The Irda

by Linda P. Baker

  * * * * *

  Lyrralt stood on the shore, digging his bare feet into the sand. The breeze off the water was bitterly cold. The sand was cold between his toes, and grainy.

  Reaching the Courrain Ocean, the great body of water to the north of the continent, had been a joyful moment. They had been camping nearby for almost a week, and many of the Ogres still ventured down to the beach despite the cold. They had spread out in small family encampments all along the seaside, among the sandy, grassy hills.

  Children played near the water’s edge, laughing and shouting, mixing their voices with the cries of the seabirds and noise of the surf. He heard all, saw nothing.

  “You shouldn’t be walking around without your shoes,” Tenaj called cheerily, crunching her way across the sand toward him. Igraine was with her, just back from a trip into Schall, a human city two days to the west. Lyrralt recognized him from his scent.

  “How was your trip?”

  The smile on Igraine’s face vanished.

  Tenaj tucked her arm through Lyrralt’s, but waited for Igraine to speak. Igraine grimaced. “Disappointing. I’m afraid the reputations of our brethren have preceded us. We were most unwelcome. I’ve brought plenty of supplies, but I think we need to move on soon.”

  “Before the humans decide to attack?” Lyrralt guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “Is there no place where we can be safe?” Tenaj asked, her voice suddenly depressed. “I’m tired of running. I’m tired of always looking over my shoulder.”

  “Perhaps there is a place.” Lyrralt turned her toward the ocean. “In Schall, were there sailing vessels?” he asked Igraine.

  “Yes. I saw sails near the waterfront.”

  “Large enough to carry us? All of us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tenaj was trembling. “Where?” she whispered. “Where would we go?”

  Lyrralt pointed out over the water.

  “How do you know this, Lyrralt?” Igraine’s voice was caught by the wind and tossed back to him so that it seemed to come from very far away.

  “There’s an island somewhere to the north. It’s … It’s calling me.”

  Igraine turned into the ocean breeze, feeling the salt spray on his face. He tried to quiet his thoughts, putting away the worries of caring for so many Ogres, feeding them, sheltering them, keeping them alive. Yet he heard no song, no call from across the ocean waves. As always, when he allowed the mask of day-to-day worries to fall away, he felt only grief, the overwhelming sorrow and loneliness that had permeated his soul since Everlyn’s death, a heartache almost too strong to bear.

  * * * * *

  Darkness, dank and dripping. Scuttling of claws on stone, somewhere in the shadows. Light from a smoky, oily torch, showing flashes of moldy walls, of grayed, chewed lengths of bone.

  There were doors, recessed, so thick and heavy that they might never open. One door was open, and Khallayne backed away from it, instinctively knowing that she didn’t want to know what lay out of range of her torchlight.

  She was in the dungeons beneath the castle. The guard who had come for her volunteered no information, and he responding to her questions with only, “I’m following Lord Jyrbian’s orders.”

  Lord Jyrbian. Lord Jyrbian had, so far, been as good as his word. He had organized the troops. He and Kaede had drilled them until they were ready to drop, then Kaede had drilled them more. made them fight each other with pikes, with swords, with fat maces, like the humans used, on foot and on horseback. And they loved him for it. The first supply train guarded by his troops had come through unscathed, and now everybody loved him.

  Khallayne and the guard passed a deep doorway, and in the flash of torchlight she saw an unidentifiable mass, disintegrating cloth that might have been a pile of rags, or might have been a body. A lump of clothes, flesh all but gone, with wispy blond hair sticking up like straw.

  She gasped softly, drew back. Had this always been here, this suffocating, dark place, below the rooms where she danced, ate, made love?

  “In here, Lady,” he said, stopping before a door, deep-set in granite. “Lord Jyrbian is waiting.”

  She froze, suddenly sure that if she went through the door, she would never leave the cell alive. She would spend the rest of her life eating unidentifiable food passed through a slit, living in the darkness until her skin was leeched of all color, her mind of all sanity.

