Avatre saw it, too, and by now, she was so hungry she didn’t wait for his signal to pursue that distant clue, she tilted sideways and slipped around in a tight turn that sent her straight for the sign. She wasn’t wasting any time either; with grim determination, she clawed for height in a stomach-lurching series of powerful wingbeats before flattening out into a racing flight. She had seen those dragons, too—and she was not going to let one of them get “her” prey.
When this kind of mood was on her, the only thing Kiron could do was duck down over her neck and hang on. Woe betide anything that got between her and her meal. . . .
With a feeling of great pride, he realized after a while that she was a lot faster, and a great deal stronger, than she had been just a few moons ago. She hadn’t put on a burst of speed like this in a very long time, and there was no doubt in his mind that the ground was speeding past down below them much faster than it had before.
But triumph—and breakfast—was not going to come easily today.
As he had expected, these oryx—he had just enough time to identify them before they threw their heads up and bolted—knew what dragons were. They probably knew every single step of their territory and the best places to hide. And they knew that dragons were more dangerous than lions.
They also knew how to escape them.
Instead of scattering in all directions, they bunched up as they ran, churning up a huge cloud of choking, obscuring dust, and making it impossible to single out one for an attack from above. And they were heading right for a crack or canyon cut into the mountains, a narrow slot where dragons would have a hard time following. Avatre put on another surge of wingbeats as his heart began to race, and he felt one-handed for his sling and stones.
Kiron cursed under his breath, but also gritted his teeth on a savage grin; his blood was up, just like Avatre’s and Avatre had an advantage that wild dragons didn’t.
She had him.
Avatre saw where they were heading, and put on a last burst of speed to try and cut them off before they reached their shelter, but it was too late; they made it into the crack as she dove desperately through the dust at what she thought was the last of them.
Her reaching talons came up empty, and she had just enough room to end in a controlled landing before she smacked into the rock face. She skidded to a halt in the fine dust that passed for sand in this part of the desert, tucking her haunches under her and back-winging as Kiron clutched the saddle and waited for her to stop.
The sudden quiet as she shook herself and hissed at the rock told him that the oryx herd had done exactly what he expected them to do. They hadn’t run on wildly through what was probably a maze of passages—the passage they had ducked into wasn’t all that wide, and they had probably slowed to a walk the moment they knew that they were safe from Avatre. And now they had stopped, somewhere inside that canyon, where Avatre could still sense or scent them. She knew they were there, and she was angry. And there they would stay until Avatre went away, safe, where she couldn’t reach them.
But he could.
He slid off her back, and got his sling and stones ready, and smiled to himself as he realized what a good team the two of them made. She would not go hungry or frustrated for much longer. And those oryx were about to get a big surprise.
He wouldn’t have tried this with a herd of wild oxen, but the oryx wouldn’t charge him the way oxen would.
Avatre was still hissing and tearing at the ground with her talons to vent her frustration and anger at missing her kill; he pounded her shoulder to get her attention, and was rewarded with a snort and an astonished look as she craned her neck around to peer at him. Her golden eyes flashed as the pupils pinned, then dilated, in her excitement.
“They haven’t beaten us yet, my love. Up!” he said, suiting the gesture to the word. “High up, my girl! Fly!”
She gave him a long and level look—but this wasn’t the first time he’d hunted on the ground while she waited in the air and her frustration vanished as she realized what it was he meant to do. She pushed herself off, the dust blowing up in a huge cloud that made him cough and cover his mouth and nose, as he headed into the narrow crack of a canyon.
The transition from light into shadow was startling; the dust didn’t follow him for more than a pace or two, the temperature dropped, and he had to pause a moment for his eyes to adjust. He found himself in a passage just big enough that he couldn’t quite touch the walls when he spread his arms wide, with a worn path running right down the center of it. Rough stone walls towered high above his head, showing mostly the effect of wind erosion to smooth them out. When the wind whipped down through this place, it must howl like a jackal.
The crack was one of those twisting and turning affairs, and he went around a couple of corners before he found the oryx that Avatre had scented. In fact, he practically blundered into them. The crack had begun to widen at that point, and they were milling about restlessly; his sudden appearance took them entirely by surprise, as their startled snorts proved.
For a moment, they just stood and stared at him out of astonished eyes, then a couple of them danced sideways, as if trying to make up their minds whether to run or stand their ground.
A stone from his sling against the leader’s flank and a wild shout decided them.
Within moments, the herd was off and running again, this time concentrating on him, and not on whatever was above. Which was exactly what he wanted, of course. He had no intention of trying to bring any of them down with his sling; he was going to drive them ahead of him until they burst out into some place where Avatre could get to them.
Whooping at the top of his lungs and swinging his sling, he urged them on, his voice echoing above the pounding of their hooves as they charged away from him. At some point this crack would widen out enough that Avatre could dive in from above, and by now she had already found just such a place. She was probably perched on the edge of the cliff above, waiting to plunge down as soon as the herd galloped into ambush. He and she had played this game before. The thunder of hooves echoed back to him, along with squeals and grunts—and then, a scream.
