Sanctuary (32 page)

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Authors: Mercedes Lackey

Tags: #Fantasy, #Adult, #Science Fiction

BOOK: Sanctuary
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Oset-re snorted, and behind him, her neck arched so that her head was right above his, coppery Apetma snorted so exactly like him that, serious as the situation was, it startled a laugh out of all of them.
“
Especially
dragons where no dragons should be, you mean,” Oset-re said. “No, you’re right. Those miserable crocodiles wouldn’t spare a man to help a single person on the Outer Rings, but once
they’re
certain of being comfortable and safe, they’ll put spies back on the temple.” He thrust out his jaw belligerently. “All the more reason to get out as many tonight as we can. We know what to do now.”
“Which is, above all else, to not let your dragons fly past their strength.” Kiron glared at him. “You can’t afford to go to ground between here and the temple.
But
—it did come to me that if a dragon were to stop at round three or four, but regain enough strength to join the final round—I think it would be important enough to let him, or her, do so. But you
must
judge your dragon’s strength to the last wingbeat. Failure on the return leg—” He shook his head. “—landing in the dark, or in the river, with the crocodiles and the river horses so excited and upset by the earthshake—”
Most of them had seen men hurt or killed in a river horse hunt. All had seen the injuries men got from the seemingly soft and passive beasts. And a crocodile, or worse yet, a swarm of them—they’d take a man and a dragon to pieces in moments. Swamp dragons could hold their own against both river horse and crocodile, but these were desert dragons, and utterly unsuited to such foes.
“No, we can’t afford that,” Kalen agreed. “And I’ve got a horrible truth for you. There are a lot more Winged Ones than there are Jousters. We cannot go into this certain that we will get them all out; we must
try,
but we might not be able to. If someone has to be left behind, it had better not be a Jouster.”
Aket-ten made a little cry of protest, but Ari nodded, and so did Kiron. “An ugly truth, too, and that is what, as your wingleader, I am
ordering
you to do, if it comes to that,” he said, making his voice as hard as he could manage. “There are ten of us, and already we have saved six times that number of Winged Ones. I can’t replace one of you. I can probably replace a Winged One. Agreed?”
Aket-ten’s face crumpled and she looked utterly miserable, but glancing at Ari gave her no reprieve, so reluctantly, she nodded.
“With luck, it won’t come up,” he said, injecting a little cheer into his tone. “Haras give us strength and luck, we’ll succeed despite their ill will. Can anybody think of anything else?”
No one could, so at that point, it was just a matter of waiting.
Just! If there was anything harder than waiting, he certainly didn’t know what it was.
 
The first passenger was an imperious old woman, with a voice so exactly like Gan’s imitation that he had to catch himself to keep from laughing aloud. “Fly faster!” she demanded in his ear—at least she was making an effort to keep her commands quiet.
“Dragon’s flying as fast as she can, Great Lady,” he replied, taking a moment to remind himself who these people were, and how much respect they were due. And he heard the fear under the arrogance; perhaps the arrogance was born of fear. He wanted that respect in his voice before he answered her. “None of them are used to carrying double.”
The old woman mulled that over for a bit, then poked him in the ribs with a bony finger. “Then land beside Te-aten-ka’s apothecary shop on Fourth Ring. I need—”
“I’m sorry, Great Lady, but no landing until we get to Re-keron’s estate in the country,” he interrupted. “Lord Khumun’s orders. Even if I knew where the place was, which I don’t, and even if it’s still standing when we got there, which it probably isn’t. What Lady Re-keron doesn’t have you’ll have to do without until you can find a way to get it.”
She bristled, forgetting her fear in the shock of being thwarted by a mere boy. He could
feel
her back behind him, bristling up with indignation like a hedgehog. “Now see here, young man, I will not—”
“Great Lady, I’m afraid you must,” he interrupted again. “What you don’t have, you will have to do without, and anyone you wished to speak with to assure them of your safety will have to go unwarned. Avatre is not like a chariot; if you seize the reins, you will only confuse and upset her, and if you upset her, she may well decide you are too much trouble to carry.”
Astonished silence followed that revelation, “But—” she began again, this time with more uncertainty in her voice.
“Great Lady, can you swim?” Kiron interrupted again. “Because if Avatre decides to rid herself of you, there is very little I can do about it, but at least we will be above the Great Mother River’s daughter most of the way.”
Behind him, he sensed that the old woman was opening and closing her mouth silently, like a fish pulled up on the bank. Well, she could do whatever she wanted, as far as he was concerned, as long as she made no noise.
Her shock kept her silent the rest of the way; when he handed her down to her waiting attendants, she looked up as if she was about to say something, but didn’t get a chance to before they rushed her away.
The next trip, the man they put up behind him was silent and looked exhausted. He said not a word until they landed, and then it was only a whispered “thank you,” as he dismounted.
The third trip, however, and the passenger being a tall, cadaverous looking man with haunted eyes, the ones who helped him strap himself to Kiron looked faintly familiar. Enough so that he glanced back in puzzlement as Avatre took off.
“Think you know them, do you?” the Winged One said in his ear. “You probably do. They were two of your little friend Aket-ten’s teachers.”
But they weren’t wearing the medallions of the Winged Ones,
his mind protested.
He didn’t say it aloud, but he had forgotten, for a moment, that with these people, he didn’t have to say something aloud to be heard. “They aren’t Winged anymore,” the bitter man said, in a tone of venomous anger.
Not Winged? But—that wasn’t possible, surely, you were either Winged or not—
“They fought the Magi. The Magi didn’t like that, so they kept the ones who fought instead of letting them come back to the temple to rest, and used them until they burned them out. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t die of it.” Not only hatred but fear, and the kind of anger that gripped Kiron like the talons of a vulture. “
Then
, the Magi brought them back as a lesson to the rest of us. They’re no more god-touched now than you are.”
“At least they’re alive,” Kiron offered, feeling it was a weak solace, but still—they
were
alive when all those acolytes in Tia weren’t. They might not be Winged anymore but thousands of people weren’t Winged—
“I wouldn’t call it living,” the bitter man said, acid etching every word. “A man can live without a hand, a foot, even an eye, but what happens when you take part of what he
is?
He’s better off dead! I’d say that, and they’d say the same!”
Kiron had no good response for that. There was no good response for that. All he could do was to guide Avatre through the night, and wonder what, if anything, the angry man thought he could do about it.
“I’m sorry” seemed a bit inadequate, but it was all he had.
The man didn’t say anything more until they reached the estate and landed. Then, once he was down on the ground, he gave Kiron a searching gaze.
“You’re a good lad,” he said. “Just do what you came to do as best you can, and don’t take more on yourself than you can be responsible for.”
And with that he staggered away, limping heavily and leaning on the arm of an attendant, and if there had been time, Kiron would have hurried after him to demand a meaning for such cryptic remarks.
But there wasn’t, and he didn’t, and Avatre was already off the ground as he wrenched his gaze back to the direction of Alta City.
 
