by Dragon Lance
Tense and irritable, heart thudding with anticipation, Khallayne hovered in the shadows of a cavernous doorway until the slave returned.
She was wearing a clean shift and her short, straw-colored hair was mostly combed. “The lady Keeper is staying in Lord Tenal’s guest apartments, Lady.” She curtseyed and thrust out her hand.
With a smile, Khallayne put the copper coin into her palm without touching the slave’s grubby pink flesh. “Fetch a tray of food, whatever the Keeper prefers, from the kitchen.”
The slave’s odd-colored blue eyes grew round and large with fear at the suggestion that she return to the kitchen.
“If anyone asks, say Lord Teragrym has commanded it. And if Lord Eneg chooses you again, simply tell him you belong to me,” Khallayne told her. “Remind him I don’t want to have to train another slave.”
Khallayne shook her head as Laie vanished. In the time it took an Ogre to mature from child to young woman, human slaves went from babies to old and useless. But no matter how old or young, they were worse than children. Slow and dumb and witless, even one supposedly as bright as Laie.
Lyrralt was waiting for them at one of the side exits to the audience hall, leaning against the stone wall.
“The Keeper’s in Tenal’s wing.”
Lyrralt nodded, eyeing the slave who stood half-concealed behind Khallayne.
Motioning for Laie to proceed, Khallayne and Lyrralt started along the passageway, nodding to other guests as they went. “What did you bring?” she asked.
Lyrralt patted a pouch hanging from his belt, bowed once more to an older lady as she eyed the two of them curiously. “Crystals from Jyrbian’s collection.”
Once they were upstairs, in the second-floor hall and away from the strolling party guests, they followed Laie until they rounded a corner and found her peeking around the corner at an intersection. “This is the hallway where the apartment is,” Laie whispered, pointing ahead. “There are guards.”
Khallayne smiled, both at the roundness of the slave’s eyes and at the way Lyrralt’s arm tensed under her fingers.
“Do we kill them?” he asked.
“It’s all right. I expected them.” Feeling less calm than she allowed herself to show, she drew away from him and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, concentrated, and, as in the audience hall, the sounds and smells of her surroundings grew blurred and hazy.
Lyrralt gasped.
Khallayne knew that he was feeling the surge of magical power she was drawing about her like a cloak. She trembled with the power of concentration, murmuring words she had wrested from the memory of a human wizard. Her hands came up, for a moment covering her face as if masking it, and she uttered the words again, lips moving silently.
Lyrralt gasped again. The slave whimpered.
Khallayne opened her eyes. Where Lyrralt had stood, now there was almost nothing, a disquieting disturbance in the air, a warm, scented breeze as if a ghost had brushed past.
“What have you done?” Lyrralt’s voice, stunned, fascinated, whispered from the nothingness.
“A spell of … of distraction, I suppose you would call it. If we make no sound, the guards won’t see us.”
“It makes my eyes hurt.”
“Yes, there is a small bit of aversion to it. It makes the illusion easier to maintain.” Turning to the slave, she murmured, “Laie?”
The woman was crouched back against the wall, her eyes so round and large it seemed they might burst from her head.
“Laie? Go down the hall. Tell the guards that Lord Tenal has ordered a tray sent to the Keeper. When they let you through the door, make sure to leave it open long enough for us to slip inside.”
With obvious effort, the slave controlled her fear. “But, Lady, what if they won’t let me through?”
“They won’t stop you. Just make sure you keep the door open. Now, go!” Khallayne, who had stepped closer to the woman, gave her a shove.
The slave almost squealed with fright, but she moved quickly, looking back over her shoulder as if she were being pursued.
It went as Khallayne had said. The guards leered. One lifted the corner of the linen napkin to inspect the tray, but they allowed the slave through. Laie paused just inside the heavy wooden door, holding it open with her foot while she pretended to balance the tray. She felt a spectral puff of air, then another, flit past.
One of the guards took the tray from her and placed it on a nearby table. “The Old One sleeps,” he whispered. “Leave it here and go.”
