A wafting scent of roast duck tickled Kiron’s nose as they moved through the second of these rooms, and made his stomach growl. He hadn’t had duck or fish or goose, or anything that lived on or in the water, since leaving Alta. Well, fish. But they were dried. Nothing like the glorious roast fish he used to enjoy as an Altan Jouster. He turned his thoughts resolutely from food. He needed to concentrate on what, if anything, Ari might be asking him.
They passed into and out of a huge courtyard with a latas-pool fully big enough for swimming, rimmed with palm trees. There were piles of cushions, palm-leaf fans in baskets, and other things that gave him the impression that this was a spot used for lounging. But by whom? He did not know enough about court life to even venture a guess. From there, they passed into another part of the Palace where the ceilings were still high, but only a bit above “normal” height.
So far, every area they’d been through had been graced with stunning wall paintings appropriate to the room. In the scribes’ and officials’ chambers, it had been paintings of the god of writing and of diligent workers. Here, where he supposed these rooms were for entertaining, the murals were of dancers and flute girls, or of hunting scenes, or of the gods giving gifts of life and health to the Great King. The pillars were all painted to look like latas flowers, with the pillar being the green stem and close-furled leaves, the capital the blue-petaled flower spreading out to press against the ceiling. Here were low couches, more piles of cushions, and small tables holding objects it was too dim to make out. The effect was opulent beyond his dreams.
He hurried on, with the servant leading through more rooms seen only dimly as torches here had not been lit. They passed through another court with a pool, this one somewhat smaller and set like a blue jewel in a green garden. And from the far side of this court he could see what was presumably their goal, another set of rooms, where light and sound were spilling through an open doorway.
Glad to see an end to this journey, he followed the servant in and found himself in a room about the size of one of those that the officials had used. There were Ari and Nofret, bent over a table with something spread out over it. There were no torches here; instead, lamps provided much clearer, steadier light, including a lamp-stand at each of the four corners of the table. They were looking at a map, he saw, as he drew nearer. But it was the biggest map he had ever seen in his life.
A table to one side, pushed up against the wall, was laden with food: grapes, pomegranates, figs, flatbread and loaf bread both, honey cakes, butter and cheese, lettuce, green peas—and not that roast duck Kiron had scented but a glorious roast goose. It was missing one leg. The leg was in Ari’s hand, and the Great King looked very like the old Ari as he took bites as someone—from the war helmet, Kiron thought it might be Ari’s Captain of Thousands—pointed to something on the map.
“Kiron,” said Ari without turning around. “Get food and come over here and tell us exactly what you found. Kamas-hotet, where’s that map of Bukatan?”
A fellow with the sidelock hairstyle of a scribe went to a basket of scrolls and pulled one out without even looking at it, spreading it out on the table on top of the big map and weighing down the edges with little faience scroll weights in the shape of beetles so it wouldn’t roll up again.
Kiron didn’t have to be told what to do twice; his stomach felt as if it was pressed against his backbone. He heaped a platter with slices of goose, a slice of loaf bread spread with soft cheese, and grapes. “Kiron, come tell us everything you saw, from the beginning,” Ari said. “Here’s the map of the town you were in.”
Between bites, Kiron related everything that they had seen, from the moment they approached the place from the west, to the time the trail of the (presumably) now-captive townsfolk and soldiers ended and the trails of the slave traders began.
When he had finished, Ari and Nofret looked to the man in the war helmet.
“This was planned,” he said flatly. “It was planned for some time, and carefully executed. Let us leave aside how the townsfolk were bewitched; that is a matter for the priests to worry over. But look at this—”
He drew a line on the map with his finger, from the outskirts of the town to the place where Kiron guessed that the slavers had been, now marked with a red pebble. “I have planned many, many evacuations, Great Ones. I have had to evacuate towns and villages in time of war and in time of flood both. That distance is nearly exactly how long a group of people carrying children and infants can go before some begin to fall back because of exhaustion. I am speaking, of course, not of a measured and calm march, but of a forced one. In the ordinary sort of evacuation, people drop back all the time. In a forced march, fear bites at their heels, and only when the weakest are too tired to go on will you lose some. Whoever planned this knew all about such things. And whoever planned this did not want to leave so much as an infant behind.”
Ari nodded somberly. Nofret, however, looked sick and troubled. “Forgive me, but—as a Royal twin of Alta, where we bought and used many slaves, I know something of slave traders. It is not often they wish to be burdened with children; young children tire easily and cannot keep up with adults. They then must be carried or conveyed some other way. And infants—” She shook her head. “Infants on such a march? I never heard of such being taken. So why would they want all of the people in the town? It cannot be because they did not want to leave abandoned children to die—”
“You ask that—” came a low voice from a shadowed corner behind Kiron, so that he jumped in startled surprise “—whose land played host to those abominable Magi?”
There was a crisp tap on the floor of that corner as they all turned around to face the speaker. Nofret inclined her head. “It is something I would rather not contemplate, my Lord Priest,” she replied. “That some of the Magi could have survived . . .”
