But the next man rising out of the stair prevented him from doing any such thing.
Definitely a professional soldier, or at least, a professional bodyguard. The man was big, well-muscled, and Kiron was nowhere near a match for him.
But he was also angry. Kiron read that in his posture and his lack of expression. He might feign a servile nature, but he hated this Magus, and given half a chance and the certain knowledge that he could not be blamed for what followed, he would desert his “lord” in a heartbeat.
Trailing behind him, with a kind of collar and leash around her neck, gagged, with her hands tied in front of her, was Aket-ten.
Once again, he had to restrain himself to keep from rushing out.
If the bodyguard was angry, she was furious. Her eyes above the gag flashed with rage. Her posture was rigid, her whole manner proclaiming that, the moment she got a chance, she was going to do something to the man that he would regret for the rest of his days.
And that if she had anything to say about it, those days would be very short indeed,
That made him weak-kneed with relief. If she had been cowed, intimidated, beaten down, he would not have been able to keep himself from running in to rescue her immediately. And if she had been sunk deep in depression and mourning for Re-eth-ke, it would be a lot harder to get her motivated to get her out. She was ready to fight for her life and her freedom and that meant she was an ally and a potential accomplice, not a potential burden.
“Tie her over there,” the Magus said, pointing to a spot Kiron couldn’t see. “Look there—see the ring in the wall. Get her wrists tied up to that, then go, get out of here. I won’t need your so-called services any more.”
“If my lord is quite certain,” said the man.
“Yes, I am quite certain!” the Magus snapped. “I do not need your halfhearted and incompetent help, and what is more, you’ll only be a hindrance once I begin working magic.”
“Very well, my lord,” the man said, hiding both anger and satisfaction under a bland façade. “It will be as you wish.”
He took Aket-ten to the other side of the Eye, where Kiron couldn’t see them. When he moved back into Kiron’s narrow field of vision, he was alone.
“Go on, get out of here,” the Magus snarled, as he moved around to the same side of the device and out of sight. “Go! I don’t need you anymore.”
“Very well, my lord.” The guard bowed just enough to keep from being reprimanded, then followed his orders to the letter, leaving by the stair so quickly that if the Magus had been paying attention, he would have been more than just reprimanded.
But the Magus was busy with the device. Kiron knew that it was the device he was meddling with, and not Aket-ten, because the huge crystal began moving, very slowly rotating. And the Magus was muttering something, too low for Kiron to hear what it was.
The entire atmosphere of the room changed. Kiron felt his hair starting to stand on end, and not just metaphorically, but physically, the way it did sometimes during midnight kamiseens or when he was flying in the dangerous tempests of the season of rains, when lightning played in the storm.
There was a low hum coming from the Eye, like the droning of bees about to swarm. The Magus moved into his field of vision again, sketching signs in the air with his hands, still muttering under his breath.
The Eye rotated a little faster. It still wasn’t going at any great speed; a desert tortoise was a hundred times faster than it, but the fact that it was moving without anyone touching it was disturbing.
Aket-ten made a noise around her gag. If it had been a scream, or anything that sounded like a cry for help, Kiron would have been out there in an instant. It wasn’t; it sounded like an insult. The Magus ignored it, and Aket-ten. Whatever he wanted her for, she wasn’t a priority right now.
The room began to brighten. At first, for a confused moment, Kiron thought it was because the light was coming from the Eye. Then he realized that the light was coming from the wrong direction—not from the Eye, but roughly from the east.
He’s cleared the sky above the Tower. Now he has light to work with.
The Eye rotated a little faster, the hum deepened and strengthened, and now Kiron felt not only his hair standing on end, but a gut-deep reaction that made his knees feel weak. This was—wrong—wrong in a way he couldn’t put a name to, but could only feel.
No, it was more than that, worse than that. This was something that had once been right and good, and had been twisted out of all recognition; something deep inside him recognized that evil for what it was, and wanted only to run.
