Elizabeth Kerner - The Lesser Kindred

"Oh, yes. They will be here any day now, I suspect," he said. "But the Demonlord will be here any moment, under my command. And this time he will be able to complete the work he began so long ago." Berys leaned forward and I got a good look at his face. It was young and fair in seeming, which made it worse. My stomach churned. I had the feeling that if you cut him he would bleed maggots.

"And I will have you to offer in fulfillment of prophecy, Marik's daughter. Your soul to demons, your body to rule Kolmar just long enough to wed with me. And then, ah, well"—he smiled a terrible slow smile. "Then I will amuse myself with you. There is so much pain that can be inflicted without causing death. You will be a challenge."

I leapt for his throat and just for a second I had him. I squeezed with all the might of my fury, but in a moment he summoned his power and threw me off.

"You will live so much longer in agony for that," he snarled, opening the door and hurrying out.

"Not if I get hold of you first," I shouted at the closing door.

But then I was alone, with a fate much darker than death before me.

"Varien, Varien," I cried in truespeech, knowing I could not be heard. The darkness of my future pressed me close, but I clung to the love I knew was in the world and seeking me. "Come soon, my heart," I cried aloud, in truespeech, deep in my soul, knowing none could hear me on any level.

I had little real hope that my loved ones would find me, but even the sound of their names was comfort in so dark a time and place.

I listened then, for the sound of a bird or a beast or even a guard outside the door.

There was nothing.

I was alone.

Idai was better than her word. It was but midmorning of the second day after Lanen was taken that I heard her voice. We all were coming down from the high hills to the crossroads, where we would go our separate ways.

"Shikrar, I see the coast!" she cried in my mind. "All green and glowing. It is glorious, Shikrar!"

"It is home, Idai," I answered. "Come, follow my voice, I would speak with you."

I was learning much of the Gedri on our travels. Varien was different, I knew him from of old, and the fact that he had banished despair and replaced it with a grim determination did not surprise me. That Jamie, who was Lanen's father, had done so as well impressed me deeply. I had come to appreciate the differences between them—Vilkas, Aral, Will the Golden. It is certain that large-souled creatures come in many forms.

Rella was my most constant companion after Varien. She asked after Kedra and his family, and demanded the whole history of our leaving the Dragon Isle. It eased my heart to speak with her. She reminded me in some ways of Idai.

The littling, Salera, was a constant delight in the midst of all our sorrows. Her speech improved by the hour it seemed. She was intelligent and gentle, knowing always who required speech and who needed silence as we walked. The very sight of her brought joy, for she was lovely in body as in spirit. I began to think very seriously that another name would need to be found for the Lesser Kindred. That had described beasts, not a free people. I must consider it.

It was Will who saw them first. We were come out of the hills and the others had pointed out what they named an "inn" in the distance, when he shouted and pointed upwards. The rest of us looked where he pointed, but there was no need. We would have heard them in a moment in any case. My heart gave a great leap as hope returned.

For the Kantri had arrived, the whole of our people rejoicing after loss and long travail, to a sunlit morning brightening a good green land, and they were singing. The sound was hauntingly familiar to me as I rose to join them, though I did not know it at first. I realised, though, as I opened my throat to add my voice, that it was in two parts. The first was the theme of our old home, the Place of Exile mat was no more, and the second—the second was a new song, of hope and peace and sun on the grass.

It was a song of homecoming. Our long exile over, the sunlight flashing on wings and striking sparks from soul-gems, the Kantri were come home.

n the deep ocean west of Kolmar there was once a large island, green and lush. Many ages ago a small box with a beating heart inside it was brought to the island by a demon and hidden deep in a great mountain.

The mountain looked, at first glance, a little like a vast dragon. The demon had a strange sense of humour, or the one who controlled the demon did, for the island was soon the home of the great dragons of legend.

Over the years the essence of the heart seeped out into the earth, the water, the air of the island. It poisoned all it touched, but not enough to kill. No, the poison was only enough to make worse the natural ailments that afflicted them—joint ill, early aging. A low birth rate.

Finally, there came one who sought the heart from afar. His searching shook the island to its foundations, for the heart did not wish to be found. The dragons fled, to escape the fire and the molten rock that sprang up to cover the island. There was only one who saw the ending, and by that time he was no longer capable of thought or speech.

The end came when he who owned the heart decided that he wanted it back. It was deeply buried under old and new stone and he had to reach down into the vitals of the island to retrieve it. The rocks burst asunder with a roar to shake the heavens at this final insult, and the mountains fell crashing into the sea.

But before death took Toklurik of the Kantrishakrim, he saw a wonder. Rock and ash and fire began to cling together. Made from the substance of the dying island—from raw molten stone, from the yellow dust that filled me air and Toklurik's lungs, from the poisonous gas that burned through his armour and choked him, from the fire that flowed over him and killed him at the last, there grew from out the death throes of the Place of Exile a vast shape, black and grey and red and sickly yellow. It rose into the air on hideous, impossible wings and circled the black smouldering rock that was the last remnant of the Dragon Isle.

Until at last, with a cry that sang joyfully of death, the great black dragon turned and flew swiftly to the east, towards the lands of men.