The Irda

by Linda P. Baker

  Behind him, Kaede climbed slowly to her feet, almost unable to walk. Khallayne couldn’t understand her, but her lips were moving as she stumbled toward Jyrbian.

  He turned his attack on her. Something leapt toward Kaede. She took the blow full-force in the chest, but kept moving, walking toward him, leaning forward as though into a blizzard-strength wind.

  Too late, he realized what she was doing. He tried to back away, but Kaede reached out for him. She stepped into the fire of Khallayne’s spell, bringing with her whatever spell it was she’d been casting, and turning the power of his own attack back on him.

  “Go!” she whispered to Khallayne. “Go!”

  Khallayne ran as things in the room erupted into flame, as the rocks and crystals on the window ledge began to explode.

  In the doorway, she paused to look back, seeing only Jyrbian’s face, the face she’d once thought the most beautiful in all of Takar, twisted with hate.

  She wheeled and ran down the corridors, down the stairs, and out into night, into the cool air. But she could still hear Jyrbian’s voice, twisted, demented, inside her head, screaming.

  Run! Run! There is no place on all of Krynn where the Ogres will not find you, where the gods will not find you!

  * * * * *

  Her horse had been left at the coliseum, so she took Jyrbian’s big stallion. He stood in his stall, still saddled.

  Khallayne galloped down into Takar, back into the flames, automatically heading for the west gate. To get back to the plains, she’d have to take a different route than before, toward Bloten. The passes northward would already be snowed in.

  The streets were almost empty. Most of the houses and buildings showed damage, but the worst of the fires still burned brightly to the east, nearer the coliseum.

  No one bothered her. No guards challenged her as she galloped through the gates and out onto the wide road leading out of Takar.

  She almost didn’t hear her name being called out over the pounding of the horse’s hooves. She looked back and saw a small figure in rough clothing running down the shoulder of the road, waving her arms, cloak streaming out behind.

  Jelindra! She pulled hard on the reins, bringing the horse to a stop. She was sure Jelindra would be gone by now! She slid to the ground. Jelindra almost knocked her off her feet as she threw her arms around her.

  “Oh, Khallayne, I though you’d never come!”

  Khallayne hugged her just as tightly. “I thought I wouldn’t either. I can’t believe you’re still here.”

  Jelindra appeared healthy, though her face was dirty and her hair full of twigs. “I told you I’d wait,” she said. “I hid in the woods, and I watched the road every day. Then I saw the fires, and I thought you weren’t going to come!” She threw her arms around Khallayne again.

  Khallayne hugged her back. “Well, I’m here now. Let’s go home.”

  Nodding, Jelindra stepped back, wiping away tears and streaking dirt across her cheeks. “How will we find them?”

  Khallayne shrugged. “I don’t know. But we’ll manage somehow.”

  * * * * *

  The two stood on the deck of the huge ship and leaned against the rail.

  Beneath Khallayne’s feet, the ancient timbers of the deck creaked. Above her head, the canvas sails snapped and billowed in the wind. And all sounds were underlined with the soothing motion of the ship slicing through the ocean, smooth, relaxing, as lulling as going back to the womb.

  Khallayne leaned far out, feeling the sting of salt spray on her cheeks and forehead, the splintery oak beneath her fingers as she gripped the rail. Would the island be there? Would their people be safe? In Schall they’d lost the last trace of them, but a sailor had told an incredible story of a group of people called the Irda, beautiful people who’d gone away to live on an island—an island that had called to them.

  Khallayne, too, heard the song on the wind. It was a sound more beautiful than any Ogre voice, high and pure like crystal chimes, more beautiful than the voice in the sphere.

  The bright, silvery light of Solinari sparkled on the featureless water, as far as they could see. But there was no island yet. No finger of land to mar the perfect beauty of the moonlight on the black-silk water.

  Bare feet gripping the wooden deck, Jelindra ran to the other side of the boat and hung over the rail, but that way, too, was water, dappled with moonlight. Jelindra ran back to Khallayne.

