Alta Read online

  “What?” both Heklatis and Kiron said sharply.

  “Toreth—Toreth has gone to the Palace, to demand audience of the Great Ones by right of being the Heir,” she said, and clapped her hand over her mouth. “When the Eye was opened, he said that you had predicted this, and that the Great Ones must be told what the Magi have done!”

  “The poor fool.” Heklatis slumped where he sat. “I only pray he has not signed his own death warrant.”

  “But you fear he has,” Kiron said heavily. The Healer nodded, as Aket-ten looked from one to the other in horror.

  “Surely not,” stammered Aket-ten. “He and Kaleth are the Heirs!”

  But there are other Heirs, Kiron thought, and saw the same thought in Heklatis’ eyes.

  “Well,” the Healer said, too heartily. “He and his brother are favored of the gods. Surely.”

  “Surely,” said Kiron, who did not believe it at all.

  Toreth did not return in time to feed his dragonet; they could not leave the poor thing alone, so Aket-ten did it for him, then brought in Wastet to play with her until they were both tired. At that point, Kiron decided that he had to tell the other boys of the wing just where Toreth had gone, and why.

  Gan and Orest were the only ones who were truly concerned. The rest of them looked anxious for a moment, then Oset-re said, “Ah, he’s God-watched, that one! He can fall in the marsh and come up clean, with latas in either hand!” And the rest of the laughed, and each recounted some tale of how Toreth had always had the luck of ten men, and for most of them, their concern melted away.

  Not for Kiron—and not for Gan and Orest either. He saw it in their faces and, no doubt, they saw it in his.

  But Toreth did not return in time for dinner, and by that time, Kiron decided to go to Lord Khumun.

  He did not tell Lord Khumun about their speculation—that the Magi were prolonging their own lives, and possibly the lives of the Great Ones, at the expense of others. He did tell Lord Khumun what he had seen—first the Fledglings, then the Winged Ones, being taken off by the Magi and returned looking drained. He spoke of the confrontation, the accusations, of telling Toreth about it, and his own prediction that the Magi would take revenge for the affront by using the Eye on those who had insulted them so gravely. And he repeated what Aket-ten had told him about Toreth. His Lordship heard him out, his face a mask, then shook his head. “The Magi are high in the councils of the Great Ones. I do not think you or Toreth truly understand their power. You should know I can do nothing against them,” he said heavily, with the sound of defeat in his words. “The Great Ones will hear no word against them.”

  “And there are other possible Heirs,” Kiron replied, voice flat and dead, nausea rising in the back of his throat. His worst fears were confirmed—and despite what Lord Khumun thought, he understood only too well that the Magi were far more powerful than Toreth had believed.

  Lord Khumun nodded, then mustered a smile. “But Toreth is a young man, a boy, even, and the hot words of boys are without meaning. I cannot imagine the Great Ones taking him seriously. They are probably administering a lecture to him about meddling in things he does not understand at this very moment.” His own words seemed to hearten the Lord of the Jousters, and he sounded more sure of himself. “He will be in disgrace for a time—but they cannot take him from the Jousters, and they cannot take his companions from him, and the gods know his heart is true. Go wait in his quarters for him, for he will probably be in need of his friends.”

  Kiron bowed, and left, feeling himself divided by his emotions. On the one hand, he was very angry with Lord Khumun for not standing up for Toreth. On the other—he understood, only too well, that Lord Khumun’s hands were tied. And surely Lord Khumun was right; if anyone should know the way of things, Lord Khumun would. His fears must be unfounded. The Magi couldn’t take the words of even a young prince as a threat.

  But— he thought, his mind darkening. Think how long they live, how far in advance they must plan. He is only a prince now, but even with magic, one day the Great Ones must die. And now they know that Toreth will never be won over.

  So he did as he had been told; he went back to the pens, and waited, but as the time crept on, he felt his heart sinking. And his hope faded of ever seeing Toreth again. Little Re-eth-katen was unwontedly silent, and curled into her sands like a blue-and-silver shadow, ignoring him.

