He only hoped it would be possible to get them up into the air with light.
With hands that still shook more than a little he saddled and harnessed Avatre while the servants placed and lit the fire pots, lighting up the training ground with a welcome golden glow. Light seemed to make everything safer; this made no sense at all, of course, because an overturned fire pot was more danger than the earthshake, but there was no reasoning with feelings.
The dragons certainly felt that way, though given how little they could see in the dark, their reaction was perfectly understandable. The question was, after that shake, could he possibly induce them to leave this “safe” haven of light?
Well, there was only one way to find out, and this time, Aket-ten would have to lead the way. If she could get Re-eth-ke up, the rest would surely follow.
He whistled the signal to mount; a little raggedly, they all got into their saddles. He looked over to Aket-ten, met her dark, serious gaze, and nodded. It was up to her now. From here on, she would lead the way, and it would all be done by the numbers.
“Re-eth-ke!” she called, her voice sounding a little high and shrill. “Up!”
And as if she could not shake the dust of the treacherous earth from her talons swiftly enough, Re-eth-ke leaped into the deepening blue of the sky.
He didn’t have to do more than lift his reins to signal Avatre, she was up like a shot, and she must have been taking comfort in a routine they had practiced until it was second nature.
Perhaps, like the birds, she felt that safety was in the air, not the ground.
As she labored higher, her sides heaving under his legs and growing warmer with exertion with every wingbeat, he glanced behind, to see that Khaleph was already airborne as well, and Wastet leaping upward with wings outstretched.
Beneath them, in Aunt Re’s compound, there was ordered activity. He could not see much damage, although things like cracked walls would not be visible until daylight. But servants were going here and there, gathering children together for comfort, moving pallets out into open spaces for safety if there were after-shakes, seeing that beasts were secure, tending to the few—remarkably few, he was relieved to see—injured. Outside her estate, however, as the full moon crested the horizon and spread her cold light over the fields, the case was otherwise. People ran here and there with torches, without really seeming to know where they needed to go. He saw collapsed farmhouses, broken walls, cattle, goats, and pigs running loose. There were fires, too, and shouts and weeping came up to them on the night air.
It made him angry that because there was a greater need for them in Alta City, they could not stop to help here. He could only hope that Aunt Re had already considered that, and when her estate was secure, would send her people out to help her neighbors.
Meanwhile, the river beckoned, a long, flat silver ribbon in the moonlight, and their guide to their goal. But it was not the serene river it had been last night; there was a taste of mud and ancient muck in the air. The animals voiced their own outrage; river horses bellowed their anger from among the pools and backwaters, and crocodiles roared and thrashed as they fought with each other or caught—well, he only hoped they were catching some luckless farmer’s terrified stock, and not the farmer’s children, or the farmer himself.
The closer they came to the Outer Canal and the Seventh Ring, the worse the damage, and the greater the chaos, and now it was physically painful to see from the air what he had not been able to see the night of his first experience of earthshake. There were fires everywhere, and not just shouts and weeping, but real screaming coming up from below. He could see places where buildings had canted over and fallen sideways, or where they were sunk up to the roofline, as if the ground had turned to water beneath them.
And that shook him. There had been nothing like that before. . . .
What had they done?
Not us, he reminded himself desperately. We didn’t do this. We didn’t trigger it, we didn’t ask for the riot that made the Magi use the Eye. All we did was take advantage of what the gods showed us the people would do, and the Magi would do, and what would come of it—it wasn’t our fault. And we couldn’t have stopped it.
But his insides were not convinced.
The shake must have been terrible indeed to have reached this far. Up until now, the worst damage had been confined within the first three rings. And what could have made the ground behave in that strange fashion, to swallow up whole buildings?
Ahead of him, the dark, silver-gilt shadow that was Re-eth-ke flew steadily onward. Behind him trailed the rest of the wing, or at least the rest of it up to Orest and Wastet. A new concern; how many of them had made it into the air?
