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 should
n’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.
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.
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