The slave nodded gratefully and hurried out.
The Keeper’s room was as lavish as anything Khallayne had seen since arriving in Takar. Two smoldering torches cast the only light, imparting flickering shadows more than illumination. Even in the smoky dimness, she could see the opulence of the slave-carved wood furnishings, the gleaming mirrors on walls covered with lush tapestries. She was sure, had she been able to examine it in daylight, that she would have found the thick carpet on which she trod to be elf made.
With a whispered command, the distraction disappeared and Lyrralt was visible.
“This …” she breathed, leaning into Lyrralt in the near dark, pressing her mouth close to his ear, “… this is how I will live someday.”
“Perhaps we both will.” For a moment, his hands hovered near her.
The Keeper was asleep on a low couch near the hearth.
Khallayne had never seen an Ogre so aged; most accepted an honorable death long before the years advanced to such fullness. She stared at the Old One’s face, lined and seamed with wrinkles, as Lyrralt stirred up the dying embers and started a small fire in the fireplace.
From his pouch Lyrralt produced a clear crystal sphere and two faceted crystals, one a double-pointed amethyst, the other a perfect sapphire as dark blue as his skin.
“I wasn’t sure which would be best,” he whispered, holding them out for Khallayne’s inspection.
She chose the crystal sphere, the plainest of the three.
Lyrralt would have backed away, but Khallayne caught his wrist and pulled him close to the Old One. “Kneel here.”
Lyrralt burned to ask what she was going to do and how and where she had learned such things. He watched carefully as Khallayne placed her hands on the Keeper and whispered words that to his ears were unintelligible.
Khallayne placed the sphere on the Keeper’s mouth. For a moment, it seemed as if it would roll off, then it caught and rose, floating less than two fingers above the Old One’s lips as if suspended on the soft exhalations of her breath.
Lyrralt whistled soft and low in admiration.
Khallayne moved to the end of the couch and stood over the Keeper. She fixed Lyrralt with an intense, unwavering gaze. “I’m going to try to use your energy in addition to my own,” she said. It won’t hurt you, but you may feel … tired. After I begin, make no noise, speak no sound, unless you wish to lose it forever.”
He nodded.
Khallayne cupped her hands around the Keeper’s head. She opened her eyes wide and concentrated. The currents of power flowed through the room, tugging at her gently.
She had performed the spell many times, but never before on one of her own kind. Now that she could feel the papery, withered old flesh between her fingers, she wished she’d risked the working of this one, just once, on an Ogre.
Gathering her concentration, striving for confidence that suddenly seemed to be ebbing away, she murmured the words of the spell and sent the pulsation outward. The Keeper moaned softly and rolled her head as if feeling the touch of Khallayne’s magic, then was still.
After a moment, while Khallayne held her breath and waited, a soft, throbbing light began to materialize between her hands. Careful not to allow her exhilaration to overcome her, she raised her arms slowly, tenderly, feeling the pressure against her palms, the thrill of magic coursing through her fingers and arms.
Then Khallayne pressed her palms together lightly. The incandescent light shifted, surged, began to
stream into the crystal sphere.
It appeared to Lyrralt that the Keeper’s head was suddenly filled with light, flowing from her lips into the crystal poised above. Power filled the room. The air smelled like the coming of a thunderstorm.
As the crystal sphere became more radiant, filling with a golden rainbow of light, the Keeper grew darker and darker.
Even after the light had gone from the Keeper and was imprisoned in the pulsating sphere, Khallayne remained standing over the Keeper’s body for a long moment. Then she plucked the sphere out of the air and away from the Old One’s mouth.
Lyrralt felt the sudden release like a jolt to his nerves. When he was free of the tug of the spell, he felt a terrible urge to speak.
Clinging to furniture for support, Khallayne edged away from the Keeper. Though she trembled with the weight, she held the pulsating sphere up in the air.
“The Song of History,” she whispered in a tired voice as Lyrralt climbed to his feet and joined her “It’s done.”
He took the sphere gingerly, and carefully turned it in his hand, holding it up toward the fire to see the light pierce it through. “How wonderful!”