They passed the Sixth Ring; the Fifth. Then, at the Fourth Ring, though there were still fires, was still shouting and crying and chaos, there was, unaccountably, less of it.
And at the Third Ring, there was order again, and he could have shouted with relief. Not surprising; this was where the military were housed and trained. But still, to look down and see people dealing with the aftermath of the earthshake with the same calm as Aunt Re’s people made him feel considerably less guilty.
Then Second Ring, and again, there did not seem to be the same amount of chaos and catastrophe as in the Outer Rings, although there certainly was more than enough—and it suddenly dawned on him why. So much damage had been wrought here already by the shakes before they had left, as well as the ones after, that almost everything that could be knocked down had been, and many people were probably sleeping in the open at night out of hopeless resignation.
For some reason, that realization transmuted his feelings from guilt into anger, and if he could have gotten his hands around the throat of a Magus just then, he’d have throttled any one of them without a second thought.
This was what they had brought the great city-state of Alta to! This state of helpless apathy, this fear that drained even the ability to properly feel fear, this crawling wretchedness not even a slave would envy! You worms! he thought angrily up at Royal Hill. You vermin! You scorpions, that eat your own young! How dare you do this—may the gods help me to bring you down for it—
But ahead of them, among the many buildings that were damaged, or afire, or ominously dark and silent, stood one he knew well. The Temple of the Twins. And though its ornamental pools were cracked and empty, and some of its statues and columns toppled, the building itself stood strong.
And visible only from above, there was a carefully laid-out square of torches on the roof.
As they drew nearer, he could see people up there, too, and after all that devastation below, his heart rose a little to see that the plan they had made in faith was being carried out in fact.
Now it all depended on the dragons; if they would remember and stick to the drill, even though the drill had taken place amid calm, and without all the screaming, the fires, and the upset from the shake.
They had paced out the dimensions of the temple, they had plotted it and the grounds around it on the earth in a pattern of stones. And now, as Kiron watched, Re-eth-ke banked slightly to take herself and Aket-ten down to that lighted rooftop—not nearly as well-lit as Aunt Re’s training ground, but it would have to do, because it was all they had. And as Re-eth-ke banked, he took Avatre to one corner of that rough square they had paced out, marked by a clump of date palms, a square whose dimensions were large enough that eight or nine dragons could fly the perimeter in the darkness and not be afraid of collisions
By the numbers— he reminded himself, and began to count under his breath.
By the numbers—because they would not necessarily be able to see when each of them landed and took off again.
The first count of thirty took him to the second corner of the square; he risked a glance at the rooftop as Avatre made a sharp left-hand bank, and thought he saw Re-eth-ke was safely down. The next count took him to the third corner, and he searched the sky at his own height for the dark-winged shadows of the others.
Yes! One, two—he counted up to eight, and let out a strangled cheer, that would surely be lost in the noise below. They had all followed from Aunt Re’s estate! It was working!
One more count of thirty, and a glance at the roof showed it empty of anything but people; Avatre made her turn as neatly as if they were practicing over Sanctuary, a long, shallow glide down over the square of torches, a thunder of wings and a wind that made the flames stream sideways as she came in to a halt, the moment of fumbling hesitation beneath him as she felt for a secure talonhold, and then—
Then she was down.
She barely had time to pull in her wings, and he didn’t get time to draw a breath before someone with a pale blur of a face wrapped in a dark cloak shoved two smaller objects wrapped in equally dark cloth at him.
Children; Nestlings, probably, not even old enough to be Fledglings, and their inert limpness made him go stiff with rage. But he wasted no time on speech; he couldn’t hold them and fly, so he belted them to himself before and behind the saddle with the straps they handed up to him silently. Below this place, weeping and cries of pain; here, only silence, as if he was being served by shadows and ghosts. And once they were secure, he gave Avatre the signal, and they were away.
