wouldn't have been any place else able to hold all of them all at once, not even the Jousters' Hall where Vetch had been freed from Khefti.
The sun shone down on a sea of heads—heads in simple, striped headcloths, shaved heads, heads with the hair cut short and precise, and here and there, the shaggy, long-haired head of a serf. The colors of the wall paintings blazed in the sun, and there was a murmur of voices, a hum that filled the space between the walls.
At the far side of the court, a simple, head-high platform had been set up. Standing up there were the Commander of Dragons and several priests in formal attire—the sort of robes and jewels and regalia they had worn when they had led spell-casting processions around the compound after the first storm. Other than the wall paintings, they supplied the only spots of color in the courtyard, for the garb of nearly everyone from the compound itself was uniformly made of sun-bleached linen. Very few wore ornaments other than the hawk-eye talisman either.
The Commander stood with his hands on his hips with the bright sun shining full down on him, surveying the crowd below him, looking remarkably casual and completely at ease. Once again, he was dressed simply, with none of the showy jewels usually sported by the nobility, and only the Haras pectoral spreading jeweled wings at his bare throat, and the royal vulture at the front of his blue, close-fitting war helmet, marked him as any higher rank than a senior Jouster. Seeing him so very calm evidently was having an effect on the inhabitants of the compound; some of the tension was out of the air, and the murmurous sound of many conversations did not have that frantic edge to it that Vetch had expected.
Finally, the Commander held both hands up peremptorily for silence, and he got it, as the crowd hushed.
'Hear the words of the priests of the gods of Tia,' the Commander said, his words ringing out, strong and deep, into the quiet. 'The gods of Tia are stronger than the gods of Alta; her priests are wiser and more powerful, and in no way can the Altan magicians hope to prevail over those of this land. The gods of our land will prevail.'
'Which only means the shave-skulls haven't figured out what the sea witches are doing, nor how to prevent it,' someone muttered below Vetch, and his neighbors nodded in agreement.
Vetch had to agree with that; if the priests had successfully countered the sea witches' magic, they'd have boasted about it here and now. If they'd been able to find Seers who could get past the protections that hedged in Altan places of power, they'd have trumpeted their findings. This was all empty air.
But the Commander wasn't finished. 'The priests of our land are wise, learned, and powerful,' he continued, and Vetch thought he heard just a tinge of irony in the man's voice, 'But no man goes hunting with only duck arrows in his quiver, when he does not know what other quarry he might encounter. The Great King, may he live a thousand years, also sent eyes and ears that walk upon two bare feet into the land of the Altans, and this is what he found—
Vetch found himself leaning forward and holding his breath, and he was not the only one.
'The sea witches have a new magic, but as it is Wind and Water magic, it is subject to the season and the conditions of the season,' the Commander told them, making sure each word was plain and unambiguous. 'As the season progresses from Growing to Dry, there will be less water in the air, less-favorable winds. The storms will come farther and farther apart, and lose strength as the days pass and the Dry comes upon us, until at last, they will fade to a memory and we need cope only with the Dry, as ever. Perhaps the Dry holds terror for the enemy of the North, but we know it as an old neighbor. And our priests strive to see that we can learn to turn it against them, as they have sent their sea-born storms against us.'
A collective sigh of relief arose from the crowd; if, like Vetch, some of the other Altan serfs felt disappointment, they were careful not to show it.
Now there were some murmurs beginning, and in a moment, they would probably be in full roar of conversation. Once again, the Commander raised his arms for silence.
'This is not to say that the sea witches may not find ways of raising storms in the Dry,' he cautioned. 'I do not need to do more than mention the Midnight kamiseen, I think…'
His words had a chilling effect upon the crowd. The Midnight kamiseen was so named, not that it arrived in the dark of the night, but because it threw so much sand in the air, with such terrible winds, that it blotted out the sun. When such a storm blew up, it was as dark as midnight at midday. There was little hope for anyone caught without shelter in such a sandstorm, for it was literally impossible to breathe. One could actually drown in sand.
'Nevertheless, this is a magic of Wind only!' the Commander added. 'And the sea witches' power has ever been that of Water, not Wind alone. Haras of the all-seeing eye is the guardian of the winds of Tia, and of the Jousters, too, and you can rest assured that His hand is over the Jousters and their dragons, and all those who serve them! And since it is a creature of Haras, the priests of Haras intend to learn to turn it northward, and give the witches a taste of true power!'
Small comfort, that, to those gathered below Vetch. Still, it did not do to say so aloud. The priests might hear—and withhold their protection from the grumblers.
It was always a chancy thing, to arouse the enmity of the priests. They might choose to ignore you, or they might not.
Vetch knew, however, as did every other Altan-born serf, that the sea witches' power was so integrally tied in with water that it was highly unlikely they could call up a Midnight kamiseen. Still—if the storms that had been
