The Thet priest Pta-hetop nodded. “I made some excuse, some trivial request, and fled the abomination, before they realized that I knew them for what they were.”
“And Pta-hetop, here, wisely began by telling his own priests what was happening, then they in turn spread out by ones and twos to the rest of us,” Baket-ke-aput continued. “It was the gods’ own will that he went softly and secretly, rather than trumpeting the abomination to the world and being cut down for it.”
Pta-hetop shook his head, and his expression, already mournful, saddened further. “It was cunning—and perhaps the gods gave me warning. I knew there were no Thet priests strong enough to take those jackals of darkness in their own lair. When you cannot fight, you must flee, for you cannot fight on another day if you are dead.”
Baket-ke-aput nodded—and so did Lord Khumun, Lord Ya-tiren, and Kaleth. “It took us but a single night and day to organize our flight. And since Pta-hetop was the good childhood friend of Hokat-ta-karen, the remaining Haras priest for what was left in the Jousters’ Court, and knew he could trust Haraket, he told Haraket and the dragon boys with him also, and asked if they could aid us in any way.”
“There was nothing left for us in Mefis—and priests are not accustomed to defending themselves,” Haraket pointed out. “We are. So—” He shrugged.
“I had some few acquaintances among the Bedu, as does Haraket, and we managed to gain their aid,” Baket-ke-aput concluded. “They told us of Sanctuary, but warned that we might not be well received here. We said we would take our chance that you would accept us. That is the whole of the sorry tale.”
That was not the whole of it, Kiron was sure. How they had smuggled themselves out, the long and terrible crossing of the desert, even with the help of the Bedu—that would fill a hundred scrolls, he was sure. But it was not, at the moment, as important as what had been imparted.
“But the god-touched children—” someone said from the darkness. “Why—”
“Why did we not rescue them?” Baket-ke-aput asked, savagely, his eyes flashing anger. “Because by the time we had organized ourselves, and knew what the advisers were about, we had found the last of the bodies. The eldest of the children. There are no more. We failed them, we failed in our duty to them, and we might just as well have set a knife to their throats ourselves. Now, shall I pound the ground and weep and strew ashes on my head, or will knowing that I know my guilt and know that I can never expiate it satisfy you?”
It had been a very long time since Kiron had heard that level of bitterness in anyone’s voice . . . and the last time, it had been Ari, crying out, I do not make war on children!
“We will build a shrine for them,” Kaleth said into the heavy silence. “You will give us their names, and we will build a shrine to them in the river cave, where the sand cannot etch the names away, nor time erode them. They will have in the afterlife all that they should have enjoyed among us. They will not haunt this side of the Great Sky River as hungry ghosts for much longer.”
Baket-ke-aput let out his breath in a sigh. “I will carve those names with my own hands,” he said heavily. “I would do so with my fingernails, if that was the only tool I had. Thank you.”
“They are not the first to die at the hands of the Magi,” Kaleth told him, and the restrained anger in his voice penetrated even Baket-ke-aput’s rage and grief. “Nor will they be the last. Listen now to who these abominations are, and what they have wrought in Alta.”
He rose to his feet, and stood, as if he was about to officiate over a ceremony. Kiron thought that he had never seen Kaleth look so full of authority; this young man who was not a great deal older than Kiron himself was standing among men much his senior in age and authority, and yet they were listening to him with as much deference as if he had Lord Khumun’s years and experience. As the torchlight flickered, the shadows moved across his face, and the larger shadow he cast behind him stretched up the wall like a kind of guardian spirit. Briefly, and succinctly, Kaleth told the Tians what the Magi of Alta were, the weapons they had created, how they had consolidated their power for decades, and how they had finally moved to take Alta into their hands. “It is the Winged—the god-touched—who give them the most power, but power, and years, can be stolen from any living human, we think.”
The Thet priest nodded. “So we have been told, in the scrolls of the forbidden magics. Though it takes the deaths of many to equal the power of a single god-touched victim.”