Avatre seemed to have picked up on some of his emotion, however, for he could feel a new energy in her flight as they sped away into the darkness, deliberately going higher to take them above the flying square of dragons. As they neared Aunt Re’s estate, he thought he caught sight of Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke coming back, and once again he gave a little exclamation of triumph; this was the second sticking point—having come back to the safe haven, could the dragons be persuaded into the air again? Re-eth-ke, at least, could be.
They landed, and eager hands reached for the children, swarming over Avatre like cleaner birds over a river horse. She seemed to have grasped the serious nature of what they were doing now; she stood as patiently as anyone could have wished while strangers crowded her and treated her like nothing more than a living cart while getting the children unstrapped. Then, at last, they were free again, and Avatre took to the sky without a moment of hesitation.
As they made height, he definitely caught sight of Kashet coming in, though he could not tell what kind of burden he and Ari carried. And then he passed the others, one at a time, really knowing who they were only by their order; Wastet and Orest, Deoth and Pe-atep, Apetma and Oset-re, Khaleph and Gan, Bethlan and Menet-ka, and last of all, the steadiest and strongest of the lot after Kashet and Avatre, big Tathulan and Huras.
Now—if they would all make the second trip, and not refuse—and if no one saw them, or realized what they were seeing if they did—
Only when he had formed up the second square did he know for certain that the plan was working in its entirety, and Avatre seemed to have been set afire by the urgency of what they were doing. She came in with the speed and snap she had when she was making a kill when hungry; she stood like a rock as the next to be rescued was helped onto her back. This time, though it was another pair of children, these must have been Fledglings, and they were able to cling to him and not be bound to him like inert bundles, though they were secured with straps. Avatre was in the air almost before the last of the Winged Ones was out of the way, and the two children gasped as she rowed for height.
Halfway to Aunt Re’s the one behind him tugged at his tunic. “Jouster?” came a thin, pathetic little whisper. “Are you taking us away from the Magi?”
“Far away,” he called back, over the steady, strong flapping of Avatre’s wings. “Far, far away, where the sand of the desert will hide you, and the swords of the Bedu will guard you, and they will never, ever find you again.”
Both children burst into tears of pure release, reaching for one another’s hands on either side of him, and it was all he could do to keep from joining them. Instead, he pointed out the white egrets in the tops of the trees they flew over, a pair of fighting river horses, the reflection of the moon on the river, the pattern of the stars—anything except the places where people were still trying to save themselves and their property below. His distraction must have been effective; they listened and watched, and most importantly, stopped crying.
They began again as soon as he handed them over to Aunt Re’s people, but at that point they were no longer his concern, and he had to concentrate on the next trip.
And the next.
And the next.
Avatre had never flown so strongly, but by the fourth trip, they had lost Deoth to exhaustion—not to unwillingness, because he tried to take off, but Pe-atep was too wise to let him. Apetma simply dropped, so tired she simply couldn’t rise. By the fifth, Se-atmen, Wastet, and Bethlan were out, too, and on the sixth, poor Khaleph and Tathulan were so tired their wings were trembling. That left only Kiron and Avatre, Ari and Kashet, and Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke for the seventh and final trip of the night. Kashet had carried double every time; probably Aket-ten’s lighter weight was what had made it possible for Re-eth-ke to carry on to the end. But she was lagging on that final leg, and as they actually flew into the gray of predawn, halfway back to Aunt Re’s compound, Kashet and Avatre caught up with her. Ari and Kiron exchanged a glance, and Kashet pulled into the lead, allowing Re-eth-ke and Avatre to fall back into the wake-position off his left and right wings. It was easier flying there; he could see Re-eth-ke’s breathing ease a little.
With plenty of light to see by, they all landed together, too, letting down their exhausted passengers into the hands of equally exhausted servants, who bustled them off before the Jousters were even out of their saddles. The rest of the dragons and their riders were already dead asleep, and from the look of them, not even another earthshake would wake them.