  Water and moonlight seemed unbroken to the horizon. Jelindra slumped against the rail where moments before she’d eagerly leaned across. “What do we do now?” she asked. “If there isn’t an island …”

  “It has to be there!” Khallayne thumped the railing with her fists. Her heart wouldn’t contemplate otherwise. “I can hear it.”

  Jelindra cocked her head. “Yes,” she agreed. “I can hear it. Let’s go!”

  Before Khallayne could stop her, she’d slipped down the rope ladder to the little boat they’d prepared earlier in the evening and started to untie the rope mooring it to the ship.

  Khallayne climbed down into the boat. “Are you sure? You know, if you’re wrong, we’ll die!”

  “We’re not wrong,” said Jelindra firmly.

  The little boat slowed and pivoted as the ocean took it, slipping away from the ship with the current. They had committed themselves. Noisily, Jelindra dipped an oar into the water. The boat responded, and she stroked again.

  The boat shot forward. Khallayne dug into the water again and again, matching her strokes to Jelindra’s, aiming the craft toward where she thought, hoped, believed, the island should be.

  She rowed until her arms ached, until her shoulders burned with fire, until the pain almost drowned out the song of the land, until she couldn’t move the wooden oar anymore and it hung over the edge of the boat.

  Then, suddenly, as if a fog had lifted, the island was before them. A dark silhouette loomed up to block out the gorgeous sky.

  Laughing, crying, Jelindra reached back to hug Khallayne, then began to row faster.

  The pain forgotten, Khallayne pulled with her oar, sliding it so deeply into the water that she was dipping her fingers, until she felt the boat scrape bottom.

  Then she slid into the cold water and pulled the boat by a rope. It seemed to take forever. Jelindra joined her, adding her insubstantial weight to the rope.

  The boat scraped sand, and they left it, running the rest of the way, until warm, dry sand was beneath their feet.

  Khallayne dropped to her knees, dug her fingers into the gritty sand. She pressed it to her face and felt the grains stick to the furrows that tears had left on her cheeks.

  “Home, Jelindra! We’re home!” She threw handfuls of sand into the air, then covered her eyes when the ocean breeze blew it back in her face.

  “Khallayne …”

  The fear in Jelindra’s voice ended Khallayne’s celebration. She saw that someone was coming toward them.

  Blinking against the sand that coated her lashes, she stood and took a tentative step toward the figure, partially hidden in shadows at the edge of the trees. “Who’s there? I’m Khallayne. I’ve come to find Igraine …”

  Lyrralt! It had to be Lyrralt. She knew the way he moved, the way he stepped, his scent on the salt breeze.

  The figure moved forward cautiously, too small, too slight, to be an Ogre. “Khallayne?” The light caught the soft hair, the canted eyes of an elf.

  Khallayne froze.

  Jelindra’s cry shattered the stillness of the night.

  Khallayne stepped in front of the girl, reaching back to protect her, to comfort her, and the figure said her name again, no longer in question, but in joyous greeting.

  It dawned on her. An elf had said her name! A male, tall and slender, with the features of an elf—only with Lyrralt’s voice.

  Before their eyes, he transformed. It was a shape-shifting, like the appearance of the island, magical, miraculous. The lithe elf became Lyrralt, tall and strong and broad of shoulder, sapphire skin
gleaming in the light of Solinari, silver hair as bright as the moon. And sightless now, forever.

  “Forgive me,” Lyrralt said, holding out his arms to them. “Forgive me, but I had to be sure.”

  Khallayne ran to him, threw her arms around him. A moment later, Jelindra threw herself bodily against them, joining their circle.

  He shivered, held them closer.

  “How did you do it?” she asked. “For a minute, I thought you were an elf!”

  Laughing, he released them. “The gods have touched us, Khallayne, blessed us with a gift beyond believing, beyond—beyond—”

  “Stop.” She touched her fingers to his mouth to stop his excited, confusing words, felt the warmth of his breath under her fingers, and something else. The scar. She turned him in the moonlight and saw the jagged mark running the length of his face. “Start slowly. Tell us everything.”