Khallayne sank onto a stool. “Yes, wonderful. This is the legacy that’s been stolen from us. Kept from us by greedy nobles.”
*
Khallayne gazed out the large window in Jyrbian’s apartment, eyes roving lazily over the twinkling lights of the city below, refracted and splintered by the beveled glass. How boring, how sad, she thought to be staring out of one of those houses, looking up enviously at the twinkling lights of the castle.
She, however, was where she belonged, and for a moment she gazed at the dozen miniature reflections of her own face in the panes of glass. The myriad Khallaynes smiled back at her wearily.
“Are you going to tell me how you did it?”
Lyrralt sat on a low stool in front of the fire. He cradled the sphere between his palms, watching the light twist and twine through it. “Are you going to tell me how you did it?” he repeated.
“Magic,” Khallayne answered, her voice unconcerned, barely conversational.
He turned and saw from her broad smile that she was teasing him.
She joined him, kneeling on the floor and taking the sphere from his fingers.
“I know it’s magic. Where did you learn to do it?”
She turned the sphere over and over in her hands, then used the edge of her vest to polish it. “From human wizards.”
“What?”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “I took the knowledge from human wizards who were slaves in my uncle’s household.”
When he offered no condemnation, she continued. “I was always much quicker to learn magic than my cousins. When they were still playing with sticks and dry leaves, I could light a fire, boil water, float objects.
“When I was ready to progress, my tutors told me I had learned as much magic as was allowed a child of my station.” The sphere lay forgotten in her lap as she balled her fingers into fists.
“I didn’t like being told no. I didn’t see why I should be restricted. There was a slave on a nearby estate. I knew she was a mage because the lord there was a friend of my uncle’s, and he had bragged that he held her there by keeping her daughter as a hostage. I made a deal with her.
“For her knowledge, I agreed to free her daughter The spell I used to steal this” – she indicated the sphere – “was one of the things I learned from her I’ve spent many years draining the magical knowledge of human mages.”
“You freed a slave!” Lyrralt gasped, more aghast a that revelation than any other.
“Of course not,” she said coolly, standing and taking the sphere to the window. “I didn’t have to, once I learned this spell.”
On the sill beneath the etched glass was a collection of crystals and spheres and rocks, all arranged neatly, sitting in brass holders or dangling from silk thread. She took a larger crystal, placed it in an empty stand, and laid the Song of History in its place. “What do you think?”
Among the grouping of more colorful rocks on the sill of Jyrbian’s window, the sphere was plain and unremarkable. He slipped an arm about Khallayne’s waist. “He’ll never know it’s there. Unless we’re discovered and have cause to reveal it.”
Chapter 4
A FRIEND OF TREACHERY
From his position on the receiving platform, Lord Teragrym motioned for Jyrbian to sit on the level below in front of him. It would not do to have the younger Ogre tower over him.
In the presence of Teragrym, Jyrbian’s joviality and brashness was dampened into watchful respect. Teragrym, who had kept his seat on the Ruling Council longer than any other because he was not careless, observed that Jyrbian bore watching.
Jyrbian sat, bowing before and after he had lowered himself to the floor, feet and lower legs folded under his thighs. With a negligent flick of his wrists, he arranged the vestrobe he wore over simple tunic and pants into a fan of cloth. The movement showed surprising grace for one so large and appeared totally unself-conscious, as if he did it without consideration for his appearance.
The audience room into which he had been received was not large, but it was opulent. Thick carpets warmed the stone floor. Painted screens and tapestries and heavy curtains left almost nothing of the stone walls visible. The furniture was sparse, consisting only of a stool for Teragrym, a low, heavily carved table at his elbow, and a writing desk farther back on the platform.
Jyrbian glanced surreptitiously about, taking in the luxury, the understated elegance. He could imagine himself quite easily in a cozy setting like this.
“My daughter has mentioned to me that, aware of my interest in what is happening in Khal-Theraxian, you have volunteered to make a visit there and report back to me.”
