Sanctuary dj-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  He would have liked to call to the others, but voices carried in the darkness, and voices out of the sky would certainly alert people below. Even if they thought it was ghosts or demons, they might be tempted to peek. So they were maintaining strict silence until they landed.

  It was a curious thing—he would have thought, if there was any such thing as ghosts or night-prowling demons to be seen, they would have been visible from above. Yet there was nothing, or rather, nothing out of the ordinary, though once he did get a glimpse of the astonishing sight of a herd of river horses on land. He would not have thought their ponderous bulk could have been sustained out of the water.

  The moon passed, slowly and with all the regal deliberation of the goddess that she was, from east to west. The dragons flew on, but Kiron sensed Avatre growing weary, putting more effort into her wingbeats, and he pummeled his brain to try and remember how long Aket-ten had said it would be before they saw Aunt Re’s fires.

  And just when he was starting to really worry—he saw them.

  A welcome sight they were, too—several furlongs away from the river itself, a blazing rectangle of yellow and blue-green, to his dark-accustomed eyes the center of the training ground looked as bright as day. And there was no holding Avatre back either; she spotted it, and put on a burst of energy to reach it. Like it or not, she was going to land there!

  He glanced behind at the eight other shadows ranged out in a V-shape from either of Avatre’s wings, and saw that their dragons, too, had spotted the fires and come to a similar decision, for they had stopped the pattern of three beats and a glide and were plowing through the air with will and determination.

  It was a very good thing that the training ground was as large as the old Landing Court of the Jousters’ Compound in Tia because there was no holding back any of them. Avatre landed first, but only by the smallest of margins. The rest came in anyhow, picking a spot by virtue of the fact that no one else was in it. In a way, the landing was an anticlimax; while it wasn’t done neatly, it was completed with no injuries or collisions.

  Only when all of them were down, and the dragons’ wings were furled and the riders out of the saddles, did anyone emerge from the gate at the end of the training ground. And then, it was not someone, but an entire procession of people, headed by a very formidable-looking woman in a fine, if plain, wig and an equally fine, if plain, linen gown. No jewels adorned Aunt Re, but she didn’t need them to denote her authority. Her erect carriage, her challenging gaze, and her rather formidable prow of a nose marked her as someone to be reckoned with.

  But she smiled as Aket-ten ran toward her and flung her arms around her neck, and gestured to some of her servants to extinguish the fire pots.

  “Where is the wingleader?” she called.

  “Stay,” he told Avatre, and approached Aket-ten’s aunt, giving her a bow of respect when he came within a few paces of her.

  “Well done, boy,” she said warmly. “That was no easy journey.”

  “It was the easiest part of what we are to do,” he said somberly, and she nodded in agreement.

  “My people have brought meat for your dragons; do you wish to remain with them, or would you care to eat in the dining chamber?” she asked.

  Kiron ran his hand through his hair, and made a rueful face. “I think we had rather eat in the dining chamber, but had better remain with our dragons,” he replied. “They’re going to be uneasy enough as it is, and they don’t like to be parted from us.”

  He had halfway expected her to be offended, but to his surprise, she broke into an enormous smile. “Well said!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “I like a man who thinks of his beast’s and servant’s comfort before his own! I raised my sons that way, and I cannot count the number of times one of them has declined a feast to sit with an ill or birthing animal, and rightly, too!” She turned to Aket-ten. “You’ve chosen well, niece, you may keep him.”

  Kiron felt himself growing warm, and even though most of the fire pots had been extinguished, he saw Aket-ten blushing. No wonder Aunt Re had a reputation for being eccentric! And no wonder the Magi had not challenged her! He rather pitied them if they tried.

  But she paid no attention to their reactions; instead, she turned to her servants and gestured, and they began bringing, first wheelbarrows full of meat, then the makings for sleeping pallets, while off to one side, a few more patiently stood, laden with platters of food.

