The Irda (29 page)

All around them, in other special boxes, were courtiers, packed into seats, hanging over the balconies, calling to each other and laughing.

To her horror, the majority of the seats were filled with slaves. They were interspersed with guards who brandished swords and pikes and bows.

The entertainment began. Dancers and jugglers and acrobats. Smartly trained horses and smartly trained soldiers went through their paces. Troops marched and saluted with perfect precision. Magicians magicked, pulling flowers out of thin air and juggling fireballs.

The Ogres clapped and cheered and drank. The slaves sat silently.

Then great torches were lit, and the real entertainment, what all the Ogres had come to see, began.

Eadamm was brought into the center of the coliseum.

Every slave in the place sat forward.

Shackles were attached to his arms with great ceremony. Horses backed into their traces.

Khallayne turned away. Jyrbian didn’t notice. His eyes were glued to the tableau, fists tapping his thighs. Kaede stood near him, brushing his arm, but he was unaware of her.

Khallayne saw Anel, in the center box, raise a red square of cloth, saw it fall, felt the sudden hush, heard sounds so horrible, she knew she would never be able to wipe them from her mind again. Whips cracked. Something creaked and snapped. Something tore.

She clapped her hands to her ears to shut out the raucous, frenzied cheering. Tears streamed down her face.

There was another burst of cheers, higher and louder than the first, then another, and she thought, “It’s over. It’s over.”

Eadamm had been drawn and quartered.

Then came a sound like nothing she’d ever heard in her life, like nothing she would ever hear again. It was dim at first, but building, surging, a hum that became a song that became a fire that became an explosion, rage and fear and horror too long suppressed, pain too long endured.

The slaves were rising up. The sound was their fury, all of them, as if someone had passed a signal. They were turning on their masters, on their guards.

Kaede screamed. Jyrbian shouted orders.

Though she knew, from his gestures, that he was marshalling his guards to rush them to safety, Khal-layne didn’t care. Now was her chance to escape!

She moved quickly, catching up her long skirts and pushing through the confused, frightened crowd toward the door. Guards were trying to block any attack. Their backs were to her.

She looked around. The drop to the ground was over three times her height. But then she would be on the field.

In the box next to Jyrbian’s, on the opposite side of the Ruling Council, there were fewer guards, more courtiers. Pandemonium. The box itself was lower to the ground. If she jumped, then the ground was only perhaps ten feet away.

She climbed onto a chair, kicking food and porcelain out of her way. For a moment, she wasn’t sure she could manage it. Then she heard Jyrbian shout her name, and she pushed.

She reached out as she fell. Her fingers caught on the rough stone, scraping, tearing nails and palms. Her body slammed into the wall. Her breath whooshed out of her, and she let go.

She fell the rest of the way and hit the ground hard. Stars danced before her eyes, and she felt sharp jabs of pain lancing on her left side. She rolled onto her back, gasping for breath. Above her, staring down, she could make out Jyrbian face. And Kaede’s.

She rolled to her hands and knees. She pushed up to her feet and stood. With a glance to make sure she Wasn’t being pursued, she slipped out from between the boxes and looked for an exit.

Most of the slaves had jumped from the stands onto the field and fled toward the city gate. Many were still in the stands, and what they were doing to their owners, to the guards, made her whimper. She hugged the wall, aiming for an exit. A few yards away was the tunnel used to transport slaves and animals onto the field.

She edged around the corner into the darkened tunnel and came face-to-face with a slave, a human whose head barely came up to her shoulders. He had carrot-orange hair and mean, little eyes twisted with hate, and blood spattered across the front of his ragged shirt.

He grinned at her, a Jyrbian grin, all teeth and loathing. He was carrying a stick, perhaps a piece of a lance or pike, jagged on both ends where it had been broken. In the darkness, it looked as if it had blood on it.

Before she could react, a woman’s voice interrupted the rise of the club.

“Stop!” A small slave woman ran toward them out of the darkness. “Not this one,” she told the man, stepping between Khallayne and her attacker.

He shoved her away and raised his club. “All Ogres die!” he snarled.

The slave grabbed a stick of wood and swung it, hitting the male squarely in the back of the head with a sickening thump.

