The Irda: Children Of The Stars

CHAPTER ELEVEN

They rode out onto the ledge.

The fear they all felt was like the gray mist, thick enough to see, to taste. Lyrralt forced himself to concentrate on Igraine’s broad back, to watch for an opportunity.

The ledge on which they rode was so narrow that they loosened grit and pebbles from the cliff face with each step of their horses.

No going back.

Lyrralt tore his gaze from Igraine and settled on the immense gulf of open air between him and the ground below.

No going back. The words beat a refrain in his mind.

The roar of the river, the rushing of the waterfall, the pounding of his own heart, made a song to Hid-dukel. In tempo to it, he whispered a chant aimed at Igraine and the horse he rode. He urged his horse forward, as close to Igraine’s as he dared.

Igraine’s horse shied, indication that Lyrralt’s chant was working. It whipped its glossy mane back and forth, then stopped, lowering its rump preparatory to rearing. Igraine stiffened, fought against the fear that enveloped him. Somehow, he kept his head, restrained the horse.

Lyrralt chanced releasing his reins and touched his shoulder, drawing on the magic of the runes. He could feel the power flowing through him, out of him, streaming toward the Ogre and beast ahead.

A scream! Lyrralt started, then froze, every muscle in his body seizing up. The magic of the runes died, cut off abruptly.

“Don’t stop! Keep moving!” The words echoed, came from somewhere far away, perhaps originating from ahead, perhaps from behind. Perhaps it was Jyrbian’s voice. Perhaps his own.

More screams broke through, more than one voice. There was a crack, like a whip striking the cliff face, and pebbles rained down on his back. More screams were followed by a horrible sound of a rider and horse falling, somewhere behind him. The screaming died away and ended abruptly with the sickening, bone-cracking thud of bodies slamming into rock.

Lyrralt’s horse, responding to the terror of the other animal, tried to bolt. Its hooves scrabbled for purchase on the path. The rider behind him cried out.

Lyrralt grabbed for the cliff face with one hand, yanked at the reins with the other, tightened his grip on his mount, and prayed for the animal to regain its footing.

The rider behind him cried out again as Lyrralt’s horse stumbled backward.

Lyrralt nails tore as he grabbed for an outcropping of rock, a crevice, anything. He kicked out. His fingers found only slick stone. Then he was free, hanging by his fingertips in the air.

His body slammed back into the wall. As breath whooshed out of his lungs, his grip on the sharp rock broke, and he knew momentum was going to carry him over the cliff.

Something-someone-caught him. Strong hands encircled his wrist and yanked him forward. He danced for firm footing, found it, and looked up into Igraine’s eyes. His face taut, Igraine held his wrist firmly, held his arm stretched at a painful angle across the backside of his horse, as he tried to control the animal, tried to keep his own precarious balance.

“Don’t let go!” Lyrralt gasped.

Igraine gave a single shake of his head and pulled harder, righting himself and steadying the horse with a mighty effort.

Muscles stretched to the breaking point, Lyrralt lowered himself until his feet found the path. He would have fainted but for the pain coursing through his body, but for the steely gray eyes locked with his, holding both of them upright almost by sheer will.

“Slowly…” Igraine said tensely, looking back down the trail. “Slowly. Climb up behind me. Now! Climb up!” Igraine pulled on his wounded arm.

Lyrralt gasped as pain shot through his joints.

Behind him, someone screamed. Something slapped against the cliff above him. Pebbles rained down on his back. It was starting all over again!

More screams, more pebbles. A fist-sized rock struck his shoulder. Something hit Igraine, and he let go.

Lyrralt fell back and flattened himself against the granite cliff. Tentacles, ghastly yellow and banded with brown, fleshy rings, were reaching up from beneath the ledge, slithering along the path, searching, tapping the space between riders. When they didn’t find anything, first one tentacle, then another, reared back and hammered the wall, sending a shower of pebbles and rocks exploding outward.

As the tentacles returned to their searching, Lyrralt realized he could hear a slavering, gurgling hiss. He reached for his arm, closing his fingers over the runes for strength. He closed his eyes and whispered to Hiddukel, asking for a shield, something to disguise his body from the slithering arms.

A scream louder and more terrible than any before broke his concentration. His eyes snapped open. The tentacles found a victim! As Lyrralt watched, the arms plucked a rider and horse from the ledge and dragged them over and down, out of sight.

The sounds that followed were indescribable. Lyrralt’s stomach lurched and would not be denied. Clinging to the cliff, he bent at the knees and vomited over the side.