  In response, he ran his fingers across her face, as if reassuring himself about the Ogres who stood beside him. He brushed sand from Jelindra’s hair. In a serene tone, he explained, “Last month, at the High Sanction of Solinari, the gods touched us. In the night, they touched us with peace, with calm. And when we woke, we could change.”

  “Change?”

  “Shapechange, as you saw me a moment before. I can assume the shape of another being. We all can. Do you realize what that means?” His voice rose excitedly. “It means that we never have to be afraid again. We never have to run again. We will always have the perfect disguise. Even if the island is discovered, no one will ever know who we are!”

  “The island! Why couldn’t we see the island?” Jelindra demanded.

  He paused, smiling shyly. “It’s my spell, a spell of hiding, but we all work to maintain it.”

  Khallayne could hardly dare to believe it. There was simply too much information, too fast. Gifts from the gods. Everyone’s magical ability, powerful enough to hide an island? And Lyrralt, blind, scarred and using magic?

  “Khallayne?” He caught her hand.

  “It’s so much to take in,” she whispered. “So much.”

  The sadness in her voice, in her face, registered. “What is it? Tell me,” Lyrralt asked.

  She caught his hands in hers. “There’s so much, I hardly know where to begin …”

  “Jyrbian?”

  “Dead, I think,” she whispered, hoping it was true. She hoped there was no way he could have survived Kaede’s fire, for she never wanted to think of Jyrbian alive as she had last seen him. “Bakrell, too. And Kaede.”

  “And Takar burned,” Jelindra piped in.

  Khallayne nodded. “We looked back, just before we left the west road. It was like a smoking cinder. The whole city …”

  “The others will want to hear.”

  The Keeper of the History of the Irda stood on the hillside, surrounded by her people, assisted by friends and love ones, though she was as young and strong as the saplings that grew nearby. She had seen the world of her childhood pass on, had seen the sacred History of her people destroyed, but still she smiled, because of the Gift that she would give to all her people.

  She held up the book, the Gift of the gods, and in a voice as pure and clear, as bright and beautiful as sunshine, spoke the beginning of the words written within, the words that wove the History of the World, of the Ogres, firstborn of the gods.

  This I have salvaged out of the destruction. The music is gone forever, as is the beauty of the Ogres, but the words are preserved for all to read.

  We are the Irda, firstborn of the gods.

  The High God looked down upon the chaos and bid the god Reorx to forge the universe with his mighty hammer. From the forge of the gods, our world was wrought and the gods played here, as children gambol in a field.

  In the sculpting of the world, sparks flew from the anvil and settled in the skies, danced in the heavens. The sparks were spirits with voices like starshine. They shone as the gods themselves, for they were pieces of the gods themselves.

  The gods saw the spirits and wanted them for themselves, and they battled over them, striking mighty blows upon the world. The High God looked down upon the destruction and was angry with his children. In the heat of his anger, he decreed that each of the triumvirate of the gods, Evil, Neutral and Good, could gift the spirits with one legacy, and afterward, must allow the spirits to go free.

  The gods of Light gave the spirits bodies, that they might master their world. The Dark gods offered weakness and want, that the spirits might learn greed and corruption. The gods of Gray, the Shadow gods, gave the spirits free will, that they might shape their own lives.

  And so, the races were born.

  From the gods of Evil came the Ogres, firstborn of the world. Gifted with immortality and untold beauty, the Ogres chose the lofty mountains as their home.

  From the gods of Goodness and Light came the elves, graceful and regal and good, who sought the enchanted forests and hid themselves away to live in harmony with the land.

  Those of the Middle, the Gray gods, brought forth the humans. They were short lived and brutish, but they had the capacity to both destroy and love. To them were left the grassy plains.

  The Ogres set themselves above to rule the other children of the world, but the elves were too placid, too good to make suitable slaves. The Ogres turned to the humans to build their castles and their cities and their roads. On the bones of humans, the Ogres built a civilization.