  The dragons, already exhausted, wolfed down their meat with weary determination to get as much into their bellies as they could before they had to lie down. Each of them chose a place to curl up on hard-packed earth that still held some of the sun’s warmth in it; most of them chose places close together, with only Avatre and Kashet choosing to be a little aloof. Interestingly, Aunt Re’s servants showed no fear of the dragons as they moved about, helping the equally weary riders spread pallets on the ground next to their beasts, then coming to offer them food from the platters.

  And as Kiron made his selections, he felt as if the first part of their ordeal had been well-rewarded, for he hadn’t seen food like this since they had left Alta. Fresh fruit, dripping with juice, milk as well as beer to drink, cheese, duck, fish—oh, fish! He would have felt ashamed to help himself so greedily to the fish, except that he saw out of the corner of his eye that even elegant, aristocratic Gan was digging into the fish with the glee of a sweet-starved child and with as little regard for manners.

  Aunt Re observed them all with a maternal smile on her face. “It does my heart good to see healthy boys enjoying food,” she said, ostensibly to Aket-ten, but loud enough for them all to hear. “The gods put good food on this earth for us to appreciate it, and it is blasphemous to do otherwise. And as you can see, I follow that creed!” Then she laughed, and patted her ample middle.

  Aket-ten grinned around a mouthful of palm fruit. “Aunt Re, I don’t think any of us would disagree with you.”

  “And which of these young men is the Queen-in-waiting’s Consort?” she asked, and not waiting for an answer, picked out Ari with her keen eyes. “Ah, there you are! Come here, boy, if you would.”

  Ari wisely did as he was told, rising from his cross-legged position on the pallet spread next to Kashet (already dozing) and coming to stand before Aunt Re like a soldier about to be evaluated by his commander. She looked up at him with her arms crossed over her chest, and nodded.

  “I like you, Tian,” she said. “You’ll do. It’s about time we got someone with some spine in his bloodline on a throne. You see to it that this nonsense is ended once and for all, and crush those vipers calling themselves Magi under your heel.”

  And with that, she looked over the rest of them. “Get what sleep you can,” she said. “When the sun rises, and it gets too hot for humans, you can either move under the canopies I’ll have brought or come inside. My people will bring you more food for yourselves and your beasts; all you have to do is ask for it.”

  She patted Ari’s arm. “Back to your dragon, before he misses you.”

  And with that, she turned and led her procession of servants back out of the training ground, leaving behind a few lit torches, filled water jars and dippers, and the semichaotic sprawl of dragons and riders.

  Aket-ten saw to Re-eth-ke—who, having been here before, had settled down as soon as she was stuffed full and now was sleeping blissfully—and flopped down beside Kiron.

  “Why wasn’t that woman on one of the Twin Thrones?” he demanded, half laughing, half seriously.

  “Because she didn’t want to be?” Aket-ten grinned. “Aunt Re, so far as I can tell, has never had any patience with what she calls ‘trivialities.’ That’s probably why the family put her out here in the first place. According to Father, it was a minor estate when she was sent here mostly to keep her from outraging anyone she talked to. She took over the management of it, made it into a very wealthy estate, married her Overseer, had six sons, and all of it without asking anyone’s permission. Father adores her.�
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  “You’d either adore her or hate her.” He nibbled his lip. “I think I adore her, too. Has she any magic?”

  Aket-ten shook her head. “Not a bit. All of her Healing is done with herb and knife, and she’s very, very good. When her husband died, she just decided one day that she was going to learn Healing, brought in several Healers to teach her, and just—absorbed it all the way dry ground absorbs rain.”

  “But why Healing?” he persisted.

  “I don’t know. She only told me that no other man could ever fill her life the way We-ra-te did, so she wasn’t going to try to find another husband, that the estate was pretty much running itself and what little it needed ought to be her eldest son’s purview anyway, so she needed something that would fill her thoughts and her time, if not her life.” Aket-ten shrugged. “If you were going to ask me, I’d say it was probably something she’d wanted to do before she was sent here, and wasn’t allowed.”

