Well, that was new. “A council?” Kiron asked. “Leaders? But—”
“All in good time,” Ari cautioned. “But it is best to have the plan in place before you need it.”
“Does Lord—” Kiron began.
“Lord Khumun knows and approves,” said Kaleth, and that seemed to be that. After all, if Lord Khumun, who had been the de facto leader of the refugees since they had all arrived here, had no difficulty with these plans, who was Kiron to object?
“Oh, yes,” Heklatis said, when Kiron came to talk to him. “A good deal of what your priests did to bring heat to the sands was mummery. Mind, it is a good thing to have the blessing of the gods when you decide to work a bit of magic! But there was no need for all the chanting and incense and pretty priestesses in mist linen.” He chuckled. “Except, of course, that the old priests probably liked looking at pretty priestesses in mist linen.” He raised an eyebrow at Kiron. “Mind, mist linen is a very good choice for adorning a fine body, don’t you think?”
The Akkadian Healer—who was also a Magus, according to his own people’s way of magic—was a short, bandy-legged fellow with a knowing eye and a head of curly, silver-streaked hair. Wiry and agile rather than slim and graceful like the Altans, he stood out among the refugees physically for more than just his Akkadian tunics and his wild halo of hair.
He also was not in the least interested in priestesses in mist linen. Which Kiron knew very well.
Kiron felt his ears growing hot, and gave himself a moment to think by looking around Heklatis’ quarters—which did not differ substantially from the ones he had in the Jousters’ Compound in Alta. Everything he remembered from there was here; the Akkadian statues of gods, the mix of Akkadian and Altan furnishings, the case of scrolls, the odd metal lamps that Heklatis favored.
Then again, Heklatis had been able to take virtually everything he owned with him. Unlike the Jousters, he hadn’t had to abandon anything, because he and Lord Khumun had smuggled themselves out disguised as an aged husband and wife leaving for the country. A wagon full of belongings made a useful foil.
“But—” he began, deciding to quickly change the subject, “Kaleth seems to think we’re going to be needing everything the kamiseen uncovered and more! I thought Sanctuary was pretty much just for the Jousters and people that the Magi were determined to do away with! Just how many people are going to be turning up here?”
Heklatis turned sober. “More than either of us think, I suspect,” he replied. “I have the feeling that things are not going at all well back in Alta. Kaleth has been very close-mouthed about what he has Seen. I believe he is waiting for this next lot to arrive to confirm with their own words what he knows, rather than risk our incredulity—because I think he knows that the skep-tics among us will take it all more seriously with eyewitnesses.”
Kiron felt his heart sinking. “It won’t be good,” he replied, shaking his head. “I didn’t want to think about it as long as we were all right, but . . . well, he won’t have to have eyewitnesses to convince me.”
“Nor me,” Heklatis sighed, scratching his head absently.
The Magi had certainly begun their covert takeover of Alta long before Kiron had arrived, but shortly after he had joined the Jousters of Alta, they had moved from covert to overt. Once, they had relied only on their own strength, like the priest-mages of Tia, and their magic had been used to defend Alta. Now, however, their power was stolen from others, and their magic was used to help them in a bid for control of the people and the land. Kiron had discovered that they were stealing whatever it was that enabled the Winged Ones to see into the future and predict earthshakes, and to see at a distance to predict the movements of Tian troops—leaving Alta vulnerable. Worse, they were draining enough of it that the Winged Ones were dying of it. And they had begun moving to drain the same resource from those with other abilities.
Like the Healers.
Once, the Eye they had created was a potent weapon that lashed the earth with fire and had been Alta’s last-ditch defense. Now it was used to keep the people of Alta in fear, lashing out whenever anyone challenged the authority of the Magi, incinerating the very people and places it was supposed to protect.
Whoever, whatever, had started the war between Tia and Alta was lost in the past and a hundred thousand recriminations. But now (so Kiron and others believed) the war was being prolonged because death, and all the magic inherent in the years that might have been lived, gave the Magi the power they could no longer live without and could not raise for themselves without harm to others. They had used up as much of their own power as they were willing to part with, they were using up the Winged Ones, and there was every indication—or had been, when the Jousters had fled—that the Magi had learned how to profit from the sacrifice of others.
And now that they had found this new source of power, he and Heklatis and the few others who suspected it had no doubt that they would exploit it as ruthlessly as they had every other source. It gave them stolen youth, it gave them the power to control the Eye, and Kiron could not even begin to guess what else they had planned.
One thing he did know; it had given them supreme secular power, or at least, it had put the Twin Thrones of Alta within their grasp.
Of course, in order to get access to the Twin Thrones, and to set themselves up as the heirs apparent, they had needed to be rid of the then-current heirs. The murder of one, the disgrace of the other—the fabrication of a twin-bloodline—and the deed was done.
The murdered heir had been Toreth, a Jouster, and Kaleth’s twin. He was not, by any means, the only one they had killed, but this was the death that had shown the Jousters, all of them, just what the Magi had become. And subsequent subtle persecution of the Jousters had proved to them that the Magi were determined to be rid of the one group that resisted their takeover.
