The Irda: Children Of The Stars

CHAPTER TWELVE

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-”

Igraine hushed her with a glance. “We must find our own place,” he said, softly, then he repeated it in a louder voice for those at the back of the crowd. “And we must build it ourselves. Of our own sweat, not on the misery of others.”

‘“You mean, no slaves?” Lyrralt stared at Igraine in disbelief. The preaching of kindness and generosity in order to increase production from slaves had seemed bad enough. But this…!

“Lyrralt. It’s wrong to take a person from his home, from his family. It’s wrong to lock a man away, take away his freedom.” Everlyn touched his arm, as compassionately as she’d touched the human.

Jyrbian’s expression changed into one of jealousy and desire.

Lyrralt stared at her as he had stared at Igraine, as if he’d discovered someone, or something, he’d never seen before.

Igraine’s persuasive words filled the silence. “If we don’t change our ways, we’re doomed. Did you-all of you! — not see it in Takar?” He swept his arms wide.

There was murmured assent. “Did you not feel the hopelessness, the uselessness in your lives?” Jyrbian looked around at the crowd, saw the eager faces, the fevered eyes.

Igraine’s voice took on a compelling, urgent quality. “Can you not see what our kind will become if we continue on that misbegotten path? Have you ever felt more alive, living as we have these past few weeks, than in all of your miserable lives before?”

He had them now, their hearts and minds. The surge of joy, of faith from his followers, was almost tangible to behold. “We will leave in the morning,” he said. “We will find a place of our own, where we can be safe and happy.”

The crowd sighed. The Ogres, arms around their loved ones, began to drift away.

Everlyn went with her father, without a glance for Jyrbian, who would have followed her had Lyrralt not caught his arm and pulled him back.

“Is this heresy what he has been preaching all along, about not having slaves?” Lyrralt accused his brother, his glance taking in Khallayne, too.

Jyrbian shrugged, watching Everlyn’s disappearing back. “I’ve been too busy to sit around Igraine’s feet like a doting child.” He turned away.

The others also walked away, leaving only Khallayne and Bakrell to hear Lyrralt’s horrified voice. “This is madness! It was bad enough when he was talking about ‘choosing for yourself’ Now he wants you to live as humans live, digging in the dirt for food, building miserable clay huts with your own hands! Don’t you even care?”

“Do you? Care, I mean?” Bakrell peered closely into Lyrralt’s eyes as if to gauge the sincerity of his answer.

“Well, I don’t care,” Khallayne said, before Lyrralt could answer.

“You don’t care as long as you can practice your heretical magic!”

She met his angry gaze with an expression of equal determination. How long since she’d thought of her magic as a thing to be hidden away? As a wrongness? Any philosophy, heretical or not, was worth the peace and joy and sense of belonging of the past weeks. She shrugged, looking eerily like Jyr-bian a moment earlier. “You’re right. I don’t much care about his philosophy, one way or the other.”

She turned and walked away, leaving Lyrralt alone with a renewed conviction that he must act soon, whether a good opportunity presented itself or not. He had been looking for a safe moment to kill Igraine, one that would allow him to escape before his deed was discovered. Perhaps he would have to die in the act.

The runes hummed approvingly on his skin.

Fear. The face was there, and it was her own. But it wasn’t. The pale sea-green complexion, which had always drawn men to her like bees to honey, was mottled, as splotchy and knotted as tree bark. The black eyes were dull and stupid and humorless. But they were hers.

Screaming woke her. The sound so nearly matched the images of her nightmare that for long moments, Khallayne lay, twisted in her blanket, wrapped in screams that seemed to be her own, except…

The screaming went on and on, growing louder then ending abruptly in a silence more terrible than all the noise.

Thinking, at last, that the voice crying out in terror had been Jelindra’s and not her own, Khallayne leapt to her feet, stumbling as her blanket caught around her ankles.

Across the campfire Tenaj and Lyrralt each fought free of their blankets, too. Nearer the tent where Igraine slept, Jyrbian tossed off his blankets with a curse that woke more people. “‘What in the name of Sargonnas is happening now?”

Before anyone could answer, a new scream ripped through the air. Without hesitation, Jyrbian drew his sword and wheeled in the direction of the disturbance. But his sword would be of no use against the thing that had sprung into the air, conjured out of nothing. Or maybe there was more than one. Khallayne wasn’t sure.

As Jyrbian charged, slashing with his sword, the cloud that rose into the sky might have been one or twenty creatures. The faces of it changed rapidly. The monster was catlike, snakelike, fanged, black-mawed, a rock, mere mist. There were two, then one, then a mass of them, writhing like snakes streaming from their winter cave into the spring sun.