  They will imprison him. They will have him exiled. No. No, he knows too much, and while he lives, he and Kaleth are still the Heirs. They dare not leave him alive. . . . He remained in Toreth’s pen, but with no hope.

  So when the prince himself stumbled into the pen, near to dawn, Kiron at first thought he was a ghost.

  He certainly could have been. He was as pale as if he had been drained completely of blood, his eyes were bloodshot and swollen, as red as the eyes of demons. And he stared at Kiron with no sign of recognition.

  “Toreth?” Kiron gasped, “Prince?”

  Toreth shook himself all over, like a dog. “They would not listen,” he said dully. “I never got past the first words. They told me not to meddle in things I could not understand. They treated me like a boy who has come to complain that a war chariot on the way to battle has broken his toy.”

  “So—” Kiron dared to hope. “The Magi don’t know that you know what they are doing?”

  Toreth shook his head. “No. Yes. I don’t know,” he said, finally. “I didn’t tell them. I hardly got more than a word or two in. I am disgraced, you see. They brought in my father, and lectured me in front of him. Then they brought in my betrothed, Nofret, and did the same. They cannot take my dragon, or my place in the Jousters, but they have made it clear that a dog in the street will have more chance for advancement from the ranks than I. I am not—quite—being declared a traitor. But I am being held up as an example of how dissension aids the enemy. They cannot cut me from the succession, but—oh, Kiron!—I had not seen them, close up, in more than two years, and now they looked no older than thirty! And the Magi are the same! I did not see a single gray hair among them all!”

  So. They have another way to solve this. They can, and will, outlive us.

  “At this rate, you will die of old age, and they will still be sitting on the Twin Thrones,” Kiron replied, a cold numbness spreading over him.

  Toreth’s head sagged. “We are defeated,” he said. “And I am disgraced and friendless.”

  “Ah,” said Gan, putting his head around the doorway, his hair all tousled from sleeping. “So I am no friend, then?”

  Toreth started; clearly, he had been so sunk in his misery that he had not heard Gan come behind him. “No!” he protested. “But—surely your parents will not wish you to associate yourself with a known traitor—”

  “My parents can take themselves off on a scenic tour of hell before they tell me who my friends will be,” Gan said pleasantly. “And I suspect every lad in the wing will say the same.”

  “Besides, most of them won’t have to defy their parents,” Kiron pointed out. “Certainly Lord Ya-tiren has no love for the Magi. Enough of us are commoners that their parents will not care. We followed you before; nothing has changed that I can see.”

  Toreth looked like a man who has suddenly been reprieved. “Do you mean that?” he pleaded.

  “Of course he means it,” said Oset-re with irritation. “Didn’t we all stay up most of the night to greet you when you returned? Kiron is right, nothing has changed, except the opinions of a few stupid people whose parties you wouldn’t have wanted to attend anyway! Now go to bed, Toreth. We’ll discuss all of this later.”

  He withdrew; Gan did the same. Toreth stared at Kiron as if he could not believe what had just happened.

  “Go to sleep, Toreth,” Kiron said. “Oset-re is right.”

  “But—” Toreth began.

  “Go to sleep.”

  Toreth stumbled into his chamber at the back of the pen, but at least now he looked less like a walking corpse. Kiron went back to his
own pen, tiptoed around Avatre, and settled back into his cot for a little more precious time before he had to get up.

  But he had trouble finding sleep again. Too many thoughts were buzzing in his head. Finally he got up, and went to see if Aket-ten might be awake at this early hour. She had always been used to going to the Temple for Dawn Rites—was she still waking that early anyway?

  She was.

  He found her in the courtyard of her chambers, and with her, Heklatis.

  “Toreth came back,” he said as they looked up, and gave them the gist what the prince had said.

  Heklatis heaved a sigh of relief. “They looked at him and saw a handsome, muscle-bound fool,” the Healer replied. “Good!”

  Aket-ten looked almost faint with relief.

  Kiron felt a stab of that same emotion he’d gotten at the thought of anyone else riding Avatre. This time he knew it for what it was.

  Jealousy. He was jealous that Aket-ten should be that concerned for Toreth. It shocked and surprised him to the core.