  The door swung inward, and yellow light spilled into the corridor. The warm air that came rushing out hinted at a scent musky yet somehow familiar. After the chilly dampness, the light and warmth pouring through the door should have been welcome.

  It wasn’t. Her intuition told her so.

  Jyrbian was just inside the door. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear the words.

  The power. The power in the room. She sensed the seething of the magic, the darkness despite its brightness. An aura greenish and ugly, stronger than any she’d ever seen, enveloped Jyrbian.

  The guard pushed her hard in the small of her back. Inside the room, the din of the spell was even worse. Her own power crawled in her veins, wanting to respond, to protect, but she fought it down. She’d never felt anything like it, not even the magic that flowed about the Ruling Council. Such malevolence! Such evil!

  Then she saw what—who—Jyrbian had brought her to see. Hand to her mouth to stifle a cry of anguish, she took a step forward.

  Bakrell was tied to a slab of stone in the middle of the floor, its surface angled. He was naked, muscles bulging. His mouth stretched wide, teeth bared in a silent mask of anguish.

  “I’m sure you remember Bakrell,” Jyrbian said smoothly. As he spoke, the aura of power around him ebbed and diminished.

  Bakrell made a pitiful sound, an animal whimper. Except for the trickle of blood that oozed from the corner of his mouth, he might have been sleeping. Or dead.

  Khallayne maintained her composure. She dug her toes into the soles of her boots, feeling the coldness of the floor. Fought to keep her face impassive because she sensed her safety and Bakrell’s life depended on it. She fought and lost. There was no way she could conceal her horror, her disgust, her nausea.

  “I know him,” she choked out, horrified when her voice stirred him, made him open his eyes.

  Jyrbian straightened, made some small gesture she noted only at the periphery of her vision, and the putrescence that was his power poured back into the room.

  Bakrell’s body contorted, straining at his bonds with such ferocity that it seemed he burst. And just as suddenly, slumped pathetically.

  “Jyrbian, please …” Although every inch of her skin crawled with revulsion, Khallayne held out a hand to him. “Why are you doing this?”

  Jyrbian took her hand, drew her close enough that he could put a hand on her shoulder. “Because it pleases me.” He turned toward his captive and asked, “Doesn’t it please you, too?”

  Bakrell’s eyes were dull, the shine of life gone from them, and she knew he was dying. She’d seen too many, fallen in battle, their lives draining away, not to recognize the signs. Gaze locked with Bakrell’s, she whispered, “Jyrbian, please don’t do this. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “My dear, you have nothing left that I want. He, however, has information that might lessen his suffering, should he choose to share it.” His fingers tightened on her shoulder, then eased off into a caress.

  She couldn’t stop the shiver of repulsion that ran down her spine. “What?”

  “The location of Igraine’s camp.”

  The greenish light, the malevolent power, leapt again. Bakrell’s body arched up off the stone. Jyrbian grabbed Khallayne as she tried to do something, grabbing her around the waist with strength she hadn’t known he possessed.

  “Bakrell, if you know, tell him!” she cried.

  Bakrell didn’t respond. His body pushed up off the stone, held for long moments, then dropped. His eyes rolled up in his head.

  “If you know, tell him! He
’ll kill you!”

  Bakrell simply shook his head. No.

  Irritated, Jyrbian flicked his fingers.

  Bakrell’s body spasmed. His muscles bunched as if they would rip through his skin. He screamed. And screamed. The sound reverberated around the small room, echoing, stabbing her ears, her heart, like daggers driven into her skull. So loud, so tortured a sound, that it persisted in her mind even after Bakrell went silent.

  Jyrbian released her. He went to Bakrell, touched him as gently as a lover. “Don’t you want the pain to be over? Don’t you want this to end? All you have to do is tell me. Just tell me where I can find Igraine. I know you know where they were going. How else were you going to take Khallayne and Jelindra back?”

  Unable to speak, Bakrell rolled his head back and forth. Back and forth. No.

  His dull eyes stared out through swollen lids at Khallayne. For a moment, just a moment, there was recognition in his face. Horror. Understanding. “Forgive me,” he rasped, his voice a blood-filled whisper. With effort, he rolled his head back until Jyrbian was in his vision. “You won’t hurt her?” he rasped, and when Jyrbian agreed, whispered, “Near Schall. On the shore.”

