Sanctuary

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

Raves for Sanctuary:

“In Lackey’s well-crafted third Dragon Jousters book, wing-leader Kiron, the former serf known as Vetch, and a disparate group of refugees from the countries of Alta and Tia flee to the desert, to a hidden refuge that the gods have uncovered and named Sanctuary. Spot-on dialogue and just the right amount of exposition mark this rip-roaring adventure as superior fantasy fare.”—Publishers Weekly

“The tension is palpable throught as Lackey wraps up the trilogy begun by Joust in fine style, remaining true to the characters and their world.”—Booklist

“Fans of dragon-powered fantasy sagas will thoroughly enjoy how Lackey delves into the legendary creatures and their relationship with their human riders.”

—The Barnes & Noble Review

“One of Lackey’s trademarks is her sympathetic characters, and she doesn’t disappoint here. Fans will enjoy this satisfying conclusion to the ‘Dragon Jousters’ series.”—Romantic Times

SANCTUARY

NOVELS BY MERCEDES LACKEY available from DAW Books:

THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

ARROW’S FLIGHT

ARROW’S FALL

THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

MAGIC’S PAWN

MAGIC’S PROMISE

MAGIC’S PRICE

THE MAGE WINDS

WINDS OF FATE

WINDS OF CHANGE

WINDS OF FURY

THE MAGE STORMS

STORM WARNING

STORM RISING

STORM BREAKING

VOWS AND HONOR

THE OATHBOUND

OATHBREAKERS

OATHBLOOD

BY THE SWORD

BRIGHTLY BURNING

TAKE A THIEF

EXILE’S HONOR

EXILE’S VALOR

VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:

SWORD OF ICE

SUN IN GLORY

CROSSROADS

Written with LARRY DIXON:

THE MAGE WARS

THE BLACK GRYPHON

THE WHITE GRYPHON

THE SILVER GRYPHON

DARIAN’S TALE

OWLFLIGHT

OWLSIGHT

OWLKNIGHT

OTHER NOVELS:

THE BLACK SWAN

THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

JOUST

ALTA

SANCTUARY

THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

THE GATES OF SLEEP

PHOENIX AND ASHES

THE WIZARD OF LONDON

And don’t miss:

THE VALDEMAR COMPANION

Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

Copyright © 2005 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

All rights reserved.

DAW Books Collectors No. 1326

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

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All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not

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Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

First Paperback Printing, May 2006

eISBN : 978-1-101-11905-1

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

—MARCA REGISTRADA

HECHO EN U.S.A.

S.A.

http://us.penguingroup.com

Dedicated to the Lunatics.

You know who you are.

ONE

IT was the silent, blue time before dawn. The air hung cool and still above the pale sand, not a hint, not a breath of breeze, so still one could hear the tick of grain against grain as a thin trickle at the crest of a dune. The desert stretched out all around Sanctuary, as if beneath the calming hand of a god. Or a goddess, perhaps; Nofet, whom the Altans called Nefer-et, the Goddess of Night, had not yet withdrawn the hem of her robe from the land. Re-Haket, the sun, still lingered in the Summerland beyond the Star Bridge.

It would not be cool for much longer, nor still.

Kiron stood on the roof of one of the four buildings that surrounded a courtyard that had been given over for use as the dragons’ sand wallow and leaned on the parapet to watch the dawn come in over the desert. Not difficult; at this point, although there were still refugees finding their way here all the time with the help of the Bedu (also called the Veiled Ones), there was no structure in the entire city that was more than three buildings away from the open sand.

He was, given a choice, not usually awake at this time. But in a little while, the dragons would, slowly, begin to rouse from their slumber, and they would be hungry. Here in Sanctuary, unlike in Alta and Tia, there was no butchery from which to feed them, no Temple sacrifices to provide the carcasses. If the dragons wished to eat, they must hunt like their wild brethren. Hunts were always more successful when the Jouster and dragon hunted as a team. So if the dragons wished to eat, their riders must waken and go out with them.

Kiron might be the first one awake and out today, but by now, the others of his wing were stirring at the very least. He generally didn’t beat the rest by very much. Besides, the terrible heat of the desert at midday in the middle of the Dry meant that their schedules were much changed from Alta. Here, they flew at dawn and dusk, and spent the hottest part of the day well away from the burning rays of the sun.

The sun: Altan Re-Haket was not the kindly Solar Disk, the bringer of life here—oh, no—not “beautiful with banners.” He was not even the Re-Haket that the Tians knew. Here in the desert, he wore the harsher visage of Se-ahketh, the Tester, the Scourge of Fire, he who had no mercy, only an unwinking Eye that tested to destruction. Even the dragons sheltered beneath a canopy from His Eye at midday. Sometimes Kiron wondered—was this where the Magi of Alta had gotten the idea for their unwinking Eye, their scourge of fire?

Kiron preferred to greet Avatre with a clear head and unclouded eyes, this morning especially, because it was all the more needful on this day that each dragon of the wing fly to the hunt and return with prey before the sun reached its zenith. Because today, they had another reason besides the sun’s implacable hammer to be well in shelter. There would be a great sandstorm today, so said Kaleth, and Kiron saw no reason to disbelieve him.

And when Kaleth meant a “great” sandstorm, he was not speaking of a quarter day of wind and blowing sand. Kiron and the others had not yet weathered a “great” sandstorm, but the Veiled Ones had, and so had Kaleth; the Midnight kamiseen, the storm without rain that brought the darkness of night at midday. The Bedu spoke feelingly of a sky black at midday, of wind too strong to stand against, of air so thick with dust and grit you could not breathe——of a storm full of sand like millions of miniscule knives that flayed clothing from the body, and flesh from bone, and packed every open orifice with wind-driven dirt. Get in the shelter of a rock or a dune, and you might survive, if you could get a clear space for your face, breathe through cloth, and manage to keep from being buried alive.

There was no sign of such a storm. The thin, clear light and the cloudless sky held nothing but peace.

Kiron did not trust the promise of such “peace.” He trusted Kaleth.

Kaleth was, without a doubt, god-touched. Had he not led them all here, to the once-buried city of legend they now called Sanctuary? If he said such a storm would blow up, Kiron would believe him. Certainly the Veiled Ones did. Those within the area of the storm had either taken themselves out of its path, or moved into the city, little though they liked living within walls even for a single day.

Kiron nodded to himself, as he looked out over a city that seemed very strange to the eyes of one accustomed to the straight, clean lines of the buildings of Alta and Tia. Once, Kaleth (then Prince Kaleth) had been nothing more than the quiet, studious twin brother of the more charismatic Prince Toreth. True, he, with Toreth, was one of the four designated heirs to the Thrones of Alta, but until Toreth had been murdered, he had been something of a cipher to most.

Well, he certainly wasn’t a cipher now. A Winged One of Alta, in truth, and a Priest of Haras of Tia, he spoke for the gods of both peoples.

Gods, which were, Kiron was coming to understand, one and the same. Or at least, there was so little difference it mattered not at all.

Kaleth was accepted by the Veiled Ones, the Wanderers of the desert, the Blue People, as a Seer, a Hand of the gods and a Mouth of the People as well. And if Kiron only had an imperfect understanding of what that meant, well, he knew it was a position of great respect, and that was enough for him.

As the city slumbered under the clear, predawn sky, Sanctuary hardly looked like a city at all, more like a collection of squared-off mounds, very like wind-sculpted, sand-polished mastabas, nearly the same color as the sand around them. Hardly surprising no one had found it until Kaleth led the Veiled Ones to it; even if it had not been buried beneath the dunes, when Kiron thought of a city, he thought—well, he thought of nothing at all like this. To his mind, the word “city” called up the image of the tall, angular sandstone or granite edifices of Mefis, the capital of Tia, carved and painted with images of the gods and Great Kings, reaching five, six, ten times the height of a man. Or the “city” of his slave days, the mud-brick, two-storied, mathematically laid out buildings along the narrow streets where ordinary folk dwelled. Or, possibly, the white-columned, long, low buildings of Alta, reflected in the shining surfaces of her seven ring-shaped canals. He did not think of buildings the color of sand, with rounded corners and edges, walls as thick as a man’s arm was long, and scarcely an opening to be seen anywhere.

But that was because the buildings of Sanctuary were armored against the blistering desert heat by the thickness of their stone walls, and against the sandstorm by their curves. Not even the dragons, much as they reveled in heat, spent more time in the sun than they could help, once the great disk had reached past the point of midmorning. Some of the buildings, in fact, were mere antechambers into a labyrinth of rooms carved out of the rock bed beneath the sand, a network of man-made caves which all connected eventually to that most precious of desert treasures, the water source that lay at the heart of Sanctuary itself.

Water. Water was the reason for anything made by man in the desert. Men sought for it, fought over it, bartered what was most precious to them for it, killed and died for it and for lack of it. And yet here, through long years gone, and until the gods permitted it to be found again, was a kingdom’s ransom of the precious stuff.

Beneath the sand, beneath the rock that lay beneath the sand, there flowed a river of the purest water, a quiet, steady stream, clear and cool, that widened here into a channel as wide as Great Mother River, and deep enough that it took an effort to touch the bottom, before narrowing again and flowing onward toward the Altan delta. Kiron supposed it must come to the surface at some point, but no one had yet been able to pinpoint that spot, not even the wise desert dwellers, the Veiled Ones, who themselves had (until now) not even guessed that here was the life-giver that fed a great many of their oases. Here was the reason for Sanctuary existing at all, the reason it had been built in the far past. Here was the reason why Sanctuary was able to prosper now. Even the Veiled Ones required water, and in this part of the desert that they called the Furnace and the Anvil of the Gods, they deemed it more valuable than the caches of gold that the new owners of Sanctuary were still discovering when wind freed another building from the grip of the sand.

Which might happen today, actually. Kaleth had hinted as much, calling the storm the instrument of the gods, and saying that in the past, it had given what was needed when it was needed. And, certainly, Sanctuary was still surrounded on all sides by dunes and hard-packed sand. There was no telling what might lie beneath some of those mounds.

A voice behind him interrupted his thoughts. “What do you think the sandstorm will show us when it passes?”

“Sometimes, I wonder if it isn’t only the dragons’ thoughts you can read, Aket-ten,” Kiron laughed, turning to wrinkle his nose at the only female Jouster—to his knowledge—ever to fly a dragon.

Aket-ten, sister to his good friend Orest, dimpled at him, as awake and alert as if this was midday. Well, she always had been a lover of the morning, already up and doing while he and Orest were still shaking the sleep from their eyes. It was a small fault, that. She was in all other ways, to his mind anyway, anything that anyone could ask for in a companion.

Not perfect, but who wanted perfection? It would be far too tiring to have to live up to the perfection of another. A companion who had flaws, now, that meant that you could have an affectionate rivalry without feeling as if there was no chance that you could ever come up to the standards set by your friend.

She was not too tall, but Kiron himself was by no means overly tall. Besides, the best Jousters were light and lean, for the less of a burden they were to their mounts, the better. Light and lean, Aket-ten certainly was, reed-slim and shorter than he, and he was no giant. Her lively black eyes met his with a look of acceptance and candor, and her ready smile warmed them further with good humor. If she did not have the finely chiseled and perfectly regular features of one of the images of the goddesses, she had a face that was full of personality. Since coming to Sanctuary she had chosen to forsake wigs and wear her own blue-black hair cut in the short helmet style favored by the rest of the wing, which made her look superficially like one of them, but the gentle curves under her simple linen tunic made it clear with only a second glance that this was no boy.

She wasn’t beautiful, but truth to tell, Kiron found himself somewhat intimidated by beauty. The elegance of court ladies made him flush and feel tongue-tied, and that was when they had ignored him. When they had spoken to him or glanced at him or—worst of all—smiled, he found himself looking for someone to hide behind. But when Aket-ten smiled, which was far more often here than she had back in Alta, she always made him smile in return. What more could anyone ask?

Once one of the Fledglings of the Altan Temple of the Twins, one of her strongest Gifts was that of Silent Speech with animals. While in the past she had sometimes disparaged herself for having such a “minor” Gift, it had been worth more even than being god-touched on that black day when Kaleth’s twin brother, Toreth, had been murdered by the Magi, and his dragon had nearly thrown herself (and every other dragon in the compound) into suicidal hysterics with grief.

Until first Ari, the Tian Jouster, then Kiron, and then the eight other Altan boys had raised dragons themselves, from the egg, it had been unthinkable that a dragon should actually have a bond of affection with its Jouster. Dragons were, at best, controllable, and only when drugged with the dust made from a dried desert berry called tala. No one had ever thought that a bonded dragon, if it lost its Jouster, would choose to give its loyalty to another.

But that was exactly what had happened when Toreth died, and his midnight-blue-and-shaded-silver dragon Re-eth-katen had nearly died of her grief and loss. When Aket-ten “spoke” to Re-eth-katen and comforted her, that dragon had bonded again to the Fledgling Priestess, and had become her dragon, renamed Re-eth-ke, thus making Aket-ten the first ever female in the Jousters’ Compound as anything other than servant or couch companion. Just as well, since it had only been possible for her to hide from the increasingly imperious demands of the Magi in that one place in all of Alta. The dragons did not like the Magi, and not all the tala in the world could stop them from making that dislike evident.

The feeling of animosity was mutual, and the Magi had made it their business to remove the Jousters—heroes of the war—by steady attrition.

“Well, if you’re thinking that we’re better off here, no matter how hard life is, than there, well, I agree with you,” Aket-ten said. “I’d rather starve and bathe in sand than stay in Alta one moment longer. Not,” she added with a shiver, “that I think I’d be aware of where I was by now if I had stayed there.”

Kiron nodded and grimaced. Aket-ten was clever (if, perhaps, sometimes a little too inclined to flaunt that cleverness), brave (if a bit rash and headstrong), loyal (if stubborn), kind (if a little sharp-tongued), and the best sort of friend.

And she was right. If she’d stayed—well, if any of them had stayed—they’d probably be half dead from injuries and overwork, or entirely dead. Except for Aket-ten, who would be locked up in the Magi’s Tower of Wisdom with the rest of the Winged Ones, somehow being drained to give the Magi the strength for their magic.

But—thanks mainly to Kaleth—they’d escaped. They were safe in Sanctuary, and if the future was shrouded in uncertainty, it was at least a future that held freedom. As for Aket-ten, it was Kiron’s hope she was inclining toward becoming more than just a “friend” of late, though he was not pushing too hard.

Aket-ten could also be very stubborn if pushed, and hated with a great passion the least hint that she was being pressured into doing anything.

He probably had the Magi to thank for that. Still, his position could be much worse. He’d once thought that she harbored a secret passion for Toreth, and that had turned out to be false. The last thing he wanted to do was to give her even the faintest of impressions that he was putting pressure on her. Aket-ten was not a desert antelope to be swooped down upon, knocked over, and devoured. Rather, she was like her own blue-black dragon Re-eth-ke, to be courted with circumspection, tact, and delicacy, so that when she made up her own mind, it was with the impression that she had been the one who’d had the idea in the first place.

She came up beside him to lean on the parapet and look down into the sand pit where the dragons were just beginning to stir. All the dragons shared a sand wallow, rather than each having their own as they had back in Alta. There hadn’t been much of a choice in that; the Jousters’ Compound had been tended by a small army of servants, builders, and slaves. There were no slaves here in Sanctuary, and precious few servants, and none to spare for building something like the complex of quarters and sand wallows the dragons were used to. Fortunately, they were all, with the exceptions of Avatre, and Ari’s huge gold-emerald-and-blue dragon Kashet, out of the same batch of eggs. All but Kashet had romped together as nestlings and fledglings, and had trained together, under the guidance of Kiron and Avatre, from the beginning of their lives. There was no serious quarreling, much less the fighting that happened among unrelated wild-caught Jousting dragons, and though there might be the occasional squabble, it was soon sorted out without much worse than a swat or a nip or two. For her part, although the lovely scarlet Avatre reacted to being forced to share her sand with the “infants” with a pained disdain that was sometimes quite funny to see, she never bullied them.