  He covered it by going in and sitting down. “I don’t think he’s safe—” he began.

  “Neither do I!” Heklatis said firmly. “I will be doing what work I can to safeguard him. This is not over; the Great Ones could still die. There are always accidents, illnesses. Now that they know that he knows—he is not safe. Fortunately, it only takes a little magic, properly used, to defeat greater magic.” He grinned mirthlessly, showing a great many teeth. “And I have the advantage over them. I know how they are schooled; they do not know how I am.”

  Kiron took a deep breath. “I came here to ask if the two of you can do something. I want to find a way to remove the Jousters from both armies.”

  They both looked at him, as if wondering where in the world that idea came from, and why he would ask them to help with it.

  “Both armies? That is no small task you set us,” Heklatis admitted reluctantly, “But I believe I see what your point is. Remove the Jousters, and it is army against army, in which we are equal. Remove the Jousters, and you remove the reason to send storms—which, unless they can concoct some better spell to use against the Tians, also removes the overt reason for the support of the Magi.”

  Leaving only the stolen years, which even the Great Ones dare not admit to. If that is not forbidden magic, it is perilous close.

  “It was Toreth’s idea that, eventually we could negate the Tian Jousters,” said Kiron. “But I fear that we may not have the time, now. If the Magi dare to use the Eye against dissenters—”

  “Then they have grown too powerful, and we should look for other ways to take some of that power from them.” Heklatis nodded. “Well, we can do that. We can also look for ways to armor the Winged Ones against being used. And we can look for allies.” He raised one eyebrow. “The Bedu, do you think?”

  Kiron had to shrug. “I do not know. I do not know that anyone knows the Bedu well enough to guess what they will think or do.”

  “But they have a use for gold, and they might well feel threatened by our Magi,” Heklatis persisted. “Yes?”

  Kiron nodded after a moment. “Yes to both, I think. They have their own magics, and the Magi cannot help but see that as a rivalry, if not a danger.”

  “Then Aket-ten and I will pursue the first path together, and I—and eventually you—will pursue the second. Agreed?” asked Heklatis.

  Oh, yes, the Magi should be shivering in their beds, Kiron thought cynically. A half-trained Jouster, a Winged Fledgling, and a foreign Healer. We shall defeat them and send them packing and still have time for breakfast!

  But, “Agreed,” he said anyway. Because it was that—or despair. And he was not yet ready for despair.

  FIFTEEN

  KIRON was not ready for despair, but despair followed its own laws, and arrived on tattered wings.

  It came on the wind, spreading in a sound that no one in all of Alta had ever heard before, a keening wail of a cry that broke the heart before anyone even knew the cause. It engulfed them, took them, shook them.

  The sound struck all three of them like blows of a lance; all three of them gasped as one. Kiron rose, but it was Aket-ten who was halfway to the door before he was halfway to his feet.

  The wail led him to the source, hard on her heels, with Heklatis not far behind, to the dragonets’ pens—to Toreth’s pen—

  —to where Toreth’s dragon Re-eth-katen stood, blue-black head pointed skyward, silver-blue neck outstretched, wailing her unbearable loss to an uncaring sky.

  —to where Toreth lay, sprawled half out of his cot, eyes wide with fear and fixed in death.

  “Toreth!” Kiron wailed himself, and started for his friend.

  “Wait!” Heklatis barked, throwing out an arm to stop him, halting him in his tracks. Just in time, as the head of the largest cobra that Kiron had ever seen rose up out of the blanket half covering Toreth’s body. It hissed, and flared its hood, daring all of them—because by now, the doorway was crowded with people—to come any closer.

  The dragon went silent. In the silence, the cobra rose farther above Toreth’s body and swayed back and forth.

  There was a murmur of fear, and as the cobra bent forward, they all moved involuntarily back.

  “The sign of the gods—” someone muttered at the back of the crowd. “Don’t touch it!” cried someone else. “It is sacred to the gods!”

  “Not my gods,” said Heklatis impatiently. He looked around swiftly, seized a sling and a handful of pellets from the weapon rack against the wall, and before anyone could stop him, let fly.

