The Irda

by Linda P. Baker

  Bakrell moved among them. Although none spoke to him, none turned away as he helped with the sad tasks.

  Lyrralt took his blankets and slipped away, alone, to the edge of the camp, past the lines of horses and the watchful eyes of the sentries.

  Tonight. He knew it had to be tonight. Igraine would be left alone with his grief. And Lyrralt would be able to slip into his tent.

  The runes throbbed on his shoulder, itched down his arm. He sat alone in the darkness and wished for a moment’s numbness, that he might be free of the urging of the runes. He searched for the constellation of Hiddukel in the night sky, but clouds had covered Solinari and blotted out the stars.

  In the blackest hours of the morning, he slipped back into camp and into Igraine’s tent. The interior was dark; only a single candle was guttering in its own wax, almost dead.

  Igraine sat on a mat of thick carpet, his legs crossed, his hands lying on his knees. He didn’t look up as Lyrralt entered, but said, “So you’ve come at last to kill me.”

  Lyrralt was so surprised, his hand halted in the act of drawing his dagger from inside his robe. “Kill you, Lord?”

  Igraine slowly raised his head.

  Lyrralt gaped when he saw that Igraine’s silver eyes had gone gray.

  “Isn’t that why you’ve come? Isn’t this what you’ve planned for, watched for, for weeks?”

  Lyrralt shrugged and drew the dagger. So, Igraine knew. Soon he would be dead, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. And if he raised the alarm, it would be over before anyone could come. “Yes. That’s why I’ve come.”

  “You won’t stop what is happening, you know. What I’ve begun is larger than me now. It’s larger than any single Ogre.”

  Despite the tiredness, the defeat in Igraine’s voice, Lyrralt felt the pull of persuasion. The runes squirmed, reminding him of his duty. A calmness came over him. “I don’t care about what you’ve begun. Only you.”

  Igraine nodded. He hadn’t made any move to defend himself. Lyrralt shifted the dagger to his left hand and wiped his sweaty palm on his tunic. The runes seemed to wriggle, wormlike, faster and faster. He struggled to maintain the objective in his mind.

  “You know you don’t want to do it, though, don’t you?” Igraine asked. “You haven’t for some time now. If you had wanted to, you would have done it long ago.”

  Lyrralt paused in the act of raising the dagger. It didn’t matter what Igraine thought. He would soon be dead. “There was never an opportunity. You’re always surrounded by admirers, by acolytes.”

  “There have been plenty of opportunities. You’ve ignored every one of them until tonight.”

  Until tonight. Lyrralt lifted the dagger over Igraine, meaning to plunge it downward into his skull. On his arm, the runes felt as if they had caught fire, as if they had grown roots, which were biting deep into his flesh, reaching into the marrow of his bones.

  Lyrralt groaned in pain, reared back, and brought the dagger down with all his might! It thudded dully, vibrating as it lodged in the wooden post above Igraine’s head.

  Pain ripped through his shoulder. He screamed and fell, writhing, spine contorted, onto the mat at Igraine’s feet.

  Igraine touched his back, his hip, his aching shoulder, and the pain eased. He heard the sound of running feet, the flaps to the tent being shoved open, but he couldn’t move.

  “Lord?” Tenaj’s voice sounded from the entrance. “We heard a scream.”

  “It’s all right.” Igraine smiled down at Lyrralt. “It was just a muscle spasm.”

  Lyrralt sat up slowly and saw several faces peering worriedly through the open flap.

  Igraine waved them away. All but Tenaj and Bakrell disappeared.

  Those two entered. Bakrell stared at the dagger embedded in the post. He considered the weapon, Igraine, then Lyrralt, then wordlessly he pulled it free and offered it to Igraine.

  Igraine took it and passed it back to Lyrralt.

  Before Bakrell could comment, Tenaj said, “I want to go after Khallayne and Jelindra.”

  “And I have told her it is I who should go.” Bakrell squatted on the mat beside Lyrralt, facing Igraine. “My sister is partly to blame.”

  “And it is my friends they’ve taken.”

  “They are just as much my friends, Tenaj, though I have not shown them the honor friends deserve,” Bakrell said.