  Like stars in the sky, the watchers of the darkness were the mighty Ogres, building a nation of order and discipline. But their hungers consumed them, their greed and desire made them weak and ugly, and their appetites devoured them.

  The humans rebelled against their cruelty and vengeance, and the Ogres fell from the grace of the gods.

  Igraine, governor of a mighty province, learned from the humans the most precious gift of all. He learned of choice, of choosing between right and wrong. He learned from the humans the gift the gods had given, the ability to destroy and to love and the potential to choose between.

  He gathered about him the Irda, the Children of the Stars, his friends and family, those who believed his vision, and they fled the mountains. Through hardships they traveled, finding a new home, Anaiatha, among the Dragon Isles.

  The Ogres are no more. They will disappear back into the chaos from which the world was made.

  But the Irda will continue, in goodness and strength, firstborn of the gods, chosen of the gods.

  And this History, the Irdanaith, the Book of the Stars, will continue. I write it for all the Irda to see and study, that we may never make the mistakes of our ancestors, that the History will never be lost.

  It was hot that morning, damnably hot.

  Far too hot for late spring on Ansalon. Almost as hot as midsummer. The two knights, seated in the boat’s stern, were sweaty and miserable in their heavy steel armor; they looked with envy at the nearly naked men plying the boat’s oars. When the boat neared shore, the knights were first out, jumping into the shallow water, laving the water onto their reddening faces and sunburned necks. But the water was not particularly refreshing.

  “Like wading in hot soup,” one of the knights grumbled, splashing ashore. Even as he spoke, he scrutinized the shoreline carefully, eyeing bush and tree and dune for signs of life.

  “More like blood,” said his comrade. “Think of it as wading in the blood of our enemies, the enemies of our Queen. Do you see anything?”

  “No,” the other replied. He waved his hand, then, without looking back, heard the sound of men leaping into the water, their harsh laughter and conversation in their uncouth, guttural language.

  One of the knights turned around. “Bring that boat to shore,” he said, unnecessarily, for the men had already picked up the heavy boat and were running with it through the shallow water. Grinning, they dumped the boat on the sand beach and looked to the knight for further orders.

  He mopped his forehead, marveled at their strength, and—not for the first time—thanke
d Queen Takhisis that these barbarians were on their side. The brutes, they were known as. Not the true name of their race. The name, their name for themselves, was unpronounceable, and so the knights who led the barbarians had begun calling them by the shortened version: brute.

  The name suited the barbarians well. They came from the east, from a continent that few people on Ansalon knew existed. Every one of the men stood well over six feet; some were as tall as seven. Their bodies were as bulky and muscular as humans, but their movements were as swift and graceful as elves. Their ears were pointed like those of the elves, but their faces were heavily bearded like humans or dwarves. They were as strong as dwarves and loved battle as well as dwarves did. They fought fiercely, were loyal to those who commanded them, and, outside of a few grotesque customs such as cutting off various parts of the body of a dead enemy to keep as trophies, the brutes were ideal foot soldiers.

  “Let the captain know we’ve arrived safely and that we’ve encountered no resistance,” said the knight to his comrade. “We’ll leave a couple of men here with the boat and move inland.”

  The other knight nodded. Taking a red silk pennant from his belt, he unfurled it, held it above his head, and waved it slowly three times. An answering flutter of red came from the enormous black, dragon-prowed ship anchored some distance away. This was a scouting mission, not an invasion. Orders had been quite clear on that point.

  The knights sent out their patrols, dispatching some to range up and down the beach, sending others farther inland. This done, the two knights moved thankfully to the meager shadow cast by a squat and misshapen tree. Two of the brutes stood guard. The knights remained wary and watchful, even as they rested. Seating themselves, they drank sparingly of the fresh water they’d brought with them. One of them grimaced.

  “The damn stuff’s hot.”

  “You left the waterskin sitting in the sun. Of course it’s hot.”

  “Where the devil was I supposed to put it? There was no shade on that cursed boat. I don’t think there’s any shade left in the whole blasted world. I don’t like this place at all. I get a queer feeling about this island, like it’s magicked or something.”