Mercedes Lackey - Aerie

by Aerie (lit)

  In the morning, it did not take long at all to hunt enough to take care of everything the dragons would need for a day. The goats that had taken shelter in the town made easy prey. The dragons ate well, and they all lumbered into the air burdened not only with their midday meal, but their evening as well.

  Kiron pressed them all hard, and no one objected, not even the dragons. But once they were a day out of the border town, the priest had been able to tell his fellows what had been discovered—sketchy details, at least. Once they were down for the night, he had performed a very simple ritual that allowed him to scribe characters on a specially prepared piece of papyrus paper which somehow would end up on another like it in Sanctuary. And he, in his turn, could read characters that appeared on his piece of paper.

  Return to Sanctuary quickly, was all that he got, which was what they were doing anyway, after all. The return trip was the mirror image of the trek out, with one exception, and that was when they split their party on the last day.

  Kiron took up the priest behind him and veered off to Sanctuary, where Avatre drifted down to her old pen in the very last glimmer of twilight and sank down onto the heated sands with a sigh. At their midday stop, the priest had sent Sanctuary another message, telling them to expect him and a Jouster around sunset. So there were servants waiting with food for Avatre and another to help Kiron unsaddle her.

  "There is a bath waiting for you, Lord Jouster," said one of them. 'And clean clothing. There is drink waiting at the bath, and I will bring a hot meal when you are finished."

  "That sounds… very good," he replied, trying to maintain at least a semblance of dignity. He followed the servant to the bathing room that had been set up in the Temple of Haras, to which the dragon pens were attached, and with a sigh of gratitude for water he did not have to personally haul, upended the first bath jar over himself.

  The priest, of course, had immediately hustled off with two acolytes that had been waiting for him.

  And when he returned from his bath, the waiting servant told him that Avatre had roused herself long enough to eat, then flopped down and spread out her wings and was asleep in moments.

  As for Kiron, fed and clean and finally in clean kilt and loinwrap for the first time in days, he thought he would surely be called on to contribute. The pens they had built here in Sanctuary were of the type that he himself had pioneered, with the Jousters' spartan quarters in the pen itself and this was where another servant bought him food, drink, and a small lamp to see by. But as he ate the meal that was brought to him, no summons came. When he found himself nodding off over the empty bowl, he gave up and stretched out on the pallet.

  Dawn broke, and still no summons. After getting himself some food from the kitchens of the Temple of Haras, and waiting until Avatre herself woke and began to look restlessly about for food, he finally shrugged, found someone to pass the message to Them-noh-thet and Kaleth that he was leaving, and saddled Avatre up.

  He was just about ready to mount up, when a boy came running up, and with him servants carrying meat that Avatre eyed with great hunger. Sanctuary still operated leanly, despite all the priests and temples here. Last night's meal for Avatre had been a necessity, because they had arrived too late to hunt. The couriers were expected to hunt their dragons to feed them.

  For Sanctuary to feed Avatre twice told him that the orders he was about to get were not to go back to Aerie.

  "Jouster Kiron," the lad said, breathless from the run. "You are asked by Kaleth, and through the priests of Haras by Great King Ari, to say nothing of what you found. Not even to your best friends."

  The servants spread out the meat for Avatre; it had already been cut up so that she could simply gulp chunks down rather than tearing at larger pieces, and she did so while he blinked at the boy's words. This took him rather aback, but he could certainly see why this edict would be issued. Given that no one knew how the people had been lured from that town, nor who had done it, there might be panic if people thought even for a moment such a thing could happen again.

  Might be panic? There most certainly would be. And rightly. It could happen again, and at the moment, they had no means of preventing it.

  There were no answers to why it had happened, only more questions.

  He nodded. There was great wisdom in this edict, but there was certainly more to come.

  "You are further asked to go, not to Aerie but to Mefis, where the Great King wishes to speak with you at length," the boy continued. "A courier will be sent to Aerie with your instructions for the Jousters."

  He thought carefully. A courier… there wasn't a great deal that he needed to actually give in the way of instructions. Perhaps if the others were all untrained—but in fact, there were people at Aerie who were far better schooled in the management of dragons and their Jousters than he was. "You can send something from temple to temple, yes? Very nearly as swift as thought?"

  The boy nodded.

  "Then tell them that they are to continue as I left them." His wing of wingleaders was more than competent enough to continue as they had been. Until the bandits changed their strategy, which was not likely for some time, there was no real need for him to be there, and even then—well, there were men with the Jousters now who all had more combat experience than he, the "old" Jousters, who surely, surely would be able to deal with such problems. All the administrative nonsense could be handed by Haraket…

  He felt a distant relief and a little guilt. Haraket had not wanted it.

  But Haraket was good at it. As the Overseer for the Dragon Courts of Tia, he had handled all these things before: disputes over quarters, getting supplies, finding ways and means of doing just about everything. The circumstances had changed, but…

  Well, perhaps Ari could come up with a way to sweeten the circumstances. And he was certainly now in a position to make such a request. Lord Haraket, with his own villa and land… not a bad thought.