  His eyes slid shut. His head rolled heavily to the side. His chest heaved, then settled, and didn’t rise again.

  For a moment, the silence in the room was overwhelming. With a triumphant malevolence, Jyrbian turned to the guard in the doorway. “Take a company immediately. Start tonight. Bring Igraine back to me, dead or alive. But the humans who guard him I want alive.”

  The Ogre saluted smartly, disappearing into the dark corridor.

  When his footfalls had died away, Jyrbian turned to Khallayne. “Allow me to escort you back to your apartment.”

  Sunlight pierced deep into the clear blue waters of the Courrain Ocean. As she often did in the mornings, the Xocli paused, her large, flat tail moving lazily in the current, and turned one of her three heads to watch the return of her fellow sea creatures, riding the warming beams of light down from the surface.

  A stately leaffish drifted by; the rippling fins for which it was named gamboled like ornaments, waving a warm good morning.

  The nightly, vertical migration had begun at dusk. Tiny fish, too small for the Xocli to actually see, rose, seeking food. Slowly, the small fish that fed on the tiny ones followed, and the larger creatures followed them in turn. Nighttime in the depths of the Courrain Ocean was a totally different world than the day.

  She watched the nightly dance and the morning return, though the Xocli didn’t rise with nightfall, not unless there was a voice, calling to her—as one called to her this morning, faintly and dimly.

  The caller was not nearby, perhaps not even on the water, but she could feel the call of its sadness; the sorrow touched her core. Motioning to her children, she set out across the ocean floor, allowing the current to pull her along, take her where it would. There was no hurry. The melancholy of the caller would tell her when to rise.

  One of her heads snapped up a larval shrimp floating on a sea leaf that sparkled like sequins. The tiny morsel made her hungry for more. She opened her three mouths and gulped in water, enjoying the rush of it through the gills on her necks.

  Spectral light played across the gossamer, transparent mantle that shielded the organs in the Xocli’s necks and torso. Streaming along behind her, the little ones, the children, frolicked in and out of the beams of sunlight, diving below the reef and popping back out above or behind it.

  The children ranged wide, then circled back to her as she turned. Not only was she avoiding the colder area north of the reef, where a vent in the ocean floor sent inky fluid smoking toward the surface, but the melancholy from the surface was stronger, singing in her bones, a siren song that could not be ignored.

  The young were miniature copies of her: three heads sitting atop long necks, golden scales and fins rippling with all the colors of the ocean. The transparency of their young skin, their developing mantles, made them difficult to see against the reef, save for the brightness of their eyes.

  She felt, rather than heard, the cry of one of the children. Turning back rapidly, she counted. One, two, three, against the reef. Another out on the floor, examining a miniature “chimney,” the beginnings of a vent, from which pale particles drifted upward. Another, still farther away, swam lazily. That left one unaccounted for, the one who was bugling in pain and fear.

  The cry was coming from the north, from the vent. Ordering the others to stay away, she darted toward the sound. She twined her three long, thick necks and swam with her three heads nose-to-nose. Gone was the lazy, panoramic view of the underwater as she homed in on the pleas.

  Visibility narrowed as she approached the vent. The smoky black fluid that spewed from the vent clouded the water until almost no sunlight penetrated. She swam by feel, following the vibration of her child. Its pitiful cries were weakening, moment by moment.

  She bugled her distress, and a mere whimper was the only response from the lost one. She circled in the cloudy darkness. Just when she thought she would never find the little one, she saw it, its back closer to the reef than she had thought, trapped in the waving tentacles of a giant tube worm.

  The tube worms were not maneuvering creatures. They lived out their lives attached to the reef or a boulder, unable to chase after their prey. They shot stinging tentacles into the current to capture their food, then dragged the stunned, hapless creature back in a deadly embrace.

  The little one was mewling weakly. Held immobile in the grasp of the huge tentacles, it was drowning. The Xocli swept in toward it, screeching a cry of warning, of distress and challenge.