“This way,” the human said without a glance for the crumpled man, jerking her head toward the dark tunnel.

Before she could turn, Khallayne caught her arm. “Laie?” There was no one else it could be. The kitchen slave who had helped her the night she and Lyrralt had taken the History, now thinner, harsher around the eyes, but with the same straw-colored hair and bluer-than-blue eyes.

The slave looked at her, a strange expression in her eyes. Khallayne felt guilty. The female obviously knew her. Why else had she saved her? “Laie, thank you.”

The slave looked around her, checking to see that no one observed them. “Hurry.” She turned and ran back down the dark tunnel.

Without any hesitation, Khallayne followed. With her longer stride, she caught up easily and followed Laie almost to the end of the tunnel, then through two turns and three different corridors.

Twice they were almost seen by other slaves, but each time they were able to slip back into the shadows, behind a door, until the danger was past. And once, Khallayne had time to work her spell of “distraction” so the running slaves passed them by.

At last, they came out into the street, into a city gone mad. The last of the sun had faded, and night should have settled over the city, but the city was in flames. The sky was filled with an orange glow that threw shadows so long they stretched across the street. Buildings on either side of the coliseum had flames spouting from their windows. The street was littered with debris and bodies. Screams and wild laughter echoed off the walls of the houses.

How could it all have happened so fast? Khallayne stared into the sky. Would there be anything left standing when the sun came up?

“We have to go!” Laie caught her sleeve. She led the way up the street, dodging other slaves carrying weapons, walking around lumps in the road that were crumpled and broken and gleaming red.

One of the broken bodies that littered the walks seemed to writhe into something alive as they passed it. Khallayne saw it first, felt it. She caught Laie and yanked her away.

“What is it?”

Khallayne knelt and stared at the writhing thing. She could feel the malevolence of it, the power that still clung to it. “I don’t know. A spell gone awry, maybe. Just don’t touch it. And watch for others. Lef s get out of here.”

Laie nodded, but this time let Khallayne led.

Khallayne saw two other things that seemed wrong to her. A thing, similar to the one they’d passed, clung to a brick wall. And a body that was so badly damaged, it had to be dead, still moved and crawled, reaching out for them.

They found an alley filled with barrels and boxes and crouched in the shadows while figures ran past not five feet away.

“I have to go to the castle. There’s something there I must retrieve.” She was free, out of Jyrbian’s grasp. Her common sense screamed at her to run, but she’d left the crystal—the History of the Ogre, laid out from the beginning of time—in the castle. She had forgotten it once. She didn’t want to make the mistake of leaving it behind again.

Laie looked at her as though she were crazy. “Back into the castle? I can’t go there.”

“I know. I understand. But I have to.”

Laie nodded, turned away.

“Why?” Khallayne blurted out. “Why did you save me?”

The blue eyes stared at her. “I owed you a life. I’ve paid it back.”

Khallayne nodded. “Thank you.” She was almost to the end of the alley when she impulsively turned. “Laie, if you can make it out of the mountains, head northeast. There are human towns there, humans who aren’t afraid of the Ogres, who fight and live good lives.”

Then she turned around and walked away rapidly, not looking back.

The castle was strangely empty, strangely dark, though there were candles everywhere, on the floor and window ledges and tables, as if the Ogres who were still there were attempting to expel the darkness.

They, not the humans, were the scurriers now, carrying their own belongings, packs stuffed with food, as they prepared to flee.

No one gave her a second glance as she strode rapidly through the halls. They were all too intent on saving themselves.

The apartment in which she’d dwelt for the past weeks was brightly lit, the door standing open in welcome. She knew who would be waiting for her inside.

Jyrbian was by the fireplace. He wore a fresh uniform. His hair was combed, not a strand out of place, lie leaned, one arm draped across the mantel, as ca-iually as if she had stopped by for an evening visit.

Khallayne didn’t see Kaede, standing by the window ledge where the sphere was concealed, until she was already through the doorway.

Kaede smiled cruelly when she saw Khallayne’s glance. “I didn’t expect we would ever see you again,” she said dryly.

“Oh, I knew she’d be back,” Jyrbian said easily.