Never in all his life had he felt this deep, soul-shaking fear. Khefti-the-Fat had only threatened his body. The Tian soldiers had only taken his father. The Tian Jousters would only have taken his heart, had they taken Avatre. This thing—this thing would eat everything that he was, ever had been, or ever would be and leave behind an empty shell that might live, speak, talk, but would be less than an ashabti-figure of flesh instead of clay—and worst of all, the most horrible of all, he would know what had happened, know what he had lost, and know he would never get it back. All pleasure, all joy, all creativity would be sucked out of him, leaving nothing but an interminable gray and unvarying existence.
No wonder those former Winged Ones had done so little to save themselves. Death was preferable to that death-in-life of emptiness.
Aket-ten screamed, her shriek muffled by her gag, but giving voice to exactly the same terror that he was feeling.
He clutched the frame of the cupboard to keep himself upright, and concentrated all his will on not giving in to the terror.
And then, the Eye began to move faster, the pitch of that steady hum rose a little, and the terrible fear faded. It didn’t disappear, but it faded enough so that it was bearable.
What—was—that?
He shook his head a little to clear it. His stomach was still churning, and he was so drenched with sweat he was surprised the Magus couldn’t smell him. What had caused that overwhelming fear?
Why hadn’t the Magus been affected?
Now he could hear Aket-ten, choking on the gag, weeping hysterically and moaning. The Magus came into his field of vision, tilting his head to the side, and wearing an expression of pleased avidity.
“So sorry to upset you, girl,” he said, sounding gleeful rather than sorry. “But I needed to test you. The more power you have, the more strongly you react to the Eye as it spins up to full speed. By your reaction, I would say that you have quite a lot of power. Far more than we suspected.”
Kiron took a very slow, deep breath, as anger chased out the last remnants of terror. And in the brief moment when terror was gone, but anger had not yet flooded him with unreason, he knew he would have to keep that rage under complete control.
And he also knew that he could.
A slave, a serf, lives with endurance and patience. He learns it because he has no other choice; he must learn to be patient or die. Orest would have attacked the Magus the moment he appeared with Aket-ten in tow. Any of the others would have burst out of hiding in rage or terror by now. Even Ari probably would not have managed to control himself.
So maybe he was the right person to be here. . . . Keep gloating, you bastard, he thought, behind the white-hot rage invoked by the sound of Aket-ten weeping. Keep right on. When the Feather of Truth is weighed against your heart . . . I would not care to be you. And I swear you are going to meet the Judges a great deal sooner than you think.
“Now, I will just bring the Eye fully to life,” the Magus went on blithely. “Would you like to hear what your destined fate is?”
Aket-ten’s sobs choked off. Kiron couldn’t tell if it was because her own fear had turned to anger, or if it was because she was too terrified to weep. He hoped it was the former. He was controlling himself so tightly that every muscle felt as tight as a bowstring.
The Magus laughed. “Oh, do glare at me, girl. Really, you should feel flattered and honored. Your power will b
e going to serve Alta far more effectively than that trivial ability of yours to speak with animals ever could. Or—well, it goes to serve the Magi, but soon enough our welfare and that of Alta will be one and the same, so it hardly matters. First—” He made a few more passes in the air, and this time Kiron’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head as he saw the fingers leaving trails of glow in the air where they had passed, forming, for just one moment, signs and glyphs. “—first, I will bring the Eye up to full speed. I have already used some of your power, oh, about half of it, to clear the storm out of the skies over the Tower, so that the Eye has some sunlight to work with. I will use the rest of your power to keep the sky over the Tower clear forever, no matter what the season, by making a link between the earth and air energies, using the Eye itself as the physical aspect of that link. Never again will the rains prevent us from using the Eye to punish those who defy and endanger us. Just think! As long as the sun shines, the Eye will always be usable by daylight after this! Then, when I am finished with you—well, by then that pesky Tian army under the command of our renegades will be at the Fourth Ring, and I will proceed to use the Eye to remove them all from our consideration. Do you understand now what your trivial sacrifice is—”
The Magus stopped in midsentence, and stared out the window somewhere behind Aket-ten. “—what in the—”
Kiron strained his ears, and thought he heard faint and far-off crashes, screams.