  It was either the best, or the luckiest shot that Kiron had ever seen in his life, for it hit the cobra right in the head. The snake tumbled off Toreth’s body, and Heklatis made sure of the beast a moment later. He dashed across the intervening space, and crushed what was left of the head and hood beneath his sandal.

  No one else moved. Not even Kiron, who felt as if he was paralyzed and could not have moved to save his own life. It was Heklatis who tenderly draped the blanket over Toreth’s face, then picked up the body of the prince, blanket and all, and carried it out. Kiron had no idea that the bandy-legged little Healer was so strong; he carried the burden as if it was nothing. The crowd parted before him, and closed up behind him, but still, no one moved except to get out of the Healer’s way.

  “The sign of the gods—” someone else murmured. But all Kiron could think was—I was in that chamber before he came back. There was no snake there, and there is no way for a snake to get past his dragon.

  Snakes can’t abide dragons, and dragons eat snakes. How did it get there?

  Had the gods sent their sacred serpent to punish Toreth? Were the gods truly favoring the Magi against all the rest of their people?

  The dragon began her keening again, and a wave of chill passed over him. A shadow seemed to pass over them all, and the wings of despair enveloped them.

  The gods. The sign of the gods. How can you go against the gods?

  He started to shake, and he was not the only one. He put one hand against the wall, fear welling up inside him in a bleak, black tide.

  It came between him and everything else, and he felt it weaken him until he could not stand. Slowly he sank down into the sand pit, as the dragon wailed her heartbreak, and people began to back away carefully, as if this place and everything that was in it held some dreadful curse.

  He lost himself in despair and grief. His eyes burned, and yet he could not weep. His throat felt choked with a lump of tears that would not leave him. His eyes burned, and he closed them, but the images in his mind kept playing over and over—Toreth, alive but a few moments ago, and now dead, with that look of terror on his face—

  “This foul creature was sent.”

  He looked up, startled to find that he was no longer alone. Heklatis stood there, face set in a mask of rage, toeing what was left of the cobra.

  “What?” he asked, somehow getting the word past the lump in his throat.

  “This was no
accident, and no act of the gods,” the Healer said flatly. “This snake was sent. It is a Fetch, a thing called into a place by magic, and commanded to act by its master. Someone brought it here specifically to attack and kill the prince. I can taste the magic, smell it, a vile odor—” He shook his head, the gray-streaked curls of his hair bouncing. “They must not have known there would be a Magus here, or they would have covered their tracks.” He glanced over at Kiron, who was staring at him in bewilderment. “You don’t understand what I’m saying, do you? Let me put it simply. The Magi murdered Toreth, and did it in a way that would look like either an accident, or a god-sent curse, depending on how the murder was interpreted. And they did it before anyone outside the court learned what it was that brought Toreth before the Great Ones. They did it while his disgrace was still vivid in everyone’s mind, and before anyone got a chance to think about what he said and wonder how much truth was in it.”

  “Murder?”

  The word was an echo of the same one in Kiron’s mind, but it came from Lord Khumun’s lips.

  Heklatis looked up, toward the door to the pen. Kiron turned as well. Lord Khumun stood there with an expression as stony as the Healer’s was full of anger.

  “Yes, my Lord,” said the Healer. “Murder. There are many ways of covering the truth, and that is one of them—to silence the truth teller, permanently.”

  Lord Khumun did not look surprised. “I feared this,” he said heavily, “But I hoped—he was only a boy—”

  “He was Prince and Heir,” replied Heklatis flatly, as the dragon continued to keen. “They could not afford to let him live. And look to yourself, my Lord. Your star has been rising of late, and the Magi, I fear, will brook no rivals now. And they are clearly no longer content with simple opposition; they have chosen annihilation for those who would stand in their path.”

  Kiron would never have imagined Lord Khumun blanching, but he saw that very thing now. And if Lord Khumun was afraid—

  The Lord of the Jousters swallowed, and then seemed to notice that Kiron was still sitting there. “Go to your quarters, Wing-leader,” he said, but it was not with the bark of an order. “This changes nothing except the size of your wing.”