As for Kashet, who might have been expected to react poorly to the herd of youngsters, the eldest of the dragons actually took to the half-grown dragonets with great tolerance and even some show of occasional pleasure.

“I wouldn’t even try to get inside your thoughts,” Aket-ten teased. “I’d find myself listening to echoes.”

“Hah,” was all he replied. “You only think that because you’ve spent so much time around your brother, all boys have heads as empty as last-year’s latas pod.”

“Last year’s latas pod isn’t empty!” her brother Orest exclaimed, coming up the stairs to flank Kiron on his right. “It is full of the seeds of wisdom, I will have you know! Ah, they’re starting to stir.”

He leaned over and made kissing noises at his own beetle-blue dragon, who rewarded his attention by slowly raising his bright blue head from the sand wallow and turning to gaze at Orest with sleep-glazed ruby-colored eyes.

Orest’s face was full of such infatuation that Kiron smiled. Not that he was under any illusions that he didn’t look like that around Avatre. It was quite clear to anyone with eyes that Orest and Aket-ten were brother and sister; in fact, at first glance, they might look like brother and brother. Both were slim, with broad cheekbones but delicate chins, making their faces the same almond shape, and both had the same merry eyes.

“Come on, little prince, it is time to greet the sun with sharp eyes and a clear head,” Orest cooed down at his dragon, coaxingly. “You need to wake up, precious jewel. We need to be in the air quickly this morning.” He turned to his sister. “You did remember to tell them all about the sandstorm, didn’t you?”

“Last night before they went to sleep,” she promised, with a hint of reproach. “You don’t think I’d have forgotten that! They know. I was careful not to confuse them either. When I told them, I took care to show them images of what they know—a black storm, wicked wind, and evil air currents. That was enough. He’s just sleepy from the heat of the sand; he’ll remember it for himself in a moment and he’ll be more impatient than you to get hunting.”

Without waiting to hear what her brother had to say, she turned and skipped down the staircase on the inside wall of the pit, to trot along the ledge surrounding the neck-deep sand until she came to where her own dragon was just now waking.

“Don’t tease her, you know how she feels about her responsibilities,” Kiron told his friend. “Look, see! Your little prince has just remembered that if he doesn’t get up in the sky soon, he might not eat today.”

And indeed, the young male had raised his head to look to his rider with sense and a bit of urgency in his gaze. The dragon snorted at Orest with impatience, and began to pull himself up out of his wallow, golden sand cascading from a blue back, without another word of coaxing from the young Jouster.

A familiar whine from just beyond Orest’s dragon caught Kiron’s attention, especially when it was paired with an equally familiar snort. He followed Aket-ten down into the pit, to make his way in the opposite direction from the one she’d taken.

Kashet and Avatre had taken to sleeping near to each other; not precisely curled up together, but they did seem to appreciate one another’s company. Perhaps Avatre remembered Kashet from her earliest days in the Tian Jousters’ Compound, when Kashet had been in the next pen over, before she and Kiron (then called Vetch) had escaped and fled northward to Alta with Ari’s help. Certainly Kashet remembered her.

He remembered Kiron, too, and with quite evident affection. The huge dragon snorted again when Kiron came near, and craned his emerald-and-blue neck over Avatre to blow his hot breath into Kiron’s hair.

Whereupon Avatre bristled with jealousy and shoved his head aside, claiming her rider for herself. Kiron had to laugh as she tried to puff herself up and interpose herself between him and her rival for his affections. Kashet could bowl her over without even taking thought for it, even now. She had a hot temper to match her fiery colors when she was irritated.

Fortunately, Kashet was a good-natured soul, and—well, it was possible that there was some instinctive behavior involved, too. Most male animals would put up with things from females that they would never tolerate in another male.

“Peace, little one!” he told her, as she shoved him a little off balance and tried to look up at him in adoration with one eye while she glared at Kashet out of the other. “You are first in my heart, always—and Ari will be here any moment and Kashet will cease to remember that I live.”

“Ari is here now,” called a voice from above, and Kashet reared up to his full height at the sound of that voice, which put his head well above the level of the roof. Ari looked down over the parapet of the building next to the one that Kiron, Orest, and the other members of Kiron’s wing (except Aket-ten) shared, waved to his protégé, then reached up to scratch the bony eye ridges of his own dragon as Kashet rested his chin on the parapet and sighed gustily. As Kiron had predicted, Kashet was now quite oblivious to the fact that the younger man even existed, which made Avatre perfectly pleased.

Ari alone stood out from among the Altan inhabitants of Sanctuary as noticeably different. He was much darker, to begin with; here in the desert, he had tanned to the color of old leather, while the Altans had gone the same golden brown as a properly baked loaf of barley bread. His face was broader than the Altan “type,” his chin stronger, his eyes a shade of brown that was very near to black.

Kiron would have liked to remain there, giving Avatre the caresses and affection she lived for, but there was no leisure for that this morning. The cramped quarters of the sand pit made it necessary for almost everyone to leave in order to get saddled, which would mean another delay in taking to the air, and this was a day when no one could afford much in the way of a delay.

Kashet was the first to get out—by virtue of his size and strength, he simply hooked his front talons into the parapet and climbed out over the roof. The first time he’d done that, Kiron hadn’t been the only one who’d gasped and shrunk back, expecting the wall to come down. But either they were all very lucky, or Kashet was a shrewd judge of construction; he hadn’t left more than a scratch or two on the top of the wall. Kiron still didn’t know what the walls of Sanctuary were made of. It looked like hard-packed sand, or sandstone, but it wasn’t, and it was tougher and stronger than anything Kiron had ever seen before. The walls weren’t made of stone blocks either; the entire city could have been carved from single pieces of stone. There were no signs of seams or block lines, and although the corners and edges were all rounded as if scoured that way, at a guess Kiron would have said that they had been carved or sculpted that way on purpose from the beginning, given that nothing much seemed to mark them. Whatever material those walls were made of, it was something that stood up to the abuse of dragons climbing all over them.

Nor could Kiron have put an original purpose to this courtyard that now served as the dragons’ sand wallow. When the wing had come to Sanctuary, the space had been filled with sand still, left that way on purpose for the dragons’ use, and the doors and windows that had once looked into the yard had been blocked up at Kaleth’s orders. It was about the size of the landing courtyard at the Jousters’ Compound in Tia, which made it just about big enough for ten dragons. Now—if somehow, there should be more dragons one day—

I will leave that in the hands of the gods, Kiron told himself. The gods had provided for these ten; he would have faith that they would provide in the future. Or else he and Ari would come up with some clever plan to create more wallows and shelters somehow.

Though the sands were not heated, as were the sands of the pens back in the Compounds, they didn’t yet need to be. The stone of the buildings and the sand itself stored enough heat over the course of the day to keep the dragons comfortable all night. And as for heating the sands in the winter—Well, the eccentric Akkadian Healer and Magus Heklatis had some ideas on that score, and Kiron was content to leave it at that. Certainly the wild dragons managed; theirs could, too. At least there would be no cold rains to contend with.

“Time to go, my son,” Ari told his dragon. “No one else can move until you do.” With a grunt, Kashet heaved himself up; first getting his forequarters up to the parapet, then carefully planting hindclaws in the blocked-up window-slits and slithering the rest of himself over the edge.

Avatre uttered what sounded like a sigh of relief. She was still small enough that she could use the open staircase as a climbing aid, and that was what she did, leaving the rest of the dragonets the room to shake themselves free of the sand and follow her lead. She and Kashet shared the roof of Ari’s building as their harnessing stop; six of the eight dragonets made use of the other three roofs, two apiece, leaving the pit to Re-eth-ke and Orest’s striking blue Wastet.

Harnessing these days was a far cry from the complicated affair it had been back when the dragons were part of Alta’s (and Tia’s) fighting forces. The saddles were the same, but there was no armor, no helmets, and no Jousting lances.

Not that they were unarmed. Especially not when hunting. Aristocratic Gan had trained his gentle green dragonet Khaleph to tolerate a light hunting spear flying past his head, so his saddle had a quiver of javelins attached to it. Orest, Ari, Pe-atep, and Aket-ten could get their mounts to put up with arrows. The rest of them used slings and stones—not much good at bringing down game of the size a dragon needed, but good enough to distract, irritate, or with luck, stun, and that was all the opening a dragon could ask for.

No making formations for this task; dragons needed a big hunting territory, and each of them had his (or her) preferred ground. By common consent, Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke got what was nearest Sanctuary, and the rest of them simply let their dragons define the hunting ranges as they saw fit.

They were up and into the air as soon as they were strapped into their saddles, scattering to the four directions. Much as Kiron would have liked to hunt alongside Aket-ten, the plain fact was that it was impossible. Neither dragon would have tolerated another in her hunting grounds.

So he and Avatre launched themselves into the soft blue eye of the cloudless morning sky, and headed for their allotment without a backward glance at Aket-ten and Re-eth-he. Later, perhaps, if they both got in well ahead of the storm, they could fly together. First things first.

Kiron was minded to chase wild ass this morning; they hadn’t preyed on those herds in a while, and if they were going to have anything left to bring back for Avatre’s evening meal after Avatre ate her fill, it would have to be a substantial kill. That meant flying to the farthest extent of Avatre’s hunting range, where the sand gave way to scrubby hills and wadis, but she was fresh and strong, and the wind was in their favor. Provided that they made a kill quickly, they would beat the storm back in plenty of time.

So with a quick prayer to Besh, the pot-bellied, bandy-legged luck god, Kiron began to scan the horizon and, pragmatically, made sure he had a heavy stone for his sling.

TWO

THE sun was only halfway above the horizon as Kiron gave Avatre signals with hand and legs that she was to gain height. She pumped her wide red wings as hard as she could, valiantly answering his direction. The only problem with flying this early was that there were no thermals to ride, and every wingbeat a dragon took came with heavy labor. A dragon’s preferred method of flight was to glide from thermal to thermal, spiraling up on the rising current of air, and gliding down to the next thermal, with as few wingbeats in between as possible. Such a flying style saved energy, and the one thing that a flying dragon needed a lot of was energy. It was Kiron’s preferred method too; riding dragonback was hard work, though you’d never know that from the serene wall paintings of Jousters in the sky in both Tia and Alta. With every downward stroke, he was flung back against the cantle of his saddle as Avatre surged forward, and with every upward sweep he hung weightless for just an unnerving moment, then fell forward against the pommel. Jousters learned to cope with this, of course; he felt what she was going to do with his legs and he had learned to shift his weight to make himself less of a burden, but it was hard work for both of them, and he always felt guilty about putting her to the extra effort of carrying him when she had to work this hard to get in the air.

Below them, Sanctuary dwindled to a child’s play village made of sand, in the midst of a sea of sand, with the other dragons scattering in all directions, the only spots of color against the pale sweeps of the dunes. He sometimes wondered how the dragons felt about this new life; were they angry because food no longer was delivered to them? Or did they prefer to make kills on their own? He didn’t detect any new grumpiness in Avatre’s mood; the contrary, actually. He thought that she liked hunting, and he knew for certain that this dry, hot desert suited her. Even at sun’s zenith, when the dragons moved out of the direct rays, they didn’t stay out of the heat for too very long.

Avatre knew “her” territory now, and headed for it without prompting. He squinted against the light of the rising sun, and sighted in on their goal, the far-off hills and wadis where the wild ass herd roamed. It was cold up here in the morning, but he shrugged off the chill; already the sun on his skin was warming him, and before very long he knew that it would stop being pleasant and start being uncomfortable, and he would be glad of the coolness of the upper air. By the time they headed back, he would be wishing for just a breath of the chill of early morning.

He kept an eye on the ground beneath them, because it was always possible—not likely, but possible—that he would spot something worth chasing even before they got to the wadis.

Besides, every flight was different. You never knew what you were going to see. A desert horned lark singing his heart out as he soared into the blue bowl of the heavens, a viper sinuously leaving “s” marks in the sand of a dune below—or a wild dragon. There were more of those about than he would have thought. He wondered how many of them had been Tian Jousting dragons. Once Heklatis had discovered the way to neutralize tala and render it ineffective at drugging dragons into submission, there was no way, short of love alone, that a dragon could be induced to remain with a Jouster. And the dragons that had escaped from Tian Jousters would probably not have gone back to their old territories. They would have been wary even if they had been inclined to fly all that way back; after all, that was where they had been captured as fledglings.

Avatre reached a height she found comfortable—somehow, he had not been able yet to understand how—dragons could “read” the invisible currents of the sky—and knew by that where their flight would come with the least effort. She settled into the longer, slower wingbeats that moved her forward rather than upward, and he leaned down over her shoulder to make himself less of a drag on her progress.

The sands seemed empty of life this morning, but with Kaleth’s prediction of a sandstorm, it could be that the wildlife sensed its approach, and had taken to shelter early.

Only when they reached the wadis, and the landscape beneath them turned from undulating waves to the hard earth and rock, cut by the occasional dry wash, and punctuated with wind-eroded mastabas, did he start to see signs of life. Birds flitted from one bit of scrub to another; he saw a desert hare loping away as fast as its legs could take it, and finally, in the distance—the only cloud he’d seen today, a cloud of dust.

The sort of dust raised by a herd or a group of animals.

Avatre spotted it at the same time that he did, and reacted to it sooner, changing her course and heading as straight as the flight of an arrow for the sign of game on the horizon. If Aket-ten was right, the dragons understood a fair amount of what she tried to tell them, and Avatre would know that something bad was coming and there would be no afternoon hunt.

Or, if her instincts were as good as those of the wild animals, she would feel the urge to get under cover warring with her hunger, and that should also add to her eagerness. Now, as long as she didn’t get too eager. . . .

He noticed after a moment that she was angling slightly upward again, which meant she was going to try for an attack from high above, which would add to her speed. Good for a quick kill, but not so good for him! He would have to get his stone off at the last moment, and wouldn’t be able to make another cast. Then, if he missed, and she missed, and the herd stood at bay or got into a wadi, there might not be a second chance.

He freed one hand from the saddle, felt for the biggest stone in his ammunition pouch, and, with his eyes still on the approaching dust cloud, slipped it one-handed into the sling in his lap. He wouldn’t drop the sling into the ready position until he was almost onto the target, otherwise he risked losing the stone before he could throw it.

Avatre’s eyes were better than his; he felt her putting more effort into her wingbeats. She must have seen the animals in the dust cloud. Beneath his legs and the hand on her shoulder, her skin was hot as a kiln, a sign that she was excited. Even if she could not yet see the prey, she knew where it was.

The amount of dust being kicked up increased; the herd was in a canter now. They must have been seen. The creatures of this part of the desert had not known an aerial predator before the dragons came, but they surely knew one when they saw it now.

A pity, that. No more easy hunts.

Three hard wingbeats that bucked Kiron back against the cantle of the saddle, and they were directly above of the herd. He looked down on the brown backs, through a haze of dust as they ran, weaving back and forth to elude the shape above them. He smelled them; hot dust, animal sweat, even as far above them as Avatre was. Three wingbeats more, and they were pulling ahead of the lead ass. And that was when Avatre stalled, giving him just enough warning to brace himself, and did a wingover, plunging down toward the herd of asses with wings folded and Kiron pressed tightly against her neck.