“Curse them all to Seft!” the Magus exclaimed angrily. “Wretched dragons! I knew we should have exterminated them all while we had the chance!”
They’ve begun! Kiron thought, with a lift of his heart. The others had begun the attack on the forces surrounding the Temple of All Gods, using the jars of Akkadian Fire. They could not have chosen a better moment to mount their distraction.
“Well, we’ll just have to speed this up so I can exterminate them now,” the Magus muttered under his breath. “Burn the vermin out of the sky—about time—should have been done years ago.” He made a few more passes, and this time the glowing lines he left in the air hung there and stayed. And then, as the Eye spun faster and faster, it, too, began to emit light, until a glowing blur hung in its place.
“And now, girl, it’s time for you to fulfill your destiny,” the Magus said, and turned his back on Kiron’s hiding place.
Knowing he would never get a better chance, Kiron grabbed his dagger, and flung open the door. It crashed into the wall as he leaped for the Magus’s back.
Only a last-moment dodge by his opponent saved the Magus from the fate he had meted out to others.
The Magus twisted cleverly out of the way, then whirled and grappled with him, trying to seize control of the dagger he held. At that moment, he realized something else. For someone as portly and out-of-shape as the Magus looked, he was still heavier and stronger than Kiron.
Kiron was angry; the Magus would not hesitate for a moment to kill.
Immobilize him—
The Magus wrenched free of him, leaving his cloak in Kiron’s hands. Kiron flung it aside, and the Magus went for him again, all of his attention on the knife in Kiron’s hand.
Behind them, the Eye was glowing white-hot, too bright to look at directly, spinning so fast that the hum had become a howl.
The Magus grabbed with both hands for his knife hand, intent on getting the weapon away from him, and suddenly Kiron had a flash of inspiration.
He let the Magus have the knife, just let it go as soon as the Magus got his hands on the hilt. And in the moment of confusion, while the Magus stared at the weapon he was now in control of, Kiron pulled the club he was carrying out of the waistband of his kilt, and cracked it down, hard, on the offending wrist.
With a screech of pain, the Magus dropped the knife from fingers that suddenly didn’t want to work anymore.
On the backswing, Kiron connected with his temple with a solid thunk that nearly knocked the Magus over.
The Magus staggered sideways, rotated on his heel, stumbled blindly toward the Eye and—
And crossed the brass circle inlaid in the floor.
And that was when every plan Kiron had made went right out the metaphorical window.
The Magus went rigidly upright, and began to scream, as his body began to—
Well, Kiron could only think “unravel” because as Kiron stared in horrified disbelief, it looked as if invisible fingers were tearing him apart, bit by bit, except the bits didn’t bleed. All the bits were sucked into the glowing vortex that the Eye had become as they were torn off. It started at his hands and feet, and as his feet vanished, he just hung in the air, as if suspended on a hook, like a discarded garment.
The screaming went on and on, as the unraveling went on, and the Eye glowed brighter and brighter with every little bit of the Magus that it sucked into itself. And part of Kiron wanted to stand and watch in stunned amazement—
But the part of him that was in control scooped up the knife from the floor, and ran to where Aket-ten was standing with her back against the wall, her hands over her head, tied at the wrist to a brass ring embedded in the wall. As he sawed through the leather thongs biting into her wrist, the screaming mercifully stopped.
But the Eye continued to spin—
There was a feeling of intense pressure as he cut through the last of the thongs, and then, a kind of dull whuff, as if something very heavy, but soft, had been dropped in the middle of the room.
As he untied the gag holding a ball of rags in her mouth, Aket-ten’s eyes went wider than he’d ever seen before. And when he turned to look, he understood.
The Eye was awake, and evidently had a mind of its own about what should be done now. That beam of light, thicker than his thigh, and too bright to look at, lanced out of the window, and was burning its way across the buildings of the Central Island. Flames rose beneath the Tower, and the sounds of screams and a terrible heat and the smell of scorched rock surrounded him.
