by Aerie (lit)
It must have been somebody's pet. Kiron tried not to think of the child that had probably made it into a pet… a child that without a doubt must have other things to worry about now than its pet goat. Assuming it was even in a condition to worry about anything.
Still, this was rather like—like Aket-ten using her Gift to lure a goat to doom. It made him a bit queasy.
He tried to remind himself that the poor goat was just as doomed. If not at their hands, a wild beast would surely get it before long. A goat that was a pet did not have many survival skills.
Kiron moved down the steps backward, still making little calling sounds. When the goat was about halfway down the steps, Pe-atep pounced, long knife in hand. And suddenly, this was a lot like helping Avatre make her first kills. He moved in to help.
It was over very quickly, without much in the way of noise or struggle to alarm the other goats of the herd.
"Should we try to frighten them?" he whispered. "See if we can get a second one?"
Pe-atep cleaned his knife and sheathed it, then paused to consider. "No," he said finally. "We have enough to eat with this one, and without a cold room… no, I don't think that's a good idea. Besides, tomorrow we can start finding everything there is to eat left in this place, and we can make sure the dragons hunt for all of us. We won't starve."
Kiron nodded. With Pe-atep taking the front legs and Kiron the hind, they carried their prize back in the direction of the temple.
As soon as they rounded the corner, it was very clear that the priest had been very hard at work in their absence. The customary two torches burned on either side of the door, and light streamed out onto the street from that door. It was a welcome sight, and mitigated, a little, the undeniably disturbing effect of the otherwise silent and empty town. It was a sign of light and life.
Them-noh-thet himself greeted them by hurrying out from the back of the temple when their footsteps sounded on the stone. "Ah, good," he said with relief "I admit to you, this place is disturbing me."
"It's just too empty," Pe-atep replied fervently. "I am glad you were able to get this temple looking more lived in."
The priest shrugged. "As much as a temple can. The rear part is better, the part where the priests and acolytes live. I have a fire going in the kitchen, and I have cleaned it up somewhat so we can work. I also found foodstuffs in storage jars, and herbs. We will not be eating half-raw, half-burned goat like barbarians; I have pickled onions and dates, and honey, and some other things, things the vermin and animals didn't scent. Come, follow me."
The temple kitchen was, as such things went, rather spacious. Open to the air, of course, though sheltered by a roof in case of rain. There were many storage jars in a room off to one side, a wide counter to prepare food on, a mortar for grinding grain into flour, troughs for kneading dough, two ovens for bread, flat stones one could build a fire on to heat for cooking, and three fire pits where things could be stewed in pots. And it looked as if they weren't going to be starving any time soon. One waist-high storage jar alone held enough lentils to feed them all for a week, and there were several dozen such in that storeroom. Kiron was not unaccustomed to kitchen chores, but he had to admit to relief when Huras and Oset-re returned bearing the fruits of their own rummaging. He gladly stepped aside to let the son of a baker take over directing the rest of them. Huras was a big man, with correspondingly large hands, which performed startlingly deft work with the knives and other implements that Them-noh-thet had found. Once they had water from the well, the question of what they would eat in the morning was easily solved; lentil stew, which would use the scraps of goat that were left when they finished eating tonight.
The result was a surprisingly good meal, which they elected to eat right there in the kitchen area. It was, however, eaten in grim silence and with many glances over the shoulder toward the small open court behind the kitchen. The silence was intimidating, though at least here, they could pretend they were in the kitchen of a country house and not in the middle of a town.
At last Them-noh-thet cleared his throat awkwardly. "I intend to try to reach my fellow priests in Sanctuary tomorrow," he said, "as well as attempt more magics that might tell us what has happened here. I think that we cannot return until we investigate this situation more—"
He looked at Kiron as if he expected Kiron to object, but the Jouster only nodded.
"As long as we have hunting for the dragons and food and water for ourselves, I don't see any other course," he agreed. "An entire town just walked off into the wilderness; we don't know where they are, why they left, or who did this to them. We have to find out whatever we can, here."
The other three nodded in agreement, and the priest looked relieved. "I don't think we should sleep without a watch being set, though," Kiron continued, "And I think we really ought to sleep with the dragons. It offers that much more safety." He thought for a moment. "In fact, I—all right, this may sound strange, but I think we ought to sleep tethered to a dragon's leg. That way, if something comes along and makes us want to go wandering in the desert, hopefully our dragons will wake us out of it."
Huras scratched his head, looking relieved. "That's a good idea. And I don't think it sounds strange at all. Tathulan is very good about telling when there's something wrong with me."
"I think they're all good at that," Kiron agreed.
The priest looked from one to another of them, and finally asked, very quietly, "Would you mind if I joined you?"
It was not a restful night. But then, no one really expected it to be. Only the dragons slept soundly, and didn't really seem to notice when their riders took heavy cords and tied themselves to a front foot. Then again, they'd had a hard several days getting here, and they were probably exhausted.
The Jousters should have been exhausted, too, but Kiron could tell that the others were sleeping fitfully if at all. Even Huras, who normally slept through everything, was tossing and turning. He took his turn at night watch, then settled down with Avatre again, and finally some time before dawn, did drop into an uneasy slumber.