The shadowy figure seated there in the corner shook his head. “Bah. They learned their tricks from somewhere. It need not be the Magi of Alta behind this—though I would by no means be surprised to learn that some had indeed survived. It could be others of the same sort. It could be these are the source of their evil. It could be that this is evil of the same kind but a different source.”
Kiron made out more of the seated figure in the corner as his eyes adjusted to the shadows. It was a man in the simplest possible robes of a Tian Priest, with none of the ornaments that most boasted. With one difference. A clean bandage covered his eyes. He was blind.
“And don’t call me ‘my lord priest.’ I am no one’s lord. I am simple Rakaten-te. The name I was born with will do nicely.”
The bandaged, sightless eyes turned in Kiron’s direction. “So this is the young one you’ve put in charge of your new Jousters.” Kiron felt a kind of coolness pass over him, and had the sense of being weighed and measured, but for what, he could not have said. “He’ll do.”
Although the priest had a face that was unlined, and like all priests, his head was shaved so there was no telling if his hair was white or black, Kiron had the sense that he was long past middle age.
But there was that about the priest—not the least of which that he was seated in the presence of the Great King and Queen—that commanded a special respect. “Thank you, Rakaten-te,” Kiron replied, with the Altan salute.
“Oh, you would not thank me if you knew what I am, boy,” the priest said with a low chuckle. “I am the Chosen of Seft.”
Kiron blanched. He had only heard of the Chosen of Seft in the hushed whispers reserved for tales of angry ghosts and terrible revenge. Seft was worshipped, it was true—or rather, it was more true to say that that dark god, brother to Siris, was propitiated rather than worshipped.
Now all the gods had their dark side. The benevolent Haras was known to go quite mad at times and forget even who his friends and allies were. Nofet was the gentle goddess of night and women with child, but she also ruled over plague. And of course, there was the sun-disk of Re-Haket, which brought life but also death, both in the mos
t fundamental of ways—light after darkness, but also the hammer on the Anvil of the Sun. Warmth that called seedlings out of the earth, and the fire that burned them where they grew.
Still! Seft! He of the underworld, through which the sun-disk must pass each night, he who murdered his own brother that he might have Iris to wife, the Father of Curses, the Brother of Lies . . .
“When you wish to catch a thief, young Captain of Jousters,” said the priest, a little smile playing over his mouth, “do you set a virtuous man to find him? Of course not. The youngest child will lisp the old saying, ‘set a thief to catch a thief.’ There is no one in all of Tia, aye, nor of Alta, that knows more about the dark magics than I. If you wish to hunt for the makers of the darkest of magics, you need someone who works such things himself. I am that person; I hold the Rod and Whip of Seft. It is why I was blinded when I was Chosen. The god himself marked me as his and made sure I could be nothing else.”
Kiron gulped. Blinded? They blind their priest? But—but—
The priest chuckled. “I was Chosen at birth, boy. I have known nothing else. Do not feel sorry for me, I can know more things with my four senses than you can with five. And take my advice. Never wrestle with a blind man. You will always lose.”
He turned his head back in Nofret’s direction. “The dark magics are one thing. Blood magic is another. The more potential life is cut short, the more power is generated. I have no doubt that whoever lured those people away demanded the infants and children as compensation. You might find a grave full of them, but more likely, the scavengers have dragged them all away. A wise precaution and one any blood mage would take to keep them from haunting their killers.”
Kiron felt a shudder convulse him, Nofret choked on a sob, and Ari’s face went blank. Even the Captain of Thousands muttered a curse. The old man looked at them all with pity.
“The truths that no one wants to hear are the ones most needful to be said,” the priest told them all. “That is the way of things. My lord Seft is the god of all hard things. Hear this: the ignorant say that Seft slew Siris to take his wife. That is the fool and the common man who think this, for they would have done so, had their brothers taken to wife the Star of the Universe.” He snorted with veiled contempt. “Here is the great mystery that we are taught in Seft’s halls—Siris had to die to become Lord of the Dead. The Dead required a Lord and King on the other side of the Star Bridge, and Siris knew he must be that King. Yet a god cannot slay himself, and he laid it upon his brother, who is the Finder of the Way, to find the way to slay him. So Seft did, that Siris could cross the Bridge and take up the Crook and Flail among the Dead.”
“But what of his taking the Lady Iris?” asked Nofret sharply.
“Oh, that,” the old man said with a sly smile. “She was alone and a widow and the fairest of all the goddesses, with breasts as firm and round as young melons, and lips as sweet as pomegranates, so say the scrolls. Who could blame Seft for taking her into his house? Even a god is sometimes a man.”
Nofret flushed, though whether from annoyance or embarrassment, Kiron could not have said.
“But you did not ask me here to hear of the loves of the gods,” Rakaten-te continued. “You asked me to tell you whether or not this was dark magic, and I tell you it is, of the darkest. That those children are gone tells me that. I cannot tell you who or why, but I will uncover the mystery.” He turned to Kiron. “This will take time. You, Jouster, will wait here in the Dragon Courts while I do my work. I may yet require a dragon and his rider.”
There was only one reason why the old man would want him to wait. . . .