When Kiron and the rest had fled Alta, it had been with the knowledge that the Magi were going to destroy the Jousters as the last obstacle that stood between them and their control of the entire country. The trouble was that the Jousters of Alta were all that stood between the people of Alta and the depredations of the Jousters of Tia, who were responsible for some true horrors.
Kiron and the others decided they could not make their own escape until they had nullified that threat, so they had done their best to even the stakes between Alta and Tia by destroying what had kept the wild-caught dragons under control, the drug called tala. The Jousters of Tia had been overwhelming in their number and the strength of their larger desert-born dragons. But with the tala gone and the wild-born dragons no longer controllable, at least the conflict came down to equal numbers and equal armies.
The only dragons left under human control now were those that had been raised from the egg by their Jousters—the eight dragons born in Alta and raised by Kiron’s wing, and the two born in Tia and raised by Kiron and Ari.
These were now the dragons and Jousters of Sanctuary, who served and protected those who were pledged to end the war, though they had no idea yet how they could do that. There was only one thing that any of them knew for certain. Ending the war began with ending the power of the Magi, because the Magi were the ones prolonging the conflict, and the only ones who benefited from it.
So now the question in Kiron’s mind was, how badly had things deteriorated in Alta since Kiron and the rest had fled the city? He could not imagine that they would have improved.
“Have you heard anything from the Healers?” he asked Heklatis. The Akkadian shook his head.
“Not that I expected to,” Heklatis added. “I think that whatever information comes to us will come in with these newcomers that we are expecting.”
“How much do you think Kaleth already knows?” Kiron asked, with a growing sense of unease that was not directed at their enemies—but at the one who was supposed to be guiding them. It was one thing for Kaleth to be the mere mouthpiece for the gods, but another entirely for him to be withholding vital information if he had it. Was Ka
leth already keeping secrets—as the Magi had?
“Not nearly as much as you think he does,” Heklatis said immediately, as if he were able to read Kiron’s thoughts, and he gave Kiron a reassuring nod. “The Magi are able to block my scrying and the attempts by the Bedu to overlook the city. I think they can probably even cloud whatever ability the gods gave Kaleth as well. My bet would be that Kaleth knows just enough to make him sure he hasn’t got sufficient information to give good advice, much less base decisions on.”
Kiron shook his head, for that made no sense at all. “How can men block the power of the gods?” he protested.
Heklatis gave an exasperated snort. “Oh, do think, will you? There are gods of the light, and are there also not gods of darkness? Oh, yes, I know, among you Altans and Tians every god has some aspects of both—but are there not gods that are mostly of the darkness, as Haras and Iris and Siris are mostly of the light?”
“Well,” Kiron admitted, slowly, “Ye-es.”
“And did those gods of light and darkness not go to war against each other in the distant and legended past?” Heklatis persisted.
“Not war, precisely, but—”
“And do you not think that the Magi of Alta are, even now, giving those dark gods what they most crave? And in return, for those gifts, those dark gods are preventing the servants of the light from seeing what they do?” Heklatis looked at him as if he were a particularly dense apprentice.
Kiron shivered. It was bad enough, thinking that the Magi alone were working against them—but to think that gods might be getting into it—
How could they ever hope to prevail against gods?
“The good thing is that gods seldom intervene directly,” Heklatis went on, with an arched brow as he noted Kiron’s shivering. “Probably because, having warred with each other in the long past, they are loath to begin such a war again. I do not believe we need fear divine or infernal retribution. Interference, perhaps—but that, my young friend, can go both ways. Do not grant the darkness more power than it already has by giving in to your fears. And remember that if this is the case, and they have allies, well, so do we.”
Anything else that the Healer might have added had to be left unsaid, for their conversation was interrupted by Huras, who diffidently rapped at the door-post of Heklatis’ dwelling. Heklatis almost never closed his door except during a kamiseen, saying that a Healer must always be available to those who needed him.
“Kiron, Healer, I wouldn’t interrupt you,” the stocky young man said, as Kiron saw immediately by the excitement in his eyes that he must have some news. “But one of the Bedu guides has just come in with word. The people Kaleth has been expecting are not more than half a day behind him, and you will be most glad to hear who they are!”
The weary caravan of refugees arrived at Sanctuary in the last gleam of twilight, as the full moon rose over the desert. Weary they might have been, but they arrived in good order; which was only to be expected, since their leader was Lord Ya-tiren—the father of Orest and Aket-ten.
And with him was his entire household. Wife, sons, servants, and every other relative and their households that wished to escape. Every bit of movable property, every scrap of food they could buy or harvest, every animal that could take the desert trek; all of it. They formed an irregular blot against the pale desert sand as they approached, a blot that brought its own dust cloud and heralded its approach by the bleating and calling of the animals with them.
Small wonder that Kaleth had said that without the sandstorm uncovering the new parts of the city, they would be crowded.
There were others with Lord Ya-tiren as well, but no other Great Houses intact and entire. Some Healers, most notably those who had the special gift of Healing by touch, and a few—a very, very few—of the priestly caste.