  The tube worm, stupid and sluggish when feeding, was quick when it sensed prey. The stinging tentacles darted out and latched onto the tender flesh at the base of her necks.

  Pain like the bite of hundreds of tiny teeth shot through her nervous system. She squealed and kicked backward with her large pectoral fin. Her weight and the power tore her loose, leaving her flesh on the barbed tentacles. She darted in again. And again the tube worm pricked her, pumping its venom into her veins.

  She tore loose again, tearing several of the tubes from the base this time. She felt the whisper of the mindless creature’s anger conveyed through the water. She surged in once more, spreading her three necks as far as they would go, as wide, attacking from three different directions.

  Ignoring her pain, she attacked. Again and again. Tireless. Desperate. She besieged the tube worm from above, below, charged in, a direct frontal assault. She tore off pieces of the ugly, writing tentacles, snapped whole clumps from the base.

  The tube worm met her assault on all sides, spraying out a thick, noxious white poison in addition to the stinging tentacles. The Xocli backed away, blinded, bleeding, defeated. Her little one moved no more in the grasp of the tube worm. Its ululations stilled forever.

  She reared back and sounded her distress, her grief. Her anguish was so great, it almost overwhelmed the calls from the surface. With one last glance back at the remains of her child, she swam upward, signaling for the other children to attend her.

  She shot upward, heeding the siren call from above, feeding on the misery of the caller, drawing it into herself.

  Added to her own sorrow, the emotion was overpowering. She gave vent to her pain. Anguish became fury, building inside her to a fever pitch, until the Xocli that broke the surface of the ocean, rising up into the air, was crazed with rage.

  The tiny ships pitched on the ocean’s surface below her. And she drank in the fear and pain of the tiny beings that clung to the decks. She sucked in the anesthetizing, exhilarating emotions.

  * * * * *

  Water, blue-gray and endless, stretched as far as the eye could see, merging with the sky. Rippling in the cold sunshine, it looked like melted glass.

  They were north of the continent of Ansalon, far west of the Khalkists. Nearby were islands, called the Dragon Isles, the human captain assured them, some of them large en
ough to support a colony of Ogres.

  “How much farther?” Tenaj called to Lyrralt, who sat in the shade of the upper deck, his back braced against the bulkhead. She strode across the rolling deck, stepping over those lolling in the sun with the ease of many days aboard ship, and squatted down next to him. “How much longer?”

  He smiled, turning his sightless eyes toward her. “Not much longer. Can’t you hear it?”

  She cocked her head. “Yes.” She drew the word out in a sibilant hiss. And she did hear something, as they all were beginning to, a siren call, drawing them across the water. “But it’s still so faint. I can’t tell if it’s near or far.”

  “It’s near,” said someone behind her. “Very near.”

  “It better be,” another voice growled.

  Tenaj stalked back to the bow. That was the problem with being packed on the ship so close with so many others. There was no privacy. The smaller ship, which sailed behind them, was probably even worse.

  Igraine came up beside her, laid a hand on her shoulder. “Feeling crowded?” he asked quietly.

  As always, Tenaj was surprised at how well he read her mind and ashamed to have harbored such unworthy thoughts. “I know I should be grateful,” she admitted contritely. “We were lucky to find a captain willing to take us all at once.” Lucky to find a human whose greed appreciated the coin they could pay.

  “We’re lucky to be here, all healthy.” Igraine said it ruefully, for he had been one of the few who had taken seasick the first few days out. Then very quietly, very sadly, he whispered, “I wish Everlyn could have seen the new home.”

  Tenaj looked at him in surprise. It was the first time she’d heard him mention Everlyn since the killing.

  Igraine wasn’t the same leader who had left Takar. His daughter’s death had drained all the life from him, leaving a male who seemed diminished, his silver hair and eyes now a drab gray. But his voice still carried the authority to move mountains.

  She squeezed his hand sympathetically, turned her face to the wind, and stared out at the sea. Just as Igraine started to speak, she drew a sharp breath and leaned forward, over the railing.