It was a relief to do something normal and take the dragons out to hunt. They let all four of them kill and eat as much as they could; it would be no bad thing for them to doze most of the day and recover their strength.
They left the priest stripped down to his kilt, busily laying out all manner of things in the sanctuary of the temple. He looked up as Kiron passed. "It is a very good thing," he said in measured tones, "both that all Temples of Haras are required to keep everything needed for the greater magical rituals, and that no one, so far as I can tell, has ever used these things here. I have pristine tools and materials."
"Will you be needing anything from us?" Kiron asked, hoping that the answer would be "no."
The priest shook his head. "I could do with a trained acolyte, but in matters this complicated, an untrained helper is worse than none at all."
Kiron nodded. "In that case, during the morning we intend to consolidate everything useful here, and in the afternoon, we are going to follow the trail of the missing townsfolk for as long as we can."
The priest's mouth thinned. "I do not know what to hope for. It could be that 'nothing' is the best thing you can find."
Kiron tried very hard not to think about that as he went out with Huras to scour the northern half of the town, including the garrison, for foodstuffs and water jars. After two trips with the latter, which were heavy, awkward, and bulky, he was feeling distinctly out of sorts. He really didn't want to contemplate what it was going to be like to have to fill all the jars that Huras had lined up along the wall of the kitchen. The temple did have its own well, but it was still going to mean a lot of water carrying.
I thought I had done with toting water when I was no longer a serf
Eventually, Huras deemed that they had enough jars, and he was able to go on to carrying—
Equally heavy things. Irksome. Exhausting. By midmorning he was sick of it. Fortunately, so was Huras. "Enough,"
the young man said finally. "I am like to turn into a donkey at this rate. We have looted the best houses in this town; anything we find elsewhere will be inferior. We will look for gardens, I think."
Kiron groaned but agreed.
But the gardens had long since been eaten up by the goats, which understandably preferred tender, well-nurtured plants to what they could find in the desert. The best that Huras could manage was to dig up some half-grown onions whose green parts had been eaten down to the ground.
Pe-atep and Oset-re fared no better, and the rest of the morning was spent filling water jars until their arms ached. Huras rewarded them, though, with a decent meal, and Kiron mentally congratulated himself that the big man was along, even though Huras had been picked for the size and strength of his dragon and not his culinary skills.
The priest came in as they were finishing their meal looking so bleak that Kiron put down, untasted, the honey-smeared flatbread he had been about to bite into. "What?" he asked apprehensively. "Your face is as long as Great Mother River—"
"I cannot speak with Sanctuary," the priest replied. "Even though my powers find nothing in the way of dark magic here, or even any magic at all, I cannot sense them, nor, I suppose, can they sense me."
All the dire things that Kiron could think of were quickly dismissed. The priest was an expert in his magic; he would surely have thought of everything Kiron could think of as the reason why he could not reach his fellows. Still. If magic was like water, could it be drained away? "No magic?" he said instead. "None? Isn't there always some magic about? Amulets, charms, even if only half of those are genuine, shouldn't you be able to sense them?"
Them-noh-thet gave him a sharp look. "What are you thinking?"
Kiron had to shrug. "I don't really know. Is there something that drinks magic?"
The priest stroked his chin, which was now shaven again. "Huh. It is possible. I have never heard of such a thing—" He stared past Kiron for a moment, then abruptly turned and stalked back into the sanctuary.
Kiron and the others shared a look. "Priests," Oset-re said dismissively. "Aket-ten is like that."
"So she is," Kiron replied, feeling both a touch of irritation and a touch of smugness, both overlaid by a profound wish that she was here. When she wasn't being irritating, she had the ability to cut through to the heart of things, and to see them quite sensibly.
But—now. Bad enough that they were here themselves. That he was here. He didn't want her in this place, this unhaunted place, where not even ghosts were lingering.
"Let's get the dragons up," he said, rather than saying anything more about Aket-ten. "We'll follow where the people went for as far as we can."
The track was easy to follow. And unnaturally straight. It looked for all the world as if the people had simply trudged over everything in their path, not stopping to go around obstacles and climbing down wadis and up the other side. There was no actual mark on where the border of Tia ended, of course; this was wilderness, who would care? The garrison had just been placed in a spot that seemed good for keeping an eye out to the east. But Kiron was fairly certain that they were well past that nebulous "border" by midafternoon. And the track showed no signs that the people who had made it were getting tired and needed to rest.
But then the dragons glided over the top of a rise—and the track abruptly ended in a muddle of footprints as if whatever had drawn those people out into the desert had stopped calling them, leaving them confused.
And on the other side of that muddle, another track began.
The four of them swooped in to land.
"Camel droppings," said Pe-atep at once, pointing to the pile of dung. "And camel tracks." He slid off his dragon's back and began walking about, bent over, frowning. "Whoever was here, they weren't here by accident. They camped here two, maybe three days—there's a fire." Now he pointed at a blackened smudge half covered with loose earth. "And look how the brush is browsed up. Whoever was here, came here expecting to intercept these people. They knew the townsfolk were coming."