  “Why you instead of me?”

  “Because we’ll need you to lead the warriors in Jyrbian’s place,” Lyrralt told her softly when his wits had returned. “If the council knows where we are, we will need you more than ever. Bakrell should be the one to go.” It was only after he’d spoken that he realized what he’d said. He looked to Igraine for permission or censure, but Igraine did as he’d always done when, before, Jyrbian had made some decision of which he approved. He merely smiled.

  Bakrell was nodding agreement, too.

  “I wouldn’t be too pleased,” Lyrralt said, rubbing his shoulder as the runes started to dance again. “You’re probably riding to certain death, whether you catch Jyrbian or not.”

  “No. I’ll be careful. Maybe we can figure out some way to get a message to the humans who’re guarding us. And if I don’t catch them before they get to Takar, I can lose myself in the city, where I’ll be perfectly safe.”

  * * * * *

  Khallayne woke, groggy. Her neck and the back of her head ached. Her belly hurt, and someone was shaking her so hard, she thought she was going to be sick.

  She opened her eyes, and the ground rushed past her eyes with sickening speed. Suddenly, she remembered.

  Jyrbian had grabbed her and thrown her across his horse. Then darkness had descended, and she remembered nothing. Until now.

  She struggled to hold her head up, to steady it against the horse’s bouncing. She pounded on his leg with her fist and was rewarded with laughter from above.

  The horse slowed and broke into a trot, which almost tore her head from her shoulders, then slowed some more and stopped. Jyrbian dragged her up and over the horse until she was on her back, cradled in his strong arms.

  “So you’re awake?” he asked.

  “Where are we going?” Khallayne tried to ask, but her mouth felt as though it were filled with puffballs.

  Jyrbian motioned for Kaede. He took the reins of Khallayne’s stallion.

  “We’re riding, my love, into the night.” He pushed one of her legs over the saddle of her horse, then lifted her up onto the horse’s back. “And remember, if you get any ideas about not keeping up with us, or of getting lost, Jelindra will be staying with us, even if you do not.”

  He grinned cruelly at her, then kicked his horse into a run. They stopped sometime in the wee hours of the morning, and Kaede tied her wrists and ankles together as she fell asleep, too exhausted, too sick with pain and heartache to resist.

  The sun was up, shining in her eyes, when she regained consciousness. She rolled over and buried her face in the crook of her elbow, trying to shut out the sunlight. Darkness descended, and she realized she overheard Kaede talking to Jyrbian.

  “Why, Jyrbian?” Kaede was demanding. “Why do we need them? They’re just slowing us down.”

  “It’s my decision, that’s why,” Jyrbian’s voice answered.

  Khallayne was very alert.

  “You asked me to come with you! You want me to help you watch the girl. I think you owe me an explanation!”

  “I didn’t ask you to come,” Jyrbian responded, still sounding bored. “And you’re free to leave anytime you choose.”

  Kaede’s voice softened, lost its stridency. “I didn’t mean it that way. You know I want to be with you. But, I see why they have to come along with us. I don’t want—” Her voice died away.

  “Well, I do want them with us.”

  “Buy why?”

  “Very well, I’ll tell you. If it will satisfy you and stop you from complaining.”

  Khallayne heard crunching sounds, footsteps on dry grass.

&nbs
p; When Jyrbian spoke next, his voice was right above her. “The girl I care nothing for, except to make this one behave. But this one …” The toe of his boot grazed her hip. “This one is going to teach me everything she knows about magic.”

  He slipped his foot under her and shoved hard, turning her over. “Do you hear me, Khallayne? You’re going to make me the most powerful Ogre in all of Takar.”

  He smiled and walked out of her range of vision.

  Khallayne sat up slowly, shielding her eyes from the sun. “And what if I refuse?”

  He was standing beside Jelindra, who was still asleep, wrapped in a blanket. He touched the girl’s head gently with the toe of his boot and looked back at Khallayne. “I don’t think you will.”

  * * * * *

  Lyrralt sat on a broken wall and stared around him. After several days of hard riding, they were camped in the ruins of a human city in a small range of low hills. They must be nearing the edge of the plains, he supposed, since the flatness was beginning to be broken by rolling land and small hills.