She plummeted for a point well ahead and to one side of them of them, and did a quick turn, still halfway above them and still diving, to face them without losing any significant speed. With frantic brays, the ass herd broke right down the middle as she pulled up out of her dive with a snap of opening wings and raced straight at them, head outstretched. Roughly half went left, the other half right, but as there always is, there was one individual who couldn’t make up her mind to go in either direction. Kiron pulled the sling out of his lap in a practiced movement as Avatre made straight for the indecisive one, whirled it, and let the stone fly as Avatre pulled up, skimming just above the tops of the mare’s ears.

The stone struck her full in the forehead, and she went down. Kiron crouched down in the saddle again and held on for dear life.

As the straps holding him in cut into his flesh, Avatre did a second wingover and plunged back down, all four sets of talons extended. Even as the ass was trying to struggle to its feet, Avatre struck it from above and behind, killing it instantly with a jolt that sent Kiron into the pommel of the saddle again.

The rush of wind stopped; dust began to settle around them. The only sounds were of Avatre settling herself and the hoofbeats and braying of the retreating asses.

She mantled her sunrise-colored wings over her prey and began tearing into it before the dust had even settled. The rest of the herd, sensing that the chosen victim had fallen, stopped dead and turned their heads to look. The air was full of the smell of hot sweat, dust, and blood.

Sometimes Kiron felt sorry for the prey, but today had been a quick, clean kill. And he was used to seeing Avatre killing and eating now; it was with no sense of revulsion that he slid down out of her saddle and left her to her feeding. No, his thought was just to make sure that the mare they’d taken down hadn’t had a foal at heel. Such indecisiveness sometimes meant the prey was guarding a little one.

There was no sign of a loose or abandoned foal in the herd. In a way, that was a pity; he would have caught it and brought it back alive, to be tamed and added to the Sanctuary animals. So far, all they had was a few donkeys, goats, and camels. Granted, keeping them fed was a chore. Sand did not make good pasturage for anything.

Still, the original inhabitants must have managed in some way. They just needed to find out how. And there was no doubt that having working animals made life easier for the humans. If they had enough asses or donkeys for instance, they could operate a water wheel to bring water to the surface to irrigate small gardens.

Another day, perhaps. As the ass herd formed up again and sped off to the shelter of the wadis, Kiron eyed the sun. The sun-disk of Re-Haket had not yet approached the point that marked “danger,” but it was time to get on with his part of the work.

With the edge taken off Avatre’s hunger, it was possible to approach her and work side by side with her on her kill without her bristling or even snapping at him. She might love him past all understanding, and he, her in return, but love does not trump a growling stomach for a dragon. She’d already cleaned out the viscera, which was actually helpful, as it made the butchering go easier and a lot cleaner.

He butchered the hindquarters for packing up, while she tore into the front. By this time she had eaten the head, so it wasn’t so bad . . . there was nothing quite as unnerving as watching a dragon take apart a skull, unless it was to have the reproachful (albeit dead) gaze of the prey seemingly focused on you. That was one problem the butchers at the Jousters’ Courts of both Alta and Tia had never been forced to deal with.

He had sacks that he tried to make of equal weight when she had finally eaten her fill. He wasn’t going to leave anything behind; this was a little more than Avatre would eat right now, since her growth had stalled out and she wouldn’t be flying this afternoon, but one of the others might not be as lucky in the hunt as he and Avatre had been. As it was, with the burden of four bags of animal parts and himself, when Avatre lumbered into the air again, it was a good thing that the sands had heated up enough to give them some thermal lift. She labored hard the entire way home, and by the time they reached the city, she was as tired as if she had flown a full patrol with a fight at the end of it.

The flight back to Sanctuary was unexceptional; Avatre was soon back in the pen, ready for a buffing and oiling, waiting patiently for Kiron to haul the sacks of meat into temporary storage. They were the first back, despite having taken the longest flight out (or so he guessed), but he had just begun scouring Avatre’s ruby-scaled hide with sand when Ari and Kashet came in to land on the rooftop above. Kashet’s landing was, as ever, a thing of precision. There was no better flier than Ari’s big blue.

“How went the hunt?” he called up, since he couldn’t see anything of Kashet but the dragon’s head from his vantage point below.

“Three gazelles. Kashet had one, and I brought the other two back, one for Kashet later and one in case someone didn’t do so well,” Ari replied, and grunted with the effort of taking sacks from his dragon. “You won’t hear me say this often, but days like this make me wish for the old times in the Jousters’ Compound and the butchery. I don’t mind not having a dragon boy, but being my own servant and my own hunter to boot is a bit of a hardship.”

Kiron grimaced. Not that he didn’t sympathize in principle, but he’d never really gotten used to servants—having been a serf and as such, less than a slave, most of his life. For him, life in Sanctuary just meant going back to old patterns of hard work.

For Ari and some of the others, however, it was a new and unpleasant experience. But there were no serfs, no slaves, and precious few servants here. There just weren’t enough people to spare for anyone to devote his time to waiting on someone else. The only servants that Kiron knew of were the two that served Kaleth and the other escaped Healers and priests, and they were more in the nature of being acolytes than servants.

In fact, the very nature of the city meant that there were several classes that were entirely missing. No serfs, no slaves, no servants—and no farmers. All foodstuffs had to be brought in from across the desert or hunted on dragonback.

Avatre squirmed and twisted to help him reach every inch of her hide, and grunted with pleasure when he got a particularly itchy spot. While he was working, Orest and Wastet came in with a flash of ruby and sapphire, followed by Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke, like a silver-edged shadow. Both were laden, so that was four in with good kills. Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke joined him in the sand pit, while Orest stayed up on the roof with Ari. A moment later, Oset-re and copper-colored Apetma landed next to them.

“Orest.” Aket-ten shook her head and made a faint sound of disapproval.

“What about him?” Kiron replied, rubbing oil into Avatre’s wing webs.

“Hadn’t you noticed? You’re no longer Orest’s hero. Ari is.” She shook her head again. “Not that he’d ever disobey you, but he’s transferred all that hero worship he used to have for you over to Ari.”

Kiron thought about that for a moment. “Huh!” he said. “I think you’re right!” He pondered the altered state of things for a little more. “Well, good.”

“ ‘Well, good’?” Aket-ten replied incredulously. “Is that all?”

“Actually, it’s very good.” The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. He had to be wingleader for right now, but with more people, and more dragons, eventually Orest would be a wingleader in his own right. There was only just so much of a leadership role that Kiron was comfortable with. Let Ari be the Commander of Dragons; he was suited to such things.

“Very good.” Aket-ten threw up her hands in exasperation. “I would have thought you might feel strongly about losing Orest’s allegiance.”

“I’m still his wingleader. He’s still my friend, and besides, Ari’s older and a lot better leader than I am.” He looked under Avatre’s neck at her. “Aket-ten, let’s not bring the game of nation and politics from Alta to Sanctuary. It’s a good thing that the others are looking to Ari for guidance. He has more experience with a hand-raised dragon than anyone, he’s older and a better fighter than I am, and he’s a good man. So what if he’s Tian? If the Magi really are moving into Tia, I bet we’ll start getting more Tians here in Sanctuary before long. You’ll just have to learn to live with them, Aket-ten.”

She hunched her shoulders; he couldn’t see her face, but he imagined from her posture that she was frowning. “All my life, they’ve been the enemy,” she said. “And everyone knew about the rider of the big blue dragon that was so devastating to our side. Now everybody seems to be fussing over Ari as if he’d never killed any of our people!”

“Probably fewer than you think,” Kiron said slowly, thinking about all those times that Ari had returned from a patrol to brood unhappily all alone. “And he regrets every single one. You know how people exaggerate; I doubt he’s done a quarter as much as rumor would have it.” Her shoulders were still hunched stubbornly, and he gave up. “Look, if you can’t be nice to him, just don’t be rude.”

“I am never rude,” came the untruthful reply, but he had the feeling that was all he was going to get out of it.

Why is it that my friends just can’t all get along?

He supposed he could thank the Magi for that as well.

Possibly she was irritated because it wasn’t just Orest that was accepting Ari without question—it was most of the others in the wing, and Nofret and Marit and Kaleth.

You’d think that if Kaleth has no issues. . . .

Well, perhaps she was feeling neglected.

Certainly, ever since they’d come here, it had been nothing but nonstop work for everyone. And Aket-ten was another of those who was not at all used to doing her own work.

“When the storm comes and shuts us all in, do you want to try and teach me to play hounds and hares again?” he asked.

She turned around, looking rather surprised. “Yes!” she said. “I would! It’ll probably be too dark for mending.”

“It will be very dark,” was all Kiron could say. “I only went through one midnight kamiseen in Tia and the ones in the desert proper are supposed to be a lot worse. I think most people are planning on going all the way down to the river cave for as long as the storm lasts.”

“But we can’t take the dragons down there,” Aket-ten observed. “It will be too cold for them.”

He nodded. “We’ll move them in there—the winter quarters.” He pointed at the end building of their court, which might have been a stable, or something of the sort. They’d decided that would be the winter “cave” once things got too cold. Heklatis had not yet worked out how the Ghed priests transferred heat into the Tian dragon pens, although he was certain that between them, he and Ari could puzzle the magic out. At least the dragons would actually fit into this building, and it could probably be heated conventionally.

“I don’t want to leave Re-eth-ke,” she replied after a moment.

“I don’t think any of us plan on leaving our dragons,” he said truthfully. “They’ll probably be all right, but you never know. So it won’t be as comfortable as being down by the river, and we might have our hands full if they get restive or frightened.”

“I can think of too many bad things that could happen if we leave them alone,” she told him.

At just that moment, the rest of the wing started to straggle in. Pe-atep and scarlet-and-sand Deoth were the first of the lot, with Deoth looking more nervous than usual. “I think he senses something,” Pe-atep called in his booming voice as Deoth landed on the sand, and immediately went to a sheltered corner. Kiron nodded; having been a keeper of hunting cats, even lions, before becoming a Jouster, tall Pe-atep was perhaps the most sensitive of any of them to his dragon’s moods except, perhaps, the former falcon trainer Kalen.

“Kaleth’s prediction is holding true, then.” Kiron did not even bother to voice the question of whether the scarlet-and-sand dragon was picking up his nerves from his rider. Pe-atep was not only more sensitive to his dragon’s moods, he was outstanding at dealing with them. He knew better than anyone in the wing except perhaps Kalen how to keep his own nerves from being communicated to his dragon.

“I think he knows it’s something he’s never seen, too,” Pe-atep dismounted, but didn’t bother to take off Deoth’s burdens. The dragon craned his neck around, showing the sand-colored throat. “I’m going to take him straight into the shelter; no point in letting his nerves get any more worked up.”

“I’ll come with you,” Aket-ten said instantly. “It’ll leave more room in the court for the others, and Re-eth-ke’s starting to fidget, too.”

“So’re Wastet and Apetma,” Orest called down from above.

Ari leaned over the edge. “The only two dragons that aren’t fussing are Kashet and Avatre—and they’ve both lived in the desert. I expect all of your Altan-born dragons that have never seen a real sandstorm, much less a midnight kamiseen, are going to be restless and on edge; they sense something coming, their instincts tell them that it’s dangerous, but they don’t know what it is. Getting them into the shelter now is a good idea.”

Aket-ten made a little face, but said nothing, she only led Re-eth-ke behind Deoth as they took the staircase to the building roof. On the other side would be a matching stair to bring them to the street side of the shelter. Orest led Wastet out of sight, presumably to take the dragon down to the street as well. Ari raised an eyebrow at Kiron, who shrugged.

“She’s seen everything but a midnight kamiseen, so she probably is thinking it’s just another sandstorm. I think she’s more interested in getting groomed, so I’ll finish oiling her before I take her in.” Kiron looked up, as Gan and his green dragon Khaleph winged in to a landing.

Gan threw his leg over the saddle and slid down from Khaleph’s back with a flourish. But then, Gan did everything with a flourish. “I saw the others going inside as we came down; Khaleph isn’t too bad, but I might as well take him below anyway. He’ll help the others calm down.” Gan was the oldest of Kiron’s wing; despite his theatrical nature, he’d be something of a calming influence himself. And if that wasn’t enough, his exceedingly sharp wit would have them laughing.

Huras and the heart-stoppingly beautiful Tathulan swooped in, a blue-purple-and-scarlet blur coming to a dead stop in the pit by using the sand itself as a brake. “It’s coming,” said Huras shortly. His eyes were wide and it was clear from his expression that he was alarmed. But even though he was “only” a baker ’s son and had never even been off his ring in Alta before becoming a Jouster, he was intelligent and steady, as steady by nature as his big dragon, the largest of the hatch. She trusted him, and he trusted in Ari and Kiron’s knowledge of the desert; they wouldn’t panic unless it was clear that panic was called for. “We were at the edge of our range, and saw it when we got height. She caught breakfast, but has anyone got a spare for her second meal?”

“I do,” Ari volunteered, as Kalen and brown-and-gold Se-atmen and Menet-ka and indigo-purple Bethlan landed on opposite buildings at almost the same moment. “Huras saw it coming!” he called, as they dismounted. “Don’t bother to unharness, just get into the shelter!”

By the time Kiron and Avatre got up to the rooftop themselves, it was clear that everyone else in Sanctuary was under cover and probably had been as soon as morning chores were done. The very few windows were already covered with wooden shutters, and the city might as well have been as empty as when they had arrived.

Avatre seemed perfectly calm, even now, but when Kiron looked to the east, he saw a brownish haze just at the horizon that made him hurry his steps. Ari was right behind him, with Kashet on his heels.

When the double doors of the stable were shut and barred behind them both, Kiron turned to look the situation over.

This was not the most ideal place for the dragons. The largest of them had to crouch to keep from knocking their heads on the ceiling. In the bars of light that filtered in through the closed shutters, it was barely possible to see, and the air seemed a bit stuffy.

It was also quite crowded. Mealtime for the dragons was going to be interesting.

Outside, there was a sound——a high-pitched whine at first, then a deep rumble, like the sound of hundreds of chariots approaching and then—

Then the light vanished, and the walls and shutters shook as the midnight kamiseen struck Sanctuary.

The wind—the wind did not howl. It roared, it thundered, it tore angrily at the walls and shutters. It made the walls vibrate. It filled the air with a dust as fine as flour. In that moment when the light was gone, Kiron felt himself groping for Avatre’s comforting presence.

This storm felt like a living thing, like a great beast— like a lion, that roared defiance of all the world, that seized entire buildings in its jaws and shook them until their contents rattled like seeds in a dry latas pod. Yet there was nothing inimical in this fury. It didn’t care if the building was empty or full of people and dragons. There was nothing malicious there—not like the storms the Magi had created.

That didn’t stop Kiron from feeling like a mouse sitting in a hole with a hawk in the air above him—but at least he knew that the hawk had no plans to torture him if it caught him.

Thanks to Kaleth’s warning, they had planned ahead; no sooner had the light gone, than someone near the back held up a lit oil lamp. The flame wavered and flickered in the conflicting air currents. Whoever it was quickly sheltered the flame with his hand, and a moment later, others clustered around him with lamps of their own.

It wasn’t stuffy anymore; wind whined through all the cracks in the shutters and around the door that a moment ago had let in light. Wind wasn’t the only thing coming in. So was the sand. It was some measure of the force of the wind that the sand was spraying in through cracks hardly wider than a hair.