“So, as they exhaust those with the holy powers, they turn to the common man,” Kaleth continued, and raised his eyebrow. “Do you see now why they should be so very interested in this war, and the indefinite prolonging of it?”
Baket-ke-aput closed his eyes, while some of the others behind him exclaimed, as if thunderstruck that they had not thought of this before. “To my shame,” said Pta-hetop, “That had not occurred to me. I thought only to take the rest of us out of their reach—”
“Wisely,” Lord Khumun put in with emphasis, speaking for the first time since they had all sat down. “You could not do any good by allowing yourselves to be taken! You have removed one arrow from their quiver. That was well done.”
“And the trek across the desert is not well-suited to taking thought for anything but the journey,” said Lord Ya-tiren with sympathy. “As we who lately took that trek know too well.”
“That is why we meddled with the tala, we young Jousters and Heklatis,” Kiron put in. “We knew we could not hope to stop the war, but we thought we could at least put it on the footing of soldier against soldier, without the dragons adding to the slaughter. But—” he added, feeling sick again, “—I never thought that the Magi would take themselves to Tia and infect it with their evil.”
“Well, we can all play the I never thought game until we are so bowed down with grief and guilt that we cannot move,” Heklatis said sharply, cutting through an atmosphere that was increasingly loaded with just that. “Now we know. Kaleth has the guidance of the gods themselves, as well as the Eye that sees into the futures. We have dragons. Kaleth tells us that we will have more flocking to our banner, and we have the best minds in both Kingdoms to deal with this. We have traded what we know, found it appalling, and have joined forces. And this is enough for one night, don’t you think?”
Words so blunt they were the equivalent of clubs left everyone sitting in stunned silence.
Then, after a long—a very long—moment, in which Kiron fully expected someone among the Tians to take offense at the Akkadian’s rudeness—the silence was broken.
By laughter.
It was laughter with an edge of bitterness and grief to it, but it was laughter all the same. And it was coming from Baket-ke-aput, who bowed his head as his shoulders shook, and finally sat straight up again and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“By the gods, Akkadian, your tongue alone is sharper than twenty swords,” he said, and Kiron thought there was just a touch of admiration in his voice. “If ever I need a goad, I will come to you, direct. I wonder that you are still alive; in Tia, you’d have been challenged a hundred times by now.”
Heklatis shrugged, looking smug. “In Akkadia, I was. Why do you think I am here? But in Alta-that-was, a man who cannot fight with his wits has no right to challenge one who can to a battle with swords. Especially when that one is in the right. And you know that I am.”
“I do. I do. Just keep that tongue of yours to a goad, and do not turn it to a flayer’s whip to take the hide off those you would help. You are right. There is nothing we can do this moment—but simply by exchanging these words, we have done much already.” Baket-ke-aput looked back over his shoulder, and seeing no disagreement among his own folk, looked each of those in the circle in the face. “If you will have us, have our skills, have us at your side—we are your brothers, from this day.”
Lord Khumun stood up, as did Baket-ke-aput, and the two men clasped arms as equals; Kaleth put his hand over both of theirs. “Welcome to Sanctuary, brothe
rs,” Khumun said fiercely, then softened the ferocity with a smile. “And as your brother—I advise you to rest. Tomorrow begins the real work. Tonight—may the gods give you dreams of a future we can be proud to build.”
SIX
KIRON went to sleep feeling as if he had just been through an earthshake, and woke up in much the same mood. And he had thought that he would have some time to get used to the situation before anyone rang in new changes on him.
He was, however, mistaken.
He had not been back from the morning hunt longer than it took to unharness Avatre and give her a sand buffing and oiling, when Menet-ka came looking for him.
“Ho! Kiron!” he called from above the pen. Kiron looked up, but before he could ask anything, Menet-ka answered his questioning look. “You’re wanted,” he said shortly. “In that little temple of Kaleth’s. Kaleth sent me to get you.”
