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.
Too late, he realized what she was doing. He tried to back away, but Kaede reached out for him. She stepped into the fire of Khallayne’s spell, bringing with her whatever spell it was she’d been casting, and turning the power of his own attack back on him.
“Go!” she whispered to Khallayne. “Go!”
Khallayne ran as things in the room erupted into flame, as the rocks and crystals on the window ledge began to explode.
In the doorway, she paused to look back, seeing only Jyrbian’s face, the face she’d once thought the most beautiful in all of Takar, twisted with hate.
She wheeled and ran down the corridors, down the stairs, and out into night, into the cool air. But she could still hear Jyrbian’s voice, twisted, demented, inside her head, screaming.
Run! Run! There is no place on all of Krynn where the Ogres will not find you, where the gods will not find you!
Her horse had been left at the coliseum, so she took Jyrbian’s big stallion. He stood in his stall, still saddled.
Khallayne galloped down into Takar, back into the flames, automatically heading for the west gate. To get back to the plains, she’d have to take a different route than before, toward Bloten. The passes northward would already be snowed in.
The streets were almost empty. Most of the houses and buildings showed damage, but the worst of the fires still burned brightly to the east, nearer the coliseum.
No one bothered her. No guards challenged her as she galloped through the gates and out onto the wide road leading out of Takar.
She almost didn’t hear her name being called out over the pounding of the horse’s hooves. She looked back and saw a small figure in rough clothing running down the shoulder of the road, waving her arms, cloak streaming out behind.
Jelindra! She pulled hard on the reins, bringing the horse to a stop. She was sure Jelindra would be gone by now! She slid to the ground. Jelindra almost knocked her off her feet as she threw her arms around her.
“Oh, Khallayne, I though you’d never come!”
Khallayne hugged her just as tightly. “I thought I wouldn’t either. I can’t believe you’re still here.”
Jelindra appeared healthy, though her face was dirty and her hair full of twigs. “I told you I’d wait,” she said. “I hid in the woods, and I watched the road every day. Then I saw the fires, and I thought you weren’t going to come!” She threw her arms around Khallayne again.
Khallayne hugged her back. “Well, I’m here now. Let’s go home.”
Nodding, Jelindra stepped back, wiping away tears and streaking dirt across her cheeks. “How will we find them?”
Khallayne shrugged. “I don’t know. But we’ll manage somehow.”
The two stood on the deck of the huge ship and leaned against the rail.
Beneath Khallayne’s feet, the ancient timbers of the deck creaked. Above her head, the canvas sails snapped and billowed in the wind. And all sounds were underlined with the soothing motion of the ship slicing through the ocean, smooth, relaxing, as lulling as going back to the womb.
Khallayne leaned far out, feeling the sting of salt spray on her cheeks and forehead, the splintery oak beneath her fingers as she gripped the rail. Would the island be there? Would their people be safe? In Schall they’d lost the last trace of them, but a sailor had told an incredible story of a group of people called the Irda, beautiful people who’d gone away to live on an island-an island that had called to them.
Khallayne, too, heard the song on the wind. It was a sound more beautiful than any Ogre voice, high and pure like crystal chimes, more beautiful than the voice in the sphere.
The bright, silvery light of Solinari sparkled on the featureless water, as far as they could see. But there was no island yet. No finger of land to mar the perfect beauty of the moonlight on the black-silk water.
Bare feet gripping the wooden deck, Jelindra ran to the other side of the boat and hung over the rail, but that way, too, was water, dappled with moonlight. Jelindra ran back to Khallayne.
Water and moonlight seemed unbroken to the horizon. Jelindra slumped against the rail where moments before she’d eagerly leaned across. “What do we do now?” she asked. “If there isn’t an island…”
“It has to be there!” Khallayne thumped the railing with her fists. Her heart wouldn’t contemplate otherwise. “I can hear it.”
Jelindra cocked her head. “Yes,” she agreed. “I can hear it. Let’s go!”
Before Khallayne could stop her, she’d slipped down the rope ladder to the little boat they’d prepared earlier in the evening and started to untie the rope mooring it to the ship.
Khallayne climbed down into the boat. “Are you sure? You know, if you’re wrong, we’ll die!”
“We’re not wrong,” said Jelindra firmly.
The little boat slowed and pivoted as the ocean took it, slipping away from the ship with the current. They had committed themselves. Noisily, Jelindra dipped an oar into the water. The boat responded, and she stroked again.
The boat shot forward. Khallayne dug into the water again and again, matching her strokes to Jelin-dra’s, aiming the craft toward where she thought, hoped, believed, the island should be.
She rowed until her arms ached, until her shoulders burned with fire, until the pain almost drowned out the song of the land, until she couldn’t move the wooden oar anymore and it hung over the edge of the boat.
Then, suddenly, as if a fog had lifted, the island was before them. A dark silhouette loomed up to block out the gorgeous sky.
Laughing, crying, Jelindra reached back to hug Khallayne, then began to row faster.
The pain forgotten, Khallayne pulled with her oar, sliding it so deeply into the water that she was dipping her fingers, until she felt the boat scrape bottom.
Then she slid into the cold water and pulled the boat by a rope. It seemed to take forever. Jelindra joined her, adding her insubstantial weight to the rope.
The boat scraped sand, and they left it, running the rest of the way, until warm, dry sand was beneath their feet.
Khallayne dropped to her knees, dug her fingers into the gritty sand. She pressed it to her face and felt the grains stick to the furrows that tears had left on her cheeks.
“Home, Jelindra! We’re home!” She threw hand-fuls of sand into the air, then covered her eyes when the ocean breeze blew it back in her face.
“Khallayne…”
The fear in Jelindra’s voice ended Khallayne’s celebration. She saw that someone was coming toward them.
Blinking against the sand that coated her lashes, she stood and took a tentative step toward the figure, partially hidden in shadows at the edge of the trees. “Who’s there? I’m Khallayne. I’ve come to find Igraine…”
Lyrralt! It had to be Lyrralt. She knew the way he moved, the way he stepped, his scent on the salt breeze.
The figure moved forward cautiously, too small, too slight, to be an Ogre. “Khallayne?” The light caught the soft hair, the canted eyes of an elf.