  Bakrell was several days gone. He had ridden back the way they had come with a jaunty wave, leaving Lyrralt with the melancholy feeling that he would never see him again.

  What was left of the city around him was sad. The crude, half-standing stone walls gave the impression that they had never stood straight and strong as intended. Perhaps they had been broken and leaning, even when new.

  Lyrralt walked through the fallen rock, the piles of dust and rubble and wondered who had lived in the place, and why. There was something about it that reminded him of Bloten. Humans attempting to build an Ogre city? It made no sense. Humans were savages who eked their lives out of the plains. They barely had civilization. Or had they built their own cities and roads, before the Ogres had discovered their usefulness as animals of burden, of hard work?

  He was standing on the highest place in the ruin, a small portion of a wall that ran along a ridge, when the rain began.

  At first, the downpour was so heavy that it seemed like stars falling from the sky! Burning stars! Stars trailing fiery tails.

  The first one hit, not far out on the plains, as he’d thought it would, but nearby, just feet from the sheer drop of the ledge. It was a rain of fire! Pebbles and dirt and rainbow flame exploded upward!

  He looked up into the sky and saw more, thousands more fiery spots of light, trailing downward. He shouted a wordless warning to those several feet below him, poking through the ruins. As he pointed, more balls of light hit, sending up gouts of flame.

  One of the older cousins of Igraine’s clan was standing nearby. A spout of fire curled up and slapped him down. He said, “It’s cold,” in an unsurprised voice. Then his flesh began to melt, like wax dripping from a candle, and the sound that came from him was an ululation of pain and despair.

  As the Ogre fell, a dark, fused mass of flesh and bone, the real horror began. Great balls of the light, feet apart, inches apart, came down! Coldfire it was, sent from the heavens by the gods. Wherever it touched, it burned without flame, burned cold, but with a heat more intense than anything Lyrralt had ever experienced.

  Lyrralt leapt down from the wall, landed on the side of his foot, and rolled on the hard ground. He came to his feet running. Where was Igraine? He had to find Igraine.

  Another Ogre was hit by the coldfire, and another: Haleyn, who made such beautiful music with his flute, and Issil, who supervised the carrying of live coals from camp to camp, always making sure the Ogres had continued warmth.

  One of the children of Igraine’s clan, the noisy one, fell. His sister screamed and grabbed him as the fiery ball crashed onto his back, and she, too, was consumed. And Celise, Jelindra’s mother, also died shrieking.

  He saw Tenaj run, dodging the fiery explosions, dragging two of the children away before they could touch the melted body of their father and become part of his boiling flesh.

  He stopped, looked about wildly, and ran again. As he ran, Ogres died all around him. But none of the deadly fire came near enough to touch him. He looked up at the sky. This was no attack of humans or Ogres! No attack even of any kind of magic he recognized.

  Reaching inside his tunic, Lyrralt grabbed the medallion that hung around his neck and yanked it so hard that the chain cut into his skin and broke. He clasped it between his palms and shouted—sang!—screamed!—a prayer to the heavens. “Mighty Hiddukel, Great Goddess Takhisis, why have you spared me? So that I might observe death all around me? Have mercy on your children! Show forgiveness and spare us—!”

  The silver disc that bore the etched symbol of his god heated up so that he flung it away without thinking. The disc sailed up as he gasped, realizing what he had done.

  He grabbed at it. But it exploded. Many-hued brightness erupted, searing his eyes and etching a line like a jagged glyph down his face from eyebrow to chin. He felt the runes on his arms writhe and burn even hotter than the metal.

  He screamed and fell back, away from the unbearable pain, trying to escape the agony of his burning flesh. He tore the sleeve from his robe, scraped at his arms, his face.

  The pain ended as suddenly as it had begun. The last thing he saw, before darkness overcame him, was the skin of his left arm, unmarked and dark indigo, as unblemished as the day he’d first appeared before his first clerical master.

