Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [133]
78
OSIRA'H
As the angry humans stood in the doorway, Udru'h shouted, "Osira'h, come to me! I will keep you safe from them." He still did not believe what the girl had done, nor did he understand what he faced.
She didn't move. "I am perfectly safe."
All the lights suddenly died. The house plunged into impenetrable shadows. The captives had smashed the power conduits and cut off the generator serving the former Designate's residence. Releasing long-pent-up anger, reinforcing each other's madness, they pushed their way into the residence.
"He has nowhere to go." Osira'h was a disembodied voice in the darkness.
Udru'h, as a man who had always relied on himself, sprinted away from the mob. He stumbled in the dark as he charged down the hall. He could not see, and the blackness would surely terrify him.
Osira'h recognized the gravelly voice of Benn Stoner as he pushed past her. "Follow the Designate. Don't let him get away." Other voices took up the cry.
With keen eyes, she watched the Designate running in the dark. When he encountered a staircase, he rushed up it. Dim light from spreading fires outside gave the intruders enough illumination to follow.
She felt strange, both weak and excited. She could not afford to remember that she'd had feelings for this man. His just punishment could no longer be stopped. It was like an avalanche, and she had encouraged it herself.
She hurried after the shouts, the sounds of running feet, the scuffle. On the upper levels, Stoner and his allies had cornered the fleeing Designate. Osira'h drove away her sudden lump of regret by recalling her mother's memories as vivid as fresh, bright blood. Just as if it had all happened to her, the girl felt the burning pain, the constant humiliation, the sheer damage done to Nira.
When she reached the upper landing, her sensitive eyes could make out Designate Udru'h. His eyes were bright in the reflections from a few remaining blazers in the Ildiran streets and the spreading fires. Sensing Osira'h there, he turned to face her. She shouted accusingly, "Your breeding plan stole the lives of all these people, and the generations before them."
Udru'h seemed confused. "Osira'h, you know why we did this. I saved my race!"
"And you doomed my mother's." It sounded like a verdict.
Stoner and his fellow mob members closed in on the trapped former Designate. Every person carried one of the farm implements that Daro'h had made available to them--hooked furrowers, weed rakes, planting staves. Their anger erupted. With the Designate backed against the wall, they began to pummel him.
Udru'h did not cry out. He fought back, but did not hurl curses or snarl. Osira'h heard the soft, ripe slap of hard implements on yielding skin. She saw the pain on his face, and in an unforgettable echo of memories from her mother, she remembered other expressions on the Designate's face in the shadowy breeding barracks.
"Wait!" Nira's voice was perfectly clear even over the tumult. "Stop this!"
Osira'h turned to see the green priest woman standing at the top of the stairs. She looked scuffed, singed, bruised, as if she'd already had an ordeal just getting here. She had come to the Designate's dwelling, bringing her other four half-breed children with her. Osira'h looked up, her pupils huge in the shadows. Her brothers and sisters stayed close to their mother.
The captives also fell silent. Nira took a step forward, surrounded by a faint glow of spreading fires outside. Osira'h had expected her mother to take great satisfaction from this, but a green priest could not. "Don't kill him."
"But, Mother, you know what he did to you, to all these people. And to me."
"I did nothing to you!" Bloody and beaten, but still very much alive, Udru'h hauled himself up. He spoke, clearly addressing the little girl, finding the strength to push back his confused attackers. "You