He put on a burst of speed of his own. The crack did widen out, rather abruptly, turning from a passage to a sun-drenched dry valley, and as he ran out into the sunlight, it was to see the last of the oryx vanishing into another canyon, and Avatre in the middle of the space with her talons on not one, but two dead oryx, feeding on one with a savagery born out of frustration as much as hunger.
But that wasn’t what stopped him dead in his tracks. Avatre was devouring her prey in the middle of a deserted, and heretofore hidden, city.
EIGHT
AVATRE was oblivious; she had an oryx in front of her, another beside her, she was ravenous, and all she was interested in was getting herself on the outside of that beast. Kiron, however, stared in astonishment, and it wasn’t until his mouth began to dry that he realized it was hanging open and shut it quickly.
Kaleth had told him he would find a city. The thing was, Kaleth had not told him what kind of a city he would find. He had expected something like Sanctuary, newly uncovered in the sand, perhaps with the rounded lines of Sanctuary’s buildings. And truth be told, he had expected something more derelict even than Sanctuary, with roofs gone, walls caved in. Even if it was made of that strange stuff Sanctuary had been built of, the legends all said Sanctuary had been buried (and preserved) in a single day. He calculated the new city to have been abandoned over the course of years.
This was a city hidden in canyons, and it had not been built of the hard stuff of Sanctuary. It had not been built at all. It was carved out of the living rock of the cliff face. It didn’t look abandoned at all—well, except for the fact that there were no doors, and no shutters for the windows. Otherwise, he would not have been at all surprised to see people come hurrying out of those doors to see what the noise was about.
There was—so he had been told—a temple like this in Mefis, the funerary temple for one of
the many Great Kings buried across the river in the City of the Dead. As he stared at building after building, turning slowly in place, he could see resemblance to the buildings of Alta and those of Tia, but not as if this was a blending of the two styles. The style of carving here was older, simpler—more as if this was the father of both styles, and each had gone its own separate way.
The amount of work here made him shake his head a little in disbelief. Every bit of cliff face was carved, in clean, simple, geometric lines. And these buildings were not single-storied, either, which made a vast difference from both Altan and Tian styles. Two and three sets of windows looked down into the canyon from each site.
There must have been thirty separate “buildings” —or at least, building facades—in this canyon alone. Each one was subtly different from the one next to it. That might reflect the tastes of the original owners, or it might reflect the passage of time—each building having been carved later or earlier than the one next to it. The pale gold of the sandstone of these cliffs made the whole city look as if it had been made of that precious metal.
He had to know what these buildings looked like inside! Were they just caves, or were they as elaborately carved inside as out? Could people actually live in them?
We could carve the doors wider on the bottom floors to let our dragons in; make a sand pit there if the ceilings are high enough. . . .
It looked as if the bottom floors had been made with dragons in mind; twice as tall at least as the ones above. But the only way to find out, was to look.
He headed for the nearest, after another glance at Avatre to be sure she was all right, but she was nose-deep in her prey, and oblivious to anything else. He crossed the threshold—noting as he did so that there were places for hinges and, presumably, doors which were long gone—and paused inside for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
For dark it was, despite the windows cut into the façade. Kiron could see, however, this was a man-altered cave. And yes, the ceiling here was as tall as in the Temple of Haras in the Court of the Jousters in Mefis, a place where Kashet had walked comfortably. A dragon could live here.
The interior was simple: a box of a room, with thick square pillars holding up the ceiling, the spaces between fully wide enough for two dragons to pass. It was a big box, though, and that high ceiling gave it a cavernous feeling. After his first feeling of vague disappointment, he realized that the simplicity was the opposite of crude. Floor, ceiling, and walls, all were polished so smooth that when he touched the wall, and then the floor and the pillars, they felt like sueded leather under the hand.
And at the rear of the room, climbing up toward the ceiling, was a stone staircase. So there were more stories above this.
He moved toward the back, hearing his footsteps echo in the emptiness, feeling the room growing cooler and cooler as he got closer to the rear and away from the windows. This could be very good. With magic heating the dragon’s sand, the bulk of the stone would keep living quarters more than tolerable, they’d be comfortable.
And this was where the Jousters would eventually live?
Could there be any more perfect place for them to live?
He found himself smiling, then grinning with glee. How could anything be better? There was more rain here, as evidenced by the signs of flash floods and the bits of green here and there. But you wouldn’t have to worry about rain when your dragon’s pen was sheltered by all this rock. And there were midnight kamiseens, but when you were behind this sort of wall, who cared? The worst that would happen would be that you had a bit more sand to sweep downstairs into the pen. And if this became a city for Jousters and their helpers—
There might be problems in supplying all those dragons with food if there were no temple sacrifices to feed them, unless—
Sanctuary is going to be a city of temples. No law says we have to feed the dragons in their pens. That had been a necessity with the wild-caught, tala-controlled dragons; put two together while feeding and you’d have fighting. Not the current lot. So long as everyone had enough food, they ate peaceably side by side. And they had all learned that although a dragon wanted a nap when she was full, she didn’t have to have one. They flew perfectly well on a full stomach. They had to, after all, a wild dragon didn’t laze about after making a kill, and neither could the tame ones. So there might not be any issue here; you could fly to Sanctuary for the morning feed, go out on patrol from there, come back for the midday feed, go out on the second patrol, return for the evening feed, then come back home. The dragons would complain at first, but only until they realized that breakfast came at Sanctuary without having to hunt for it.
