[Lanen Kaelar 03] - Redeeming the Lost (3 page)

The joy of our homecoming was too soon over.
None had the strength left to stay aloft for long, and we all soon drifted,
weary but grateful, to the ground. My heart was pulled in a dozen directions at
once. My joy at seeing my people come safe again to their ancient home, after
an exile lasting full five thousand years, was uppermost. The Kantri, we whom
the Gedri—no, Shikrar, in their tongue they are called humans—we whom the
humans call True Dragons, were come home at last, to share this vast land with
the only other creatures who speak and reason. I knew fear also, of course. In
this place where we were largely forgotten as living creatures, where we were
become little more than tales to frighten children, we had no way to know what
our welcome might be. Behind and through all, however, was deep heart’s-sorrow
for Varien, my soulfriend Akhor, whose beloved wife La-nen had been stolen away
mere days before.

I had not the leisure to give any of these
feelings the attention they deserved, for I was bound to go and welcome my
people to a land I had only known for the last four days. It was enough,
I think, for most of them to see me here before
them—Eldest, Keeper of Souls, guardian of our people in the place of their
transformed King, Varien.

Most of the Kantri lay exhausted where they
had landed. We all had flown, with only one brief rest, for many days on the
back of the Winds. Our home for so many years, the Isle of Exile that tle
humans name the Dragon Isle, was gone. The earthshakes that had plagued us
these last years had grown worse and worse, and at the last the fire mountains
had erupted, spewing molten rock over our home. It was gone forever. We had had
no choice. Kolmar was the home of our ancestors, after all, and it surely must
be clear to the Gedri that neither caprice nor passing fancy drove us to dare
the crossing of the Great Sea. The Winds had decided for us that it was time we
returned. Our oldest teaching was clear: “First is the Wind of Change, second
is Shaping, third is the Unknown, and last is the Word.”

I could only hope that the Gedri would see it
the same way.

There were a number of our folk ranged along
the edge of the field, where a shallow little stream danced over stones,
drinking thirstily. I wandered among the weary souls, scattering praise and
encouragement where I thought it would be accepted.

As I passed, I noted that the great sealed
golden cask containing the soulgems of the Lost was safe, resting now between
the forelegs of my son’s beloved mate Mirazhe. The Lost! The cursed legacy of
the great evil that was the Demonlord, the reason the Kantri left Kolmar so
long ago. Born a child of the Gedri, the Demonlord sold his name and his soul
for a terrible power over us. In the dreadful final battle fully half the
Kantri alive in those times, two hundred of our people, had their soulgems
ripped from them by demons. They fell from the sky, reduced to the size of mere
younglings, and the powers of speech and reason were taken from them; it was
that day upon which they were first called the Lesser Kindred. The Demonlord
was eventually destroyed—but he died laughing. It is widely believed even now
that he will return to trouble us one day. In the normal way of things, when
one of the Kantri dies, the soulgem shrinks to a quarter of its size and
resembles a large faceted gemstone. Every soulgem is retained reverently, for
they are the means by which, through the Kin-Summoning, we may bespeak the
Ancestors when need arises. When the soulgems of the Lost were gathered up,
however, it was seen that they nickered with some unknown inner fire. From that
day to this we have tried to contact them, but neither the Kin-Summoning nor
truespeech nor heartfelt prayers to the Winds have made any difference.

Mirazhe managed a nod to me, and lifted one
wing slightly to show the sleeping form of her youngling Sherok. I breathed
again. Strange, is it not? I knew that Sherok must be well, but it was not
until I saw him safely asleep with his mother curled round him that my heart
believed it. A little beyond Mirazhe, piled carefully on the ground, were the
lansip trees we had brought with us, the only remembrance of our old home. The
Gedri prized lansip, leaf and fruit, beyond all imagining. For thousands of
years it had grown only on the Dragon Isle that lay now below the sea. I
foresaw a thriving trade in a few years, if we managed to plant the trees quite
soon. If they would grow here. The poor creatures who had borne them hither
also slept, even more tired than the rest.