He started to open his mouth to say that there was not a chance under heaven that he would take an old blind man out to the deserted city. Started. Then he thought better of it.
What, after all, did he know of magic? Not much. And of the terrible magics the Magi used? Nothing at all.
It might be that the only way to unravel the mystery would be to take this man to where the mystery was.
“If I can send a younger man, I will,” Rakaten-te said, with a wry twist of the lips. “I have no more desire to undergo the rigors of such a journey than you want to take me on it. But it may be that I will need to go. Save the Great King, you are the most experienced Jouster riding these tamed dragons that there is.”
Kiron nodded reluctant agreement.
“You also have faced the Magi personally, Kiron,” Nofret pointed out. “You know something of what to expect.”
He nodded, though reluctantly, and the urgent discussion moved on to other aspects of the situation. And try though he might to stay awake, he found himself yawning when he no longer needed to answer questions.
At last Ari took pity on him and dismissed him. But only after calling in a servant to guide him back out again. A good thing, too, or he would have gotten lost.
He checked on Avatre; she could have been a stone for all that she moved. He thought about stumbling as far as his usual quarters—
But the sand was soft and comfortable and he thought he would just curl up with her for a little.
And that was the last thing he knew until dawn brought a chorus of birdcalls and the stirring of all things in the Dragon Courts to wake him.
TWELVE
IT had all started like a perfectly unremarkable day. Sutema woke, ate, begged for caresses, and slept again. Peri then got her bath and fresh clothing, as always, reveling in the scent of the clean linen and marveling anew that she had the luxury of clean clothing every single day. Then she went in search of food for herself before the day’s lessons, both for Jousters and little dragons, began. There had been some fuss over the last few days about comings and goings from the Palace, but really, though those who had been priestesses might find such things worth chattering endlessly about, for Peri, it was not anything that would make any difference in her life, so she ignored it.
And that was where “ordinary” ended. Peri stopped in surprise at the doorway to the courtyard where all of the Jousters and Jousters in training ate, and stared, hardly able to believe her eyes. It was Lord Kiron. What was he doing here? No one had said anything about him appearing. It wasn’t as if he was a courier, to come and go unannounced.
He looked very tired, and he was plainly wearing a borrowed kilt, as it was a little too long on him and extended down over his knees. He must have arrived last night.
Perhaps all that business that the other girls had been so excited about had brought him; with so many comings and goings between all of the temples and the Palace, perhaps this was something that would make a difference to the Jousters.
Then something else occurred to her, that last night, it was rumored, the Chosen of Seft himself had made a visit to the Palace.
The Chosen of Seft! The Altan equivalent was Sheften, and in one of the rare cases of total accord between the Two Kingdoms, in both the Altan and Tian pantheons, the god had betrayed and murdered his brother, and tried to force his brother’s goddess-wife into marriage. Seft was the lord of dark doings, of rumors and shadows and hidden knowledge. His Chosen almost never left the Temple of Seft.
For indeed, Seft was worshipped, as was Sheften, and openly; both gods had temples, but that was largely on the basis of the idea that it was better to coax the god into leaving you alone than it was to leave him alone and take the chance that he would turn his attention on you.
Among the ordinary people, the serfs and the slaves, the tales of what went on in those temples ranged from the prurient to the profane. In general, anyone wishing to propitiate the god into indifference simply delivered his or her sacrifice at the door, to be collected by the silent and faintly menacing acolytes, then hurried off. Seft’s Temple was not a place where you wanted to linger—oh, no.
And yet—it was said among the Jouster-priestesses that, other than being a place where shadows instead of light ruled, and the most sacred sanctuary was all in darkness, the temple of Seft was, if anything, more ascetic, more spare, than any other in
Mefis. That there were mysteries there too deep for common folk even to begin to understand. That Seft’s priests never offered their aid with dark magics and cursing, even when one came to them precisely for that purpose, and that no matter what occurred there, it had a profoundly important purpose.
Frankly, Peri didn’t believe them. First of all, they were all priests together, and priests protected each other, even when there was something bad going on. She remembered a scandal from her own home village and one of the temples there, and not that of Seft either, but of Ghed, who was a jolly god, and one of the few for whom there really were no darker or more violent aspects. People reasonably assumed that any house of Ghed was a safe one for children. The priest had been taking advantage of the little girls, inviting them to come and decorate the altar with flowers, then filling them full of palm wine, and when they were too dizzy to think, filling them with something else entirely. And what had happened to him when he was found out? Nothing. Other than that he was whisked away and another priest put in his place. He suffered no punishment at all so far as Peri knew. The other priests of other gods would not say nor hear a word against him, in turn saying only that “The matter is dealt with.”
Ah, no. Priests stuck together, and she would trust nothing from former priestesses without confirmation. Nor from priests either, but from common ordinary people who had seen things with their own eyes.
But there was no reason to doubt that the Chosen of Seft had made a long visit to the Palace last night, and that was a curious thing indeed. The very servants were talking about it as they brought the meat for the baby dragons this morning, and she had heard murmurs of astonishment coming from over the kitchen wall before she had left last night.
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