  Meanwhile it seemed he was needed elsewhere, and he had better put all possible speed into it.

  Avatre finished the last chunk of meat and raised her neck to look at the sky, spreading her wings slightly. She was impatient to be gone, and she turned her head gracefully, to look at him as if prompting him.

  "You are to make all speed, Lord Kiron," the boy said, echoing his thoughts.

  "We will," he replied, and before he had finished the second word, Avatre, responding to his shift in weight, gave a tremendous leap and upward thrust of her wings and sent them both aloft.

  They landed to the kind of reception that Kiron remembered from the old days of the Dragon Courts here; servants, rather than dragon boys, but otherwise it was a taste of the old days, except he had never been on the receiving end of the attention back then. It was a little disorienting, actually, to see the swarm and have the reaction that he should be down among them. He had scarcely unbuckled his straps and slid out of his saddle when there was a servant there unbuckling the harness, another with a barrow of meat for Avatre, a third filling her water trough. She looked surprised for a moment, then hunger overcame surprise and she dove into her meal.

  Kiron, for his part, was taken away by yet a fourth servant, moving at a run toward the Palace. And if he had not felt the urgency of his situation so strongly, he would have been stunned at the mere sight of the huge building that crowned the avenue that the servant led him onto.

  For all that his duties sometimes brought him here, this was the first time he had been in the Palace, and it simply did not compare to anything he had yet seen. The Dragon Courts and the temple attached to them were large, yes, and indeed the temple was fully large enough for a dragon, even several dragons, to walk about in comfortably. But he had gotten used to the low ceilings, the long, dark rooms of Aerie, the squat, sturdy buildings of Sanctuary. That was what his mind measured things by,

  He had forgotten—if indeed he had ever truly realized—that the Great King's Palace in Mefis was intended to impress to the point of intimidation.

 
; He found himself approaching a building that was at least as tall as the cliff walls of Aerie were—except that the dwellings of Aerie were carved from something natural, and this was entirely built by man. Fat, carved and painted pillars made to look like palm trees rose up three tall stories to support the roof, and the front of the Palace was so wide that forty chariots could have lined up in front of it. The front door, of beaten plates of bronze, would have admitted Avatre or even Kashet without requiring them to bend their necks or tuck in their wings.

  Inside, the first room looked like the sanctuary of a temple, with more rows of carved and painted columns upholding the ceiling, which was so far above Kiron's head that Avatre could probably have flown in here, had the columns permitted it. And there must have been fifty torches illuminating the place.

  From the dais and the two thrones at the far end, this must be the audience chamber. But the thrones were empty and the servant was hurrying on.

  They passed through another chamber like the first, but smaller; presumably this one was for smaller gatherings of more important people. There were larger-than-life-sized murals here, of tribute being offered and captive enemies, and on the wall behind the thrones, there was an almost-life-sized dragon, wings spread protectively above the thrones themselves. Just as many torches burned here as in the previous room.

  The servant hurried on, leading him into a chamber of about the same size, but clearly one made for a very different purpose.

  This was a room full of scribes' desks with rolls of papyrus paper in baskets beside them, ink and reed pens on them, and on one or two, works still being written and held down with scroll weights. Four doors led into this room, and, through them, he glimpsed servants coming around to light torches and lamps. There were a few, a very few lamps lit here, but not many. Work here was done for the day, unless the Great King or Queen would call for a scribe.

  The servant led him through the right-hand door, taking him now toward the south, for the palace itself faced east. The next two chambers seemed to be places for officials to do business; the decorations here were paintings of the god Teth, who oversaw such things, and the furnishings were desks, chairs, and baskets of scrolls.

  A wafting scent of roast duck tickled Kiron's nose as they moved through the second of these rooms, and made his stomach growl. He hadn't had duck or fish or goose, or anything that lived on or in the water, since leaving Alta. Well, fish. But they were dried. Nothing like the glorious roast fish he used to enjoy as an Altan Jouster. He turned his thoughts resolutely from food. He needed to concentrate on what, if anything, Ari might be asking him.

  They passed into and out of a huge courtyard with a latas-pool fully big enough for swimming, rimmed with palm trees. There were piles of cushions, palm-leaf fans in baskets, and other things that gave him the impression that this was a spot used for lounging. But by whom? He did not know enough about court life to even venture a guess. From there, they passed into another part of the Palace where the ceilings were still high, but only a bit above "normal" height.

  So far, every area they'd been through had been graced with stunning wall paintings appropriate to the room. In the scribes' and officials' chambers, it had been paintings of the god of writing and of diligent workers. Here, where he supposed these rooms were for entertaining, the murals were of dancers and flute girls, or of hunting scenes, or of the gods giving gifts of life and health to the Great King. The pillars were all painted to look like latas flowers, with the pillar being the green stem and close-furled leaves, the capital the blue-petaled flower spreading out to press against the ceiling. Here were low couches, more piles of cushions, and small tables holding objects it was too dim to make out. The effect was opulent beyond his dreams.

  He hurried on, with the servant leading through more rooms seen only dimly as torches here had not been lit. They passed through another court with a pool, this one somewhat smaller and set like a blue jewel in a green garden. And from the far side of this court he could see what was presumably their goal, another set of rooms, where light and sound were spilling through an open doorway.

