Sanctuary

The Magus wrenched free of him, leaving his cloak in Kiron’s hands. Kiron flung it aside, and the Magus went for him again, all of his attention on the knife in Kiron’s hand.

Behind them, the Eye was glowing white-hot, too bright to look at directly, spinning so fast that the hum had become a howl.

The Magus grabbed with both hands for his knife hand, intent on getting the weapon away from him, and suddenly Kiron had a flash of inspiration.

He let the Magus have the knife, just let it go as soon as the Magus got his hands on the hilt. And in the moment of confusion, while the Magus stared at the weapon he was now in control of, Kiron pulled the club he was carrying out of the waistband of his kilt, and cracked it down, hard, on the offending wrist.

With a screech of pain, the Magus dropped the knife from fingers that suddenly didn’t want to work anymore.

On the backswing, Kiron connected with his temple with a solid thunk that nearly knocked the Magus over.

The Magus staggered sideways, rotated on his heel, stumbled blindly toward the Eye and—

And crossed the brass circle inlaid in the floor.

And that was when every plan Kiron had made went right out the metaphorical window.

The Magus went rigidly upright, and began to scream, as his body began to—

Well, Kiron could only think “unravel” because as Kiron stared in horrified disbelief, it looked as if invisible fingers were tearing him apart, bit by bit, except the bits didn’t bleed. All the bits were sucked into the glowing vortex that the Eye had become as they were torn off. It started at his hands and feet, and as his feet vanished, he just hung in the air, as if suspended on a hook, like a discarded garment.

The screaming went on and on, as the unraveling went on, and the Eye glowed brighter and brighter with every little bit of the Magus that it sucked into itself. And part of Kiron wanted to stand and watch in stunned amazement—

But the part of him that was in control scooped up the knife from the floor, and ran to where Aket-ten was standing with her back against the wall, her hands over her head, tied at the wrist to a brass ring embedded in the wall. As he sawed through the leather thongs biting into her wrist, the screaming mercifully stopped.

But the Eye continued to spin—

There was a feeling of intense pressure as he cut through the last of the thongs, and then, a kind of dull whuff, as if something very heavy, but soft, had been dropped in the middle of the room.

As he untied the gag holding a ball of rags in her mouth, Aket-ten’s eyes went wider than he’d ever seen before. And when he turned to look, he understood.

The Eye was awake, and evidently had a mind of its own about what should be done now. That beam of light, thicker than his thigh, and too bright to look at, lanced out of the window, and was burning its way across the buildings of the Central Island. Flames rose beneath the Tower, and the sounds of screams and a terrible heat and the smell of scorched rock surrounded him.

The Eye had already incinerated the Royal Palace by the time he turned, had decimated the buildings around it, and was cutting a swathe across the Island toward the canal. When it reached the edge of the canal and kept going, water bubbled and exploded in steam where it passed.

“How do you stop this thing?” he yelled at Aket-ten over the discordant howl the thing was putting out.

“I don’t know!” she shouted back.

And just as if the situation they were in wasn’t bad enough, he felt the stone of the Tower beneath him tremble, and his stomach lurched with that all-too-familiar, sickening sensation that marked an earthshake.

No time for argument. He grabbed Aket-ten’s wrist and ran for the window—not, thank heavens, the one the Eye was aiming its light-weapon out of.

He thrust his arm out of it, and groped for the rope.

It wasn’t there.

His stomach lurched again, this time with fear. Oh, no—where’s Avatre? Did she fly off? Did the Eye frighten her? Great Hamun, is she anywhere nearby?

Panicked now, he whistled, praying she was near and could hear him, because if she wasn’t—

And Avatre swooped down out of the sky, just as the Tower shook and swayed under his feet again, and out of the window he could see the ripple of the earthshake move across the land and water, as if someone had shaken out a rug.

It flung them toward the window as Aket-ten shrieked at the top of her lungs; it tossed Aket-ten over the sill, while he shouted for Avatre and the dragon tried desperately to maneuver closer.

“Kiron!” Aket-ten screamed—the rest was undecipherable.

“Hold on!” he screamed back. He hung on with one hand to the windowframe, precariously sprawled over the windowsill; Aket-ten had been pitched right out of the window and only his grip on her wrist kept her from plummeting to her death below. A second jolt rocked the Tower and broke his grip on the stone, and he felt himself rolling over the windowsill and out the window, completely unable to stop himself, pulled by Aket-ten’s weight.

Avatre twisted herself over sideways in some impossible maneuver his eyes refused to accept just as he began to fall, and somehow she got herself halfway under him, with Aket-ten still hanging desperately onto his left hand, and he sprawled over the saddle, holding on desperately with his right. As the beam of the Eye began to go everywhere with the rocking of the Tower, Avatre lurched over in the air and kited sideways, trying to compensate for their weight, trying to get down to the ground before they fell—

No— Aket-ten’s hand slipped a little out of his grip, as she continued to scream at the top of her lungs, her eyes fixed on his and full of terror. Sweat poured down his arm, making his hand, and hers, slippery. He tried to pull her up to where she could grab a harness strap or something, but though his arm screamed with the effort, he couldn’t raise her at all. She flailed, trying to catch his hand with her free hand, but couldn’t seem to get a grip.

No! Her hand slipped a little more, despite the fact that they were both holding on as hard as they could. Now instead of holding to her wrist, he only had hold of her hand. And his fingers were loosening. . . .

NO! He felt it—she was still slipping, as the tower collapsed behind them in a tumble and roar of stone and dust, as the earth continued to shake, as Avatre fanned her wings and tilted over sideways, desperately trying to keep them from falling—

She screamed, he screamed—

And then, lumbering clumsily out of the dust cloud, canted to one side, an indigo-and-silver miracle.

Mouth gaping open with effort, Re-eth-ke tucked herself under Aket-ten just as her fingers slipped out of his.

And caught her, as they had all practiced with sandbags, sliding her head under the falling human and forcing the victim to slide down her neck to her shoulders. It was perfect. It was beautiful. He shouted aloud with elation.

Aket-ten sprawled athwart her dragon’s neck and shoulders, and as Re-eth-ke sank lower with every wingbeat, she clung on desperately without saddle or reins to help her.

There was a wound in the dragon’s shoulder that had been stitched shut, and holes in the webbing of her wing. Still she bravely fought to get her rider to the ground safely—which, in her mind, quite clearly meant away from the Central Island, across the canal.

Across the canal, where a line of fire divided the half-ruined Temple of All Gods from the armed force that had been besieging it (and which now was fleeing to a man). Well, staggering away, because the earth was still convulsing, and mounting wreckage made every step hazardous.

Re-eth-ke landed heavily in an open courtyard, with Avatre right behind her. Half a dozen Healers came running into the center of the courtyard to take Aket-ten from Re-eth-ke’s back, but she slid off by herself, and flung herself into Kiron’s arms as he jumped down from Avatre’s saddle to meet her.

Ah, gods! I have you, I have you safe at last!

“I knew you’d come!” she sobbed, as she clung to him, her wet cheek pressed into his chest. “I knew you’d come! I knew it!” She was trembling all over, his brave Aket-ten, but so was he.