All the dragons, Avatre and Kashet included, inched toward the back wall until they were huddled together. Their pupils were as wide as they could go, making their eyes look like black plates rimmed with ruby or gold, and every time an especially fierce blast shook one or another of the shutters, all their heads swiveled as one to face the source of the noise.

“I doubt they’re going to panic,” Ari said over the scream of the wind. “And if we all settle down and act normally, they’ll relax.”

Gan cleared his throat, then tossed his head as if dismissing the storm as a trivial inconvenience. “These walls and shutters have withstood centuries of storms, and this one has nothing of magic in it. I doubt they’re going to fail now. So, who’s for a game of hounds and hares?”

They had made the stable ready long before the storm arrived, and at Gan’s prompting, the others unpacked game boards, jackstones and dice. Kiron arranged a couple of flat cushions next to Avatre and Aket-ten brought over her gameboard. They settled in, Kiron to learn the game and Aket-ten to teach it, within the circle of light cast by an alabaster oil lamp found here in the ruins. Shaped like latas buds, one of its three cups was broken, but the other two cast a fine light, sheltered from the weird breezes whipping through the stable. Gradually, as nothing worse happened than drifts of sand forming at the windows and door, and the howls of the wind shaking the shutters, the dragons relaxed. Eventually, they put their heads down on their forelegs, or draped head and neck over a neighbor ’s back. They still showed no signs of relaxing their vigilance enough to nap, but they weren’t ready to bolt at the first alarm anymore.

There was no way to gauge the passage of time, but the Altans had known that would be the case. The artificial darkness was a lot like the darkness cast by the storms the Magi conjured in order to drive the Tian Jousters out of the sky, and they were as used to such conditions as anyone could be.

However. . . .

“I think we should feed the dragons at the first sign of hunger,” Kiron said, looking up from a game at which he was (predictably) losing. “If we wait until they get really hungry, there might be fights.”

“I can keep track of that,” said Aket-ten. He nodded; with her Gift of Silent Speech with animals, she should have plenty of warning when they began to complain.

When the first dragons began getting hunger pangs, she alerted their riders. As the meat was distributed, there was some minor squabbling, but not much, and quickly sorted out before it escalated beyond a nip and a hiss. This could never have been done with the wild-caught dragons; there would have been bloody fights over the food in no time, and woe betide any human who got in the way.

The storm continued to howl long after sunset, only dying around the middle of the night. By that time, as the oil lamps burned out one by one, everyone had gone to sleep; Kiron only woke because a beam of moonlight penetrated the shutter and shone directly into his eyes.

He got up and opened the door. He expected a flood of sand to pour into the room, but instead, it appeared that the storm had scoured the street clean. There was no real sign that such fury had lately raged out here; the air was still, cold, and calm, and the streets peaceful. He wondered what the storm had buried—or revealed.

But that would have to wait until morning.

THREE

THE dragons woke early that morning, and wanted out! They jostled each other and whined with impatience, once they were fully awake, and if it had seemed crowded before, with the dragons fussing, it was like being in the middle of a cattle pen that had been crammed too full. No one could sleep with the fidgeting, impatient snapping, and noise. It was obvious that it was time to go. As soon as the stable doors were opened wide, they crowded through, shoving and squabbling, in a hurry to get to their saddling stations. It was time to fly, time to eat, and most of all, time to be outside of walls.

Whatever those walls were made of, it was remarkable stuff. There was not so much as a gouge or a scratch on them after half a day of being abraded by wind-blasted sand.

But a cracked water jar that had been left carelessly beside the door was now little more than a sand-smoothed lump of baked clay.

Laden with saddle and guiding reins, Kiron climbed the stairs to get to the rooftop; too impatient to climb, Avatre spread her wings and flew up. He had to smile at that. She was not only maturing, she was showing more initiative. He’d begun teaching her to come at his whistle some time ago, thinking it would be a useful trick if they were parted; now she obeyed him as eagerly as any dog, and the others had begun teaching their dragons to do the same.

Aket-ten and some of the others were already up there, staring out to the west. When he joined them, it was clear what they were staring at. The sandstorm had uncovered more of the city beneath the dunes; this time there was a temple-sized building, and a vast complex a great deal like a Great Lord’s house. These were a mix of the familiar structures of the sort they all lived in now, and a carefully laid-out area of roofless courts divided by walls next to the temple that bore a striking resemblance to the dragon pens.

“We could use that temple for the dragons, instead of this building,” said Pe-atep speculatively as he tapped a toe on the roof of the stable they had just used, then glanced down at Aket-ten from his superior height, and added, “if the gods allow.”

“I shouldn’t think they’d mind,” she replied, rubbing her ear. “But I’m not the one to ask.”

“I think,” called a cheerful voice from below, “that they will not mind at all, seeing as that building has the sign of Haras upon it.”

Kiron looked down at Kaleth, who grinned up at him, teeth very white in the tanned skin of his face. His spotlessly white headcloth nearly matched them. Kaleth had been thriving out here, and anyone who was under the impression that someone serving as the literal spokesperson for the gods would be frail and ascetic would have a great shock when confronted with the lean, hard, athletic Kaleth. He was one of the few who had adopted the Tian custom of shaving the head out here in the heat, and generally appeared in public in headcloths, as Ari did. His appearance was a curious mixture of Tian and Altan dress, and Kiron was quite certain that this was a deliberate decision on his part.

“You look like you’ve been up for ages,” Aket-ten called down.

“I have. I’ve been inspecting,” he replied, his mild eyes sparkling. “The gods provide, you see. We’ll be getting another caravan of Altan refugees soon, and we’d have been a bit crowded without some help.”

Another caravan of refugees? Well, if anyone would know, it would be Kaleth, god-touched, Winged One of the Far-Seeing Eye. If anyone had asked Kiron long ago what he thought a god-touched person would look like, he probably would not have described someone like Kaleth. Except when the gods spoke through him, there was nothing about him at first glance that was uncanny; he could have been one of Kiron’s wing. Stronger, browner, and more vigorous than he had been when he was merely Toreth’s scholarly twin, and with him, the heir to the Twin Thrones, the power of a Winged One sat lightly on him. But it was there—oh, yes—those with the eyes to see it knew very well that the gods had set their mark on him. It was in his eyes, the straightness of his back, and the very way he moved, as if always conscious of the lingering presence of something greater than himself at every moment.

“While you were inspecting, I don’t suppose you came across a cache of enchanted, sleeping wenches, did you?” asked Gan wistfully. “They wouldn’t have to be princesses or anything of the sort, just old enough to have cut their child locks and young enough to still have all their teeth.” Kiron bit his lip to keep from laughing, though he knew that half of what Gan said was for effect. If anyone was to have taken a vote as to which of the Jousters was the best looking, Gan would have swept the tally boards, and while he certainly was (understandably) vain to a certain degree, and took full advantage of the effect of his beautiful body and features on women, he also enjoyed mocking himself and the teasing of his friends.

Kaleth laughed. “Ah, poor Gan, you have certainly suffered more than any of us here, with no one to admire your handsome face except Heklatis!”

Gan grimaced. “Believe me, I tell you in all sincerity that by now even that scrawny old Healer is beginning to have his charms!”

Oset-re feigned alarm and edged away from him. The rest laughed, and Kaleth spread his hands wide. “Well, the gods have heeded your suffering. Cheer up! That problem will be taken care of before very long, I promise you!”

Imperious Bethlan whined and shoved Menet-ka with her indigo-blue nose. She didn’t give a toss about new buildings or newcomers. She was hungry, and right now! Avatre wasn’t as demanding, but she made it known with little anxious bobbings of her head as Kiron glanced at her that she was uncomfortably empty herself.

“I’ve already allotted the big building and its courts to you!” Kaleth told them. “It’s much more suited to the dragons than this makeshift arrangement anyway.”

“We’ll come look when we get back!” Kiron promised, and turned to saddling Avatre so they could get out of there. As they leaped into the air, the pattern of the newly uncovered buildings came clear. There were two distinct sections. One looked exactly like a Great Lord’s city manor, with the Great House and all the attendant outbuildings. The other was that very large building, in seemingly excellent preservation with a ring of roofless, walled courtyards all around three sides of it, looking for all the world exactly like dragon pens. . . .

Well, even if that wasn’t what they were, if they could be made to work as pens, he and the others would be taking them over. And, he reflected, as Avatre banked away from the city, this meant he and the others could build in their own separate rooms within those pens, exactly as they’d enjoyed in Alta. It would be a relief to have separate quarters again.

It wasn’t that he minded sharing his living space with the others, it was mostly that there never seemed to be any place to be private. For all that he had been a serf, Kiron had been accustomed, most of his life, to being alone, for his lowly status had meant that not even Khefti-the-Fat’s slaves had been willing to share a room with him. Even when he had been Ari’s dragon boy, that status had made it necessary to accommodate him in Kashet’s pen rather than the quarters of the rest of the Tian dragon boys. But now, crowded up into a single house with all of the riders but Aket-ten, he had been very aware of the presence of others around him and it had felt exceedingly uncomfortable. Sometimes it was only sheer exhaustion that allowed him to sleep.

“So, it looks as if we’ll be alone again, at last!” he said cheerfully to the back of Avatre’s head. She was listening, he could tell by the way she glanced back at him, but she wasn’t giving him a lot of attention. She was colder than usual in the morning, and that made her hungry; her concentration was on the hunt.

She’d get her fill of it today. With no sandstorm coming, and with yesterday’s storm confining the human hunters within walls, today would be one of those days when he and Avatre would be doing the new work of a Jouster—helping to keep the people of Sanctuary fed. Hunting was not just for the dragons. Hunting was for the people, too. He slapped her shoulder. “The sooner we get game, the sooner I can see what we can make of this gift from the gods! Let’s try that watering hole where the thorn trees are. After that storm, I bet a lot of the game is thirsty.”

A pity there had been no one to take that bet. When they returned, with two small gazelles, and Avatre full and ready to sleep the afternoon away, he found that they were the last to make it back. As they flew in above the roofs of Sanctuary, he could see figures prowling the newly uncovered buildings, and recognized Ari (by his striped headcloth) and Aket-ten among them. He unharnessed Avatre, and as he was putting her saddle up, Hurok-eb, the Provisioner, approached him. The Provisioner, a solemn-faced old fellow with a sturdy, compact body who was naturally bald without needing to shave his head, had been appointed by Kaleth to take charge of the common treasury and to make sure everyone got a fair share of the food that came in. Eventually, Kiron supposed, this would stop. Sooner or later people would be, if not raising their own food, certainly finding ways to make money to buy it, rather than depending on what was brought in, paid for by the treasures that were turning up in the city. Or, at some point, those treasures would stop turning up, and only what was brought in by the dragons would be available to distribute. At that point, things would be as they were in every other city.

But that was for another day, and hardly Kiron’s concern. The Provisioner was certainly happy with the morning’s catch; he made his usual point of thanking both Kiron and Avatre for their work before he carried off the bounty.

Kiron gave Avatre a quick sand buffing, but she didn’t seem to want an oiling and definitely did want to nap, so he left her to doze in the hot sand of the pen while he went out to join the rest of the wing in exploring what the storm had uncovered.

Of course, the first place he went was that big building with the surrounding penlike structures. It naturally drew the eye and their attention, since the tall building loomed over the surrounding structures by a full story. He followed the sound of voices when he got there, straight to one of the “pens,” where all the rest had gathered.

“. . . workshops,” Ari was saying judiciously, as he kicked through bits of rubble embedded in the sand.

Kaleth nodded. “I would guess the same,” he said. “As we have been looking through the ruins, I’ve found broken tools, half-finished projects. I agree that these were all temple workshops, and you know what that means. This was a great temple at one time, one that had many workshops making statues of the gods, and offerings. These workshops must have had roofs of palm-leaf thatch, so when the sand overwhelmed this place, what little was left of the roofs crumbled away to nothing.”

Kiron joined them, noting that Ari’s prodding toe had turned up a half-finished statue of the god Haras in his falcon form. It seemed Kaleth’s guess was correct.

“Which suggests to me that at one point there was a palm oasis here, too,” Ari replied, stooping to pick up the statue and turn it over in his strong hands. “What was here once, we can build again. And meanwhile, if you are sure the god Haras will not begrudge us living room—”

“Very sure,” Kaleth replied, with a nod. “As sure as I have ever been of anything. These workshops can be made into pens, as you have been suggesting, and that big enclosure that was probably a corral for sacrificial cattle can be made into a nursery for little ones.”

“Little ones?” Kiron felt it was time to make his presence known.

Kaleth favored Kiron with a half smile, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes this time. “You don’t think the Magi are going to leave us alone forever, do you? One day, we will need Jousters to fly to defend Sanctuary, I fear.”

As a matter of fact, he had hoped for something of the sort, but it appeared that his hopes were in vain.

“As he told us this morning, Kaleth says that we are soon to see our population increase,” Ari said. “And then—well, he has a plan, and I will let him explain it to everyone when the time is right.”

“But part of that is that we’re going to have dragonets again, and new Jousters to train, is that it? And this will be soon?” Kiron persisted.

“Absolutely,” Kaleth replied. He looked so sure of himself that any doubts Kiron might have had faded away.

“But we haven’t any dragons other than Kashet who are of breeding age,” he pointed out. “If we’re going to be hatching our own and raising them from the egg—”

“It is safe to transport an egg when it is first laid, before it has begun true incubation,” Ari observed. “I wouldn’t do it by cart, or transport it for more than half a day, but in a sling between two camels—it would probably be fine.”

“By the time the wild dragons are laying their eggs, Heklatis will have perfected the magic that makes the sands hot, and we will be able to incubate the eggs,” Kaleth said, with his eyes looking off into the distance. “After that you will train new wings and—” he broke off what he was saying. “One step at a time. We will make these workshops into new pens, the old temple into a place where dragons can wait out a storm or shelter from the cold, and the cattle pen into a nursery for eggs and dragonets. And meanwhile, other things will be happening. And for that, we need a council and official leaders.”

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 Kaleth 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 would 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.

Kiron winced. Poor Menet-ka! Though the young Jouster had come a long way from the shy fellow who scarcely raised his voice above a polite murmur, he was still so good at concealing his feelings that Kiron hadn’t quite realized until this moment that Menet-ka was at least as lonely and concerned about his family as the more vocal Aket-ten and Orest. And here Kiron had been feeling sorry for himself, when everyone else in the wing with the exception of Ari was virtually in the same position as Menet-ka. Not everyone had the resources that Lord Ya-tiren had. How would Huras’ family manage to get enough money together to get the beasts they would need to bring them across the desert? Everything they had was tied up in their bakery, and if they tried to sell that, even if they could find a buyer, it would raise suspicions. The rest were scarcely in a better case, even those who had wealthy or noble families. First, how to persuade them that the son they likely thought had been killed when the dragons shook off the last effects of the tala was actually still alive? Then, how to convince them that it made more sense to flee into the desert and the unknown than remain under the heel of the Magi? The choice seemed very simple out here; back there, it meant leaving everything one had ever known, sometimes leaving a home that had been in the family for generations, leaving friends, a business, fortune, status . . . disposing of things that might have been in the family for generations, paring everything down to what could be carried away and going off into a completely unknown future. No matter how bad things got in Alta, at least you were home. For most people, abandoning everything they had or had fought to gain was not worth the possibilities on the other side of escape.

Huras eeled his way through the crowd to join them, then Gan, Pe-atep, and Kalen let the crowd follow Lord Ya-tiren and his caravan of refugees, and separated themselves by the simple expedient of standing still while the crowd moved off.