Jyrbian smiled, then modified the expression. “Yes, Lord. I would be pleased and honored to be of service.”
“And what would you expect in return for this service?”
Jyrbian’s pulse accelerated as the answer leapt to his throat: power, prestige, wealth, permanence, but he didn’t voice that thought. “I ask nothing, Lord. I’m honored to simply serve.”
Teragrym smiled. The younger one stared down at the patterned carpet and appeared deferential, but Teragrym knew the avarice in his soul, the envy in his heart. Teragrym, too, had been a second son, brighter and bolder and more worthy than his firstborn brother. “There is a hunger in you, young Jyrbian. It is not so well disguised as you think,” he added when Jyrbian’s head came up with whiplash speed, his silver eyes a mere hint of evil in the darkness of his face. “The journey could be dangerous.”
Teragrym was about to add, “Very dangerous,” but Jyrbian interrupted. “I know about the attacks on the mountain trails.”
“That report was for the Ruling Council exclusively. How do you know?”
Jyrbian merely shrugged. “There’s always talk.”
Teragrym’s estimation of Jyrbian increased a notch. “Very well, so you know of the attacks, which seem to be increasing in our mountains. Will you, therefore, take a company of guards with you?”
“I would not be likely to inspire the governor’s confidence riding into Khal-Theraxian surrounded by guardsmen. Besides,” Jyrbian scoffed, “I am as well trained as any guard. I will go alone. Or perhaps as one of a small party. I know someone who is acquainted with the governor’s daughter. Perhaps we might pay a social call.”
“I approve.” Teragrym nodded slowly. “Surely there is something you would ask? Such service should not go unrewarded.”
Jyrbian shook his head. He had thought it through carefully before he came. If he asked for something specific, that would be all he received. If he didn’t specify, there would be no boundaries on what he might receive, should his errand prove worthwhile. “If the lord would feel me deserving of reward, naturally I would be honored. But I would also be honored simply to be of service.”
Teragrym smiled again, almost as if he could read the c
alculations going on in Jyrbian’s mind. “Very well. I accept your offer to serve. And I’ll expect you to report back to me – and only to me.”
Jyrbian nodded stiffly.
“I need to know —” Teragrym paused, considering. “I need to know everything. Be observant. I want to know what Igraine is doing to increase the production in his mines. I need to know if he says anything that could be considered treasonous.”
“Treasonous?” Jyrbian shifted forward, poised eagerly for what would come next.
“That is a rumor we have heard. But whether it is exaggeration or truth …” Teragrym shrugged. “The line between acting for the good of all and the good of oneself is sometimes subtle. Sometimes it is the same thing. I must have enough information to judge for myself. I must know what is said, and what is not said.”
Teragrym waited a moment, scrutinizing Jyrbian, then dismissed him.
Jyrbian was so excited he could barely maintain his poise until he was out of Teragrym’s sight. The reward for such a task should be excellent indeed! As he exited into the hallway, he was beaming so broadly that the female Ogre who was waiting to enter paused in surprise in the doorway.
She watched him until he turned a corner, and hesitated even a moment longer.
“Kaede?”
Teragrym’s voice snapped her back to the present and into the room.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
Kaede bowed and sank to her knees, knowing how Teragrym hated having someone loom over him. “Lord, forgive my unannounced arrival, but I have come to ask a favor.”
“What sort of favor?”
Kaede clasped her hands in her lap to cover her agitation. “I have come to ask your permission to right a wrong that has been done my family.”
*
Lyrralt paused inside the door of his apartment. He lit the candles with a few words and a flick of his wrist. His rooms were larger than Jyrbian’s but located on the far side of the hallway, so he was without windows.
He had spent his morning walking the cold hallways of the castle, listening in on conversations, joining groups of Ogres to exclaim in dismay at the news. The Keeper could not be awakened. She lay as if dead, but breathing, and no one had been able to rouse her. He had started for Khallayne’s rooms but wound up in his own instead. The Ogre female with whom he’d passed his night after Khallayne pleaded tiredness was gone from the room, leaving not even a trace of scent, less of memory.