  “She’s a wonder,” Kiron said, looking at the gate through which she had exited.

  “She’s every bit of that.” Aket-ten yawned. “Now I want to sleep. If that earthshake comes tomorrow, we’ll need all the rest we can get.”

  Kiron nodded, looked around, and saw that pretty much everyone else had come to the same conclusion. Ari was already asleep, with his hand on Kashet’s foreleg. The others had curled up in various other positions of contact with their dragons, each taking comfort from the other in this strange place. Aket-ten bent and softly kissed his forehead before taking herself to her own pallet, and he found the most comfortable position for himself, with his back against Avatre’s belly.

  Sleep was a long time in coming, as he played over in his mind all the possible variations the rescue could have, and tried to think of others that hadn’t yet occurred to him. But eventually, sleep did come, and took all further thoughts and plans away.

  FIFTEEN

  THE dragons slept like so many statues, and for a while, so did their riders—until the sun rose a bit too far and it was too hot for a human to take, even those used to the heat of the desert. As the riders woke, one by one, the dragons roused just enough to eat, but went back to sleep immediately. Kiron worried about turning their night and day all round about for them, but there really wasn’t a choice, not if they were going to have any hope at all of rescuing the Winged Ones. Still, as he stumbled with the rest to the shelter of the canopies Aunt Re’s servants had erected, stomach a bit queasy, thoughts fogged, and head aching, he wondered—if the humans felt this unsettled, how did the dragons feel?

  He fell asleep again almost as soon as he’d had a drink and gotten into the shade, as had the rest. The rest! They were flat as dried-up lizards on their low Altan couches, made to stand as near to the ground and the cooler air near the floor as possible without actually being on the floor. It probably would have been cooler inside, but none of them wanted to leave the dragons.

  He woke again, feeling much more clear-headed, to the sound of quiet voices, and levered himself off the couch to see that it was mid- to late afternoon, and Aunt Re was deep in conversation with Ari. Oset-re was cleaning his harness. Gan, Pe-atep, and Orest were feeding their dragons; only Kalen, Huras, and Aket-ten still slept. His mind felt immensely clearer, and the dragons looked quite their normal selves. In fact, Avatre caught the slight movement he made in looking up and raised her head to snort at him in that demanding fashion that told him she wanted food and she wanted it now. The others were being fed, and here he was asleep!

  Aunt Re glanced over at the imperious scarlet beauty and chuckled. He knuckled the last sleep out of his eyes and got up to obey her, nudging the couches of Aket-ten and Huras as he passed to stir them up. Kalen was already blinking, looking as ruffled as an owl awakened during the day.

  It was all so peaceful, it was easy to forget the situation that brought them here, the crisis that was building within an easy flight of this place, the war, the Magi, and everything else.

  He asked one of the waiting servants to bring him meat for Avatre, and trundled the waiting barrow to her with a pang of regret. This was a very temporary respite in a terrible conflict, and he found himself longing for this peace as much as starving little Vetch had longed for food. Avatre bent her head to the barrow of meat and, rather than gulping down the chunks as he had expected she would, ate them daintily as she had in Alta; slowly, as if savoring the fleeting moment herself and trying to make it last.

  By the time she was done, the rest had all finished feeding, even Re-eth-ke; none of the others was willing to linger over a meal, however tasty. And as the servants filled the horse troughs so that the dragons could get a drink, they all, even Avatre, kept their heads up, looking about warily, as if expecting something. Even when they were all led to the water, they would not all drink at the same time, but took it in turns to keep watch for something only they could sense.

  And Kiron wondered—had the Magi employed the Eye, as Kaleth had said they would? Could the dragons sense the horror scorching down out of the Tower out there? Kaleth’s vision had shown it happening late some afternoon, but there was no telling which afternoon it would be; they had picked the most likely, but it could come tomorrow, or the day after that, or yet another day. And part of him wanted desperately to put the hour off, but the rest of him wanted just as desperately to get it all over with.