  A peacefulness came over him, covered him like a blanket, like nothing he’d ever known. This is what it is to die, he thought. This quiet, this dark …

  Tenaj and Igraine found him. The fiery rain of stars had ended. The fire of the gods had left no wounded, only melted lumps of flesh, no longer recognizable as Ogres.

  Lyrralt was sitting, his back against a broken wall of stone, legs crossed comfortably, his hands clasping his unmarked forearms.

  His face, his beautiful, finely chiseled face, bore a craggy scar that began at his hairline, dipped to his heavy eyebrows, zagged across his high cheekbone, back across his cheek, and disappeared underneath his chin. It looked like a thunderbolt, molded of silver as bright as the color of his eyes. Except that his eyes were no longer bright silver. They were a shining, opalescent white with no sign of any pupils at all.

  “Lyrralt?” Tenaj kneeled beside him, afraid almost to breathe his name, for fear that he would start to scream. Or that she would.

  “Lyrralt, are you …” What she meant to ask seemed a stupid thing to inquire, with his face disfigured and his eyes so strange.

  For a moment, Lyrralt continued to stare, then he stirred, slowly straightening. He reached out, obviously for her hand, but not in the right place.

  Igraine took his hand tightly. Tenaj reached across and placed her palm on their joined hands.

  Lyrralt fumbled for the linked hands and felt first her fingers, then Igraine’s beneath them. He said softly, “I can’t see you.” And he smiled.

  The cool, crisp mountain air felt like home after the alien heat of the plains. Tree branches hung low overhead. The damp, welcoming scent of decay permeated the mulch underfoot.

  Jyrbian rode in silence, as he had for days, drawing the scent of rot, the humidity, into his lungs. His despair rode with him.

  Khallayne was sullen and withdrawn. Kaede was, for the moment, wise enough to remain silent, for Jyrbian’s thoughts were not kind.

  The bloodstone seemed warm in his pocket, as if he could feel it against his hip through the layers of cloth. He could still envision it, lying against the smoothness of her throat, the polished black surface of rock, the red veins pulsing through it, pulsing, though blood no longer pulsed in her veins.

  Did her human lover know that she was dead? His mouth curled. His fingers clenched into fists; the leather of his reins cut into his palm. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to pound his fists on something until his hands were numb, until his fingertips could not remember the sweet sensation of smooth flesh beneath them.

  His horse nickered softly and danced sideways, almost unseating him. He pulled at the reins and tightened his
grip on the animal.

  “Jyrbian.”

  He glanced back at Kaede irritably, still tugging as his horse pranced. He saw that her horse, too, was misbehaving, throwing its head up and down.

  Immediately alert, Jyrbian signaled for silence. Dismounting, he soothed his mount with gentle hands, then checked his sword, easing it a hand’s length in and out of the scabbard twice, just to make sure it was ready to do his bidding. Holding firmly to the reins, keeping the horse’s head down, he eased along the trail. With a stealth that spoke of experience, Kaede slid to the ground and followed, leading Jelindra.

  Khallayne slid to the ground, too. They knew, as long as Kaede held Jelindra in her thrall, that she would follow them.

  The woods had become silent. Gone was the chitter of birds and the rustle of small animals in the undergrowth. The cool, leaf-shaped shadows had become menacing.

  Beside the trail, Kaede discovered what was making the horses so restive. Dumped carelessly between the roots of a huge, old tree were what was left of two Ogre guards, a male and a female, wearing uniforms that had probably once been the immaculate white-and-red of the Dalle Clan. The cloth was so stained with blood and dirt, coated with dead leaves and twigs, that it was difficult to know for sure. It seemed as if they had been hacked and battered to death, the bodies dragged off the trail and left for the animals.

  “No attempt to hide the bodies,” Jyrbian whispered, sliding close to Kaede so that his lips barely made a sound. “Whoever did this didn’t care who discovered the evidence.”

  “Humans!” The word was a hiss, a warning, a curse. Kaede turned away, one hand on her sword hilt, one on her stomach as if she were sick.

  Jyrbian knew, however, that she actually clutched the dagger she wore tucked in her belt, hidden beneath the folds of her tunic. He backed carefully away from the bodies and back onto the hard ground of the trail, careful to make as little noise as possible among the leaves and dead twigs.