“Hu!” Gan said, scratching his head and looking after them. “I knew my lord was ranked, and highly so, but I never knew that household was so cursed big.” But his kohl-rimmed eyes were bright with interest as two of Lord Ya-tiren’s pretty servants looked back over their shoulders at him, whispered something to each other, and giggled. He didn’t see Oset-re behind him, making doe eyes at both of them.

“There’s more of it than he brought with him if you count all the people on all the estates he owns,” Menet-ka observed wistfully. “He just brought the people he couldn’t leave on his most remote estates, I suspect, and those the Magi would think to use as hostages.”

Kiron tried, for a moment, to think like one of the Magi, then like Lord Ya-tiren, to work out what the Lord might himself have done. “The Magi wouldn’t look at anyone without rank,” he said, after a moment. “So anyone like servants or slaves—less than an Overseer, say—is probably safe enough, even if they’re in my Lord’s household and kinship line. They don’t trust their servants or underlings with anything, so they wouldn’t think Lord Ya-tiren would either.”

“Speaking from personal experience, to those of a certain mind, anyone less than an Overseer is invisible,” Gan observed. “Simply not worth troubling your mind about.”

Oset-re nodded. “Scarcely more than a living abshati, if it comes down to it.”

Gan shrugged. “And if I were Lord Ya-tiren, I’d feel safe enough in leaving some of those behind so long as I got them out of Alta City. Out of sight, and out of immediate reach, is pretty much out of mind.”

“Something about the Magi is worth thinking about,” Menet-ka added after a moment. “They don’t travel outside the Third Ring. Ever. I’m not sure the remote estates really exist to them, except as an abstract concept. So . . . if we needed to, we might be able to use those estates to help funnel people out of the city, or to hide people on, because the Magi might not think to look there.”

They walked on in silence under a sky blossoming with stars. And something else odd occurred to Kiron in that moment. In Alta and in Mefis, both, people had been afraid of the night, afraid of the hungry ghosts that haunted it, the spirits of those who could not cross the Star Bridge into the afterlife. Sanctuary of all places should have been awash with haunts.

So why was it that no one feared to walk in the night here?

He was thinking about this so hard that when a voice came out of the dark, he nearly leaped out of his skin.

“It seems I am not the only one who is looking for a little peace.”

Gan recovered first. “Kaleth?” he said incredulously, peering into the shadows in the lee of their building.

“The same.” A long, lean shadow detached itself from the rest, and moved toward them, resolving into Kaleth. “It seems that there will be a celebration, and I dislike being the skeleton at the feast.” Kaleth approached them, slapping Kiron lightly on the back and Gan on the arm. “I thought I would come spend some time with my friends who I have seen far too little of lately. Besides, there is a slight difficulty in being the one who speaks for the gods. When people are sober, they look at you out of the corners of their eyes and are afraid to speak to you. And when the date wine has flowed too much, they suddenly wish you to trot out your trick, like a prize flute girl who can play while bent over backward.”

“Well, that’s one trick I can do without,” Gan said fervently. “Unless the gods are telling you how we are to feed all these new mouths.”

“Ah! I don’t need the gods for that. Come up on the roof and we’ll catch the evening wind, and I’ll tell you.” Kaleth sounded a lot more cheerful, and Kiron felt some of his own melancholy melting. They all went up onto the roof as he had suggested, and sprawled on the warm stone with him. Baked in the sun all day, though the temperature of the wind off the desert was dropping, the stone under them—and the sands of the dragon pen below—radiated heat, and would for the rest of the night. Down below, the sounds of the dragons dozing recalled nights that seemed a thousand years in the past, when they had gathered in one or another of the pens while the dragonets slept.

“We have water, which is the main thing,” Kaleth said, after a long silence. “Some of those folk that Ya-tiren brought with him are growers, and not the usual sorts of Altan swamp farmers either. These are the fellows that cultivated his city manor gardens. They know how to grow things in containers, with a trickle of irrigation. And in all that maze that the storm just uncovered is a manor where things were grown in just that way. But we won’t be growing food.”

“We won’t?” asked Gan.

Kiron found a wind-smoothed curve of stone that just fit his back, and tucked himself into it. Kaleth sounded more like his old self tonight than he had in a very long time.

“No. We’ll be growing things worth more than food—yes, even here, in the desert. Spices. Medicines.”

Oset-re laughed. “Ha! Now I know why Lord Ya-tiren was cosseting trees across the desert! Incense!”

“Exactly so,” Kaleth replied. “Incense, which is far more valuable than gold or turquoise. There are young incense-trees and seeds for spices and herbs in the packs Ya-tiren brought with him.” Kiron glanced over at Kaleth and saw that he was nodding. “There is no reason to try to grow what doesn’t suit this place, when with care, we can grow what does, and is worth so much that traders will bring us whole caravans of foodstuffs in exchange for what a single camel can carry away.”

“But that won’t be for another growing season, surely,” Huras protested mildly.

“True enough. But the gods do provide. And until we have that precious crop, they have provided.” Kiron could hear the smile in his voice. “The sandstorm also uncovered another treasure trove. It’s enough to feed us all for some time, even with our population doubled.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I was afraid we’d be out hunting from dawn to dusk.” Gan shook his head. “As it is, if we aren’t going to overhunt our territories, I think we’d better start ranging out a bit farther.”

“Ah, that brings up another thing. Who ranges to the east the farthest?” Kaleth asked.

“I do, I suppose,” Kiron volunteered. “Ari goes farthest to the south; we have the two oldest and biggest dragons, after all.”

“Then I want you to range farther than you already have, into the wadi country. There’s another abandoned city there that used to be allied with this one, and we’ll want to colonize it for the dragons and Jousters eventually.” Kiron didn’t ask how Kaleth knew that; after all, Kaleth had been the one who’d found Sanctuary.

“Well, what am I looking for?” he asked. “And can you give me some direction?”

“Only that you should follow the game into the wadis, and you’ll find it.” Kaleth sighed, and tilted his head back against the stone of the parapet that supported his back. “This business of being Winged is not as clear as any of us would like. In many ways, it is as if someone handed me a box of shards from several shattered jars. I can see a face I recognize here, the curve of an arm or a bit of a duck or a latas flower, and sometimes I can make out what the shape of the vase—that is, what the shape of the future will be, but unless one of the gods actually chooses to speak through me, or a moment that I have foreseen comes to pass and I can say something pertinent, often it is just images that I can put no real meaning to. Until, of course, something actually happens, but by then it’s a bit too late to do anything about it.”

No one seemed to have any good answer to that, so there was, for a moment, an uncomfortable silence. Kaleth himself broke it again.

“I would very much like to be able to see things afar, as others in the Temple of the Twins could, but that is not within my power either,” he admitted. “So I cannot do as I very much wish to, and see what is toward with any of your families. What I See—well, when it isn’t like a pile of shards, it is like looking at the Great Mother River at Flood, when she is full of silt and what she has swept away. Anything could be hidden beneath the surface; I can only see what the direction will be, what floats to the surface, and sometimes those things that influence the direction.”

Menet-ka let out his breath in a huge sigh. “Well. That is somewhat less than useful for us mere mortals! Next time you talk to the gods, tell them I am severely disappointed in their performance and planning!”

It was a moderately feeble joke, but good enough that they all laughed, which lightened the mood considerably.

And Kiron reflected after a moment that the fact that Kaleth had not “seen” anyone’s relations might actually be a good sign, because it meant that they were going to be quiet enough that they made no impact on the course of the future. Right now, where the Magi were concerned, it was best to be unnoticed.

A burst of laughter from the other side of Sanctuary made them all look up. “I am glad they are weary,” Kaleth said feelingly. “Dawn comes too soon, and an all-night celebration is not what I wish to be next to when it’s time to sleep.”

“Yes,” agreed Huras. “And I am glad that I will not be there when they realize life here is not as it was in Alta. There will be much wailing, I warrant. And bitter complaining.”

At least we all knew how to work, Kiron thought. Those who had come to Sanctuary first had no illusions about what the conditions were. In fact, their expectations had been lower than reality. No one had anticipated water in such abundance, which made a great deal of life much easier than it would otherwise have been. He closed his eyes and let the warmth of the stone bake into his back.

“At least Lord Ya-tiren brought servants with him,” Gan observed. “I cannot imagine the amount of complaining if some of the household learned they were to haul their own water and wash their own linen because there was no one here to do it for them.”

“I think that Lord Ya-tiren has sufficiently warned them,” Menet-ka countered. “It isn’t as if Lord Khumun hasn’t been able to get some information to him.

Kiron sighed and opened his eyes again. “It is hard to imagine what is going to come of all this,” he said, quietly. “With lives being upended. Those used to being served having to fend for themselves.”

“Well, Lord Ya-tiren will not need to be worried about that,” Gan pointed out. “He has brought enough people with him to ensure that his inner household will not be cooking their own food and washing their own linen—”

“Ah, and he did bring something else with him that you lot should be grateful for,” Kaleth replied slyly. “Females. Young women. Two thirds of his household is female, most are young, none are children, and half are unmarried.”

“And we are no longer in the army, to be subject to soldiers’ rules, and Gan cannot possibly monopolize all of them,” added Kiron. “So you may pursue young women to your hearts’ content. Or at least, as I am your wingleader, I should say that you may pursue them in the time you are not spending in hunting and caring for your dragon!”

Even as he said that, he wondered how much time he would be able to get with Aket-ten, now that her family was here and she was no longer needing to hide from the Magi. Surely she would want to spend most of her own free time with them.

Why was it that nothing in his life could ever be simple?

“Gan!” said Kalen instantly. “If you cause all of them to become enchanted with your handsome face, I will be very put out!”

Kiron glanced over at Kalen to see if he was joking, but couldn’t make out anything but a shadow among the shadows.

“By At-thera’s horns, aye, leave some for the rest of us!” exclaimed Pe-atep.

“He does have competition, you know,” Oset-re reminded them.

“Perhaps we ought to prevent him from venturing anywhere near until we have our chance,” Kalen suggested, in a tone that sounded as if he was entirely serious.

Surely not.

Quite taken aback, Gan evidently decided to put a gracious face on the matter. “I,” he announced, with a dignity that bordered on the ponderous, “have no intention of frittering my time away in pursuit of women. Or at least, no more than one or two women. We have a new home to create! That temple that was uncovered—it is to be our winter quarters, and what had been workshops are to become our dragon pens, and that will take much work. As you yourselves pointed out, we have no one to do it but ourselves. There is too much to do to waste our precious time on such nonsense.”

“Ehu!” cried Huras in mock alarm. “He’s demon possessed!”

“Or else the Magi stole him and left a changeling!” Kalen said with a shudder. “For surely that is not Gan!”

“Perhaps I should exorcise him,” Kaleth said slyly. “A long fast, and an ordeal might do the trick, or perhaps there is a more expedient solution. It is said that neither changelings nor demons can survive immersion in running water.”

“Attempt to duck me in the spring, and you will regret it,” Gan growled. “That, I do pledge you!”

“And you the one who cannot get enough bathing!” Pe-atep chuckled. “What is the difference between a cold bath and a ducking, I ask you?”

“A world of difference, I thank you.” Gan’s face was quite visible in the moonlight, and he was glowering.

No one made any move to get up, but they teased him unmercifully, at least until it looked as if the jests were about to get more irritating than amusing.

Kiron refrained from joining in, and for the most part, so did Kaleth. After all this time together, they all had a fairly good sense of how far they could go with each other, and a distinct aversion to stepping over that line, though they could, and would (and tonight, did) go right up to the very brink of it.

The great irony of it all was that in this case, the others were far more likely of success than Gan was. Most of the young women that Lord Ya-tiren had brought with his household would be common-born, servants and laborers and the like, and with them, Gan’s noble blood and handsome face were likely to count against him. It had been Kiron’s experience—limited though it might be—that young women who were not born into wealth and privilege tended to be suspicious of men who were. And when wealth and high birth were combined with good looks, that only made them doubly suspicious that, whatever the man in question said, what he actually intended was to have his joy and wander on to the next conquest. Whereas for someone nearer in rank, philandering came with attendant high costs . . . and not just social costs, for if the girl in question had brothers, those costs could swiftly become both physical and painful.

In fact, those few young women who were of anything approximating Gan’s social rank probably already knew him, knew of his reputation of old, and might well be as uninterested in him as their lesser-born sisters.

No, in fact, Pe-atep, Huras, and Kalen were all more likely to have success among Lord Ya-tiren’s household than Gan, and Menet-ka be more likely to succeed with young ladies of rank. As for Oset-re—he might well prove Gan’s equal now.

But Gan probably hadn’t realized this, and it was pretty certain that it wouldn’t occur to the others either. Kiron didn’t intend to point it out. For one thing, it wasn’t too likely that any of them would believe him, and for another, it was pretty amusing to see Gan stew a little.

“Peace, enough,” Gan said finally. “Women and cats will do as they please, and there is no predicting either of them. Except that I would advise any of you who wish success to sacrifice to Pashet on the morrow, and leave me be. She is like to contribute more to your benefit than anything I could do.”

Since Pashet was both the goddess of cats and of love, it was generally agreed that Gan was right. And a sacrifice to that goddess was a light one, anyway—a bit of a tribute to one of the temple cats would serve. Kaleth had lured a few wild mau-cats out of the desert, and their first litters of kittens had grown up tame. They had taken up residence in the temple he and Heklatis had set up. And to make doubly sure, a little incense burned at Pashet’s image would do the trick. Pashet was the sort of deity that preferred admiration to worship, and a practical tribute to one of her chosen creatures to an expensive or elaborate sacrifice.

Kiron yawned hugely. “Sacrifice to Pashet or not, as you will. I agree with Gan in this; there is a great deal to do, and I very much wish Avatre to have a pen all to herself soon. With these new people about, the sooner I can give her privacy, the better.”

“There is . . . something you should know,” Kaleth said, and the hesitation in his voice caught the attention of all of them instantly. “There is another group of people coming. And on the one hand, you will be pleased because of what it will mean for your dragons. But on the other hand . . . I do not know what you will think.”

There was such a long silence following that astonishing statement that finally Kalen burst out with, “Well? You cannot just say something like this and leave us hanging! Out with the rest of it!”

Kaleth sighed. “The new group will be here in two days, three at the most. You will be pleased because they will give you heated sands for your dragons. But you may not be pleased because—because they are priests from several temples. From Tia.”

FIVE

THE entire population of Sanctuary was waiting, when the travel-worn and weary caravan of Tians arrived with a light escort of Bedu. There was no doubt that they were priests—their shaved and wig-less heads marked them. But these were not the sleek, polished, and gold-bedecked priests and priestesses Kiron remembered.

They wore the simplest of garments, nothing more than linen kilts for the men, simple sheath gowns for the women and mantles for both to shelter them from the worst of the direct rays of the sun. The kohl about their eyes was smeared, and it did not look as if they had renewed it since they left the borders of Tian lands. They were not laden with gold and faience jewelry either; the most any of them had were common amulets on leather thongs to mark which god they served. The little priestesses were in the saddest condition, nearly fainting with weariness, thin and parched looking, so much so that it would have taken someone with a much harder heart than anyone here possessed to turn them away.

But it was Kaleth who stepped forward first, to extend his hand to the priest in the lead of the group, as the Bedu who had guided them here dropped discreetly back.

The leading priest drew himself up with weary dignity. “We have come to fling ourselves at your mercy, Altan,” he said, his voice hoarse, the Tian accent and pronunciation sounding strange in Kiron’s ears after all this time away from it. “We are no longer safe in our own land.” Not only did he look weary, he looked bleak, as if he had no real hope of anything other than being turned away.

