Authors: Mercedes Lackey

Tags: #Fantasy, #Adult, #Science Fiction

Sanctuary (42 page)

BOOK: Sanctuary

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No one refused. Maybe they were afraid to. In any event, when he checked back with groups with which he had left children, they were caring for the foundlings as well as their own. In a couple of cases, he found a woman in the party cradling the child possessively, and he wondered, had he united a bereft mother with a replacement for the child she had lost?

Ari was the first to return. Kiron spotted him coming in from the south, and went to meet him. By then, Aket-ten was in the air, had presumably dealt with the people at the harbor, and was working the interior of the First Ring, guiding people through the maze of broken buildings and toppled statues to the one causeway still intact—a floating footbridge made of raft sections lashed together, a replacement for a causeway that had collapsed in an earlier shake.

He didn’t even need to say anything, he just pointed at Re-eth-ke hovering in the middle distance, and Ari practically went limp with relief. He straightened immediately, though. “We saw Re-eth-ke rise from the Healers’ Court!” he called. “I thought I was having a vision at first. But Seft’s own chaos was breaking loose, so we landed and each took a sick or wounded Healer out.”

“It’s getting w—” Kiron began, when another shake interrupted him.

By now, there wasn’t much left of the Central Island, and with this shake, buildings were beginning to sink on First Ring as well. Ari took in the damage with widened eyes.

“By Hamun’s horns!” he exclaimed. “What is happening here?”

“We’re evacuating the city, sending them south, getting as many into boats as we can,” Kiron called. “The rest—we’re finding safe paths to that causeway and guiding them from the air, and I don’t know why things are sinking. Maybe it’s a different sort of shake than we’ve ever had before. I want you to intercept the others and tell them that’s what they’re to do. Then
you
go to the others, the ones with the Tian army, Great King. The Magi here are dead or running, the Queens and most of the nobles, if they were on Central Island, are dead, too. You are Great King and commander of the Armies of Alta, which are about to close in on the Tian forces. The greater need for you is there, not here.”

He’d thought about that, as well, in the time since he and Aket-ten had begun this evacuation. There was no doubt of it in his mind; under the heading of “greatest good,” Ari could help to save a few thousand, of which most could save themselves so long as they knew where a clear path was,
or
he could take his place as the ruler of Alta, and save—perhaps—hundreds of thousands.

And, Ari being Ari and very far from stupid, saw that for himself right away. So he just saluted, with no sense of irony or mocking at all, and turned Kashet’s head south without another word.

Oset-re was the next back, and he took immediately to working directly across First Ring from where Aket-ten was. By the time Huras arrived, they had most of First Ring cleared, or at least, as much as it was going to be cleared without help to extricate people who were trapped past bare hands getting them out. Those who hadn’t already gotten across the causeway at least knew where the clear path to it was. Aket-ten had gotten the brilliant notion of having the survivors splash paint, or mud, or use anything else that would make a mark on the way, to show where the safe route was. That sped up the evacuation of those behind the first out immeasurably.

The Second Ring had begun to evacuate itself, warned by the collapse of Central Island and the First Ring, and by those escaping across the causeway. Boats were already fleeing, and people streaming across the two floating-raft causeways linking the Second Ring to the Third.

And on the Third Ring—now there was help. The Third Ring was home to the army. There were fewer buildings as such; fewer places for people to get trapped in wreckage. But even more important, the soldiers of Alta were used to helping in the wake of shakes, and now they, under the direction of their officers, were organizing the evacuation as refugees poured over the causeways.

It was to these officers that Kiron now gave a different piece of news.

“The False Kings are dead,” he said grimly, “and their foolish or deluded Queens with them. But Alta has a Great Queen and a King; Queen Nofret-te-en, once betrothed of Toreth-aket. She was wedded by the Mouth of the Gods, Kaleth-aket, to Ari-en-anethet, rider of the dragon Kashet; he who was chosen to be Great King by birth, marriage to the Lady Nofret, and the will of the gods. And,” he would add with a significant lift of an eyebrow, “He is no friend of the Magi.”

Of course, this was news to them, but it was clearly welcome news. It put heart in them, gave impetus to their effort.

But the one thing they asked that he couldn’t answer was, “How far are we to evacuate?”

To which he could only answer “Judge by what you would do yourself. How far would
you?
”

Because he wanted to say that the Third Ring was far enough . . . but as another shake hit, and he got up into the air, he saw that half of First Ring was gone, the same sand-and-water geysers were spouting on Second, and buildings there were sinking.

“The shakes are getting worse,” said one grizzled Captain of Hundreds grimly, when it was over. “It’s not natural. You get a big shake, then you get your smaller after-shakes. You don’t get shakes that are bigger with each one that hits! It’s all the fault of those cursed Magi!”

Kiron nodded. By now, his half of the wing was back; Aket-ten, Kiron himself, Huras, Oset-re and Pe-atep had divided Third Ring into quarters. Aket-ten, Huras, Oset-re and Pe-atep were working the sections, while Kiron made contact with the officers. Some of those officers had, to his immense relief, sent rescue parties back to Second Ring to try and dig out the trapped.

Though, truth be told, there were fewer of those than he would have thought. The shakes that Altans had been living with since the Magi began using the Eye had knocked down most dubious structures a year or more ago, and living with so many shakes had taught most Altans how to survive them.

But now that the officers and fighters had shaken off their brief paralysis of being without orders or a leader to give those orders, it was looking as though the Jousters were redundant here.

Which meant it was time for the wing to reunite.