But Kiron found himself being helped in unsaddling Avatre by a handsome, muscular young man with the powerful upper torso of a charioteer, who had also come wheeling up a heaped-high barrow of meat that Avatre began wolfing down without waiting to be unharnessed.
“You’ve gotten out eighteen Nestlings,” he said without preamble, raising his voice enough so that Ari and Aket-ten could hear. “That was the first trip. You got out twice that many Fledglings on the second and third trips, another six Fledglings and three Winged Ones on the fourth, six Winged Ones on the fifth trip, five on the sixth, and three on the seventh trip, which is three more trips than anyone ever thought you’d make in their wildest dreams.”
Kiron tried to add the total up in his mind, and felt the numbers slipping through his mind like the yolk from a broken egg. “Um. Sixty—ah—”
“Seventy-seven,” the young man corrected him. “One more night, and you’ll have all the Winged Ones out. If you want to try for three nights, you can probably evacuate the servants that are left, too.”
Kiron looked over at Ari, and rubbed a gritty hand over his forehead.
“I think we should,” Ari said firmly. “The dragons are clearly willing, and I don’t want to leave anyone to suffer back there.”
There was something intensely bitter and angry in Ari’s tone as he said that—something that cast Kiron back in time to a moment when he had heard Ari cry out, “I do not make war on children!” It rocked him back on his heels, and he stared at Ari wide-eyed.
Ari stared back. “There are some things,” he said, “that no man can countenance.”
Someone told him something. Maybe more than one someone. Well, Ari was the only one with a dragon strong enough to carry the largest of the adults. Once the youngest had been gotten out, surely the next to go would have been the very oldest. No one had been draining the Winged Ones for several days now, which meant some of them would have started to recover their powers. They had to have recovered their wits, or they would never have been able to barricade themselves in the temple.
If one of them recognized Ari for what he was—and it would take a Winged One no more than an unguarded touch to do that—then they would have known that their rescuer was also the titular King of Sanctuary.
So of course they told him something. They probably told him everything they could before they were set down. He’s the King. He has to know.
It was one thing to be told in abstract that the Magi were draining the god-touched, damaging them, sometimes killing them. Kiron suspected that it was quite another thing to be told what that was like, by someone who had experienced it, day after day, for the last year.
Well, that was a good thing. If Ari had any doubts about what he should do, they were gone now.
But Kiron was very, very glad that he was not the one who’d had to hear those tales. Truth be told, he already knew more than was comfortable.
“Mother is sending the strongest of them off today,” the young man continued—that clue telling Kiron that his helper was the horse-training son of Aunt Re, which explained his family resemblance. “But they will be very, very glad to hear that you intend to evacuate the entire temple. I’ll go tell them now.”
“Do that,” Ari said, and managed a wan smile. “And meanwhile, I think we had better emulate our wingmates.”
Avatre was already doing just that, dropping down where she stood after swallowing a last mouthful of meat. With a groan, Kashet did the same. Re-eth-ke looked about and went to curl up beside Tathulan, then changed her mind and put her back up against Avatre, who didn’t even stir.
Ari raised an eyebrow at Kiron, who was too tired to even blush.
More servants brought them meat, onions, and soured milk wrapped up in flatbread, and jars of beer, that they ate and drank while pallets were spread beside their dragons. Then, like their dragons, they dropped down to sleep, and did not awaken until their dragons’ hunger roused everyone.
SIXTEEN
HE had thought they had slept like the dead yesterday. That was nothing, compared with today. Even an earthshake didn’t wake them, for they did get a minor rumble, and neither he nor any of the others was aware there had been one until they clawed their way up out of slumber. He didn’t even remember stumbling his way to a couch in the shade when the sun grew too hot; he only knew he had gone to sleep beside Avatre and woke, once again on the couch, and not even the same one as the last time.
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