He looked around as his head came up through the floor of the next story; it was identical in every way to the room below it, except, of course, for the view from the windows and the height of the ceiling. He took a walk around the room, trying it on for size. It was comfortable; very comfortable. A brazier near the windows would keep it warm—or you could go down and spend the night with your dragon in the sand. The one thing it lacked was a place to bathe—well, there was nothing of the sort in Sanctuary either. No point in getting beforehand with things.
There was another story above this one—this time the room was a little smaller, but not by much. The view was amazing. Short of being on the back of a dragon, there was no view like this anywhere. Beneath him, the white-gold sand of the canyon stretched like a fat snake between the carved walls—and from here, looking down at how regular the floor of the canyon was, he had the feeling that it, too, had been smoothed by stonemasons.
How long had it taken to build this city? And why? Sanctuary supposedly had been a stop for caravans crossing the desert, but what had this place been? There were no legends telling about it.
And why had it been abandoned?
Perhaps because the caravans stopped coming?
Perhaps there had been something here worth mining, and when it ran out, so did the prosperity of this city, and gradually, people left it to the oryx and the lizards.
Across from him, stood a building façade with false pillars framing a mathematically precise doorway and windows with beautiful simplicity. Each façade reflected a different personality; some very rigid and formal, some less so, some so pure in their simplicity that they made him think of some of the temples in Alta. Some had false urns carved into the rock, or the stylized forms of gods that looked familiar, yet strange, reduced from the realistic, if rigid forms he knew to the kind of sketched-in shape that an artist would rough out before carving the details. Yet, he could tell by the elegant curves and carefully smoothed surfaces, these images were in their finished forms.
Yes, there was Thet, or something like Thet—the curve of an ibis-bill thrusting out of the otherwise featureless head, but as smooth as a bone fishhook. And there was Pashet, in her feline form; two of her, in fact, flanking a door, with the barest curves for brow ridges, and no sign of eyes or nose, and yet more the essence of cat than anything but a real, living feline.
After he had studied them, he began to have the feeling that he would never quite look at the images of the gods in the same way again. These seemed so much more powerful, purer.
From here, he could see four more canyons branching off from this one, and in at least two of them, there were more buildings. How many Jousters and dragons and their helpers and families could be accommodated here? Fifty? A hundred? More?
He felt dazzled by the idea. A city, an army of Jousters, whose duty was to guard the borders, and the priests of Sanctuary, and protect the caravans coming across the desert. Jousters who could actually have families—perhaps raising sons and daughters to ride dragons themselves? Dragons flying to mate, and new dragonets being raised from the egg by the children of Jousters. The vision was nothing less than intoxicating. Could that possibly come to pass?
I’m getting ahead of myself again. Far ahead. We’ve a long way to go before we’re safe from the Magi, and that has to be taken care of first. He shook his hea
d. All that was for the future; for right now, he needed to keep his eye on the immediate needs.
Still, he ought at least to investigate this place and get some idea of how big it was, and whether it was all in as good a repair as this building was. Kaleth would want a report, and so would the others. Even if they weren’t going to be able to move here in the immediate future, they would still want to know everything about the place.
He trotted back down the stairs and out into the canyon. Avatre had finished her first oryx and was beginning, in a much more leisurely manner, on her second. She looked up as he neared and made a little noise of inquiry.
“Eat, sweetheart,” he said, and passed on to the next building.
All the ones in this first canyon proved to be in excellent repair, although despite the uniform appearance of the facades, only a third of them were actually three stories tall once he looked inside. It was clear why; in some, the rock had flaws that would have made cutting a third floor dangerous, and in others, it appeared that work had stopped before a third floor could be put in. He wondered about that, but cutting so much rock was difficult and dangerous, and perhaps these places had all begun with single stories, then as the owners acquired wealth, second and third levels had been added.
He couldn’t imagine how a family would cope with the noise of having someone cutting away at the rock above them until the room was completed, though.
Maybe they’d moved elsewhere until the work was finished. Aket-ten would probably be full of theories about these people, but unless they ever found, say, wall paintings showing how they had lived, her hundreds of questions would go unanswered.
When he’d finished taking inventory, he found that a third of the structures were limited to two stories, and a third were only a single story inside. The rock itself told the tale for the most part; there weren’t too many of these places where the carvers had simply stopped without a good reason.
He moved into the first side canyon, and here, he met with his first disappointment.
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