Their weariness was not to be wondered at, for
they had flown high and far for the best part of three days and nights, without
cease and without hope of rest—and before that, two full days of flight to reach
the tiny isle where we had rested and drunk from a small, brackish pool. None
had eaten since the fires of the earth had taken our island home from us, and
although we do not normally require large amounts of food, we were all in
desperate need of sustenance.

Here, however, came one in whom pride was
stronger than exhaustion—Idai, weary but unbowed, striding towards me from the
eastern side of the field. She it was who, following me, had led the Kantri
through the everlasting Storms and across the wide expanse of the sea. I walked
to meet her and bowed formally, in the mingled Attitudes of Joy and Praise, in
acknowl-edgement of all that she had accomplished.

“Iderrisai! My heart rejoices to see thee
safe,” I said aloud, adding in truespeech, “Safe and well, and with all our
people. It is a great thing that you have done, Idai. You will be remembered
among the Kantri forever.”

“I thank you, Hadreshikrar,” she said gravely,
aloud. She remained silent otherwise. I turned to follow her gaze—ah. Yes, she
would not bespeak me on seeing him, lest truespeech betray her deeper thoughts.
The Gedri—no, human, I must remember—the human called Varien approached us
swiftly from the edge of a small stand of trees in the west. Varien, the
Changed One. He who had lived a thousand years as Akhor, the Lord of the
Kantri-shakrim, soulfriend and dear as a son to me, and who for most of his
life had been dearly loved by Idai. Poor Idai. Akhor had never returned her
love or encouraged her regard: but even among the Kantri we cannot choose whom
we will love. It was less than a full year past that he had been changed,
through a kind of death and rebirth, impossibly, from his true form to a
creature with the form of the Gedri children, but with his soul and his mind as
they had ever been.

I glanced again at Idai and knew the pain in
her heart, though she tried to hide it. Truespeech does not always require
words, after all. She had loved Akhor for most of her life, knowing full well
that he did not return that love but unable to deny her own heart. For her to
see him now was little less than agony. It was a measure of her greatness of
soul that she did not hate Lanen, who had caught Akhor’s heart between one
breath and another while yet he was of the Kantri. She and Lanen had made their
peace: but now Lanen was stolen away by great evil, and all Akhor’s thought and
all his mind and all his soul were focussed, waking and sleeping, on getting
her back. A lesser creature would have rejoiced inwardly at Lanen’s misfortune.
Idai has a great soul.

I had known Akhor from his birth, a thousand
and some winters past; he was soulfriend to me, and apart from my son was the
only soul on live who knew my full true name. He had possessed the form of a
human for less than six moons. It was still very hard for us all to accept,
this strange being who was undeniably Akhor in his soul but withal so very
different. So small, so fragile! I prayed to the Winds that he would not be so
short-lived as the children of the Gedrishakrim usually were. By all rights he
should live yet another thousand years, in the common way of our people.

Varien hurried over to meet us. Idai bowed her
head low, and without thinking he leant over and stretched out his neck as if
to greet her in the Kantri manner. The very feel of it must have stricken him
wrongly, though, for he swiftly stood upright. Instead, he reached out with his
hand and placed it, oh, so gently, upon her cheek, where the solid faceplates
of my people curve back to protect the great vein in the neck. She trembled a
little at the contact.

“Idai! Oh, welcome and welcome, my namefast
friend, my heart soars at sight of thee,” he said. He dared to gently stroke
her dark copper faceplate, gazing into her steel-grey eyes. “When we parted I
feared I would not see you for many long years, and lo, even in this dark hour,
the Winds have sent you as a flame to brighten my soul’s darkness. It is good
to see you, Iderrisai.” He smiled then, and his soulgem—no longer part of him,
as nature meant it, but worn in a circlet of gold that held the stone against
his forehead—burned for that moment bright and clear. “I see you were not
content to let mine be the only great tale of these times! You and Hadreshikrar
have between you accomplished a work that will be remembered as long as our people
live and memory lasts. You have brought us all home.” He leaned forward and
touched his soulgem briefly to Idai’s faceplate, a deeply personal gesture used
only between the nearest of friends.