Jyrbian’s sword sank into flesh and mist. An appendage, flickering between long, slithery tentacle and claw-tipped, gnarled horror, reached out and threw Jyrbian backward twenty feet. He landed in a heap and was still.

Khallayne started toward him, and Tenaj grabbed her, hauling her back. “Forget him!”

The creature was smaller now, more solid, more deadly, but still moving slowly, dreamlike, almost loving in its gestures, as it grasped a female Ogre around the neck with its impossibly long fingers.

She tried to scream, but all that came out was gurgling, then abruptly no sound at all.

The cloud creature had gained in substance while the living being had become a flimsy husk, lifeless, no more substantial than paper.

There were new cries from about the camp as more Ogres awakened to find their view of the stars blotted out by the gruesome creature. Lords and ladies who had, weeks before, known a dagger only as a jeweled object to decorate a belt, took up their ceremonial swords and their crude pikes and prepared to fight.

Khallayne knew their courage would do them no good. Hadn’t Jyrbian just proved that? She could sense Tenaj collecting her power, could hear the murmured words of a spell forming on the other Ogre’s lips. Tenaj was still only learning things Khallayne had practiced as a child, still tentative about the power inside her. Khallayne realized she had to help.

The cloud creature turned on them. Its features were two, three, a dozen frightening faces, shifting until they were one, multiplying again, then melting into something ugly and monstrous and monolithic.

Khallayne tried to close her eyes, tried to concentrate and bring up her own power. She couldn’t. She couldn’t move a muscle. Even her eyelids refused to budge, to blot out the dreamlike movement, the painfully slow change of features, from one to many. Chameleonlike. Dreamlike.

Tenaj finished her spell, the words to a “banishing” spell hurled at the creature with all the neophyte force she could muster.

The thing wavered in the air, then reared and moved in their direction, all teeth and roaring maw.

It leapt at them, like a snake coiling and striking.

In the instant before it struck, Khallayne perceived its true nature. Fifty feet away, maybe seventy, the tenuous, smokelike tail that tethered the cloud creature to the earth was connected to a sleeping form. In the center of pandemonium, in the middle of the attack, Jelindra slept. The creature issued from her. And it was Jelindra’s voice that had wakened Khallayne…

Tenaj fell, struck by one of the writhing tentacles. She tried to regain her footing, but was dazed by the blow. She slipped. Her arms refused to support her weight as she tried to push herself back up.

The horrible, half-melted, half-monster face leered at Khallayne. The stench of filth and corruption filled her nostrils. The nearness of the thing freed her tightened muscles.

She flung up her hands, forming a shield to protect herself and Tenaj.

“Do something!” Lyrralt materialized at her side, mace clutched in his fingers. He helped Tenaj to her feet, his tall, strong body bracing her, then grabbed Khallayne’s shoulder. “Stop the thing!”

Khallayne tried to tear herself from his steely grasp. The tips of each of his fingers pressed bruises into her flesh. The thing lunged at them again and rebounded off her shield. It struck again and was repelled again. It reared up into the night and screamed, a roar of fury and frustration. It turned on the warriors surrounding it, on Ogres who hadn’t the power to shield themselves. It grabbed a young boy and lifted him, screaming and kicking, into the air.

Lyrralt shook Khallayne. “Khallayne! Do something!”

“Jelindra-” she managed to gasp. “Jelindra’s nightmare. Wake her.” She pointed to the sleeping form, barely visible through the crowd.

At last comprehending, Lyrralt went into action. He leapt campfires, dodged confused, shouting Ogres, made it across the camp, and grabbed the sleeping Jelindra.

His touch was rough and abrupt. In response, the creature writhing in the air above his head roared, spewing fire and noxious smoke. The flame licked at Lyrralt’s head and shoulders.

Khallayne surged forward, sure he was about to be immolated. Just as she reached him, the creature disappeared. She blinked, blinked again.

The monster was gone, leaving dark sky and twinkling stars overhead as if nothing had happened. Jelindra was sitting up, clutching her blanket in her fists. Lyrralt, standing above her, mace still clutched in hand, was unharmed.

Then Jelindra screamed, hideously, pitifully.

Khallayne and Lyrralt wheeled in the direction of the child’s stare, both expecting to find another monster.

What they saw instead was Celise, Jelindra’s mother. She was kneeling on the ground, weeping over the lifeless husk that had been Nomryh.