  Glad to see an end to this journey, he followed the servant in and found himself in a room about the size of one of those that the officials had used. There were Ari and Nofret, bent over a table with something spread out over it. There were no torches here; instead, lamps provided much clearer, steadier light, including a lampstand at each of the four corners of the table. They were looking at a map, he saw, as he drew nearer. But it was the biggest map he had ever seen in his life.

  A table to one side, pushed up against the wall, was laden with food: grapes, pomegranates, figs, flatbread and loaf bread both, honey cakes, butter and cheese, lettuce, green peas—and not that roast duck Kiron had scented but a glorious roast goose. It was missing one leg. The leg was in Ari's hand, and the Great King looked very like the old Ah as he took bites as someone—from the war helmet, Kiron thought it might be Ari's Captain of Thousands—pointed to something on the map.

  "Kiron," said Ari without turning around. "Get food and come over here and tell us exactly what you found. Kamas-hotet, where's that map of Bukatan?"

  A fellow with the sidelock hairstyle of a scribe went to a basket of scrolls and pulled one out without even looking at it, spreading it out on the table on top of the big map and weighing down the edges with little faience scroll weights in the shape of beetles so it wouldn't roll up again.

  Kiron didn't have to be told what to do twice; his stomach felt as if it was pressed against his backbone. He heaped a platter with slices of goose, a slice of loaf bread spread with soft cheese, and grapes. "Kiron, come tell us everything you saw, from the beginning," Ari said. "Here's the map of the town you were in."

  Between bites, Kiron related everything that they had seen, from the moment they approached the place from the west, to the time the trail of the (presumably) now-captive townsfolk and soldiers ended and the trails of the slave traders began.

  When he had finished, Ari and Nofret looked to the man in the war helmet.

  "This was planned," he said flatly. "It was planned for some time, and carefully executed. Let us leave aside how the townsfolk were bewitched; that is a matter for the priests to worry over. But look at this—"

  He drew a line on the map with his finger, from the outskirts of the town to the place where Kiron guessed that the slavers had been, now marked with a red pebble. "I have planned many, many evacuations, Great Ones. I have had to evacuate towns and villages in time of war and in time of flood both. That distance is nearly exactly how long a group of people carrying children and infants can go before some begin to fall back because of exhaustion. I am speaking, of course, not of a measured and calm march, but of a forced one. In the ordinary sort of evacuation, people drop back all the time. In a forced march, fear bites at their heels, and only when the weakest are too tired to go on will you lose some. Whoever planned this knew all about such things. And whoever planned this did not want to leave so much as an infant behind."

  Ari nodded somberly. Nofret, however, looked sick and troubled. "Forgive me, but—as a Royal twin of Alta, where we bought and used many slaves, I know something of slave traders. It is not often they wish to be burdened with children; young children tire easily and cannot keep up with adults. They then must be carried or conveyed some other way. And infants—" She shook her head. "Infants on such a march? I never heard of such being taken. So why would they want all of the people in the town? It cannot be because they did not want to leave abandoned children to die—"

  "You ask that—" came a low voice from a shadowed corner behind Kiron, so that he jumped in startled surprise "—whose land played host to those abominable Magi?"

  There was a crisp tap on the floor of that corner as they all turned around to face the speaker. Nofret inclined her head. "It is something I would rather not contemplate, my Lord Priest," she replied. "That some of the Magi could have survived…"

  The shadowy figure seated there
in the corner shook his head. "Bah. They learned their tricks from somewhere. It need not be the Magi of Alta behind this—though I would by no means be surprised to learn that some had indeed survived. It could be others of the same sort. It could be these are the source of their evil. It could be that this is evil of the same kind but a different source."

  Kiron made out more of the seated figure in the corner as his eyes adjusted to the shadows. It was a man in the simplest possible robes of a Tian Priest, with none of the ornaments that most boasted. With one difference. A clean bandage covered his eyes. He was blind.

  "And don't call me 'my lord priest.' I am no one's lord. I am simple Rakaten-te. The name I was born with will do nicely."

  The bandaged, sightless eyes turned in Kiron's direction. "So this is the young one you've put in charge of your new Jousters." Kiron felt a kind of coolness pass over him, and had the sense of being weighed and measured, but for what, he could not have said. "He'll do."

  Although the priest had a face that was unlined, and like all priests, his head was shaved so there was no telling if his hair was white or black, Kiron had the sense that he was long past middle age.

  But there was that about the priest—not the least of which that he was seated in the presence of the Great King and Queen—that commanded a special respect. "Thank you, Rakaten-te," Kiron replied, with the Altan salute.

  "Oh, you would not thank me if you knew what I am, boy," the priest said with a low chuckle. "I am the Chosen of Seft."

  Kiron blanched. He had only heard of the Chosen of Seft in the hushed whispers reserved for tales of angry ghosts and terrible revenge. Seft was worshipped, it was true—or rather, it was more true to say that dark god, brother to Siris, was propitiated rather than worshipped.