feet.
Igraine touched his back, his hip, his aching shoulder, and the pain eased. He heard the sound of running feet, the flaps to the tent being shoved open, but he couldn’t move.
“Lord?” Tenaj’s voice sounded from the entrance. “We heard a scream.”
“It’s all right.” Igraine smiled down at Lyrralt. “It was just a muscle spasm.”
Lyrralt sat up slowly and saw several faces peering worriedly through the open flap.
Igraine waved them away. All but Tenaj and Bak-rell disappeared.
Those two entered. Bakrell stared at the dagger embedded in the post. He considered the weapon, Igraine, then Lyrralt, then wordlessly he pulled it free and offered it to Igraine.
Igraine took it and passed it back to Lyrralt.
Before Bakrell could comment, Tenaj said, “I want to go after Khallayne and Jelindra.”
“And I have told her it is I who should go.” Bakrell squatted on the mat beside Lyrralt, facing Igraine. “My sister is partly to blame.”
“And it is my friends they’ve taken.”
“They are just as much my friends, Tenaj, though I have not shown them the honor friends deserve,” Bakrell said.
“Why you instead of me?”
“Because we’ll need you to lead the warriors in Jyrbian’s place,” Lyrralt told her softly when his wits had returned. “If the council knows where we are, we will need you more than ever. Bakrell should be the one to go.” It was only after he’d spoken that he realized what he’d said. He looked to Igraine for permission or censure, but Igraine did as he’d always done when, before, Jyrbian had made some decision of which he approved. He merely smiled.
Bakrell was nodding agreement, too.
“I wouldn’t be too pleased,” Lyrralt said, rubbing his shoulder as the runes started to dance again. “You’re probably riding to certain death, whether you catch Jyrbian or not.”
“No. I’ll be careful. Maybe we can figure out some way to get a message to the humans who’re guarding us. And if I don’t catch them before they get to Takar, I can lose myself in the city, where I’ll be perfectly safe.”
Khallayne woke, groggy. Her neck and the back of her head ached. Her belly hurt, and someone was shaking her so hard, she thought she was going to be sick.
She opened her eyes, and the ground rushed past her eyes with sickening speed. Suddenly, she remembered.
Jyrbian had grabbed her and thrown her across his horse. Then darkness had descended, and she remembered nothing. Until now.
She struggled to hold her head up, to steady it against the horse’s bouncing. She pounded on his leg with her fist and was rewarded with laughter from above.
The horse slowed and broke into a trot, which almost tore her head from her shoulders, then slowed some more and stopped. Jyrbian dragged her up and over the horse until she was on her back, cradled in his strong arms.
“So you’re awake?” he asked.
“Where are we going?” Khallayne tried to ask, but her mouth felt as though it were filled with puffballs.
Jyrbian motioned for Kaede. He took the reins of Khallayne’s stallion.
“We’re riding, my love, into the night.” He pushed one of her legs over the saddle of her horse, then lifted her up onto the horse’s back. “And remember, if you get any ideas about not keeping up with us, or of getting lost, Jelindra will be staying with us, even if you do not.”
He grinned cruelly at her, then kicked his horse into a run. They stopped sometime in the wee hours of the morning, and Kaede tied her wrists and ankles together as she fell asleep, too exhausted, too sick with pain and heartache to resist.
The sun was up, shining in her eyes, when she regained consciousness. She rolled over and buried her face in the crook of her elbow, trying to shut out the sunlight. Darkness descended, and she realized she overheard Kaede talking to Jyrbian.
“Why, Jyrbian?” Kaede was demanding. “Why do we need them? They’re just slowing us down.”
“It’s my decision, that’s why,” Jyrbian’s voice answered.
Khallayne was very alert.
“You asked me to come with you! You want me to help you watch the girl. I think you owe me an explanation!”
“I didn’t ask you to come,” Jyrbian responded, still sounding bored. “And you’re free to leave anytime you choose.”
Kaede’s voice softened, lost its stridency. “I didn’t mean it that way. You know I want to be with you. But, I see why they have to come along with us. I don’t want-” Her voice died away.
“Well, I do want them with us.”
“Buy why?”
“Very well, I’ll tell you. If it will satisfy you and stop you from complaining.”
Khallayne heard crunching sounds, footsteps on dry grass.
When Jyrbian spoke next, his voice was right above her. “The girl I care nothing for, except to make this one behave. But this one…” The toe of his boot grazed her hip. “This one is going to teach me everything she knows about magic.”
He slipped his foot under her and shoved hard, turning her over. “Do you hear me, Khallayne? You’re going to make me the most powerful Ogre in allofTakar.”
He smiled and walked out of her range of vision.
Khallayne sat up slowly, shielding her eyes from the sun. “And what if I refuse?”
He was standing beside Jelindra, who was still asleep, wrapped in a blanket. He touched the girl’s head gently with the toe of his boot and looked back at Khallayne. “I don’t think you will.”
Lyrralt sat on a broken wall and stared around him. After several days of hard riding, they were camped in the ruins of a human city in a small range of low hills. They must be nearing the edge of the plains, he supposed, since the flatness was beginning to be broken by rolling land and small hills.
Bakrell was several days gone. He had ridden back the way they had come with a jaunty wave, leaving Lyrralt with the melancholy feeling that he would never see him again.
What was left of the city around him was sad. The crude, half-standing stone walls gave the impression that they had never stood straight and strong as intended. Perhaps they had been broken and leaning, even when new.
Lyrralt walked through the fallen rock, the piles of dust and rubble and wondered who had lived in the place, and why. There was something about it that reminded him of Bloten. Humans attempting to build an Ogre city? It made no sense. Humans were savages who eked their lives out of the plains. They barely had civilization. Or had they built their own cities and roads, before the Ogres had discovered their usefulness as animals of burden, of hard work?
He was standing on the highest place in the ruin, a small portion of a wall that ran along a ridge, when the rain began.
At first, the downpour was so heavy that it seemed like stars falling from the sky! Burning stars! Stars trailing fiery tails.
The first one hit, not far out on the plains, as he’d thought it would, but nearby, just feet from the sheer drop of the ledge. It was a rain of fire! Pebbles and dirt and rainbow flame exploded upward!
He looked up into the sky and saw more, thousands more fiery spots of light, trailing downward. He shouted a wordless warning to those several feet below him, poking through the ruins. As he pointed, more balls of light hit, sending up gouts of flame.
One of the older cousins of Igraine’s clan was standing nearby. A spout of fire curled up and slapped him down. He said, “It’s cold,” in an unsurprised voice. Then his flesh began to melt, like wax dripping from a candle, and the sound that came from him was an ululation of pain and despair.
