Mercedes Lackey - Alta

“Exactly,” Kiron put in, as the others began to look a bit skeptical at all this talk of payment. “The desert takes everything you have just to survive. The Bedu have nothing to spare to sustain an outsider. They need payment in order to get extra supplies for you.”

He nodded. “And then, they’ll need more gold to get the supplies to help me make the place livable for the rest of us.” He looked a little feverish, but had an air of triumph about him, and a look as if he had at last found meaning for his life and a great goal to pursue.

Well, if that was the case, Kiron couldn’t blame him for looking triumphant. In many ways, he had emerged from Toreth’s shadow and come into his own kingdom. . . .

“So if you’re going to be wandering out in the desert, just how are we supposed to find you and this refuge?” Oset-re asked, with a touch of irony. “I don’t fancy flying off across the wastelands trying to find a place that shouldn’t exist.”

“You won’t have to. The Bedu will find you and bring you to me when the time comes. The Mouth will know when and where to find you. That’s all I know.” He shrugged. “The visions showed me the city, but not how you’ll end up there, though I think it’s bound to be when the dragons go wild. And it’s getting dangerous for me to be here; I’m not sure why, I only know that it is. The Bedu said so, too. I’ll leave in the morning, so this is the last time we’ll all meet before I see you in Te-pa-ten-ke.”

Kiron cast a glance over at Heklatis, who interpreted the look correctly. “I believe him, Kiron,” the Healer said. “I think this is a true vision. I told you once that these things come in fragments; we should just be glad that he got enough to know the next part of the plan.”

“We essentially destroy the Jousters, then escape into a refuge,” Kiron mused aloud. “It could be worse, I suppose.”

Kaleth scowled at him. “Yes, it could, ” he said with annoyance verging on anger. “You could come back to the compound after the battle, and the Magi could wipe you all out of the sky with the Eye. I’ve seen that, too, and I don’t want to see it truly happen instead of being a maybe-future!”

That stopped Kiron dead; in fact, they all went as still as stone for a moment, and in the silence, the rain outside was very loud indeed.

“All right,” Kiron said into the silence. “In that case, let’s all work on making sure that particular maybe-future never has a chance of coming true.”

Kiron half expected that no one outside of their little group and Marit and her sister Nofret would even notice that Kaleth was gone, and as far as he was able to tell, that was the case. Lord Khumun did not mention it, there were no rumors from the court, and in fact, Kaleth’s absence might well even be a relief for some. Kiron did not even attempt to keep up the fiction that he was still there, though if anyone asked him, he was going to say, truthfully, that Kaleth had left one night leaving no word of where he was going, and then add, “Though he spoke once of trying to find the Lost City.”

He figured that such a statement would brand Kaleth as completely mad. Even the Magi would probably not bother to look for him after that.

But no one outside the group ever spoke of him; perhaps, like Toreth, they were all trying to pretend he had never existed. Perhaps they were trying not to draw attention to themselves. Perhaps both.

But within half a moon, and deep into the rains, they all got a rude shock, and Kiron was very, very glad that Kaleth had gone. It went down as one of the black moments of his life.

Lord Khumun sent dragon boys around to the entire compound that morning as they all awakened, saying that he wished to address them over breakfast. Kiron fed Avatre without thinking very much about it; though it wasn’t unusual for Lord Khumun to address them all together, it wasn’t unheard of. Perhaps the work of the rains had gotten noticed and the Great Ones wanted to send a reward of some sort, or at least, a word of commendation.

They certainly deserve it, he thought, with more than a bit of bitterness. More than the Magi, if you were to ask me. After all, they were having to fly in that magic-befouled weather, and because of their efforts, the border had been pressed back yet again—almost to the place it had been when Kiron’s own village had been lost to the Tians so many years ago.

But when Lord Khumun finally appeared to the restless crowd of Jousters waiting for him in the kitchen courtyard, he was not alone.

There was a Magus with him, and at the sight of the man, the muttering men in the courtyard went deathly quiet. It seemed at that moment that every drop of rain on the awnings overhead, and dripping down between the gaps in the cloth, was terribly, terribly loud.

Aket-ten sucked in a breath, and Kiron was very glad that she was sitting at the back of them all, and they were at a table at the back of the wall. There were a lot of taller, older men between them and the Magus, and yet the man’s penetrating eyes seemed to sweep the crowd and see all of them. Kiron would very much rather have been in complete shadow at that moment, and he hoped that the Magus had only seen a sort of shape, and not that there was a girl among them. He did not want Aket-ten to be noticed.

It was not a comfortable sensation. Those eyes were as cold and as dead as opaque pebbles, and Kiron would have wagered at that moment that he was looking at a man who would bury his own mother alive if it got him something he wanted. But at least his gaze didn’t rest on any of them.

“This is Magus Mut-ke-re,” said Lord Khumun carefully—too carefully—into the silence. “The Great Ones have decreed that he is to have oversight of the Jousters, in order that the Magi may make the best use of us. Our tactics, so successful now, they say, will become even more successful with a Magus to guide us.” There were worlds of hidden meaning there, and Kiron was under no illusion that he could read more than half of them. It would have taken someone like Toreth or Kaleth, versed in the double-dealing of the court, to decipher all of them. Some were clear enough, though. Lord Khumun was under no illusion that the Magus was there to “help” the Jousters.

The man is here to spy on us, he means, Kiron thought instantly, and was passionately grateful that now there was nothing to hide—no dust, no plan to spread it, and no Kaleth with his visions. What would the Magi have done, had they discovered Toreth’s brother had become a Winged One, untrained, and of the sort that they dreaded most? At the least he could have expected to be dragged off to the Tower of Wisdom to be used and used up. At the worst—Kiron preferred not to think about what the worst could be. He had the horrible suspicion he couldn’t possibly imagine it.

No wonder Kaleth had said that he was in danger. If he’d had any hint from his visions that this was coming, he could only have read it as imperative that he get away.

And how fortunate it was that they had already found ways of explaining everything else that the Magi might take exception to! Everyone had the stories straight, and no one would deviate from them or fumble out contradictory explanations.

The Magus nodded at Lord Khumun’s words, but said nothing. He only looked, looked at all of them, hunting with his eyes, searching for some sign of rebellion, perhaps. Kiron set his chin, straightened his back, and looked right back again. He would not show this man that he was afraid. If he saw anything, let him see defiance and be damned to him. Let him see rebellion, if that was what he was looking for. He could suspect it all he wanted; Kiron’s actions would not give him any ammunition for an accusation.