“This is why we called this city Sanctuary, my friend,” said Kaleth, his hand still extended. The priest looked at it for a moment, as if he could not quite believe it—then he stretched out his own hand, and the two clasped arms, hands to wrists. “Welcome, brother,” Kaleth added softly.

One of the little priestesses burst into tears of relief, and as her sisters clustered around her, the rest of the women of Sanctuary, Aket-ten among them, hurried up to them, enveloped them, and carried them off before the priests could say a word.

The priest smiled wanly. “Trust the women to cut through all the nonsense we men put up as barriers. I am Baket-ke-aput.”

Kaleth’s smile was broader. “I am Kaleth, and you all are weary, hungry, and, most especially, thirsty. Come. You can tell us the rest after you have remedied all these ills, and when you are not standing in the desert sun.”

But the priest held up his hand. “There are some others with us. I would know if they, too, are welcome.”

Some of the priests stepped slightly aside, and from the back of the group came forward—a set of faces that Kiron had never expected to see again. Especially the tall, blocky, bald-pated, white-kilted man in the front of the group of much younger men and boys.

Nor, it seemed, had Ari.

“Haraket?” they exclaimed simultaneously in disbelief.

Haraket, once the Overseer of the Tian Dragon Courts, squinted in equal disbelief, looked briefly stunned, and then stumbled forward. “Ari? Ari? By Nofet’s breasts—you miserable cur! You’re alive! You’re alive!”

They fell on each other, embracing like long-lost brothers. “Sobek’s teeth, I should have known you were too evil to die!” Haraket rasped out. “You jackal! You dog! How did you come here? Did the Bedu bring you? Tell me you have not lost Kashet—”

“I have not lost him; it would take a god to part us, I think. But there is more—” Ari said, pushing Haraket a little away and gesturing behind him. And as Haraket’s eyes fell on Kiron, he saw them widen yet again with disbelief. When he and Ari parted completely, he continued to stare at Kiron and finally said, “Is that—that can’t be—but you’re dead!”

“No more than Ari,” Kiron said, flushing a little. “And I’m afraid you have Ari to blame for the deception.” Then he raised his head, with pardonable pride. “I did not steal that little red dragon, Haraket. I raised her from the egg, as Ari raised Kashet, but in secret; and in truth, you could say that she stole me.” And with that, he whistled.

Avatre might have been waiting for his call; she shot up out of the pen to the complaints of the others, whose rest she had disturbed. It was too crowded there for her to fly straight up from the sand, but as the Tians exclaimed and pointed, she half leaped, and half flew from the rooftop she jumped up onto, hovered for just a moment to pick out a clear space, and landed in a backwash of wing-made wind and airborne sand. In the next moment she was butting Kiron with her head, and looking curiously at the newcomers, while Ari beamed.

“Hu!” exclaimed someone from behind Haraket. “She’s a beauty, by Haras!”

“You think she’s a beauty, wait until you see Tathulan and Re-eth-ke,” Kiron replied, rubbing the sensitive skin under Avatre’s chin.

“You have more?” said another, raw envy in his voice.

Haraket shook his head, and passed his hand over his shaved head. “I am—I am at a loss. Vetch—I suppose you have another name now?”

“Kiron, son of Kiron.” He looked up at Haraket, and realized that he did not have nearly so far up to look now . . . “Which is my right and proper name.”

“A man’s name, and you are growing into it.” Haraket managed a smile. “You look so unlike the boy Vetch, I do not think I will have difficulty remembering what to name you.” He looked back to Ari. “In truth, I do not know what to think or say, so I shall say nothing and allow you to do my thinking for me, Ari. Are we welcome? I have with me all the dragon boys trained by Baken, aye, and Baken himself. We could not stay, Ari, not when—But the priests will tell you.”

“The priests will tell us all, when you are all rested and calmer,” Kaleth told him firmly. “And yes, you are welcome, too. This is, after all, Sanctuary, and it would be a poor sort of sanctuary that did not offer shelter to anyone who needed it.”

In the end, not everyone in Sanctuary came to hear the tale the Tians told that night, when they were fed and rested, but most people elected to. Some came out of curiosity, some out of concern, and some, sad to say, to gloat over the sad state of the former enemy.

They gathered in an open square, beneath the stars, the only place big enough to hold them all. At the center were the Tians that seemed to have been given the authority to speak for the rest; Haraket and several of the senior priests. So, too, were the most-senior in Sanctuary; Kaleth of course, and Heklatis and Lord Khumun, Lord Ya-tiren, his wife Iris-aten, and their eldest son, and Ari—

—and somewhat to his own surprise, Kiron, drawn firmly out of the crowd by Lord Khumun and Kaleth. The rest—with the exception of some of the Tians who were still deep in the sleep of exhaustion—arrayed themselves around the court, or on the roofs of the nearby buildings. The court had the acoustic advantage that anyone speaking at the center of it could be easily heard by everyone in and around it. Rugs were spread for the group at the center to sit on; anyone else sat or stood as he or she wished. Most stood, the better to see the proceedings. It was a calm and windless night, still warm enough to be comfortable, though by midnight anyone under the stars would need a mantle.

The Tians began to explain what had brought them across the desert to seek a haven here, and the sense that Kiron had at first was that his fellow Altans were prepared to enjoy their tale of woe.

But it did not take long until they were all united in shock and a certain sick feeling of déjà vu. The tale was all too familiar.

“When the dragons revolted, we didn’t really have a good idea of what had happened,” said Haraket. “We knew the dragons had been getting restive and hard to control, but you know, none of us ever really thought that there was anything wrong with the tala; not even Baken or me. My guess was that your sea witches were to blame somehow, but it never really occurred to any of us, I don’t think, that we’d actually lose the dragons until it happened.”

“No one knew the dragons actually had been lost for days,” one of the priests put in. “It wasn’t until messengers came back from the battlefield with the report that we knew why no Jousters had returned from the battle.”

“And until then,” Haraket continued, “we actually thought your sea witches had found some way to make lightning strike them out of the air—or something. About half the riders came back afoot, though most of the ones that didn’t were not actually killed by their dragons or by falls. Or so I’m told. They generally managed to get their dragons to land, but it was the soldiers on the ground that got them.”

Kiron nodded. There was some relief in that. Not that he had any great love for most of the Tian Jousters, but—well, he wouldn’t wish the kind of terror and death (or the terrible life-in-death of a paralyzing injury) that came from plummeting out of a dragon’s saddle on anyone. Well, anyone except, perhaps, the Magi. . . .

“So, without dragons, and with no means to control captured dragonets, there was no need for the Courts of the Jousters,” Haraket said glumly. “It wasn’t long before orders came that took most of the servants and slaves away; only a few of the dragon boys, me, and a couple of slaves remained. The Jousters that survived generally went into the King’s army, and most of the dragon boys dispersed as did most of the servants. Baken decided he’d try either to pay one or more of the trappers to try to get an unfledged young dragonet right out of the nest, or else he’d get one himself, but right about the time I was going to attempt to persuade the Great King’s advisers that this was worth trying, the Great King—got new advisers.”

He looked over at Baket-ke-aput, who took up the thread of the story. The priest looked much better now; shaved and bathed, and with a proper headcloth and a bead collar that might have come from one of the ancient city treasure troves. That was Kaleth’s touch, Kiron had no doubt. Kaleth knew that to have respect, oft-times one had to look, as well as be, impressive. The man was dressed in a fashion that clearly marked him as a priest, yet he no longer had the distinctive look of a Tian priest about him. The priest’s eyes remained on Lord Khumun and Lord Ya-tiren as he spoke, but Kiron had the sense that he was very aware of everyone else whose face he could see in the torchlight. “The first we knew of these new advisers was when the Great King’s previous advisers were suddenly called up, thanked, and dismissed. Sent back to their estates, if you please! And in their place, as if conjured from air, there were strangers who remained with the Highest at all times, and that was when the trouble started.” He shook his head. “Small things, at first. The temple tribute was reduced; not by a great deal, but it was reduced in order to support these new advisers, who had no land, and seemingly no family. Then there were—accusations. People who objected to the presence of the advisers, or even voiced any questions about where they had come from and who they were, why the Great One had chosen them, were sent out to the provinces.”

“That was if they were of wealth or birth,” growled another priest. “If they were neither—they tended to disappear. And it wasn’t wise to ask after them either.”

Baket-ke-aput sighed. “Then—came the orders that certain young people in each temple should come to serve the Highest at the Palace. It took some while, though, and the god-touched were summoned from each temple separately, by name.” He paused a moment, rubbing the back of his right hand with his left. “Perhaps I should explain that in our land, those who are god-touched with special powers are spread about all of the Temples of the Gods, rather than being concentrated in a single temple as, so I understand, you Altans manage things—”

Baket-ke-aput cast an inquiring glance at Kaleth, who nodded. “We call them Winged Ones,” he said. “The priests are Winged, those who are not yet trained are Nestlings or Fledglings, and they all serve and are trained together in the Temple of the Twins. Well, except for the Healers, who have their own temple, in which all gods are honored, including those we Altans know not.”

“That,” said Heklatis briskly, “is because all Healers, whether they Heal by the knife, by the leaf, the flower, and the root, or by the touch of a hand, must learn every aspect of Healing, and all gods favor the Healer. It is so in Akkadia as well.”

“I suppose being scattered thinly through every temple in Mefis and outside it was the reason why it took these so-called Advisers so long to find our equivalent of Nestlings and Fledglings, which we call acolytes,” Baket-ke-aput said with a grimace. “And because they were spread about the temples, and the summons came, not all at once, but over days and weeks, it took us longer to realize that these so-called ‘advisers’ were making off with every child and adolescent that was god-touched.”

“Nothing like this had ever happened before?” Kaleth asked, in tones that suggested he knew that it hadn’t.

Baket-ke-aput shook his head. “Never. What need had the Great King of those who were untrained or half-trained? I know that I asked why they were being taken, and I was told that since there were no more Jousters, the untrained were going to be learning to act in concert, as the Altan sea witches could. This was meant to give Tia a weapon equal in magic to what Alta had. And since Haras priests do use magic—when they have it—in combat, I thought no more about it.”

Lord Ya-tiren pursed his lips. “Even though these were the youngest, and untrained, and not the experienced and trained?”

Baket-ke-aput closed his eyes, as if in pain. “To my shame and sorrow, if I thought at all, I was simply glad that the ones called were those whose untrained or half-trained abilities we could afford to do without. And to be honest, we didn’t, any of us, think that there was anything wrong. After all, these were the Great King’s advisers who had issued the orders! Why would they do anything to harm Tians, especially consecrated youngsters?”

“We soon found out differently,” said another priest, bitterly. “We did not see the young ones at all after a time. Some parents began to make diffident inquiries. Still, there was no sign of them, no rumors, and no one within the Palace would talk about where they had been taken.

“And then, one terrible dawn, the bodies began to turn up—thrown by night into Great Mother River!” Baket-ke-aput looked sick. “That was when we realized how wrong we were.”

“What?” Ari exclaimed, turning white.

“Bodies,” said Baket-ke-aput succinctly. “The bodies of the god-touched that we had allowed the minions of those advisers to take. Something in the Palace, or wherever those demons are working their evil magic, was killing them—the youngest and weakest first.”

Kiron felt sick. Kaleth only shook his head.

“This is what I feared,” he said quietly. “When I stopped being able to See what lay within Tian lands, I feared there were Magi there now, and that somehow they had wormed their way into the Tian King’s good graces.”

Another priest, considerably younger than Baket-ke-aput, who wore the amulet of Thet about his neck, leaned forward. “We should never have known, had they not been so greedy about draining so many of the children of their power until they died,” he said bitterly. “There were too many for the crocodiles to take them all, and so we found some of them. That was when I made to approach the Great King, and as soon as I was given audience, I knew that I should say nothing. Not only was there a shadow upon him, but he looked to be as he had been in the full flower of young manhood. And so did the three advisers.”

“That has a familiar taste to it,” Lord Khumun said, with controlled anger in his voice. For some time now, Kiron had been a little concerned about the older man. Being forced to flee his own land had taken something out of him. But now—now the old warrior was back. And Kiron was relieved to see it. “So did the Magi of Alta, and our rulers, when our Winged Ones began to be taken.”

The Thet priest looked angry, and resolute, and just as much a warrior as Lord Khumun. “I know the forbidden spells that can give one a second youth, though I am sworn never to use them; it is the business of those of Thet to be upon the watch for shadow magic and the powers of darkness. We know these spells so that we may combat them; I knew the signs of what was happening. Those children had been killed so that their power might be absorbed and their years might be stolen and given to the Great King and his advisers.”

Every time those words were spoken, Kiron felt colder. Bad enough to be profiting magically from the deaths of fighters in combat, but to murder children . . . !

“You said nothing,” Heklatis said shrewdly. “Else you would not be here. And do not feel guilt; if you had confronted them, I think none of you would be sitting here now.”

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, brothers,” 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.”

“But Tians will never accept an Altan leader,” began Baket-ke-aput, his brow clouding. “There have been only two Queens who ruled in all of our history, and even then they ruled as Regents for their infant sons!”

Kaleth held up his hand. “We did not say she was to rule alone. In Alta, that would be unthinkable anyway. We are no longer to be ruled by the Sacred Twins, I think, but—” And now he looked at Ari, “—there is a logical partner for Nofret who would be accepted by the Altans. And that is you, Ari.”

Ari started visibly. He had not been expecting this! But then, by the murmurs, neither had anyone else. “I cannot see why—” Ari began.

“Only because you are far too modest. If I recall correctly, it is you, Ari, who more often than most, has the best ideas.” Kaleth lifted his right shoulder in a kind of shrug. “Ask anyone, and they will tell you. It is you who is the likeliest to devise solutions to problems quickly. But most important of all, you are a peace-maker. It is you who most often can take people who are quarreling and bring them to work together.”

“Oh, no—” Ari objected, shaking his head. “It is you, Kaleth, who does all that and more!”

“But only when under the hand of the gods! When I am myself, I am no better at it than—than Gan!” Kaleth replied, causing those who knew Gan well to laugh. Then his expression darkened, and grew serious. “Besides, no man can serve at two tables. The gods demand my time, and our history tells ill tales about those who thought to hold power over men while the gods demanded their own kind of service.”

“It says worse of those who styled themselves as Priest-Kings,” Heklatis put in dryly. “Or those who claimed to rule in the name of the gods. The temptation is to say that what you want and what the gods want is one and the same, and it is difficult for ordinary folk to prove otherwise.”

“As always, your tongue delivers wisdom as well as stings, Healer,” Kaleth said, nodding. “To be brief, then: I will not deny the gods what they will of me.”

Marit placed a hand on his shoulder; she said nothing, but her expression spoke as loudly as any words. No more shall I.

“I,” said Lord Ya-tiren, “would not be accepted by Tians, nor, more importantly, by Nofret. And, most importantly of all, the First Lady of my house would strip my skin from my flesh with her words if I were to try so foolish a thing.”

That brought another bit of laughter from those who knew the lady in question. Sweet-natured as Lord Ya-tiren’s wife was, she also had a dangerous tongue when she was angered. And there was little doubt how she would react to the notion of her husband attempting to take a wife young enough to be his daughter, she who had never permitted a Second Wife to enter the household. “I am pleased and happy to handle administrative tasks,” he finished, “but I know where my abilities best lie.”

“And I,” said Lord Khumun, “am, and always will be, a soldier. Ask me strategy, tell me that tactics are needed, and you will have all you desire. But outside that—” He shrugged. “And even less am I, a soldier of the Altans, like to be accepted by Tians.”

