Mercedes Lackey - Aerie

“It sounds to me as if that time has more than come.” Rakaten-te sat up alertly. “The rest of your pronouncement was blessedly clear if wretchedly inconvenient for me. Fortunately, there are two messengers here already, so at least there are dragons enough to haul us like so many sacks of provender off to the middle of the howling wilderness. I am too old to endure a jaunt on a racing camel in the ungentle care of one of the Blue People.” One corner of his mouth turned up a little. “Here I am, who wished for adventure in his youth and got none, now beset by adventure uncomfortable and hazardous in my declining years. Truly it is said, ‘Take care what you wish for, the Gods will deliver it at the worst possible time.’ ”

But he did not sound unhappy about it. Not in the least, in fact. Kiron had the distinct impression that Rakaten-te was enjoying every minute of this, even (or perhaps especially) the danger.

“It’s not the middle of the howling wilderness,” Kiron protested mildly. “I will admit that you can see the middle of the howling wilderness from there, but—”

“—there is no point sitting about and nattering about it,” Aket-ten said briskly, standing up. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we will discover what it is the Gods want us to find.”

“And that is truth. Let us gather our things and go. Marit and I can be ready by the time the dragons are finished eating.” Kaleth stood up, and Marit with him.

“I never unpacked,” sighed Rakaten-te.

“Anything Aket-ten and I need is already there,” Kiron put in, with a glance at Aket-ten. She returned his look warmly.

They had agreed on a few things, down there beside the slow-moving, hidden river. She wouldn’t be going back to Mefis. Certainly not until this crisis was over, and after that—

She told Kiron that she had more than half made up her mind that Huras was a better teacher than she, certainly more patient and definitely better able to get things out of people. It might be, now that the group of female Jousters had been more-or-less (if grudgingly) accepted, that it would be good for them to get their training from someone who was actually suited to teaching. And one thing was certain. The Queen’s Wing would be led, for the nonce, by the son of Altan bakers.

But first, before any plans for the future could be made, it was time to defend the Two Kingdoms.

“Then we will gather at the pens when you are ready,” Kiron said. “I will alert the other two Jousters. Let us be gone and quickly.”

“Aye,” Rakaten-te said, all of his humor vanishing. “All we know about our enemy is that he has been a step ahead of us until now. We must hope he is not still, but act as if he was.”

EIGHTEEN

W HEN the Gods speak . . . things get done. Kiron wiped the back of his neck and his forehead with the rag he’d had tied around it, and took a much-needed break from what at any other time he would have balked at doing. Virtually every able-bodied person in Aerie that was not out patrolling or supporting the day-today activities of the place had put in some time on clearing the rocks from the cave-in.

It helped that one of the priests had some sort of magic that told him what places were unsteady and needed careful work. It also helped that the initial effort at clearing the tunnel must have taken place immediately after the earthshake until the presumably desperate inhabitants had given up and packed themselves out. It also helped that another effort, if a desultory one, had taken place as the new inhabitants of Aerie now and again moved a few rocks, or even came looking for a good place to find stone for partitions and the like.

But now . . . now the real effort was underway, and even Lord Kiron, Captain of the Jousters, was stripped down to a loinwrap and was part of a human chain moving rocks out to be piled beside the ever-more-freely-running spring. And Aket-ten, Wingleader of the Queen’s Wing, was carrying water like any serf girl.

It was brutally hot, even deep in the tunnel, and the air was thick with sweat and dust. Although most of the labor was of the unskilled, brute-strength variety—barrow-loads of smaller stones being carted out and dumped, those rocks that could be lifted being passed from hand to hand, and the truly enormous boulders being levered from where they were wedged and pulled by teams of the strongest hitched to ropes—Kiron was seeing more real magic in this place than he had since the use of the Eye in Alta. And now he knew why priests and Magi so seldom did purely ordinary things by means of magic.

There was the priest who could somehow “read” instability, of course. That was not what Kiron would have called “impressive” except in that there had been no rockfalls and no cave-ins. But three times now, they had come upon a huge boulder that was far, far too big to lever out, and even if it could have been freed, it was too heavy to move. Three times, a different priest had come forward with a different solution.

The first had sent everyone out of the cave. What happened next, was known only to the priest and presumably others of his rank, but there was a thunderclap from within the cave, followed by a violent blast of dust-carrying wind rushing out of the mouth of it. They all scrambled back in, to find the boulder shattered and the priest unconscious on the ground.

Kiron was in a panic at the sight of the unconscious man, but his fellows seemed perfectly at ease, and merely picked him up and carried him out without any fuss.

The second time, the rectangular rock was not wedged in like a cork in the mouth of a bottle, it simply filled most, not all, of a rather narrow space. This time another priest came forward and directed them to clear all debris out of the way and from around the sides of the boulder. Then, chanting and gesturing, he “went to work” with all of them watching.

With a grating sound, the rock began to move.

It moved forward at an agonizingly slow pace, hardly more than the width of a nail paring for every breath. The priest was soon white-faced and sweating as hard as any of them; it looked for all the world as if he was moving the wretched thing himself, by main strength.

Maybe he was.

Finally, just as he got it far enough out of the bottleneck that it would be possible to get ropes around it to haul it out over rollers, he collapsed and was in his turn carried out.

And now the third. Another fall of rock, again bottlenecked in with the spring creeping under some hair-thin gap beneath it, and another priest.

“This is the last,” said the one who could sense when falls were about to take place. Eyes closed and sweating as hard as any of them, it was clear that what he was doing was no light task either. “When this is gone, the way will be clear.”

“But there is much water built up behind this stone.” The new priest placed both hands on the rock and leaned his forehead on it. “Hmm. This will be tricky—”

“Not to mention dangerous,” the stone reader replied. “If it is released all at once—”

“I do not speak to you of the ways of stone, Tam-kalet; do not preach to me of the paths of water!” the priest snapped, then immediately apologized. “Forgive me. Great Mother River is no easy mistress. And she wants her child released.”

The reader of rocks chuckled, opened his eyes, and mopped his brow. “They all move in us this day, and it seems we deal in more tasks for them than just one. Need you my services?”

The newcomer looked around the cavern. “Indeed, I need none save perhaps Lord Kiron. . . .”

“Why me?” he asked, astonished. “The other priest—”

“The other priest was not me.” That was all the explanation Kiron was going to get, it seemed, for as everyone else took the hint and began an ordered but hurried evacuation of the tunnel, the priest turned his attention back to the rock. “Have I your consent to draw upon your strength?” the man asked brusquely, eyes closed and one hand on the rock.