The Eye had already incinerated the Royal Palace by the time he turned, had decimated the buildings around it, and was cutting a swathe across the Island toward the canal. When it reached the edge of the canal and kept going, water bubbled and exploded in steam where it passed.
“How do you stop this thing?” he yelled at Aket-ten over the discordant howl the thing was putting out.
“I don’t know!” she shouted back.
And just as if the situation they were in wasn’t bad enough, he felt the stone of the Tower beneath him tremble, and his stomach lurched with that all-too-familiar, sickening sensation that marked an earthshake.
No time for argument. He grabbed Aket-ten’s wrist and ran for the window—not, thank heavens, the one the Eye was aiming its light-weapon out of.
He thrust his arm out of it, and groped for the rope.
It wasn’t there.
His stomach lurched again, this time with fear. Oh, no—where’s Avatre? Did she fly off? Did the Eye frighten her? Great Hamun, is she anywhere nearby?
Panicked now, he whistled, praying she was near and could hear him, because if she wasn’t—
And Avatre swooped down out of the sky, just as the Tower shook and swayed under his feet again, and out of the window he could see the ripple of the earthshake move across the land and water, as if someone had shaken out a rug.
It flung them toward the window as Aket-ten shrieked at the top of her lungs; it tossed Aket-ten over the sill, while he shouted for Avatre and the dragon tried desperately to maneuver closer.
“Kiron!” Aket-ten screamed—the rest was undecipherable.
“Hold on!” he screamed back. He hung on with one hand to the windowframe, precariously sprawled over the windowsill; Aket-ten had been pitched right out of the window and only his grip on her wrist kept her from plummeting to her death below. A second jolt rocked the Tower and broke his grip on the stone, and he felt himself rolling over the windowsill and out the window, completely unable to stop himself, pulled by Aket-ten’s weight.
Avatre twis
ted herself over sideways in some impossible maneuver his eyes refused to accept just as he began to fall, and somehow she got herself halfway under him, with Aket-ten still hanging desperately onto his left hand, and he sprawled over the saddle, holding on desperately with his right. As the beam of the Eye began to go everywhere with the rocking of the Tower, Avatre lurched over in the air and kited sideways, trying to compensate for their weight, trying to get down to the ground before they fell—
No— Aket-ten’s hand slipped a little out of his grip, as she continued to scream at the top of her lungs, her eyes fixed on his and full of terror. Sweat poured down his arm, making his hand, and hers, slippery. He tried to pull her up to where she could grab a harness strap or something, but though his arm screamed with the effort, he couldn’t raise her at all. She flailed, trying to catch his hand with her free hand, but couldn’t seem to get a grip.
No! Her hand slipped a little more, despite the fact that they were both holding on as hard as they could. Now instead of holding to her wrist, he only had hold of her hand. And his fingers were loosening. . . .
NO! He felt it—she was still slipping, as the tower collapsed behind them in a tumble and roar of stone and dust, as the earth continued to shake, as Avatre fanned her wings and tilted over sideways, desperately trying to keep them from falling—
She screamed, he screamed—
And then, lumbering clumsily out of the dust cloud, canted to one side, an indigo-and-silver miracle.
Mouth gaping open with effort, Re-eth-ke tucked herself under Aket-ten just as her fingers slipped out of his.
And caught her, as they had all practiced with sandbags, sliding her head under the falling human and forcing the victim to slide down her neck to her shoulders. It was perfect. It was beautiful. He shouted aloud with elation.
Aket-ten sprawled athwart her dragon’s neck and shoulders, and as Re-eth-ke sank lower with every wingbeat, she clung on desperately without saddle or reins to help her.
There was a wound in the dragon’s shoulder that had been stitched shut, and holes in the webbing of her wing. Still she bravely fought to get her rider to the ground safely—which, in her mind, quite clearly meant away from the Central Island, across the canal.
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