As the army moved its rescue and evacuation efforts to Fourth Ring, and the other four finished their segments of Third, he rounded them up, and signaled them to land. “We’re done!” he called, and got nods of agreement from all four.

“Seventh Ring and Ari?” Huras called back, looking much more at ease than he had in—well, months. By this, Kiron deduced he’d found his family intact, and they were already making their way to safer ground.

“Have you—” he began, then hesitated. “Are your families—”

“Mine’s in a boat,” Huras replied, with satisfaction.

“What there is of my family should be across the causeway to Third Ring by now,” Pe-atep told him, and shrugged.

“Our city manor is deserted,” Oset-re said. “But it was shut up in an orderly fashion. I assume the family went to the estate in River Horse Nome, and the servants and slaves left behind have gotten out.”

“Right. Then Ari needs us. Time to go be the Great King’s wing.”

“Time to find those so-called advisers, you mean,” Aket-ten said grimly, as he signaled Avatre to take off.

True enough,
he thought,
but what will we do with them when we find them?

He did not doubt that they were with the Tian army. The Tian King would be leading his forces, and he would insist on his three closest advisers being with him. No King, whether he be Tian, Altan, or skin-wearing barbarian, left the leading of his army at such a decisive moment to his generals. Such a duty was part of being King, and unless the King was very old, or sick, or had a coregent to wear the War Crown for him, it was expected. Where the King went, the advisers went also.

We aren’t Thet priests, to defend ourselves against magic. . . .

Then, of course, there was an entirely separate issue in Ari meeting with the Tian King—the King who had personally given him the Gold of Honor, not once, but several times. Impossible that he would not recognize Ari. What he would do about it was anybody’s guess.

And then to find out—if he didn’t already know—that Ari was a hitherto-unacknowledged, and possibly unknown nephew. . . .

But that was not Kiron’s problem, it was Ari’s. Kiron’s problem was to get the rest of the wing to wherever Ari was—

Then he realized that would be easier than he thought.

“Aket-ten!” he shouted, as they moved south across the Fifth Canal (which was now dotted with boats). “Ask Re-eth-ke where the others are!”

He suspected that the dragons would have some innate sense of where the rest of their kind might be, especially if they were nestmates, and it seemed he was right. Aket-ten pointed, and they all changed direction in accordance with her guidance, as another shake made the water of the canal slosh in its basin.

So intent was he on assessing the damage to the rings below them that it wasn’t until they were crossing the Seventh Ring (wide enough that entire farming estates were set up there) and approaching the eighth and final canal, that he realized he should have known all along where the Tian army would be.

Because the Tian army was just starting across the only “bridge” that could accommodate them all, the so-called “Grand Causeway” of the Eighth Canal. It was huge, wide enough for forty men to march side by side. Of course, it had to be that big, after all, the
Altan
army had to use it to get out of Alta City. It was also the only way for a large force to cross the Eighth Canal without going hundreds of leagues north.

The advisers—and Kiron could see them, in three war chariots behind the King’s chariot—knew that this was a potential ambush point, and they knew that the Eye could reach this far. But there was no sign of the Altan army, and the advisers must be certain that on an overcast and rainy day like this one, the Eye could not be used.

There was no need to look for Ari, though. Planted right in the middle of the causeway, just before it connected with the land of the Seventh Ring, were Ari and Kashet. Lined up behind them, Orest and blue Wastet, Menet-ka and indigo Bethlan, Gan and green Khaleph, and Kalen on brown Se-atmen.

The Tians might have expected an ambush. They didn’t expect this.

The Tian King, mindful of the fact that the massive number of troops behind him took time to react to anything, had already slowed his chariot to a crawl as they approached Ari. Ari was wearing his blue War Crown rather than a Jousting helmet, and that would keep the Tian King from recognizing him until they got very close, but it couldn’t be long now. And just how did Ari intend to stop the Tian army with five Jousters?

This isn’t what I’d have done,
Kiron thought, as he urged Avatre to more speed; Ari was going to need all of them to back him if he had any hope of pulling off a bluff.
I’d have come in and plucked those advisers off their chariots and dropped them.
Then
I’d have gone into negotiation. . . .

But he wasn’t the Great King. Ari was. And Ari was the one making the decisions.

Then, some instinct, something caught out of the corner of his eye, or a distant rumble made him turn his gaze briefly back the way they had come. So
he
was the one who saw the thing that was going to render all of Ari’s plans null, the ripples in the land, like ocean waves, racing toward Eighth Canal and the causeway. . . .

He shouted in alarm, and pointed back at the onrushing earthshake; the others looked, and stared, dumbfounded. Knowing that Ari couldn’t hear him, he shouted at the Jouster anyway. When that wave hit the causeway—

Perhaps Ari couldn’t hear him, but Kashet most certainly could sense
something.

With a startled bark of alarm, and with no warning to his rider, Kashet launched himself into the air, followed shortly thereafter by the other four.

The Tian King and his advisers had just about enough time to register that there was something else wrong, when the shake-wave hit where they were standing.

For hundreds of years, this causeway had stood firm, proof against the worst that man or nature could throw at it. Today, it met something it could not stand firm against.

As Avatre threw up her head, snorting with alarm, the causeway disintegrated in an explosion of churning water, sand spouts, flying stones and brick, and thrashing horses. The last few soldiers just setting foot on the causeway had enough time to fling themselves backward to save themselves. The rest were flung into the water of the Eighth Canal. Whether or not they could swim was irrelevant; very little was going to survive being dropped into the midst of a collapsing causeway.

The Great Tian King and his advisers did not even have time to understand what was happening before they were gone.