Mercedes Lackey - Alta

The Magus made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, went dead white, and fled.

Kiron stuffed both hands against his mouth to keep from laughing aloud until the Magus was well out of hearing distance. It was very hard, but fortunately, he was laughing so hard that he couldn’t get a sound out anyway. By that point, the convulsions that shook him made it impossible to breathe for several moments. Tears streamed down his face, and he had to sink to his knees, rocking back and forth as he clamped his arms to his sides.

Finally, he sucked in air again in an enormous gasp, and looked up. Heklatis’ grin very nearly set him off again.

“Oh—dear gods!” he gasped, tears still coursing down his cheeks. “Did—you—see—his—- face? ”

Heklatis made a rude sound. “As if I would touch him with a barge pole!” he said cheerfully. “Let me get dear old Theus back to his altar, while you get yourself under control before you do yourself an injury. You can dislocate your own jaw by stretching it too far, you know.”

That just set him off again, and Heklatis made an exasperated sigh and went back inside his workroom. Fortunately, he stayed there long enough for Kiron to stop laughing, wipe his eyes, and get back to his feet.

“I think,” the Healer said, as he came back into the courtyard again, “that I might just lodge an official protest with the Great Ones about this incident. I very much doubt that it will rid us of the man, but it will put them all on notice that I was serious.”

“Well, now we know that not only can he not scry past your wards, he can’t even get physically past your wards,” Kiron pointed out. “That’s useful!”

“Ye-es,” Heklatis replied thoughtfully. “The thing is, I wonder why? My magic has never had that effect before. I shall have to look into that very carefully.”

“I had better get back to the wing,” Kiron replied, with some regret, for it was comforting, knowing he was standing in the middle of the one place in the compound that wretched Magus was never going to go.

“Yes, go,” Heklatis said, absently making a shooing motion. “Keep the poultice damp while you wear it, but take it off to fly or do other work. And keep it away from Avatre; I don’t think she’ll try to eat it, but it could make her ill.”

“Thank you, Healer,” Kiron said, but Heklatis was already going through the door curtain, mumbling something under his breath.

When they all got together in Kiron’s room later that night, there was something waiting for him—and Kiron was unsurprised to see that it was an Akkadian statue. This one he happened to know was no goddess, it was a simple artistic piece, but he had no doubt that Heklatis had put the same wards on it as were on his real god images. He decided, if asked, to claim that this was the Akkadian equivalent of We-te-esh, the Goddess of Luck and Love—a rather natural deity for a young man to worship, and doubly so for a Jouster. The fact that it was a fine little figure of an exceptionally lovely, completely unclothed young lady was just incidental. Right?

Aket-ten isn’t going to like it, he thought, placing the image on the little shrine in the corner. He surveyed it, and smiled. Heklatis certainly knew Kiron’s taste very well. Aket-ten is going to have to get over it. There was plenty of Altan art—well, perhaps not plenty, but certainly a reasonable amount, including on the walls of the public places in Lord Ya-tiren’s villa—that depicted dancing girls wearing little more than a string of beads. There was no logical reason for her to take exception to this piece—which meant, of course, in the contrary nature of girls, that she would.

The others noticed the addition—the boys with sly looks and elbows to each others’ ribs, and Aket-ten with a frown, then a disdainful sniff—and he explained what had happened that afternoon with great gusto.

When he got to the part about Heklatis flirting with the Magus, even Aket-ten had to stifle howls of laughter.

“I know I’ve seen this in Heklatis’ rooms,” he said, gesturing to the statue, “And I think I’m probably supposed to say it’s an Akkadian goddess he gave me. If this does what I think it’s going to do, it’ll keep that rotted Magus out of here as well.”

Aket-ten turned a look on the statue that, had it been wood instead of marble, would have set it afire. “I think it should have been that image of Epialon, then,” she said pointedly, her brows furrowing in a frown.

“Now, Aket-ten, you know that you’d never get Heklatis to part with any of his handsome lads,” teased Gan. “This was probably the only image he didn’t want to keep for himself!”

Aket-ten colored, and opened her mouth to say something, when she was interrupted by noises outside the door. It was Avatre, snorting and rearing up out of her sand like a rising cobra. There was someone shadowed against the light from the corridor in the doorway to the pen. For one moment, Kiron felt a jolt of alarm—

“Avatre!” came a hissing whisper out of the dark. “Hush! It’s only me!”

“Marit!” exclaimed Kiron, more quick-witted than the rest in recognizing the voice and realizing that the silhouette was too short to be the Magus. “What are you doing here?”

“Us,” corrected Marit, as Avatre also belatedly recognized her voice and settled back into her wallow with a grumble. And indeed, it was two figures, not one, that emerged, blinking, into the light spilling from the doorway.

At first glance, it was hard to tell which of the girls that pulled back the hoods of their rain capes was Marit. They were, literally, as alike as two barley-grains. Or at least, it seemed that way to Kiron, but evidently Aket-ten had some arcane way, unknown to mere males, of telling them apart, for she looked at the left-hand one of the pair and said sharply, “Nofret! What are you doing here?”

The handsome young woman turned grave, faintly shadowed eyes on Aket-ten and said simply, “Escaping.”

Both of them put down bundles that had been hidden beneath their capes. “We assumed that the worst had already happened to us,” Marit said bitterly. “We were wrong.”

“What worst? ” asked Aket-ten. “You haven’t been banished or anything, have you?”

Nofret sighed. “No. But believe me, it is a good thing that Toreth and Kaleth taught us about making many plans, well ahead of time, because we needed them.”

Marit nodded, and the two of them pulled off their rain capes and settled down onto cushions that the other boys offered. Kiron noticed that they were dressed—oddly enough—in simple clothing, more like that one of their servants would have worn. “This afternoon the entire court was summoned by the Great Ones after a long morning Council meeting; the first we knew about it was when the Great Ladies sent us to be bathed and dressed by their servants. By the time we got our wits about us, we were already in a procession, and the next thing we knew, a new royal clan had been made, and we were being betrothed to a pair of Magi we’d never seen before.”

“And if they’re twins,” added Nofret, with a lift of her eyebrow, and a toss of her head, “ I am a dragon.”

“What did you do?” asked Gan, looking utterly stunned.

“We went along with it, of course,” Nofret replied. “The vows aren’t valid. These men aren’t in a royal clan, no matter what the Great Ones decree; the laws of the gods say that you can’t create a new royal clan unless an old one dies out. And even if both our betrotheds were dead, which they aren’t, we can’t be wedded to anyone who is not of royal blood without our consent, which we did not give and were not asked for during the ceremony. No matter what words were spoken over us, we are not betrothed in the eyes of the gods, and that is all Marit and I care about.”