“We must move. Quickly.” Igraine had turned around on his horse, his hand extended.

He seemed to be very far away. The distance from Lyrralt to the back of the horse seemed insurmountable. Lyrralt shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Can you walk?”

Lyrralt nodded. He stepped, clutched the wall tighter, and inched forward. His feet were numb. One step. Another. Somehow his legs supported him. His arm, though aching, held on to the cliff.

After a moment, Igraine gently urged his horse onward.

Lyrralt dared to look back at the Ogre on the path behind him. They nodded at each other as Lyrralt forced himself to take another step, then another, another.

The rain had started again, drops so huge that he could feel them roll down his neck. They soaked the ledge. Still he forced his legs to carry him on, concentrating on just one step at a time.

It seemed that days passed before the ledge began to widen and he stepped off the shelf. He rushed forward, past Jyrbian, past Igraine, past Khallayne’s outstretched hand, past the riders who had stopped ahead of him. He didn’t stop until there was solid ground for twenty feet all around him, trees blocking the view down the mountainside. There he fell to his knees and retched helplessly.

When he finally looked up, it was Igraine who had dismounted and was coming to help him, Igraine’s hands that held his shoulders, supported his head. Then there were others, supporting his body, someone gently wiping his face with a soft cloth, another Ogre handing him wine to rinse his mouth.

Shamed to his core, he pushed everyone away, stood on his own, and found himself surrounded by concerned faces, Igraine, Everlyn, Khallayne, Tenaj, Everlyn’s Aunt Naej.

“I thought we were going to lose you,” Igraine said with a smile, evidence of how pleased he was that they had not.

“I was just ahead,” Khallayne said. “I saw your horse go over, and I could tell there was a problem, but I didn’t know what happened.”

“He saved Lord Igraine!” the Ogre who had been behind Lyrralt on the trail said.

“What!” The word was spoken by a chorus of voices, Lyrralt’s among them.

The runes on his arm roused, clamped down, burned. “I didn’t-!” Lyrralt protested. He looked at Igraine’s face, saw only a serene smile there, instead of irritation for the mistaken idea. “Igraine saved me!”

The mumbling died down. The crowd turned to Igraine, waiting for his response.

“I’d say we saved each other.” Igraine clasped Lyrralt on the shoulder.

There were words of approval from the crowd. Some reached out to touch Lyrralt, to pat him, to murmur wordless awe and approbation. He had saved and been saved by Igraine. It was almost as if they felt that by touching him, they touched Igraine and took for themselves a blessing, a charm of protection.

Lyrralt, ignoring the seething runes, was amazed by their warmth.

As the Ogres began to drift back to their horses, ready to move on, Lyrralt looked up.

Jyrbian sat on his horse, looking away toward the horizon, his face dispassionate, expressionless. Lyrralt realized that, of all the hands that had reached out to help him, his own brother’s had not been among them.

Jyrbian looked down at him finally and said, “Are you going to stand there all day?” He spurred his horse. The huge animal gave a lurch in Lyrralt’s direction, then wheeled and headed up the trail.

“Lyrralt will be one of the ones to go. It’s his horse we need to replace.” Jyrbian’s voice, speaking with the authority of one who knew he would not be disputed, echoed in Lyrralt’s thoughts as he and his entourage of fourteen rode into the human settlement.

Since the deaths on the trail, Jyrbian wasn’t likely to be disputed. His loudest detractor, Butyr, had been the first one dragged from the ledge to gruesome death. Lyrralt, who was exalted for having been saved by the grace of the gods and the intercession of Igraine, hadn’t even tried to argue, though he had not wanted to make the trip into Nerat for supplies and information.

The three weeks of travel since the deaths of those on the cliff trail had been long and tedious. Lyrralt had watched, planned, waited for another chance to do his god’s bidding, but the opportunity eluded him. Now Igraine was always encircled by a group extolling his brave actions.

Lyrralt himself was sought out, admired. Perhaps, he reflected ruefully, that was why Jyrbian had insisted he lead the group into Nerat. Perhaps Jyrbian didn’t want anyone else becoming popular and powerful.

Obviously relishing his leadership of the refugees, Jyrbian was trying to pattern his mannerisms after Igraine.

Lyrralt had watched his brother, day after day, pulling a mask over his natural cynicism, forcing out calm, gentle words where harsh ones would have been more comfortable on his lips, striving to show a face that would prove worthy of Igraine’s approbation… and Everlyn’s love.

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 Jyr-bian 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 riders 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.