Sanctuary

Kiron nodded. “Kaleth, have you any idea when this business in the Tower is going to happen? Aside from tomorrow, that is?”

Kaleth shook his head regretfully, then brightened. “But—the priests say this kind of magic takes time, so they’ll probably begin as soon as the sun is up.”

“Which means I should be in place that night.” He pondered that for a moment. “Avatre can’t take a full night of cold on the bare top of the Tower. And I can’t get into the Tower from the ground.” He thought for a moment more. “I need to talk to someone who knows magic. I need to talk—”

“To a Thet priest,” said a deep voice from the door. “And here is one.”

One of the tallest and most heavily muscled men Kiron had ever seen outside of the army or the Jousters stood in the door.

“Be-ka-re at your service,” he said soberly. “The High Priest tells me you have need of magic. Tell me what you need, and I will tell you if any of us can do this.”

“A way to keep Avatre warm all night at the top of a tower,” Kiron said instantly. “And I need a way to know, from above the clouds, that the Magi’s Tower is right below me.” Now he had something he could do.

These were simple things, and yet—so crucial, and so impossible to achieve without magic.

Be-ka-re pursed his lips, then looked up at the ceiling. Kiron waited; he got the impression that the priest was thinking hard and rapidly.

Finally, the reward for his patience.

“I think,” Be-ka-re said, “we can do this.”

As the last light faded, Kiron and Avatre circled above the clouds over Alta City. No one could see him from here; the only problem, of course, was that he couldn’t see anything. And he needed to wait until darkness fell, while people’s eyes were still making the adjustment from light to dark, and a shadow could fall from the clouds and have less chance of being seen.

In his hand was a disk made of glass, and on that disk was a glowing spot that moved as he moved. When the spot was in the center of the disk, it meant he was directly over the Tower.

So small a thing, and it would not last for long. By midnight, its power would be exhausted. But by midnight he would be on the Tower, and would not need it. Without it, he would have to come in beneath the clouds and approach the Tower from a distance, drastically increasing the chance of being seen. With it, he could drop down from directly above.

The Tower, it seemed, sent out magic. The little glowing spot was a reflection of that magic. The disk was not, as the use of the Far-Seeing Eye was, an active thing that could be blocked. It was more like a mirror, a passive thing showing only what another Magus might see merely by looking in the right way.

“Magi and those of us priests who also know the ways of magic can see this,” Be-ka-re had told him. “I merely give you a way to see what I can see.”

The last of the sun tipped below the clouds, which turned blood-red below him. He hoped it wasn’t an omen; Avatre continued to circle at his direction, though she was growing uneasy, as her frequent glances down showed him. She knew it would be dark soon, and she didn’t like to land in the dark any more than any other dragon did. But other than her glances downward, she did nothing; she trusted him.

When the last red of sunset had left the sky, and stars had begun to appear in the east, he centered the glowing spot on the disk, and sent Avatre plunging down through the clouds. She could not have been more willing; she pulled in her wings and dove, trusting to him to be her eyes. As the drop sent his heart racing and his stomach clenched, there was also a moment of eye-stinging awe that she did trust him so much.

It was nothing like the wild plunges he and Aket-ten had made when they seeded the winds with the plant disease that rendered tala useless. There didn’t seem to be any lightning anywhere around, and if there was wind, it was too little to take note of. What there was a great deal of, however, was rain. Avatre was forced to moderate her fall, spreading her wings and turning the plunge into a tight spiral downward.

He was soaked within moments of passing into the clouds, as if someone had emptied an entire bath over him. And the farther they dropped, the worse it got until, as they broke through the bottom of the clouds, he had begun to wonder if he was going to find himself swimming to the Tower.

This was the central island of Alta City, the place where the elite of the elite lived. Here, too, stood the temples to the most important gods, the Royal Palace, and, of course, the Tower of Wisdom, the tallest building on the island, and the symbol of the power of the Magi.

Though even in the semidarkness the damage wrought by Eye and earthshake on the rings was obvious, there was no obvious sign of any such damage here on the center island. There were no buildings in ruins, no burned-out places—

But Kiron didn’t have much time to look either; he and Avatre were coming straight down to the top of the Tower to avoid being seen, and the faster he got her down, the better.

And, of course, Avatre was all but blind in this light, depending on him to tell her what to do in time for her to do it.

At the height of a single-storied house above the top of the Tower, he signaled her to backwing and start to land. She responded instantly, fanning her wings furiously and tucking her hindquarters under, then stretching out with her back legs as she felt for the surface she trusted would soon be there. This was the moment they were most likely to be seen—or heard, as her wings pumped, creating a kind of thunder.

He felt it when a single talon touched that surface; she backwinged a little harder, and he felt her hindquarters stretching, then as she got her weight onto the surface, he felt her legs take it. She folded her wings and settled onto the Tower top with hardly more than a whisper of sound.

Kiron sagged against her neck for a moment in relief. She’d never done this in the full dark before, and yet she had trusted him, trusted him even though they had no more communication than shifting weight, hand signals on her neck, and whispered voice.

He told her fervently what a clever dragon she was, then slipped off her back and onto the wet sandstone of the Tower. He saw with relief that there was a knee-high parapet running all around the edge. So Avatre would not be immediately visible.

Of course, when dawn came, there was the little problem of a scarlet dragon perching on the top of the pale stone of the Tower of Knowledge. Not all of her was going to fit behind that parapet.

But first, she needed to be fed.

There were two bundles of food for her, in baskets on either side of her flanks. Not butchered meat; this was all whole small animals, things she could, and would, swallow whole. There would be no blood and no mess.

He emptied one pannier in front of her, and she gulped down everything while he untied the other and put it aside. He’d feed it to her in the morning, before he went—inside.

He quickly untied the bundle he’d brought from behind the saddle and shook it out as she finished the last of her meal.

It was, to all outward signs, a simple huge square of canvas, like one of the awnings that used to keep rain off the pens, or a sail of the sort you would find on any vessel moving up and down the Great Mother River and her daughters. But the moment he shook it out, this expanse of canvas began to radiate the same heat as a flat rock on a pleasant summer day.

The same heating spell that kept the sands of the dragons’ pens hot kept this piece of fabric just as warm— courtesy of the Thet priests. This was how Avatre would be able to endure the cold and rain of the night. He shook it out over Avatre and made sure that she was entirely covered, before climbing in under it with her.

His clothing quickly began to steam; this was every bit as hot as the sands. Avatre was already relaxing.

It’s a pity this is so complicated a bit of magic, he thought, trying to keep his mind on something other than the fact that Aket-ten was somewhere below. Well, perhaps someday . . . someday when there are more of us. And no Magi.

The canvas had another use besides keeping Avatre warm all night. It was nearly the same color as the sandstone; if Avatre kept her head down and her tail tucked in, chances were no one would see her from directly below. And it wasn’t likely anyone across the canal would look at the Tower long enough to notice a lump on the top of it.