"They weren't here to invite them to a feast either," said Oset-re suddenly. He rose up from behind a bit of scrub with something in his hands, his face grim.
They all clustered around him. What he held in his hand was a bit of leather with a ring on it; it had broken where the ring was riveted to the leather, rendering it useless.
It was a slave's neck collar, and the ring was meant to run a rope through, so that the slaves could be strung along like a string of pack animals.
Well. Now they knew why no one had come back.
"The dead guard," Oset-re said, slowly. "He was probably riding patrol along the border, and whatever happened back there, he didn't get caught in it. Then, when he got back to town, he followed this track, just as we did."
Kiron nodded grimly. "Now we know who killed him. But where did these slave traders take our people?"
Pe-atep was already walking the site in ever-widening circles, and suddenly stopped. He looked at the other three and spread his hands in frustration. "I was thinking—a town full of people—that's a lot of slaves. And there were a lot of slave traders here. A lot of slave traders."
Kiron went to join him, and saw what Pe-atep meant. Camel and human tracks radiated out from the spot where Pe-atep stood. This must have been—like a feast for these traders. Because there were no signs of any struggle. Whatever held the townsfolk in thrall continued to keep them docile.
And as for where the townsfolk were—they were scattered to the four winds.
The four Jousters looked at each other in dismay. By now there was no telling where those people were. There were only four of them, and a dozen slave traders or more, and that was assuming that the traders had moved so slowly that the dragons could catch up with them—with more than a sennight of head start.
The townsfolk were gone, beyond recall.
With heavy hearts, they mounted back up, and turned back to the deserted city.
There was still a mystery to solve. Who did this? Why?
And how could it be avenged?
ELEVEN
« ^ »
DESERT wind flowed through the ventilation openings just under the temple's roof carrying away most of the thick incense smoke. Which was just as well, since the Priest of Haras had been undertaking so many rituals that it would otherwise have been impossible to breathe here. "I can find nothing," Them-noh-thet said with frustration. He looked worn to a rag. He had not slept except when he had to, and Huras had been bringing him meals because otherwise he would not have troubled to eat. "Except that, yes, something is drinking the magic. I cannot tell where it is, because it drinks the magic as fast as I bring it up."
Kiron rubbed his head. They had been here three days now and were no closer to solving the mystery. Nor were they in any position to do anything about bringing the stolen people back, and the longer they remained here without being able to speak to Sanctuary, the longer it would take for anyone else to know what had happened. Finally, he shook his head. "We must go back. We can do nothing more here."
The others looked as if they were about to protest, then thought better of it. With a resigned look, the priest shrugged and knelt down to begin packing up his magical and ritual instruments. Kiron nodded with sympathy. "I understand. We have accomplished nothing other than to find a deserted town and to discover that the people and garrison are almost certainly now slaves. If any of you can think of anything we have not yet tried, I should like to hear it."
Nothing. No one had any clever answers. They were all too tired to even try to think of some. As he had known was the case, since he wasn't in any better condition than the rest.
He wanted a real meal, and he wanted a bath. But he would do without both if only they were getting answers here. Since they weren't—it was piling misery atop futility to stay here.
"Very well, then. We fly back. Perhaps the priests at Sanctuary will have better ideas." He glanced at Them-noh-thet, who shrugged wearily. The pr
iest looked as if he had come to the last of his ability to think, and that was not a good state to be in. They were relying on him for defense against magic, but if he could not think clearly, that was a potential disaster.
He could tell them not to feel guilty, but it would be useless. He rubbed the back of his hand across his cheek and felt the grit under it. Enough. The wise commander knew when to order a retreat. The sun was going down; there was a beam of light pouring in through the ventilation slit in the western wall, to fall three fourths of the way up the eastern wall. That only happened as the sun-disk approached the horizon and was a good cue to tell them all that nothing more could be done this day. "Get a good night's sleep," he advised. "If you cannot do it any other way, broach that last jar of date wine. We'll hunt before we leave and take as much as the dragons can carry."
At least now he knew the locations of the watering places on the way back. The locations were engraved, not in his memory, but in the far better memory of the dragons. That would make things much easier for everyone; the dragons would make a straight flight from one to another, without the need to hunt for it this time. A dragon never forgot a place where there was something it needed, as he had discovered with Avatre, who would return, time after time, without prompting, to the same little wadi where she had cornered a gazelle, presumably hoping that another one would find the place to its liking. And more often than not, she did find some sort of prey there, though once it had been a very disappointing fennec fox that had slipped right between two of her talons and scampered away.
They all resorted to the date wine, even the priest. Huras put together a truly excellent if very limited dinner for all of them, but it seemed rather like a funeral feast. In a way, perhaps it was; the people they could not help might just as well be dead now. It was more than enough to make one think very hard about taking refuge in the wine. No one indulged too much, however; no one wanted to awake in the morning feeling as if his head had been put in the olive press and his gut was a colony of scorpions. And when the jar had been split five ways, Kiron noted as he went to bed that at least half of each portion had been poured out frequently for the god. He hoped that Haras got good use of it.