“I do not know how much you know of the ways of our people and their rulers,” Lord Ya-tiren said to the Tian priests. “In our tradition, the male twins of royal blood who marry the female twins of royal blood can be made Kings. And unless I am very much mistaken, in the Tian tradition, the man of the appropriate bloodline who marries the royal daughter can be made King. Is this correct?”

Baket-ke-aput nodded. “Entirely. And—” he added, with a lifted brow, “—there is a saying among our people that the man who least wishes to be King, is the man who is like to be the best suited. Still—”

“Then by all qualifications, Ari is the only choice for all of us,” Kaleth replied, “since he is Tian and will be accepted by Tians and I will not divorce my Marit to free her for some other husband.” Marit still had her hand on Kaleth’s shoulder, and he covered it with one of his own. “My beloved, who has the secrets of her sister’s heart poured daily into her ear, tells me that Nofret does not find Ari distasteful.”

“Ah, but Ari is a commoner,” Ari objected—

Except that when he said those words, he did not sound at all certain. In fact, he sounded like a man who was telling a lie. And Kiron’s ears pricked up at that.

Kaleth drew himself up and stared at Ari, putting on that invisible mantle of dignity that transformed him into someone Kiron felt impelled to bow to. The back of his neck prickled a little. Kaleth knew something. And it had not come from the mouths of men. Furthermore, he was about to say something—or perhaps it was more appropriate to say, Someone was about to speak through him.

“I believe, Ari-en-anethet,” said Kaleth, in a voice that seemed to echo in the overcrowded room, “that it is time and more than time that you told the truth about your birth.”

The reaction of the Tian priests to that voice was altogether satisfactory from an Altan point of view. They looked very much as if they were going to throw themselves on their faces, and only the fact that no one else was doing so kept them still seated. At the back of the room, the few acolytes who were still here had thrown themselves prostrate.

So these Tians do recognize the Voice of the Gods when they hear it. That made Kiron feel a good bit better. It meant that the priests knew now what Power was holding the reins here, however lightly those reins were being held. And when their fellow countrymen showed up, the priests would take care of whatever “enforcement” of the laws and ways of Sanctuary needed to be done. It was one thing to claim to speak for the gods, but when you could demonstrate the fact, well, that was another bundle of reeds altogether.

But others here had paid more attention to the words than the tone or the way in which the words were delivered. “Your birth?” Haraket looked from Kaleth to Ari, his face screwed up in puzzlement. “What about his birth? He’s the son of a scribe—”

“He is the nephew of a scribe,” Kaleth corrected, in a voice that no longer echoed. “His mother was a Temple of Senet handmaiden. Which was where his father came upon her and came to love her.”

Sharp glances among the Tian priests, and some whispers among the oldest. So. There was something about this that was calling to mind things that they knew.

“My father was a simple soldier,” Ari said stubbornly.

Kaleth laughed. “Your father was a soldier, yes, but hardly ‘simple,’ and well you know it. Ari, the gods have shown me your life laid out as an open scroll. Let your tongue at last tell the truth. It is the answer to how to unite our people, and though it is not the only answer to that conundrum, it is the best one.”

Ari looked as stressed as Kiron had ever seen him, as if he both loathed what he was about to say, and had longed to say it aloud all his life. “It is—it is nothing I wished anyone to know. Ever!” he managed. “It is an accident of birth! It is not meritorious and not ignoble either, but it is no recommendation to be made a leader! Kings should be made of more than bloodlines! This is—”

“Vital,” Kaleth said firmly. “To the common man, it is the hand of the gods. Perhaps blood does not make a king, but having a noble bloodline does not make him less of one. You have the skills. Now tell.”

Ari hung his head. “My father,” he said, to the hands lying clenched in his lap, “Was—is—the King’s brother, the Royal Commander of the Armies of Tia.”

Baket-ke-aput looked absolutely thunderstruck. So, in fact, did every other Tian. It was Baket-ke-aput who recovered first and said, falteringly, “Then Ari-en-anethet, Jouster of Tia and Sanctuary, would be—acceptable to the priesthood and the people of Tia as a coruler with the Noble Maiden Nofret. If he is acceptable to the Noble Maiden.”

Nofret’s expression was sober, but her voice was firm. “He is acceptable.”

“Just one moment.” Ari stood up. Kiron had never seen him so tense in all the time he had known the senior Jouster. He practically vibrated. It’s a good thing that Kashet isn’t here, or Ari’s nerves would have that poor dragon looking for something or someone to attack. “Nofret, no matter what these people want, I will not take a wife who is coming to me out of a sense of duty!”

Nofret regarded him gravely. “Jouster Ari,” she said, with great dignity. “All my life I have known that I must wed out of duty. To have a husband who is pleasant, kind, and a—” she hesitated, “—a friend, a very dear friend, is more than I expected.”

Ari shook his head, stubbornly. “Maybe you have been trained to think that is the right and proper way to do things, but I have not. Thank you for saying that I am pleasant and kind and a friend, but I—I require more.”

He turned to Kaleth. “The Lady Nofret has no other kin here but you and her sister, Mouth of the Gods,” he said with great formality, before anyone, even Nofret, could respond. “Therefore, I beg your leave to court her and win her love as well as her regard.”

Baket-ke-aput was dumbstruck. Nofret looked first shocked, then puzzled, then, slowly, her eyes glowed with warmth and pleasure.

Kaleth did not so much as lift a corner of his mouth, even though Ari was almost old enough to be his father. “You have my leave,” he said gravely.

“And mine,” said Marit, just as gravely, though the twinkle in her eye and the furtive flush on Nofret’s cheeks suggested that Ari already was well on the way to having that love. Assuming he didn’t have it already. Maybe Kiron wasn’t very old, but there was one thing he did know, and that was that there was no telling what a female would think.

“And you will not pressure her into a decision!” Ari continued. He sounded desperate, but Kiron didn’t think he was looking for an excuse not to wed Nofret. On the contrary. He wanted her desperately. He meant exactly what he said; he didn’t want a co-ruler, he wanted a wife and a partner.

Kiron took another glance at Nofret. If he was any good at reading expressions, she didn’t think Ari was looking for any excuses either.

“By no means,” said Kaleth, before anyone else could speak. “After all, there is time yet before so many people come to Sanctuary that we will need a King and Queen. Take whatever time you need. Unless Nofret objects?” he raised an eyebrow in her direction.

Nofret blushed a deeper crimson, but smiled. “What lady ever objects to being courted? Any who would must be mad.”

Baket-ke-aput looked as astonished as if a camel had spoken to him—but then, in Tia, while women were held in high regard, young women were accustomed to obeying fathers and elder brothers until the day they had a household of their own.

Baket-ke-aput might as well get used to this change in “the way things were.” Kiron knew very well what would happen when Tian girls saw how much freedom Altan girls enjoyed.

“Until then, however,” Kaleth continued. “You must needs be on this council. That, I require. I want your skills and your knowledge of your fellow countrymen. Sit, please, Ari.”

Ari did.

People obey him as if he were as old as Lord Ya-tiren. Kaleth, it seemed, was acquiring a little something in the way of personal authority each time the gods spoke through him, and it wasn’t the sort of thing that wore off. “And now—let me beg of you all a little time.”

Kiron sensed an abrupt change in subject—and he wasn’t mistaken.

“Time,” Kaleth repeated, “and attention. I wish to spread before you the lines of the possible futures we face, as I have seen them.”

Kiron leaned forward at the words. That Kaleth had seen a future for this place—more than one, actually—was without a doubt. But he had not yet shared that vision with anyone.

Kaleth drew a deep breath and turned to the Tians. “Forgive me, Priests of Tia, if I repeat what you already know. Among our people, the ways of those who are Winged are not well known, and I must begin with an explanation.”

Baket-ke-aput nodded gravely. “Even among us, the Eye that sees ahead in time is rare. Please go on as you will.”

“The future is like Great Mother River entering the delta,” Kaleth said gravely, looking into the eyes of each of them in turn. “It is not a single straight path. It bends and curves, breaks into daughters, and each of the daughters wanders on. Some merge again, some fade to nothing. And I—I am a dragon flying above at dawn, and have only glimpses of what is below as the morning mist chooses to part, or clings stubbornly to land and water. The nearer we are in time to what I see, the clearer it is—but the nearer we are, the more difficult it is to find ways to change what I can See.”

“I have heard something similar from the priestesses who tend the Mirror of At-thera,” said Baket-ke-aput. “Save only that they have never, in my lifetime, Seen far enough ahead in time to do more than give warning.” He looked at Kaleth with increased respect.

Kaleth acknowledged the admiration with a nod. “We have come to a point where that branching begins, and I cannot always tell what decision will put us on a beneficial path—nor can I always control what will put us there. And I have seen many endings to our story.” His face darkened. “Some, I will not speak of. But there is one ending that I greatly desire, and in it, the Two Lands are—not one, but bound, as husband and wife are bound, partners in all respects. In that future, the King and Queen rule from a new city on the river, equally distant from Mefis and what you call Bato, and we call Alta City. Sanctuary is become the city of the Gods of Alta and Tia together in harmony, the symbol of the joining of the Two Lands, and the Jousters are its protectors. It serves also as the way point for a rich caravan route, bringing wealth to the gods from trade, and not from taking it out of the hands of the people. No longer at odds with one another, the task of Altan and Tian Jousters alike is to guard those who dwell in Sanctuary, to make the caravan route across the desert safe to travel, and to watch the borders.” Kaleth’s eyes shone with enthusiasm, and the reflection of his dream. “In that vision, all Priests of Alta and Tia come to Sanctuary to be trained, and the aged and most wise come here to impart their wisdom. Sanctuary is a place of peace, where enemies learn to become friends, and ways are found to heal old wounds and make new dreams grow.”

Kiron caught his breath at that vision, and he was not the only one. What a dream! If only it could come to pass. . . .

“That is the vision I desire you to hold in your hearts, and give to the people as a goal,” Kaleth went on. “Would I could tell you how it is that we will come to that place, but that is the end I hope you will strive for.” Now he looked deeply into Baket-ke-aput’s eyes.

This is the one he has to win over. The Senior Priest, perhaps the High Priest. He’s had power in his hands. When Tians come here, he’ll have it again. Will he barter some of that power to Kaleth for a piece of Kaleth’s vision?

“You have us, Mouth of the Gods,” Baket-ke-aput said, slowly, and then to Kiron’s complete astonishment, the priest bowed. Not the bow of equal to equal; he abased himself, as he would have at the altar of a god. The only thing he did not do was to lift up Kaleth’s foot and place it on his own head in token of complete abasement, and Kiron had the feeling he had actually considered doing even that. After a moment of shock, so did every single one of his followers bow, down to the acolytes who stopped hovering at the edges of things, trying to pretend they were busy so they could listen. They, too, dropped what they were doing to throw themselves on the ground.

Kaleth rose, paced slowly to where Baket-ke-aput was stretched out, and touched his shoulder. “I do not need minions, holy one of Tia,” he said quietly. “I need—Sanctuary needs—partners. Friends who share the work and the dream.”

Baket-ke-aput rose also, and once again, he and Kaleth clasped arms. “Those, you have. I swear it. For myself, and for these.”

“Then that is all I can ask.” With a radiant smile, Kaleth went back to his seat. “Now,” he continued, looking around again, “There is the little matter of where we are to put all of you. . . .”

SEVEN

THE acolytes of the various Tian gods were surprisingly willing to help with the work on the new dragon pens. Not that acolytes of any sort weren’t used to working hard, but they were generally not accustomed to the kinds of labor that might be termed “common.” Nevertheless, they turned their hands to it, fitting stones into place, making cement to hold them together, although the task of trimming them to fit was left to Lord Ya-tiren’s experienced stonemason. But perhaps that was because the four buildings surrounding the original pen were destined to become temple quarters for them all once the Jousters moved; at the moment, the priests and acolytes of the entire Tian party were all crowded very closely together in Kaleth’s Temple to All Gods, sleeping with scarcely a place to put a foot between them, and it could not be comfortable for any of them. At any rate, with their help, and the help of some of Lord Ya-tiren’s people, the conversion occurred within a few days. The original doors—which fortunately had no lintels anymore, if they ever had possessed such a thing—were bricked halfway up, and the walls raised, so that a real sand wallow could be made deep enough for a dragon to dig him- or herself in.

Then, before the sand was brought in, a walkway was constructed around the periphery of each pen, just as the pens in Alta and Tia had been constructed, with a wider platform at the rear. Last of all, copying the pens in Alta so that the riders could live with their dragons, a single-roomed shelter was built on that platform at the back of the pen, and a water trough where a dragon could drink.

Since Kiron had been put in charge of the new Jousters, there was one thing he had made very clear. Everyone, including Ari, had agreed with him.

No Jouster would ever live apart from his dragon again.

Jousters were going to change; it was time for that change to begin. They would no longer live as lesser nobles, not that they’d be able to under the current conditions anyway! They would be housed in conditions no better, and no worse, than any officer in the Tian or Altan armies.

Jousters would still be like no one else, and part of that difference would be signaled by other ways in which they lived besides the bare fact of their housing.

It was no longer possible, with the bonded dragons, to treat a dragon like an inanimate thing, the chariot that one drove, the sword in one’s hand. It was no longer possible to shrug, walk away, and get another if one’s dragon was ill or injured, or worse, died. Not that anyone with a bonded dragon would be able to do anything like that. Look at the way every Jouster in Kiron’s wing fussed over their darlings, fretting over a bit of scuff on a scale, seeing that their dragons were fed, watered, and comfortable before they even considered their own needs!

They hadn’t much cared for having walls between them and their beloveds, but now that the new quarters were built, that would end. The new Jousters were partners with their dragons, and like the faithful hound that slept at the foot of his master’s bed and followed at his heels, the dragon would spend as much time as possible with his own Jouster. Which was, after all, the way that both dragon and Jouster wanted things. Kiron had not really slept easily without being able to wake in the night and hear Avatre’s breathing. . . .

Perhaps one day, when there were more resources, the quarters could be enlarged. For now, they were comfortable enough, and at least when the temperature dropped, as Kiron very well knew, they would be better than most.

The one thing they didn’t have to worry about out here was rain; any rain that fell in the desert was sporadic and wouldn’t turn a pen into sand soup the way it did in both Tia and Alta, so no awnings were going to be needed over the pits. A sturdy roof on the Jouster’s shelter to keep out the sun, however, was a must. Otherwise in summer, the heat would be a punishing thing, even for a dragon.

Once the construction was done, the biggest job, other than raising the walls and making the walkways, was in filling the pens with sand. Kiron had a hope that perhaps the gods would oblige with another sandstorm, but in the end, it was done by the simple, if more back-breaking means of having every single able-bodied person in Sanctuary get together to spend a single day helping to carry and dump sand into the waiting pens.

Then the Thet priests, with Heklatis watching closely, invoked their spell. It was the same magic used in Tia and Alta both that kept the sand in the pens at a temperature comfortable for the dragons. Without the need to impress, as Heklatis had shrewdly guessed, it was a much simpler affair than Kiron had observed when he spied on the ritual. What Heklatis had not realized, however, was that the little priestesses were actually needed and were not merely decorative.

In fact, in many ways, they were crucial.

Theirs, it seemed, was a passive power; Kiron suspected that if the Magi had guessed what it was they did for the priests, their names would have been first on that list of those who had been called to “serve” the advisers, and their status as priestesses would not have saved them.

