Mercedes Lackey - Sanctuary

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

HEhad 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.

But when he woke, it was with a rush, and he woke all at once, out of a dream of flying Winged Ones off the roof of the temple, burning with a desire to get more of them away before the Magi understood what was happening.

He didn’t sit up with a yell, though he might as well have. He startled the servant who was sitting beside him. But the boy recovered quickly.

“It is not yet time, master,” he said, before Kiron could say anything. “You have time to see to your dragon, to bathe and eat. There was another small shake after dawn. Did you feel it?”

He shook his head, but his attention was caught by a single word. Bathe! At the sound of that word, Kiron itched all over; not that there wasn’t water enough to bathe at Sanctuary, but it seemed wrong to use so precious a thing for bathing. They all did, of course, but it seemed wrong. Now, the hot spring at Coresan’s nest was another matter entirely—but he hadn’t had a bath there since two days before this journey.