Aket-ten and Orest were beside themselves with relief and joy, and could not wait until the caravan arrived; they flew out to meet it on their dragons, and arrived back leading the refugees from the air, so Kiron did not witness how they greeted their father. Not that he needed to; he knew that the greeting would have been full of tears and pleasure, and he also knew that while he was very happy that his best friends had their mother and father safely with them, there would have been a small part of him eaten up with envy. His father, after all, was dead beyond a shadow of a doubt; his mother and his sisters, if they weren’t also dead, were worse off than slaves. He couldn’t begrudge Aket-ten and Orest this meeting, but he was glad he didn’t have to see it.
Instead, he was able to wait by the side of Kaleth and Lord Khumun with all the rest of the Jousters to welcome the refugees to their new home. He would not even have put himself forward as the Lord was greeted by Khumun as an equal, and himself gave Kaleth the bow of deep respect—but Lord Ya-tiren caught sight of him and greeted him with an enthusiasm he hadn’t expected.
“And there you are!” Lord Ya-tiren exclaimed, embracing him as he might have one of his own sons. Kiron felt himself flushing with a mingling of embarrassment, pleasure, and affection. He had not realized just how much he liked Lord Ya-tiren until that moment. He had known how much he respected the man, but not that he had come to think of the Lord and his family as a kind of second family of his own. “Kiron, it is good to see you again!”
“My lord, I am happy beyond telling that you have come safely here,” Kiron managed to say, with only a little stammer of confusion. “And with your entire household!”
“We should have been here sooner, but he would not leave anyone behind,” said Iris-aten, Aket-ten’s mother, with a warm smile for her husband. She didn’t look much like Aket-ten; where her daughter was flexible and tough, she was willowy and gracile. If Aket-ten was a bit like a cheetah, Iris-aten was a pampered temple cat. Nevertheless, she had made the trek, and evidently without a word of complaint. “Not that I didn’t agree with him; I will leave nothing for those wretches to seize in their greed. Not the least servant, nor the youngest goat!”
“I would leave nothing for those monsters in their Tower to use against us either,” Lord Ya-tiren said, his face darkening; his wife put a comforting hand on his arm. “Nor would I leave anything or anyone behind to suffer their wrath.”
“Not that we believe the Magi have so much as a clue that we have fled,” added a young man who looked very like Orest, but who was wearing what looked to Kiron like the robes of some sort of priest. “We left behind a great deal of misdirection. They should think that we left for the remote estates, well past the bounds of the city, and they should believe that it is because we fear the earthshakes.”
This must be the brother that’s a Te-oth priest. Kiron had not had the chance to meet all of the brothers—or even Aket-ten’s mother, except in passing. He tried not to feel too overwhelmed by this sudden avalanche of brothers, but he couldn’t help but wonder if they were eying him.
Were they looking at him and wondering how he felt about Aket-ten? Did they wonder how she felt about him?
But there were eight other young Jousters, and if they didn’t know—
He resolved to put the worry out of his mind for the moment. “How did you manage that?” he asked.
“A great deal of carefully placed gossip,” said yet another brother; this one must be the eldest, the one who had been Lord Ya-tiren’s steward; he looked like an older and taller version of Orest. “We have been dropping hints, acting terribly worried about the earthshakes, for—well, ever since Father let us know that we might need to take ourselves out of reach of the Magi. We aren’t the only ones either. There are those who really are making for property as far away from Alta as possible.”
“The Akkadians are leaving,” said yet another brother, somberly.
“Am I properly holding back my shock?” asked Heklatis, dryly. “Greetings, my Lord. I am exceedingly pleased to see all of you.”
“And I am exceedingly pleased to see you, Healer,” Lord Ya-tiren said. “We have more of your colleagues with us, though not as many as we wo
uld have liked. And we are, to be frank, very weary.”
“My old friend, we anticipated that.” Lord Khumun eased his way into the group, and he and Lord Ya-Tiren clasped forearms in greeting. “Our friends the Bedu have been helping us prepare temporary places for you; they will do until you can shape what the desert uncovered for your use to your own liking. Now come, and we will show you.”
With a sigh of relief, Kiron eased out of the way and let Lord Khumun take over the shepherding of the entire group. It was with a feeling of shock that he realized that this one group was going to more than double the population of Sanctuary.
As soon as we move out of our quarters, I suspect some of those that are not of Lord Ya-tiren’s household will move into them!
It was just as well that it wouldn’t take much to turn those empty workshops into the combination of pen and living quarters that they all had enjoyed in Alta.
We have a lot to do. And so did everyone else. Well, one step at a time. Tonight—
Tonight he would let Aket-ten and Orest enjoy being with their family again. Tonight was for celebration. Leave the work for tomorrow.
FOUR
“MY heart is glad for Aket-ten and Orest,” Menet-ka said, quietly joining Kiron as the latter slipped off to go back to the Jousters’ quarters, taking advantage of the crowd and the deepening darkness. “But I have no stomach for much celebration.”
Kiron glanced aside at him and they locked eyes for a moment The moon just coming up and the last of the twilight showed Menet-ka’s melancholy expression with painful clarity. “My own family is still in Alta, and not likely to escape any time soon,” Menet-ka elaborated quietly.
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