When he picked up the seventh passenger of the night, there were people bringing heavy coils of rope up to the top of the building.
And as he took off with the man—he and Ari were getting the men, of course, since their dragons were the oldest and biggest—the Winged One kept looking back. Kiron followed his gaze and saw that the rope had been tied off to some ornamental stone-work, and someone was just slipping over the edge to climb down.
“That’s a relief,” his passenger said, turning back to face forward. “I’m glad to see someone talked sense into them.”
“Talked sense into who?” Kiron asked.
“Some of the servants—young ones, who actually have the strength to go down a rope like a monkey.” The man sighed. “With two thirds of us gone, there’s no need for all of the servants, and there’s no telling what
They’re
up to, spying on us, I’ve no doubt. If they discover that some of us are gone, they’ll try and break the siege, and we’ve been telling the servants that there’s no odds one way or another on whether you’ll be able to get them out before the Magi and their guards turn up. Someone must have talked them around to going out over the wall.”
“It’s what I’d do,” Kiron agreed, “If I wasn’t needed.”
“They aren’t, and if the Magi guess what’s happening, they’re likely to get—” the man paused choosing his words carefully, “—vindictive.”
Vindictive.
Kiron didn’t like the sound of that. “Would they turn the Eye on the temple?” he asked, feeling his stomach sink with dread.
But the answer he got reassured him. “They can’t. Once they use it, they have to recharge it for days before it’s fit to be used again. But it would be better for no one to be here when the temple is broken into.”
That was surely an understatement.
When they landed in the beginning light of dawn, the man went off with Re’s servants without saying a thing more—but then, Kiron was so tired, he probably couldn’t have asked his questions coherently anyway.
So for the third night, he fell asleep in the curve of Avatre’s belly, more exhausted than he would ever have thought possible.
 
For the third afternoon, he woke in a rush, this time out of a confused dream of flying, fire, and death. He lay there for a moment while his heart pounded with anxiety, and forced it to calm.
After all, it was only a dream. And it was a dream of things he’d gone through many times before this, and would do so many times in the future. He wasn’t a Winged One, to have dreams of portent.
In fact, right now, he was altogether glad that was the case. It would have been much too heavy a burden to carry.
And this time, there was someone from among the rescued of last night waiting for him when he gathered all of them for their meeting, a lady with more of the air of a Queen about her than Nofret.
Someone Aket-ten clearly knew very well. “Wingleader Kiron, I make you known to Winged One Ma-an-ed-jat,” she said, with utmost formality. “She is the High Priestess of all of the Winged Ones of Alta.”
Kiron bowed about as much as he did to Lord Khumun. The lady lifted a sardonic brow, but gave him a little smile of approval. “Not afraid, I see.”
He shrugged. “Fear of you would serve no purpose, and we need to keep our wits about us. How many Winged Ones are left to be rescued?”
“No more than a handful,” the High Priestess said. “You’ll have them out on your first trip. The rest are all servants and—” she hesitated, then said, “—servants and friends. But I came to tell you that the Magi suspect something. I am Far-Sighted, and I have been bending my will to see what I may see this day. They’ve brought their private guards there now, and it looks as if they’re planning to break down the doors.”
Before Kiron could say anything, Oset-re laughed, although it did not sound as if what he was about to say was something he considered humorous. “Much good may it do them. My last man said you people have moved everything movable and packed the antechamber behind every door solid. They can break the doors, but they won’t get in until they clear the place.”
The woman nodded. “But our time is short,” she told them all. “That is what I came to say, and to thank you, and to tell you that I know that not only will you and your dragons do their best, I also know that no one anywhere would put as much of themselves into this as you have.”
She bowed—deeply—to all of them, then turned and left the training ground without a backward glance.
Huras broke the silence, laughing shakily. “I feel as if I have just had Lady Iris appear, pat my head, and tell me I have been a good boy and to finish cleaning my room and run along now,” he said, which made them all laugh.
“The ways of gods are strange, and the ways of their servants even stranger,” Ari said briskly.
“She’s exhausted,” Aket-ten said doubtfully, looking after the woman. “I’ve never seen her so thin and drained-looking.”
“So the sooner we finish this thing, the sooner she’ll have no people back in that temple to worry about,” Kiron replied, putting a bit of a whip-crack into his words. “You heard the Winged One. Let’s get into the saddle and into the air. Either the Magi will spot us, or they won’t, and in either case this is the last night, and we’ll be gone before they can do anything about it.”

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