Khallayne froze.
Jelindra’s cry shattered the stillness of the night.
Khallayne stepped in front of the girl, reaching back to protect her, to comfort her, and the figure said her name again, no longer in question, but in joyous greeting.
It dawned on her. An elf had said her name! A male, tall and slender, with the features of an elf- only with Lyrralt’s voice.
Before their eyes, he transformed. It was a shape-shifting, like the appearance of the island, magical, miraculous. The lithe elf became Lyrralt, tall and strong and broad of shoulder, sapphire skin gleaming in the light of Solinari, silver hair as bright as the moon. And sightless now, forever.
“Forgive me,” Lyrralt said, holding out his arms to them. “Forgive me, but I had to be sure.”
Khallayne ran to him, threw her arms around him. A moment later, Jelindra threw herself bodily against them, joining their circle.
He shivered, held them closer.
“How did you do it?” she asked. “For a minute, I thought you were an elf!”
Laughing, he released them. “The gods have touched us, Khallayne, blessed us with a gift beyond believing, beyond-beyond-”
“Stop.” She touched her fingers to his mouth to stop his excited, confusing words, felt the warmth of his breath under her fingers, and something else. The scar. She turned him in the moonlight and saw the jagged mark running the length of his face. “Start slowly. Tell us everything.”
In response, he ran his fingers across her face, as if reassuring himself about the Ogres who stood beside him. He brushed sand from Jelindra’s hair. In a serene tone, he explained, “Last month, at the High Sanction of Solinari, the gods touched us. In the night, they touched us with peace, with calm. And when we woke, we could change.”
“Change?”
“Shapechange, as you saw me a moment before. I can assume the shape of another being. We all can. Do you realize what that means?” His voice rose excitedly. “It means that we never have to be afraid again. We never have to run again. We will always have the perfect disguise. Even if the island is discovered, no one will ever know who we are!”
“The island! Why couldn’t we see the island?” Jelindra demanded.
He paused, smiling shyly. “It’s my spell, a spell of hiding, but we all work to maintain it.”
Khallayne could hardly dare to believe it. There was simply too much information, too fast. Gifts from the gods. Everyone’s magical ability, powerful enough to hide an island? And Lyrralt, blind, scarred and using magic?
“Khallayne?” He caught her hand.
“It’s so much to take in,” she whispered. “So much.”
The sadness in her voice, in her face, registered. “What is it? Tell me,” Lyrralt asked.
She caught his hands in hers. “There’s so much, I hardly know where to begin…”
“Jyrbian?”
“Dead, I think,” she whispered, hoping it was true. She hoped there was no way he could have survived Kaede’s fire, for she never wanted to think of Jyrbian alive as she had last seen him. “Bakrell, too. And Kaede.”
“And Takar burned,” Jelindra piped in.
Khallayne nodded. “We looked back, just before we left the west road. It was like a smoking cinder. The whole city…”
“The others will want to hear.”
EPILOGUE
The Keeper of tbe history of tbe Irda stood on the hillside, surrounded by her people, assisted by friends and love ones, though she was as young and strong as the saplings that grew nearby. She had seen the world of her childhood pass on, had seen the sacred History of her people destroyed, but still she smiled, because of the Gift that she would give to all her people.
She held up the book, the Gift of the gods, and in a voice as pure and clear, as bright and beautiful as sunshine, spoke the beginning of the words written within, the words that wove the History of the World, of the Ogres, firstborn of the gods.
This I have salvaged out of the destruction. The music is gone forever, as is the beauty of the Ogres, but the words are preserved for all to read.
We are the Irda, firstborn of the gods.
The High God looked down upon the chaos and bid the god Reorx to forge the universe with his mighty hammer. From the forge of the gods, our world was wrought and the gods played here, as children gambol in a field.
In the sculpting of the world, sparks flew from the anvil and settled in the skies, danced in the heavens. The sparks were spirits with voices like starshine. They shone as the gods themselves, for they were pieces of the gods themselves.
The gods saw the spirits and wanted them for themselves, and they battled over them, striking mighty blows upon the world. The High God looked down upon the destruction and was angry with his children. In the heat of his anger, he decreed that each of the triumvirate of the gods, Evil, Neutral and Good, could gift the spirits with one legacy, and afterward, must allow the spirits to go free.
The gods of Light gave the spirits bodies, that they might master their world. The Dark gods offered weakness and want, that the spirits might learn greed and corruption. The gods of Gray, the Shadow gods, gave the spirits free will, that they might shape their own lives.
And so, the races were born.
From the gods of Evil came the Ogres, firstborn of the world. Gifted with immortality and untold beauty, the Ogres chose the lofty mountains as their home.
From the gods of Goodness and Light came the elves, graceful and regal and good, who sought the enchanted forests and hid themselves away to live in harmony with the land.
Those of the Middle, the Gray gods, brought forth the humans. They were short lived and brutish, but they had the capacity to both destroy and love. To them were left the grassy plains.
The Ogres set themselves above to rule the other children of the world, but the elves were too placid, too good to make suitable slaves. The Ogres turned to the humans to build their castles and their cities and their roads. On the bones of humans, the Ogres built a civilization.
Like stars in the sky, the watchers of the darkness were the mighty Ogres, building a nation of order and discipline. But their hungers consumed them, their greed and desire made them weak and ugly, and their appetites devoured them.
The humans rebelled against their cruelty and vengeance, and the Ogres fell from the grace of the gods.
Igraine, governor of a mighty province, learned from the humans the most precious gift of all. He learned of choice, of choosing between right and wrong. He learned from the humans the gift the gods had given, the ability to destroy and to love and the potential to choose between.
He gathered about him the Irda, the Children of the Stars, his friends and family, those who believed his vision, and they fled the mountains. Through hardships they traveled, finding a new home, Anaiatha, among the Dragon Isles.
The Ogres are no more. They will disappear back into the chaos from which the world was made.
But the Irda will continue, in goodness and strength, firstborn of the gods, chosen of the gods.
And this History, the Irdanaith, the Book of the Stars, will continue. I write it for all the Irda to see and study, that we may never make the mistakes of our ancestors, that the History will never be lost.