Avatre was ill-pleased by the interruption, and she snorted at Menet-ka, her golden eyes flashing her displeasure. Kiron patted her shoulder, where the scales shone like armor made of rubies. “For what?” he asked. “I was going to go work on the new pens—”
Menet-ka shrugged. “They didn’t tell me, but I expect they want you as the wingleader. Anyone who’s like to be in charge of anything is there right now. I suppose they’re forming that council Kaleth was talking about, and they want you for something having to do with it.”
Well, he could see why they would be doing that now—while people were still in shock and feeling sympathetic to the Tians, it was best to make them a fundamental part of Sanctuary. Especially if more Tians were likely to be coming.
Only the priests of the temples at Mefis had reached here so far, though according to what Kiron had heard rumored this morning, warning was spreading out to the farthest-flung temples like the ripples after a rock has been thrown into a still pool. Soon every priest in every temple in Tia would know what had happened in Mefis, and if they had any sense at all, they would realize it was only a matter of time before the hands of those “advisers” stretched out for them. Or at least, any of them that had extraordinary powers.
After that, anyone Winged (or “god-touched” as the Tians put it) who had any measure of common sense and self-preservation would be fleeing. Some might choose other directions than into the desert, but some would follow the priests of Mefis. And many who were not god-touched might also choose to escape.
Then the rumors would begin to fly as priests and some of their servants and slaves vanished, the story about the dead children would eventually surface and although it might be embellished or changed out of all recognition, fingers would begin pointing in the right direction. The Magi in Tia did not have an Eye, the terrible means of enforcing their will and controlling the populace at large that the Magi of Alta did. The King’s soldiers could punish and arrest, but they could not strike from the sky—ordinary Tians might begin to look askance at the Great King’s new advisers, wonder if the rumors were true, and think about a retreat across the desert themselves.
Perhaps. There was the same difficulty there as there was in persuading Altans to flee; it was hard to leave everything you had built and sweated for, and go off into the unknown. Especially when what you had sweated for was very little. When you did not own much, every bit of what you did have was precious. A bit of land—well, it might be no more than a few rods of soil, but how could you leave it and go somewhere else where you owned nothing? A small house—but if it had been where your father, and your father’s father grew up, the very dust was precious. And without the double threat of the Eye and the earthshakes to threaten them, it would be difficult to persuade Tians to flee.
Not all, not even most would make the journey. Most would remain where they were, reluctant to leave their only homes and possessions. Many of those who initially left would turn back after the first few hardships. But there were a great many Tians and Altans, and Sanctuary until now had been very small. The population of Sanctuary was about to be increased from both sides of this conflict, and Kiron could easily see that there had better be something in place to rule over them and adjudicate the inevitable differences before the influx became too great.
Though why he should be involved—
Well, only one way to find out. He gave Avatre a final caress, and left her basking in the heat while he sought the building Kaleth called the “House of All Gods.”
There had been too few priests and too few resources when they first came to Sanctuary to have a temple for each god. Kaleth had simply solved the problem himself by setting up the same sort of temple that the Healers and the Winged Ones had, in a great building that had surely once been a temple itself, with small shrines to every God the Altans knew around the walls of the chief room. As more buildings were uncovered and explored, little statues turned up that more or less resembled different Altan deities. Whenever that happened, he or Heklatis modified them to suit and put them at the appropriate shrine. There were several small rooms—looking exactly like the rooms where priests lived in the temples that Kiron knew. Kaleth and Marit lived there now.
The door to the House of All Gods stood open, and the Tian acolytes were busying themselves with various tasks as Kiron approached. It appeared that Kaleth had taken in the Tian priests as his guests. This would probably serve, but—
But we’d better get another sandstorm soon, Kiron thought, as he entered the door, moved to one side out of the way of traffic, and surveyed the crowded central hall.