I was grateful that Idai closed her eyes in
that moment, for Vnrien’s sake. He could not see the years-long sorrow rise in
them, pain and weary loneliness that struck my own heart in the instant. I had
to close my eyes against the depth of it. By the time Varien pulled back from
the contact, though, Idai was in control of herself again.

“You are well, then, Ak—Varien?” she asked.
Her voice wa-vered only slightly. Varien might well put it down to her
weariness.

“I rejoice to see thee and my people safe at
last, but in truth, I toll thee I have seldom been worse, Idai,” he said, and
as his voice deepened I heard the anger in it rising. If he had been in his old
shape his wings would have begun to rattle. In this body, his hands curled in
upon themselves and the skin of them began to turn white. “Hath Shikrar told thee
of the great ill that hath befallen us, Lady? That a demon-master hath stolen
away my beloved from my very side, and I helpless to stop him?” A tremor in his
voice betrayed the depth of his feeling. “And that I know not where she bides,
or whether she is quick or dead?”

Even I was shaken. Varien in his fury was
using the style of Gedri speech he had learned hundreds of years before. “I
have told her, Varien,” I said aloud, adding silently, “Your speech be—i trays
your anger. You must not fail now, Akhor. We are here and our strength is
yours. Do not let your heart’s wound blind you. We cannot fly in force and
destroy this Berys at once—he is a demon-master and we know not the extent of
his strength. Remember the Demonlord, who destroyed the half of our Kindred
upon a single day! I do not counsel cowardice, my friend, only prudence. And
such a battle, such a war, would not be kind to those innocents around about.
We are new-come to this land. Would you arrive as a destroyer?”

“I would arrive as one bent on saving the life
of my beloved!” he cried.

“We will find Lanen, by my soul I swear it,” I
answered solemnly aloud, “but we must go softly at first, lest we break all
hope of living here in peace with the Gedri, or break ourselves J like fools
upon the power of this demon-master.”

“Oh, I expect you’ll have a good chance of
living in peace here,” ji said a calm voice from near the ground. The Lady
Rella stepped I forward and bowed briefly to Idai. “Welcome—you’re the Lady
Idai, aren’t you?” Idai nodded once, and Rella grinned. “I remem-ber you from
the Dragon Isle. I don’t think we ever exchanged names, but Lanen told me about
you. Well-met, Lady, and welcome to your new home. I for one am delighted to
see you.”

Idai hissed her amusement. “Rrrellla, the
strong arm that kept Llanen safe from her own kind. Yess, I recall you.
Well-met, and I thank you for the welcome, but I do not know if it will outlast
my first request.” She turned to me. “Have you eaten, Hadreshikrar?”

I instantly wished she had not said that, for
of a sudden I was aware of my empty belly and a raging hunger surged through
me. “No,” I replied shortly, and both Rella and Idai laughed as a noisy rumble
from my interior nearly drowned out my answer. “No, I have not eaten, apart
from a morsel here and there since I arrived. The prospect of fighting a
Raksfaa has sustained my spirit, but my belly longs for meat.”

“As does mine. We have none of us eaten since
we left the Dragon Isle sinking into the sea below us, and we have endured many
days of desperate toil. We are hungry and we are weary, Shikrar, and we thirst.
Whither shall we go now to find sustenance?”

“This is where I come in useful,” said a quiet
voice, and a man with golden hair and light blue eyes stepped forth. He bowed
to Idai, his eyes taking in the host of the Kantri behind us. I was impressed
that he managed to contain his astonishment as he spoke. “I’m Willem of
Rowanbeck, but only my mother calls me Willem, I’m Will. I live near here, and
I know of a farmer not ten miles away with a herd of good cattle. If you have
anything to trade for them, I suspect Timeth wouldn’t mind being the first in
Kolmar to have dealings with dr—with you.”

Idai stood in Concern. “We have brought the
lansip trees, Shikrar, they are safe, but they must be planted soon and cared
for. When once they are established the leaves and the fruits will serve us for
trade—but what we shall do in the meantime I cannot imagine. What else have we
to offer the Gedri?”