  Whatever was causing them to be wary, the dragons didn’t settle down completely once they’d drunk. Not even a rubdown and a brisk oiling made them give over that constant looking around for something that no one else could sense. Aket-ten could only say, “They’re uneasy, they’re on edge, and they don’t know why,” which was obvious enough even to anyone without the ability to speak with them.

  The boat of the sun sank to the horizon, and still they would not settle, even though their instincts were surely telling them it was getting on time to sleep. The servants reported that none of the other animals around the estate were keyed up—with the single exception of Aunt Re’s pet cheetah, who was prowling the confines of her special chamber with the same wary urgency with which the dragons were prowling the training grounds.

  And just as the sun-disk sank out of sight—everything suddenly went very, very quiet. Too quiet. Not a goose honked, not a bird sang, not even a single insect buzzed or rattled. The hair suddenly rose on the back of Kiron’s neck, and he felt cold all over, and instinctively looked around for something to clutch. The dragons went rigid.

  Then—it came.

  That moment of silence warned them, and they had all braced themselves, but it was still gut-wrenching. When the ground below one moves, the body automatically reacts, sharply, and with the most acute of terror.

  And this was no ordinary shake, for it went on for what seemed like an eternity. It was not bad as such things went; in fact, it was no worse than many such that Kiron had felt before the Magi began employing the Eye on a regular basis. But it went on, and on, and on, while humans and animals alike screamed with atavistic fear, while birds exploded up into the darkening sky, calling alarm at the tops of their lungs, and the dragons ramped and snorted and hissed, clustering close until their heads and long necks formed a bizarre, ever-weaving bouquet. Under the crash of things falling over, pottery breaking, cries and howls and screams was another sound, deep, that rattled the chest and the gut. It was worse than the worst thunder he had ever heard, a moaning of earth and stone providing the drumming of this dance of disaster. The voice of the earthshake was like the groan of an earth wounded near to death.

  But only Khaleph lifted off, and even then, not for long, only for a moment, and he set down again in spite of the fact that the ground was still heaving.

  Nearly all of them had dropped to their knees, not because it was hard to keep their footing, but because the terror that welled up inside them made it impossible to stand. Only Ari and Aunt Re remained on their feet, and Kiron could not imagine how they were coping with abject fear that made his insides turn to water and his muscl
es to dough. They felt it; he could see it on their faces. Yet they were holding against it.

  The shake continued to go on and on for far too long, until he could scarcely think or see, hardly draw a breath for the terror that tightened his chest.

  Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped, leaving behind only the cacophony of birds, the terrified whinnying of horses from the stables and paddocks beside the training ground, and the hissing and whining of the dragons. Kiron picked himself up and went to Avatre to calm her; around the courtyard, the rest were doing the same. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aunt Re going to her servants, one after the other, helping them up, giving them a maternal pat here, a bit of a shake there, a shove to get them moving again.

  “. . . knew it was coming,” she said briskly, as she moved into his range of hearing. “Now we need to find out the damage! Come on, come on, we don’t want to find river horses trying to take shelter in the duck pond, now, do we?”

  Even as he was calming Avatre, he had to admire her; she was like a general mustering the courage of her troops.

  “I’m glad she’s on our side,” he said to Aket-ten, who had quickly gotten Re-eth-ke under control, and was now working her way around the other dragons, bestowing calm with a touch, a silent “word,” or both.

  She gave him a shaky smile, her teeth flashing whitely in the growing darkness, but said nothing.

  By this time, the birds had settled again, and though there was anxious complaining from the trees around the house, there was no more shrieking. Those that could still see in the half light had flown off, the rest had no choice but to settle down. Someone was getting to the horses, too; they were calming.

  We have to go, he realized, still numb with the after-shock. This is it. We have to go, and soon.

  It wasn’t long before Aunt Re had her servants out of the training ground and back in again, bringing back those fire pots. They placed the pots exactly as they had for the dragons’ arrival, and Kiron was grateful; Aunt Re must have understood it would be impossible to get the dragons up into the air without light now.