As they had last night, those most closely involved with what Kiron was beginning to decide was going to become the council were seated in a rough circle, with other interested parties behind them. Fewer now than last night, but still . . . there were a lot of them in this audience. Interesting; once again, it was a mix of Tians and Altans, but now, instead of being completely separated into two groups, the Tians and Altans were at least sitting close to one another and if not yet talking, were at least trading cautious glances.
Kaleth, who was seated next to Lord Khumun and beside the chief Tian priest, glanced over at the doorway from time to time. When he finally spotted Kiron, he lifted his head and gestured to him to come in. “Kiron!” Kaleth called, when he made no move to enter the room. “Come sit beside Ari. You are to speak for the Jousters.”
His own head came up; to say he was startled was an understatement. How could he possibly speak for the Jousters? “But Ari—” he began. “Ari is older than I and, besides, Ari is more experienced—”
“Not in the sort of things we will be asking you new, young Jousters to do,” Lord Khumun pointed out, as Kiron made his way through the crowd to sit uneasily next to Ari on a flat cushion that one of the Tian acolytes handed to him. “His expertise dates to the days before, when no one had a tame dragon but himself, and even he will have to learn what you already know. And besides that—we have another purpose for Ari.”
Ari stirred, looking a little apprehensive at that pronouncement. But before he could say anything, Lord Ya-tiren stood up, and any murmuring sank into silence.
Lord Ya-tiren had never been the sort to have any patience with ostentation in his dress, so the plain kilt he wore and the simple collar, sash, and wig with it, would not have been out of place among any gathering of moderately prosperous men. It was not his physique that commanded the room either; like most Altans, especially compared with Tians, he was slender, and although he was in excellent condition, his was the build of a scholar or scribe, not a warrior.
It was something else entirely that set him apart; the feeling of completely unconscious authority, as if, all his life, men had listened to him and obeyed when he gave an order.
Which, of course, they had.
“I make bold to call this meeting into order. We are here because things have come to the point that we need a council of peers to govern us,” he said, in such reasonable tones that there was nodding all the way around. “I think we are all agreed on that, even our new—allies. And we were fairly agreed
some time ago on who should sit on this council. But after last night, it is clear to me, and perhaps it has always been clear to Kaleth, that Sanctuary is not going to be the retreat for Altans alone that we once thought. It will be bigger, holding far more people, and a council alone will not suffice to govern it.”
He paused, but there was no sound of disagreement. “We are used to being ruled by Kings and Queens, both Altans and Tians alike. I believe most folk will be uneasy without such rulers. Perhaps a council might have served if Sanctuary was only to be home to a handful of Jousters, a few renegade Great Houses, and a gaggle of priests. But it is not. The common people of the Two Lands will be coming here, and we need a single figure—or perhaps, I should say, a pair—to serve as leaders. Our peoples are used to bringing their troubles to a single source of remedy, not a council. And there should be one deciding voice to cut through dissent and say, ‘this shall be’ when there is no clear agreement.”
There was murmuring, but it was the murmur of agreement rather than dissent. No one was going to argue . . . yet.
“You, my lord,” Ari began, but Lord Ya-tiren shook his head.
“I will not be accepted by Tians,” he pointed out, before any of the Tian priests could even think to object. “I would not even truly be accepted by Altans. By our laws, the ruler must be out of the royal bloodlines. Kaleth and Marit are already out of the succession, by reason that he is claimed by the gods and she is claimed by him. So aside from them, there is only one person here who matches that requirement.”
And he looked across the circle to where Nofret was sitting beside Ari, on the side opposite to Kiron. She looked up at him, eyes as wide as a startled gazelle.
“But!” she began, “I do not—I am not—” but Lord Khumun and Lord Ya-tiren together shook their heads.
“You must,” said Lord Ya-tiren. “We are all—all!—taking duties we feel we are ill-suited to. This must be yours. Besides, Nofret, you and your sister were trained to sit on the Twin Thrones. You may not have the experience, but you have the knowledge of how to lead, and you certainly have the example before you of how not to lead.”
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