaede appeared at Jyrbian’s elbow, a bloody dagger in her hand. “They’re humans.” If she had said “animals” or “dung,” her voice could not have portrayed more disdain, more contempt. “And they attacked us without provocation.”

  Khallayne remembered that Kaede had left the camp. She tried to remember if she had seen Kaede during the fighting.

  “They have reason to hate us,” Igraine was saying softly, “after all that we have done to them.”

  Jyrbian opened his mouth to disagree with Igraine, to agree with Kaede. Humans were stupid and savage, good for nothing but slavery. And as for humans who would attempt to kill Ogres … his hatred, his lust to kill them boiled over inside. But Everlyn was watching. Sweet, kind, gentle Everlyn, who seemed so fragile that surely his rage could burn her up.

  Visibly he controlled his emotions and was rewarded with a smile that warmed his heart. But when he stepped toward her, as usual she turned away.

  Kaede put her hand on Jyrbian’s, her breast against his arm and gazed up at him with all the heat, the desire, he wished to see in Everlyn’s eyes.

  He turned away. “We cannot go on this way,” he said, facing Igraine.

  Khallayne stepped forward. Lyrralt was at her elbow. Bakrell, also, seemed to have appeared from nowhere, clutching a bloody weapon, as his sister had.

  Toning his words with respect, Jyrbian said, “Now is the time to speak of the future. We’ve been running. Now you want us to run again, this time from a pack of puny humans. We could have vanquished them, made slaves of them! Built a new place here.”

  There was only a minimum of mumbled agreement and much shaking of heads from those around him, but none spoke out. They waited for Igraine to respond.

  Everlyn, her face flushed, eyes narrowed, said hotly, “You’ve learned nothing! Slavery is an evil thing! We can never build—”