Sanctuary

“The soldiers were just all over her before I could even get Bethlan’s head around. They’ve got her, Gan—the Magi have her. And you know what they almost did to her before! The soldiers spotted me and started shooting, and I couldn’t hold Bethlan; she was scared, scared by seeing Re-eth-ke drop out of the sky and hearing both Re-eth-ke and Aket-ten screaming, scared of the arrows, I couldn’t hold her—” Kiron heard the emotion, the thought behind the words. I failed her.

I should tell him it’s not his fault— But he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Menet-ka what he himself did not feel. It was Menet-ka’s fault, and his. He should have trusted the presentiment of disaster. Menet-ka should have kept her from going down into the fog; should have insisted on turning back the moment they saw the fog.

Menet-ka looked up, past the others, and saw him. The others followed Menet-ka’s gaze, and an echoing silence fell, one those silences in which, no matter how it is broken, it just sounds wroing.

He stared at them, stared at their stricken expressions, at the guilt in Menet-ka’s eyes, at the pain in Ari’s face. Stared, and finally, because there was nothing he could say to any of them that would not simply have brought more pain, he turned away.

He stumbled blindly back to Avatre’s pen, falling into walls and bruising his shoulders, as his eyes burned and he held back his tears by main force of will. He couldn’t weep until he got some privacy. But once he was back in Avatre’s pen, he threw himself down onto the sand next to her, and howled his grief to the stars.

They left him alone. Not even Heklatis came near him. And that suited him just fine, because he didn’t want their pain, he wanted only his own; he didn’t want their apologies, he wanted to nurse his anger against everyone who hadn’t listened to him and had encouraged her in this madness. But even the anger wasn’t enough to overcome his own guilt or his anguish, and he wept into Avatre’s neck until he had no more tears to weep. He pillowed his face against her cheek, moaning like a dying animal under his breath, clinging to Avatre’s neck as the only place of safety in the world, as the sun rose, and burned its way across the heavens, and sank again. Someone brought Avatre food; he wasn’t sure who. They had to bring the meat right into her sand pit, for she wouldn’t come out to them.

In fact, Avatre refused to leave him, even long enough to eat. So long as he was clinging to her neck, she showed no signs of budging. So whoever fed her brought her food to her, and she ate it with one eye on Kiron, her tail coiled protectively around him.

Which was how Kaleth found him, at some point before sunset.

He heard the footsteps and looked up dully. “What?” he asked, not really caring to hear the answer, and hoping that Kaleth would respond to the rudeness by going away.

But Kaleth didn’t go away. Instead, he squatted down in the sand next to both of them.

“Don’t give up. She’s alive, and she’s not even hurt,” he said. “We’ve been able to see that much. They’re saving her for something—”

“They’ve killed her dragon,” Kiron interrupted, harshly. “They shot Re-eth-ke right out from under her. They don’t have to do anything to her to destroy her now! Don’t you understand that?”

Kaleth sat back on his heels, and watched him measuringly. “We aren’t even seeing a fraction of what is going on,” he replied, with an urgency that penetrated even Kiron’s grief. “Listen to me—they won’t hurt her, not right now. They’re keeping her for some purpose—and that gives us a chance; we can get her away. She’s tough. She knows we won’t give up on her, and she knows we’ll do anything we can think of to rescue her. She’ll stay strong as long as there’s any chance at all. And we will find a way—”

His heart leaped, and he seized Kaleth’s shoulders and shook him. “You’ve Seen it?” he gasped, hope making him choke on his own words. “You’ve Seen us rescuing her?”

And his heart plummeted again, as Kaleth shook his head. “Nothing so sure—nothing so definite,” he admitted. “But—”

“Then stop toying with me!” He shoved Kaleth away. “Don’t give me hope and snatch it away again!”

“Now listen to me, damn you!” Kaleth burst out, grabbing his shoulders and forcing him to look into Kaleth’s eyes. “In all of the futures I’ve seen that end in Sanctuary prospering, Aket-ten is there!” He gave Kiron a little shake. “Why would I lie to you? That was why I wasn’t concerned, why I thought, since she felt so resentful about being protected, I should just encourage you to let her do this thing!” He shook Kiron again hard, twice. “I cannot See the way to those futures, but I have Seen it, and I know that once we have all the facts, what is happening will make sense and we will find a way to rescue her!”

He looked into those deep, black eyes, could not look away, and found his heart rising again, just a little. Kaleth believed this. Kaleth had not been wrong yet. . . .

“Be patient!” Kaleth said, with a bit less force. “I don’t know how this will be, but—the only futures I have seen that do not have her in them are futures we do not wish to live in anyway.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and tried not to think of the other implications of that statement—that the fact that Aket-ten had been taken meant that losing her had doomed them all. . . .

“Wait,” said Kaleth. “Hold to hope. That is all I can tell you right now.”

He stood up, and although Kiron would have done the same under ordinary circumstances, all he could do was to sag back against Avatre’s shoulder and stare. “You ask a great deal,” he managed. “And you promise very little.”

“That is so I do not play you false,” said Kaleth somberly. “Now—I go to consult with the Tian priestesses, the Thet priests, the Winged Ones, and Heklatis. And, shortly, what we know, you will know.”

With that, he turned and left Avatre’s pen.

Avatre blew into his hair and whined. He looked up at her numbly and realized that she must be hungry. Whoever had brought her meat, it had only been for the morning meal. The fact that she had put off her hunger while he needed comfort almost made him burst into tears again.

But weeping wouldn’t get her fed, and she had been patient long enough.

He got to his feet, and headed for the cold room and some of the stored meat that was there.

If he did not yet have hope—he would try not to sink into despair. Not yet anyway.

After all, even if there was nothing else for him, there was always revenge.

NINETEEN

SOMEHOW he stumbled through taking care of Avatre; Pe-atep tried to get him to eat and drink something. He managed the drink, but his throat closed when he tried to swallow food, and he ended up giving it to one of the dragon boys. After Kaleth and Pe-atep left him, he sank back into leaden despair. Easy enough to say “hold to hope,” but there didn’t seem to be any hope to hold onto.

If anything, knowing that Aket-ten was probably alive made it all worse. He kept thinking of the bleak despair in that former Winged One’s eyes, and wondering how long it would take before the Magi burned her out. Or, with Re-eth-ke gone, would she even care anymore? He remembered only too sharply how, faced with losing Avatre, he had intended to die rather than lose her. Aket-ten had been immeasurably closer to Re-eth-ke than that. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how she must be feeling now.

He curled himself up against Avatre’s warm side, as she crooned over him with anxiety. He closed his sore eyes, mostly because they hurt, rather than with any expectation of falling asleep.

I’ll just rest here for a moment, he thought, insofar as he could still think at all—

And then, the next thing he knew, Huras was shaking him awake, and it was black night.

“Wha—” he said confusedly.

“Kaleth wants you,” the big fellow announced. “Now.”

He got awkwardly to his feet, stiff and sore from sleeping in such a tortured position. “What is it?” he asked, still sleep-fogged.

Huras shook his head. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “But messengers came in not long ago, and then half the Tian priests came running over. I think something really unexpected and big has happened. I’m supposed to get the others.”

He helped Kiron to his feet, and then disappeared, leaving Kiron to make his own way.

When he got to the audience chamber, the place was lit, and Kaleth, Lord Khumun, and Ari were all bent over a map that was spread out on the floor of the chamber because it was too long for a table. “—so they’re coming here and here,” Kaleth was saying, tapping the end of a long stick on some place on the map.