Mercedes Lackey - Sanctuary

That didn’t stop Kiron from feeling like a mouse sitting in a hole with a hawk in the air above him—but at least he knew that the hawk had no plans to torture him if it caught him.

Thanks to Kaleth’s warning, they had planned ahead; no sooner had the light gone, than someone near the back held up a lit oil lamp. The flame wavered and flickered in the conflicting air currents. Whoever it was quickly sheltered the flame with his hand, and a moment later, others clustered around him with lamps of their own.

It wasn’t stuffy anymore; wind whined through all the cracks in the shutters and around the door that a moment ago had let in light. Wind wasn’t the only thing coming in. So was the sand. It was some measure of the force of the wind that the sand was spraying in through cracks hardly wider than a hair.

All the dragons, Avatre and Kashet included, inched toward the back wall until they were huddled together. Their pupils were as wide as they could go, making their eyes look like black plates rimmed with ruby or gold, and every time an especially fierce blast shook one or another of the shutters, all their heads swiveled as one to face the source of the noise.

“I doubt they’re going to panic,” Ari said over the scream of the wind. “And if we all settle down and act normally, they’ll relax.”

Gan cleared his throat, then tossed his head as if dismissing the storm as a trivial inconvenience. “These walls and shutters have withstood centuries of storms, and this one has nothing of magic in it. I doubt they’re going to fail now. So, who’s for a game of hounds and hares?”

They had made the stable ready long before the storm arrived, and at Gan’s prompting, the others unpacked game boards, jackstones and dice. Kiron arranged a couple of flat cushions next to Avatre and Aket-ten brought over her gameboard. They settled in, Kiron to learn the game and Aket-ten to teach it, within the circle of light cast by an alabaster oil lamp found here in the ruins. Shaped like latas buds, one of its three cups was broken, but the other two cast a fine light, sheltered from the weird breezes whipping through the stable. Gradually, as nothing worse happened than drifts of sand forming at the windows and door, and the howls of the wind shaking the shutters, the dragons relaxed. Eventually, they put their heads down on their forelegs, or draped head and neck over a neighbor ’s back. They still showed no signs of relaxing their vigilance enough to nap, but they weren’t ready to bolt at the first alarm anymore.

There was no way to gauge the passage of time, but the Altans had known that would be the case. The artificial darkness was a lot like the darkness cast by the storms the Magi conjured in order to drive the Tian Jousters out of the sky, and they were as used to such conditions as anyone could be.

However. . . .

“I think we should feed the dragons at the first sign of hunger,” Kiron said, looking up from a game at which he was (predictably) losing. “If we wait until they get really hungry, there might be fights.”

“I can keep track of that,” said Aket-ten. He nodded; with her Gift of Silent Speech with animals, she should have plenty of warning when they began to complain.

When the first dragons began getting hunger pangs, she alerted their riders. As the meat was distributed, there was some minor squabbling, but not much, and quickly sorted out before it escalated beyond a nip and a hiss. This could never have been done with the wild-caught dragons; there would have been bloody fights over the food in no time, and woe betide any human who got in the way.

The storm continued to howl long after sunset, only dying around the middle of the night. By that time, as the oil lamps burned out one by one, everyone had gone to sleep; Kiron only woke because a beam of moonlight penetrated the shutter and shone directly into his eyes.

He got up and opened the door. He expected a flood of sand to pour into the room, but instead, it appeared that the storm had scoured the street clean. There was no real sign that such fury had lately raged out here; the air was still, cold, and calm, and the streets peaceful. He wondered what the storm had buried—or revealed.

But that would have to wait until morning.

THREE

THEdragons woke early that morning, and wanted out! They jostled each other and whined with impatience, once they were fully awake, and if it had seemed crowded before, with the dragons fussing, it was like being in the middle of a cattle pen that had been crammed too full. No one could sleep with the fidgeting, impatient snapping, and noise. It was obvious that it was time to go. As soon as the stable doors were opened wide, they crowded through, shoving and squabbling, in a hurry to get to their saddling stations. It was time to fly, time to eat, and most of all, time to be outside of walls.

Whatever those walls were made of, it was remarkable stuff. There was not so much as a gouge or a scratch on them after half a day of being abraded by wind-blasted sand.

But a cracked water jar that had been left carelessly beside the door was now little more than a sand-smoothed lump of baked clay.

Laden with saddle and guiding reins, Kiron climbed the stairs to get to the rooftop; too impatient to climb, Avatre spread her wings and flew up. He had to smile at that. She was not only maturing, she was showing more initiative. He’d begun teaching her to come at his whistle some time ago, thinking it would be a useful trick if they were parted; now she obeyed him as eagerly as any dog, and the others had begun teaching their dragons to do the same.

Aket-ten and some of the others were already up there, staring out to the west. When he joined them, it was clear what they were staring at. The sandstorm had uncovered more of the city beneath the dunes; this time there was a temple-sized building, and a vast complex a great deal like a Great Lord’s house. These were a mix of the familiar structures of the sort they all lived in now, and a carefully laid-out area of roofless courts divided by walls next to the temple that bore a striking resemblance to the dragon pens.

“We could use that temple for the dragons, instead of this building,” said Pe-atep speculatively as he tapped a toe on the roof of the stable they had just used, then glanced down at Aket-ten from his superior height, and added, “if the gods allow.”

“I shouldn’t think they’d mind,” she replied, rubbing her ear. “But I’m not the one to ask.”

“I think,” called a cheerful voice from below, “that they will not mind at all, seeing as that building has the sign of Haras upon it.”

Kiron looked down at Kaleth, who grinned up at him, teeth very white in the tanned skin of his face. His spotlessly white headcloth nearly matched them. Kaleth had been thriving out here, and anyone who was under the impression that someone serving as the literal spokesperson for the gods would be frail and ascetic would have a great shock when confronted with the lean, hard, athletic Kaleth. He was one of the few who had adopted the Tian custom of shaving the head out here in the heat, and generally appeared in public in headcloths, as Ari did. His appearance was a curious mixture of Tian and Altan dress, and Kiron was quite certain that this was a deliberate decision on his part.

“You look like you’ve been up for ages,” Aket-ten called down.

“I have. I’ve been inspecting,” he replied, his mild eyes sparkling. “The gods provide, you see. We’ll be getting another caravan of Altan refugees soon, and we’d have been a bit crowded without some help.”

Another caravan of refugees? Well, if anyone would know, it would be Kaleth, god-touched, Winged One of the Far-Seeing Eye. If anyone had asked Kiron long ago what he thought a god-touched person would look like, he probably would not have described someone like Kaleth. Except when the gods spoke through him, there was nothing about him at first glance that was uncanny; he could have been one of Kiron’s wing. Stronger, browner, and more vigorous than he had been when he was merely Toreth’s scholarly twin, and with him, the heir to the Twin Thrones, the power of a Winged One sat lightly on him. But it was there—oh, yes—those with the eyes to see it knew very well that the gods had set their mark on him. It was in his eyes, the straightness of his back, and the very way he moved, as if always conscious of the lingering presence of something greater than himself at every moment.