Khallayne looked at him, surprised. Then she saw what he held in his hand, casually rolling it in his palm: the crystal sphere.

His movements might be indifferent, his voice bland, but his face was taut, the skin stretched over the muscles. His eyes were a tarnished metal gray, heavy lidded, and completely mad.

“You still haven’t told me how you did it.”

Khallayne’s eyes followed the crystal.

“Please, Jyrbian,” she said softly.

Jyrbian threw back his head and laughed, low-pitched and filled with madness.

She took a step toward him, sensed Kaede take one toward her. “Please, Jyrbian, let me have the sphere. You have no use for it here. Takar is gone forever. But it doesn’t have to be forgotten. All that we were doesn’t have to be forgotten.”

“You want it to take back to Igraine?” He held it out teasingly.

“To our people, not to Igraine.”

He grinned, his teeth gleaming. “You do know where they are? You knew all along.”

She shook her head. “No, but I’ll find them. Somehow.”

“Tell me.” He held out the sphere. “A trade. The History for the location. For my curiosity.”

Her intuition said run. Now, quickly. No more conversation. Just feet moving, one in front of the other. Quickly.

“No. You’ll just kill me, the way you killed Bakrell.”

Kaede made a muffled noise at the mention of her brother’s name. She stepped forward.

Laughter was bubbling out of Jyrbian once again. The laughter erupted, demented, maniacal. Jyrbian held the globe out to her, cupped between his palms and, as she stepped forward, smashed it, crushed it in his bare hands.

With shards of crystal and blood dripping from his hands, he regarded her.

“How could you?” Kaede screamed. “That was mine! Mine! You’ve destroyed it, as you’ve destroyed Bakrell!”

Jyrbian sidestepped her, continued his stalking of Khallayne, but Kaede jumped in front of him again. “Tell me why you killed my brother!” she screamed in his face.

“He murdered him for no reason,” Khallayne said. “He died in the dungeons of this castle.” Khallayne backed away quickly as Jyrbian swept Kaede aside effortlessly.

With a scream, Kaede rushed him. He backhanded her casually, sending her sprawling on the floor. Her head hit a chair.

Magic seethed in the pit of Khallayne’s stomach, reminding her of flames. Fire. Now. It had to be now. She closed her eyes, a dangerous thing to do, but it helped focus the power.

She felt Jyrbian tense, ready to leap, and she cast the power outward with all her strength. Coldfire. She had no idea where the spell came from. It was intuition by now.

The bluish orange flames leapt toward Jyrbian, enfolded him. He screamed in rage and twisted within the field of flame, shouted out words of an incantation, a prayer for protection from his god. Flames weakened, sputtered; still she concentrated, putting all her knowledge, her fear, her pain, into maintaining the spell. He stumbled, staggered, clutching his brow.

Then, incredibly, Kaede was standing, adding her force to the fire.

Jyrbian turned on Kaede, reaching out through the wall of flame. He grabbed her shoulder, pulled her close, into the fire with him.

Khallayne cried out. Kaede convulsed, her body arching in pain. Jyrbian’s fingers dug into her throat.

Khallayne fell to her knees, sweat and tears mixing on her face. She balled her fists into her stomach and doubled over with the effort of maintaining her attack. Kneeling on the floor, she could feel the broken shards digging into her knees and cutting into her palms. She gathered the pieces up into her hands. A residue of magic still clung to them, an echo of power and song.

Jyrbian dropped Kaede, abandoning her bruised body, and turned his attention to Khallayne.

Khallayne rose to meet him, the pieces of crystal in her fingers, met him with fury for what was lost— the city, the Ogre civilization, the Song of History.

Unable to defeat the flames that surrounded him, he reached through them. A lamp exploded. Something large fell behind her. The window, the beautiful, etched glass window, exploded inward, sending glass arcing toward the ceiling.

Behind him, Kaede climbed slowly to her feet, almost unable to walk. Khallayne couldn’t understand her, but her lips were moving as she stumbled toward Jyrbian.

He turned his attack on her. Something leapt toward Kaede. She took the blow full-force in the chest, but kept moving, walking toward him, leaning forward as though into a blizzard-strength wind.