They amplified the power of the spell, giving it, not merely strength, but reach, sending it far beyond the area in which it would normally operate. So the Thet priests were able to “steal” heat from somewhere far outside the walls of Sanctuary, and sink it into the sands. But they also created, at long last, one of the “cold” rooms where meat could be stored for days at a time at need, channeling the heat from that space into the pens as well. In the times when there was more game caught than the dragons could eat that day, it could be stored against greater need. The Thet priests were adept from long practice at finding good ways to channel the heat, but it was clever Heklatis who suggested one change that had never occurred to them—to move the heat through time as well as distance, taking heat from Sanctuary during the day to be used at night, keeping the buildings cool by day, as the Palace at Mefis was.

The mere concept made Kiron’s head spin, but apparently they worked out how to do that. It seemed so impossible that he finally decided to just pretend he hadn’t heard any such thing.

When they brought the dragons to the new Compound, there was not a moment of hesitation out of them on seeing their new quarters. The dragons had never been so happy since they had left Alta. They lofted over the walls and plunged into the hot sands with little squeals of glee, and every one of them, even Kashet, immediately buried him- or herself to the shoulders in the sand, leaving only the wide, leathery wings spread out across the hot surface.

The Thet priests, who back in Mefis had never actually stayed around long enough to see what the dragons made of their pens when the heating spells were renewed, watched them with spreading grins on their faces. By this time, they had all made the acquaintance of one or more of the dragons and had, predictably, been charmed by them. It was hard not to be charmed by indigo-colored Bethlan with her assumption that everyone she met was a friend, and by the gentle green Khaleph, and beautiful tricolored Tathulan who could excite admiration in the dullest of observers, but each of the others had their little coterie of admirers. All of the dragons liked people, even shy scarlet-and-sand Deoth. And why not? People had never hurt them, and people were the source of satisfying attention and even more satisfying scratches on the sensitive skin under the chin and around the eye ridges and the join of head to neck. In Tia, everyone had heard of Kashet, but few had seen him up close; dragons were to be admired from afar, but were dangerous, even deadly, up close. And of course, all that had once been true of the wild-caught, tala-controlled dragons. Although a dragon that killed a man would be put down, nevertheless, it was possible to be seriously hurt by one that was clever enough to know he could harm his handlers.

But these—these creatures were as clever as temple cats, as keen and beautiful as falcons, as personable as a high-bred and intelligent horse, and as eager for admiration and affection as a hand-raised cheetah. It was quite clear the moment you approached one that he (or she) liked being in your company, and would no more harm you than your favorite hound would.

Every one of the newcomers had a favorite among the dragons; that had begun from the moment the Jousters had come to Sanctuary, and those who had just arrived had simply carried it one step further—for they began wearing little tokens in the dragon’s colors to denote that partiality.

Now that the pens were complete and the priests had done their magic, they all lingered, congregating around the pens of their particular favorites, talking with great enjoyment about new ideas for improving the dragons’ living conditions, while the humans of the wing moved their belongings, at long last, into their shelters. There was a great deal more to move than Kiron would have thought. Somehow, all of them had managed to accumulate enough personal comforts to make life reasonably close to the one they had once enjoyed.

“Perhaps,” said one young priest to another as Kiron hauled in a load of flat cushions, “we ought to build a hatching pen? It would be better to have it before we need it.”

“These dragons aren’t old enough to breed yet,” objected the one he was talking to, chasing away a fly with a whisk, though not the pretty, bleachedhorsehair-and-gilded thing he would have had back in Tia, but an improvised switch made of frayed palm fiber. “I don’t think any of them except Kashet is. What would you hatch?” Still, he looked interested. And this was very new, this interest in dragons in general, as well as partiality to particular ones.

“Wild eggs,” said a third decisively—this one bearing the hawk pectoral of a Haras priest. “It’ll be nesting time soon, and if you get an egg before the mother starts incubating them, you can move it safely. Steal them the way my mother stole wild goose eggs, and bring them here to hatch. Sling it between two camels or something, so you don’t addle it while moving it.”

Ari was passing by at that moment with his bedding, and laughed. His dark eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement. “You’ve never seen a nesting she-dragon, have you? Even if she isn’t incubating, she’s guarding, and it’d be worth your—”

Then he stopped, and Haraket, who was carrying another load just behind him, nearly ran into him. He had a most peculiar look on his face, and Kiron tossed what he was carrying into his shelter hastily and went to join the discussion.

“What are you thinking?” he demanded of Ari, before Haraket could ask what was wrong. “I know that look! You’ve thought of something!”

“That we’ve got forty or fifty inexperienced she-dragons out there right now,” said Ari, staring off into the hard blue sky as if he could conjure a dragon out of it. “That instinct will tell them how to mate, but not what to do afterward. Remember how you got Avatre’s egg so easily away from her mother? I don’t know that the she-dragons out there will be much different. So I’m thinking that we’ll have dragons laying eggs in the wrong places, or in more than one nest, or just laying them and going off without knowing they have to incubate or guard. And some of those eggs will be laid near enough to Sanctuary to retrieve them. I can’t see a reason to let good, fertile eggs go to waste.”

“And we have eight or ten dragon boys right now who would give their privates for a dragon of their own,” said Haraket, nodding. “Tell ’em they’ve got to go retrieve an egg a couple days away from here? That’s nothing! They’ll bring it back on their own backs if they have to!”

“I’d go back to Mefis for a dragon egg,” said Baken, coming into the conversation, his voice raw with longing. “I’d do it barefoot and in a loincloth.”

“You shouldn’t have to go that far,” Kiron replied, and when the others looked him, he grinned. Oh, he’d seen the envious looks from the Tian dragon boys, every one of them thinking: “If I’d only had an egg, I could have an Avatre now.” They’d seen enough of Kashet, and worked enough with the young ones that were about as “tame” as a wild-caught falcon to have gotten the fever for themselves. “Look, when the tala ran out, you had all those dragons loose on the border of Alta, and I do think that most of them didn’t go back to the hills beyond Mefis. For one thing, the pickings in the swamps are better, though they would only hunt there, not den up. For another, if they tried to go back, the other dragons would drive them out. The wild ones have established groups and territories, and the Tian dragons would have been nothing more than clumsy interlopers.”

Ari nodded his approval of Kiron’s assessment. “Oh, a few of them would get accepted, but the rest would be driven out—and of course, some of them wouldn’t have bothered to try and go back since there would be good hunting here, and none of them are afraid of humans. That means they’re forming wild wings of their own, and making new territories all over this desert. In fact, I think I’ve been seeing some of them in the distance. I just didn’t think about it, because as long as they didn’t bother me, they didn’t really matter.”

“I believe I have, too,” Ari replied thoughtfully. “But I’ve been so busy hunting I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the wild dragons in the distance.”

“I know I have,” said Menet-ka, quietly, from behind Kiron. “There’s a natural hot spring in my hunting area, and there’s a whole—flock? herd?—a group of them, anyway, that I see there most mornings. They sleep around it at night. I know they’re Jousting dragons, because they let me get pretty close before they fly off.”

Baken’s eyes lit up. “Females?” he asked eagerly.

“At least four. And they’re all breeding age.” Menet-ka chuckled. “They left us alone, I don’t know whether it’s because I’m with Bethlan, or because Bethlan is too young to be considered a rival.”

“I think I know where there’s at least one or two,” Kiron said slowly. “I think I’ll go look; I have to go there anyway to hunt tomorrow. It’s where the mountains meet the desert.”

“Then I think we should construct a hatching pen,” said the young priest firmly. “We haven’t the need to hurry, the way we did to work on these pens so we could all move to better quarters, and it won’t take all that long to do a single pen.”

“We’ll help!” replied Baken. Then he hesitated, and looked at Kiron. “That is, if—”

A memory flashed through Kiron’s mind, of how Baken had made friendly overtures to him despite being given very unfriendly treatment on Kiron’s part. How Baken had inadvertently been the one who had taught him what he needed to know to train Avatre. Without Baken, he probably would never have escaped successfully with her.

“Baken, we’ve done without dragon boys this long, why start spoiling us?” he said with a laugh. “No, this is important. Kaleth has said we must have more dragons, and until ours are old enough to breed, this is the only way we’ll get them. You build the hatching pen, and as many more new pens as you can. We’ll see if we can spot any groups of the old Jousting dragons about, and when we find them, we’ll start watching them, or asking the Bedu to, and—trust to luck and to Haras.”

“Haras will favor us,” said the young priest firmly.

“He must. If he fails to do so—he may well find himself with no one to worship him but those the advisers deem too unimportant or ineffectual to repress.”

Kiron winced. But after what he had seen in Alta, he couldn’t find it in him to disagree.

He slept better that night, with Avatre literally within reach (she had elected to rest her head on the platform, with her nose just inside his shelter!) than he had since the first days of utter exhaustion following their arrival in Sanctuary. It was good to be with his beloved again, good to have her scent of hot stone and spice in his nostrils, good to know that if anything disturbed her in the night he would be right there to soothe her.

Not that anything did. She slept as soundly as he; perhaps she was as comforted by his presence as he was by hers. They were both up and awake without needing outside prodding as soon as the sky lost its stars, and she was truly awake and ready to move immediately, with none of the sluggishness of having spent a cold night. It was just light enough to make out the shadows of things against the lighter stone and sand; the rack for the harness and saddle, the stone trough that had been moved here with much grunting and labor for Avatre’s water. She stood waiting for her harness, as good and obedient as anyone could have asked. It was a distinct pleasure to be able to saddle her without jockeying for space with the others. He had done this so many times that he really didn’t need to see the worn-familiar straps and buckles to get her harnessed up. And as for Avatre, she kept looking upward and making little contented snorts, not the grumbling that had been her usual accompaniment to this chore. It seemed that everyone else in the wing was having a similar experience with their dragons this morning, because he didn’t even hear whining from Deoth, Pe-atep’s scarlet-and-sand male. And although he and Avatre were the first in the air, it wasn’t by much. Aket-ten took off right after he did, and before he had gotten too high, Pe-atep and Ari were a wingbeat behind her.

Mindful of his promise to range farther today, he took Avatre up high. She followed his signals and his encouraging hands, rising upward in as close to a vertical climb as a dragon could manage. He was glad of the saddle straps today, leaning over her neck and feeling the thrust of her muscles under his legs with each upward surge of her wings, each wingbeat a flash of glowing scarlet in his peripheral vision, and when they could see the distant mountains, he signaled her to level off and head in that direction. By moving her up as high as he could safely take her while she was still fresh, she had the height to take some glides, saving her some laboring in the thin, cool, morning air.

Cool? It was more than cool, it was cursed cold—but that was the way of things in the desert. He glanced down; at this point, a wild ox would look smaller than an ant, but the only thing he saw was a single Bedu on a camel down below, and the only reason he knew there was a Bedu on the back of the camel was by the barely visible flapping of his robes. It was probably one of the outriders, bringing back waterskins full of precious water from the spring below Sanctuary to his clan or family group.

They flew on as the sky lightened, going from deep, velvety blue to gray, as the eastern horizon brightened, and at last, the very edge of the great disk showed at the world’s edge. The sun gilded the tops of those distant mountains at their halfway point, though the land beneath them was still in shadow. He held himself back from asking her to fly faster, even though he feared that if there were dragons in there, he would miss the sight of them taking off for their morning’s hunts. She needed to save her strength for her own hunting.

But he kept his eyes strained toward those low, rough crests, rather than looking for game as he usually did—and so luck was with him, and he did catch sight of them as they powered up out of the canyons cut into the rock. The sun struck them as they came out of the darkness, flashing on their scales, and making them look like distant, iridescent gems being flung into the sky by a careless child.

Ten of them, altogether: ruby-red, deepest maroon, two sky-colored blues, a blue-green like a beetle’s wings, a green-gold the color of sunfish scales, a red-gold like an enameled pendant, an indigo, and a coppery brown. They scattered to every direction in order to avoid each other as they hunted, though they spread mostly to the north, but there was no doubt in his mind that they were using that canyon as their den. He marked it in the map in his mind, and with a feeling of relief, turned to the important task of helping Avatre with her hunt. He could scout the canyon later; she was hungry now. He could feel her impatience in the way she kept scanning the desert below, and the sudden way in which she changed direction when she thought she spotted something.

And a good thing, too, for the hunt was singularly frustrating.

They spent most of the morning gaining height, searching for prey, gliding down and having to labor for height again. All the while, she was getting hungrier and more impatient—and, in fact, losing her temper. Finally, just as the thermals were starting to help, he spotted something, a dust cloud, in the direction he had least expected it, the mountains where he had seen the dragons taking off from their canyon.

If they’re living there—then they’re used to avoiding dragons. This isn’t going to be easy. . . .

Avatre saw it, too, and by now, she was so hungry she didn’t wait for his signal to pursue that distant clue, she tilted sideways and slipped around in a tight turn that sent her straight for the sign. She wasn’t wasting any time either; with grim determination, she clawed for height in a stomach-lurching series of powerful wingbeats before flattening out into a racing flight. She had seen those dragons, too—and she was not going to let one of them get “her” prey.

When this kind of mood was on her, the only thing Kiron could do was duck down over her neck and hang on. Woe betide anything that got between her and her meal. . . .

With a feeling of great pride, he realized after a while that she was a lot faster, and a great deal stronger, than she had been just a few moons ago. She hadn’t put on a burst of speed like this in a very long time, and there was no doubt in his mind that the ground was speeding past down below them much faster than it had before.

But triumph—and breakfast—was not going to come easily today.

As he had expected, these oryx—he had just enough time to identify them before they threw their heads up and bolted—knew what dragons were. They probably knew every single step of their territory and the best places to hide. And they knew that dragons were more dangerous than lions.

They also knew how to escape them.

Instead of scattering in all directions, they bunched up as they ran, churning up a huge cloud of choking, obscuring dust, and making it impossible to single out one for an attack from above. And they were heading right for a crack or canyon cut into the mountains, a narrow slot where dragons would have a hard time following. Avatre put on another surge of wingbeats as his heart began to race, and he felt one-handed for his sling and stones.

Kiron cursed under his breath, but also gritted his teeth on a savage grin; his blood was up, just like Avatre’s and Avatre had an advantage that wild dragons didn’t.

She had him.

Avatre saw where they were heading, and put on a last burst of speed to try and cut them off before they reached their shelter, but it was too late; they made it into the crack as she dove desperately through the dust at what she thought was the last of them.

Her reaching talons came up empty, and she had just enough room to end in a controlled landing before she smacked into the rock face. She skidded to a halt in the fine dust that passed for sand in this part of the desert, tucking her haunches under her and back-winging as Kiron clutched the saddle and waited for her to stop.

The sudden quiet as she shook herself and hissed at the rock told him that the oryx herd had done exactly what he expected them to do. They hadn’t run on wildly through what was probably a maze of passages—the passage they had ducked into wasn’t all that wide, and they had probably slowed to a walk the moment they knew that they were safe from Avatre. And now they had stopped, somewhere inside that canyon, where Avatre could still sense or scent them. She knew they were there, and she was angry. And there they would stay until Avatre went away, safe, where she couldn’t reach them.

But he could.

He slid off her back, and got his sling and stones ready, and smiled to himself as he realized what a good team the two of them made. She would not go hungry or frustrated for much longer. And those oryx were about to get a big surprise.

He wouldn’t have tried this with a herd of wild oxen, but the oryx wouldn’t charge him the way oxen would.

Avatre was still hissing and tearing at the ground with her talons to vent her frustration and anger at missing her kill; he pounded her shoulder to get her attention, and was rewarded with a snort and an astonished look as she craned her neck around to peer at him. Her golden eyes flashed as the pupils pinned, then dilated, in her excitement.

“They haven’t beaten us yet, my love. Up!” he said, suiting the gesture to the word. “High up, my girl! Fly!”