“No, no, Nomryh,” Khallayne admonished. “You’re depending too much on the incantation. Try to feel it. Try to forget the words and feel the power.”

He nodded and bent to a small, cleared space with a pile of dry grass in the center.

Khallayne went back to gazing at the horizon. For all her life, she’d lived in the mountains, where even the largest valley was ringed with mountains. She found the flatness of the land, the infinity of it stretching away, frightening and fascinating.

She felt what the gods must have felt, looking down on Krynn in the beginning. Away from the camp, with only her two charges and the soft murmuring of the spells for company, she felt small and inconsequential.

“Khallayne?” Jyrbian slid down on the rocks several feet away. “I was watching you work with the children.”

“Are you having trouble with your magic?” She patted the rocks closer to her, beckoning him closer.

He nodded, looking so dismayed that she laughed. “It took me two hundred years, Jyrbian. You can’t expect to master it in a few weeks.”

“I know.” He shifted nearer. “It’s just that I’ve come so far… “

She understood exactly. “For two hundred years, I tortured human mages, extorting their knowledge from them. But until the battle in the forest, I didn’t understand.” She turned sideways, drawing her knees up. “Human magic and Ogre magic are vastly different. I didn’t realize that I was hampering my own abilities by relying on the human requirements for incantation and spell components.”

He was following every word, but she saw that he didn’t really comprehend.

“I’m sorry, Jyrbian. I can’t explain any better than I already have. You just have to let go. You must trust your own intuition.”

She held out her fist and popped her fingers open. Puffballs danced in her palm, like those on the tops of the nearby grasses, except that hers glowed at the center. “Try to feel it. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

He held out his fist, concentrated, and opened his fingers. There was nothing there.

She smiled at his crestfallen expression. It was harder for him than most. The mighty warrior Jyr-bian was not accustomed to failure.

“It’ll come, Jyrbian. It’ll come the way it did for me. And Jelindra.”

He was no longer paying her any attention. He was looking eastward, where the line of sky and land was broken by a group of riders on horseback.

“Look!” she called to her students, pointing.

“It’s only Lady Everlyn and the others,” Nomryh protested.

Khallayne looked at him sternly. “Yes, I believe so, too. But what should we do?”

“Run and alert the sentries. Sound the alarm.” He spoke in a tired voice, by rote.

“Very good.” Khallayne took pity on them, shooed them away. “Go tell the sentries as you’re supposed to. Then go and play for a while before supper. You’ve done enough for today.”

The two hurried away, their energy already renewed.

Jyrbian, too, stood. “I’d better go and see what they’ve found out.” He held out his hand to help her to her feet, but she demurred.

“I think I’ll stay a while longer.”

The clamor of the camp rose as Lyrralt and his group rode in, leading three new horses loaded with supplies. Everyone came over to see what had been brought back, to hear the news, everyone except for Kaede. She left the camp, a shawl folded over her arm.

Khallayne watched lazily, observing the ebb and flow of the crowd, Kaede’s wandering. Kaede roamed far out onto the plain, then bent down.

Khallayne sat up straight and shaded her eyes with her hand. She could see Kaede’s arms moving up and down, as though digging.

Kaede must be digging for roots. Some of the Ogre cooks had been experimenting with roots and berries and grasses, looking for something to flavor the monotonous meals. So far, dried meat, boiled and mixed with greens and herbs, still tasted like dried meat.

Still, Khallayne sat there, staring out over the plains, waiting for the golden disk of the sun to slowly drop toward the dark meeting point of land and sky.

The humans attacked at dusk.

CHAPTER TWELVE

For a moment, Khallayne’s mind refused to be drawn away. The violent sounds seemed unreal, far away.

Humans erupted from the grass, screaming and yelling, like fish leaping from beneath the peaceful waters of a pool. The pounding of horses, the screams from camp, the sudden peal of blade against blade, all were background.

Then reality intruded, and Khallayne leapt to her feet with a gasp. Humans were attacking!

She ran, the pumping of her blood thrumming in her ears, fuel to the coursing of the magic. By the time she reached the encampment, the humans were fiercely engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with the Ogres. They had attacked the east perimeter of the camp.

Power coiled in her belly, ready to be unleashed. The fighting was so close, there seemed no way to set it free without danger to her own.

This was no ragtag band of runaway slaves, wielding homemade weapons and crude spears. These warriors rode into the line of Ogre defense, laying about with axe and mace. They ran, sword in hand. Archers knelt just outside the light of the campfires and let fly arrows feathered with the colors of the prairie.

Khallayne wheeled in time to see a female Ogre run down by a grinning, snarling human on horseback. He crushed her skull with one blow of his heavy mace, then wheeled his mount toward other fighters.

She snatched up the fallen Ogre’s sword and ran toward the human. He swung at her, and she felt air whistle past her face. His horse danced sideways, and he jerked it around.

As he charged again, she darted in under his weapon and grabbed his leg, sent magic whooshing out through her fingertips. She had no idea what she was doing. She felt the power, as she had in Khal-Theraxian, as she had in the forest. And as before, the power served her without direction.

The human screamed, fell from his horse, and lay writhing in the dirt, begging for mercy as he died. Without a backward glance, Khallayne threw down the sword.

Another sword sliced through the air. Materializing as if from thin air, Tenaj met the low, whistling swing and deflected it from Khallayne with her sword. Her next movement ripped open the gut of the man, left him standing with his hand pressed to his bleeding stomach, his expression comically surprised. Before Khallayne could say anything, Tenaj had wheeled toward an opening in the line of defenders, blocking to prevent another attacker from slipping through.

Khallayne pivoted. In the thick of the fighting she saw Jyrbian. He was standing his ground, seemingly invincible. Lyrralt fought near him, meeting the human attackers with the same ferocity as his brother.

All around them, the others were rallying to him. She ran toward them. The humans were being driven back!

As Khallayne struck out at the nearest human, Everlyn ran past, weaponless. Khallayne darted to intercept her, past sword thrusts and under swinging axes, but Everlyn reached Jyrbian first. She threw herself between him and the human he was fighting, a husky, hard-muscled human who held his weapon awkwardly because of missing fingers on his sword hand.

Jyrbian dropped his guard, and the human was so surprised at seeing an Ogre throw out her arms to shield him, that he didn’t take immediate advantage of the situation.

“Please stop!” Everlyn cried.

“Everlyn! Get out of the way!” He reached out to snatch her aside.

She evaded him, still using her body to protect the human. She reached out and shoved the human who was fighting Lyrralt. The woman warrior was so surprised, she almost dropped her weapon.