Mercedes Lackey - Sanctuary

All in an instant, his mind went from grief-clouded and leaden to alert and sharp as a shard of obsidian. Hope! Now he had it; now he could think again.

“We’ll have to divide the wing,” he said, thinking aloud. “Five need to go after the Tian forces; I’m sure the Magi calling themselves advisers will be with the army, and we can’t risk them getting away.” He paused. “That should be you, Orest, Menet-ka, and Gan under Kalen, I think. Get both Menet-ka and Orest away from the rescue attempt, so they don’t feel as if they need to kill themselves in the rescue or have the opportunity to try something without thinking first.”

“Good,” Ari said, nodding. “And the rest—except for you, that is—under Pe-atep to run a feint, while you go for the actual rescue, I presume?”

He rubbed his eyes with one hand, and felt something inside him falter. “I—that’s what I want, but it might be better if you were the rescuer, because I’m afraid I might try something stupid—”

“You won’t,” Ari said flatly. “And of the two of us, you are the most likely to be able to get into that Tower. Avatre will do anything you ask; I do not have that level of cooperation from Kashet. No, you’ll keep your head, and you do the rescue attempt while we run a feint, let them think we’re trying to rescue Healers.”

“All right, then.” He closed his eyes a moment to think. “You’re right in thinking our best chance is to rescue her out of the Tower; I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where they’d be keeping her before then. We’ll have to come in above the clouds for the surprise to work in our favor, and it will have to be at night.”

“Kashet would never do that,” Ari said firmly. “He went in where there was light, but he will refuse to land in the dark. And on the top of the Tower? Impossible.”

Kiron nodded. “Kaleth, have you any idea when this business in the Tower is going to happen? Aside from tomorrow, that is?”

Kaleth shook his head regretfully, then brightened. “But—the priests say this kind of magic takes time, so they’ll probably begin as soon as the sun is up.”

“Which means I should be in place that night.” He pondered that for a moment. “Avatre can’t take a full night of cold on the bare top of the Tower. And I can’t get into the Tower from the ground.” He thought for a moment more. “I need to talk to someone who knows magic. I need to talk—”

“To a Thet priest,” said a deep voice from the door. “And here is one.”

One of the tallest and most heavily muscled men Kiron had ever seen outside of the army or the Jousters stood in the door.

“Be-ka-re at your service,” he said soberly. “The High Priest tells me you have need of magic. Tell me what you need, and I will tell you if any of us can do this.”

“A way to keep Avatre warm all night at the top of a tower,” Kiron said instantly. “And I need a way to know, from above the clouds, that the Magi’s Tower is right below me.” Now he had something he could do.

These were simple things, and yet—so crucial, and so impossible to achieve without magic.

Be-ka-re pursed his lips, then looked up at the ceiling. Kiron waited; he got the impression that the priest was thinking hard and rapidly.

Finally, the reward for his patience.

“I think,” Be-ka-re said, “we can do this.”

As the last light faded, Kiron and Avatre circled above the clouds over Alta City. No one could see him from here; the only problem, of course, was that he couldn’t see anything. And he needed to wait until darkness fell, while people’s eyes were still making the adjustment from light to dark, and a shadow could fall from the clouds and have less chance of being seen.

In his hand was a disk made of glass, and on that disk was a glowing spot that moved as he moved. When the spot was in the center of the disk, it meant he was directly over the Tower.

So small a thing, and it would not last for long. By midnight, its power would be exhausted. But by midnight he would be on the Tower, and would not need it. Without it, he would have to come in beneath the clouds and approach the Tower from a distance, drastically increasing the chance of being seen. With it, he could drop down from directly above.

The Tower, it seemed, sent out magic. The little glowing spot was a reflection of that magic. The disk was not, as the use of the Far-Seeing Eye was, an active thing that could be blocked. It was more like a mirror, a passive thing showing only what another Magus might see merely by looking in the right way.

“Magi and those of us priests who also know the ways of magic can see this,” Be-ka-re had told him. “I merely give you a way to see what I can see.”

The last of the sun tipped below the clouds, which turned blood-red below him. He hoped it wasn’t an omen; Avatre continued to circle at his direction, though she was growing uneasy, as her frequent glances down showed him. She knew it would be dark soon, and she didn’t like to land in the dark any more than any other dragon did. But other than her glances downward, she did nothing; she trusted him.

When the last red of sunset had left the sky, and stars had begun to appear in the east, he centered the glowing spot on the disk, and sent Avatre plunging down through the clouds. She could not have been more willing; she pulled in her wings and dove, trusting to him to be her eyes. As the drop sent his heart racing and his stomach clenched, there was also a moment of eye-stinging awe that she did trust him so much.

It was nothing like the wild plunges he and Aket-ten had made when they seeded the winds with the plant disease that rendered tala useless. There didn’t seem to be any lightning anywhere around, and if there was wind, it was too little to take note of. What there was a great deal of, however, was rain. Avatre was forced to moderate her fall, spreading her wings and turning the plunge into a tight spiral downward.

He was soaked within moments of passing into the clouds, as if someone had emptied an entire bath over him. And the farther they dropped, the worse it got until, as they broke through the bottom of the clouds, he had begun to wonder if he was going to find himself swimming to the Tower.

This was the central island of Alta City, the place where the elite of the elite lived. Here, too, stood the temples to the most important gods, the Royal Palace, and, of course, the Tower of Wisdom, the tallest building on the island, and the symbol of the power of the Magi.

Though even in the semidarkness the damage wrought by Eye and earthshake on the rings was obvious, there was no obvious sign of any such damage here on the center island. There were no buildings in ruins, no burned-out places—

But Kiron didn’t have much time to look either; he and Avatre were coming straight down to the top of the Tower to avoid being seen, and the faster he got her down, the better.

And, of course, Avatre was all but blind in this light, depending on him to tell her what to do in time for her to do it.

At the height of a single-storied house above the top of the Tower, he signaled her to backwing and start to land. She responded instantly, fanning her wings furiously and tucking her hindquarters under, then stretching out with her back legs as she felt for the surface she trusted would soon be there. This was the moment they were most likely to be seen—or heard, as her wings pumped, creating a kind of thunder.

He felt it when a single talon touched that surface; she backwinged a little harder, and he felt her hindquarters stretching, then as she got her weight onto the surface, he felt her legs take it. She folded her wings and settled onto the Tower top with hardly more than a whisper of sound.