Aerie

complicated matters, and so far the scribe had had no luck.

But to have her simply turn up like that—He was happy—oh yes—but he was as much shocked as he was happy. And she looked old, old and bitter.

Well . . . given all that she had suffered, it was no surprise that she looked bitter. Really, he should have been surprised if she had not.

Still, Jouster Peri-en-westet was Altan, and would take care of her until he got back. He ran on to the Palace, trying to regain a sense of calmness. This was duty, and duty came first. Duty always came first.

Where did she come from? Where has she been? And how did she come to the Dragon Courts? And as important as how, why?

She couldn’t have been looking for him. She had been as shocked to see him as he was to see her.

By now, he was a familiar sight in the Palace. Servants parted crowds to let him through. He arrived at Nofret’s rooms without any significant delay.

He half expected Rakaten-te to be there, but it was another, a junior priest of Seft, who waited diffidently for his arrival.

Nofret gazed at him somberly, as did—Ari! He had not expected the Great King to be here in the middle of the day, but one look at Ari’s face told him why. The Priests of Seft had no good news for the Two Lands.

“This will be ill hearing,” Nofret said, as he bowed to her and to Ari, then waited for the latter to wave him into a seat. “The Chosen of Seft had already sent word, so I decided to wait until we were all here to listen to it.”

Kiron nodded and sank into a chair. The young priest cleared his throat with care.

“Our sort of hunting has found a place where the darkest of magics have been performed,” the priest said. “And, as was warned, there are many deaths in that place. It is not far from where your trail from the city ends—

“So the deaths were probably the children and elderly.” Kiron felt ill. The priest nodded.

“We all will want you to confirm that,” Ari said into the awkward silence. “When you go back out there, we’ll want you to find the place where the bodies are.”

Kiron nodded; there didn’t seem to be any sort of graceful response to that order. Then again, a graceful response really wasn’t what was needed. “Has anyone been chosen to go from your temple yet?” he asked with great care and deference.

“The Chosen of Seft believes it will be himself, but the god himself will decide,” the priest replied, with a look that warned he should ask no further. Kiron closed his mouth on all the other questions he wanted to ask. “And, as yet, we have been as unable to See past that barrier as the priests in Sanctuary.”

Kiron shivered at that, for it implied that the magic that had hidden the town was either very dark indeed—or very powerful. Or both.

“There is a flavor about it of the Magi,” the priest was continuing. “But also a flavor of another sort. Something very . . . foreign. And that is all that I can tell you at this time about the magic. As for when you must be ready to leave, Lord Kiron, it will be at the end of three days. By then, the Chosen will have completed his preparations.”

Kiron nodded, as did Nofret and Ari. “By then, Aket-ten will be back,” Nofret observed, “and Kiron will be free to go. You had better begin making your own preparations, Kiron.”

Taking that as a dismissal, Kiron bowed and backed out of the room.

Nofret and Ari scarcely noticed, so deep were they in plans with the young priest. This was fine; Kiron had no real head for strategy, and he knew it. The best thing he could do now was to go back to the Dragon Courts and begin writing out his requisitions.

And, of course . . . deal with his mother. Who was probably still waiting for him

He made himself hurry.

He had expected to find Letis with Peri. Instead he found her waiting in his rooms.

“By the gods, it is you,” she said from out of the shadows of the little palms planted in their jars beside the pool. “Kiron—you look so like your father—”

And then she began to weep, and he caught her in his arms. He felt helpless and awkward then, and gradually it dawned on him why.

This might be his mother, but she was also a stranger to him.

The mother he had loved and cherished was gone into the past. He had no doubt that this was his mother. The trouble was, he had no idea who that person was anymore.

And he had even less of a notion how to let her know this thing.

FOURTEEN

THE Chosen of Seft might be blind, but there was nothing wrong with the rest of his senses. He sat in a shaded corner of Avatre’s pen, wearing the same tunic as Kiron himself, and because he was not used to riding, a pair of the leggings that Heklatis called “trews” such as the barbarians wore, to keep his legs from being chafed raw on the inside. “Curious,” he said to Kiron, as the latter patiently tested every bit of harness and rigging on an increasingly impatient Avatre. “You seem both apprehensive and relieved at the prospect of this journey. I can understand the apprehension, but not the relief.”

Kiron took his time in answering the implied question, and not just because he was trying to avoid that particular subject. Even if Avatre was getting impatient, Kiron had no intention of taking off without making sure of every piece of equipment, every buckle, every strap. There would only be three people out there this time; himself, the Chosen, and—Aket-ten. If anything went wrong, there were only two that really had the skill to fix things. And if one or both of those two were incapacitated, the result could be very ugly. So Kiron was taking every step he could think of to prevent anything from going wrong.

The Chosen said that the fewer living people there were in the area, the easier it would be for him to “read things.” He did not specify what “things” he would be reading, nor how, and Kiron was not entirely sure he wanted to know. The more he learned about magic, the less he wanted anything to do with it himself.

The surprise had come when the Chosen informed all of them that he wanted Aket-ten to accompany them and assist him. Kiron gave the priest a sideways glance as he tightened another strap, then adjusted it minutely. And not for the first time, he wondered; could they really trust this man?

The reasons seemed good, sound, logical as he enumerated them for the little conference. Aket-ten was still technically a priestess, was definitely still a Winged One, had been trained to assist at rituals. “She also has been used by the Magi,” the Chosen had said bluntly. “That left a mark on her that I can use for many purposes. It is one of the laws of magic, that things that have once been touched still retain the traces of that touching.”

Oh, Kiron could certainly understand it. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. And there was no real reason why she shouldn’t go, no pressing duties with training her wing, because she had returned from Aerie with two victories. Huras, the patient, had agreed to be the trainer for her new Wing—and word from Haraket that he was, grudgingly, giving living room to the Queen’s Wing in Aerie once they were trained and on duty. Aket-ten was thrilled, though she would have been less than thrilled had she heard what Huras had to say privately about it.

“Haraket’s still predicting doom,” the big man had said with a rueful smile, and an apologetic shrug. “He says that the girls will only serve to make the men act like idiots. But, he says, ‘Better to have them acting like idiots under my nose, than having them finding excuses to fly off to Mefis every time I’m not looking. ’ He also thought it might discourage them, or even make them quit, if they left the luxurious life they have here and had to put up with what our life is like.”

Haraket definitely had a vindictive streak in him. And no, although Peri was used to hard living, none of the priestesses had ever done without very much. When they discovered the state of the food, the fact that they were unlikely to get twice-daily baths or relax in bathing pools, and that everything was in short supply, it would not make them happy. They would not like Aerie, or at least, they would not like it as it was now.

Well, none of that was going to happen until the little dragons were old enough to fly the enormous distance from Mefis to Aerie. And that would not be any time soon. They weren’t even flying yet, much less flying with weight or for any distance at all. Who knew what would happen between then and now?

But having Huras in charge of training the Queen’s Wing freed Aket-ten for this journey, which pleased the Chosen. Kiron was still not entirely certain how he felt about her coming with them. On the one hand, it would be very good to have Aket-ten to himself for a while. On the other hand, it meant that she was going into a potentially very dangerous situation. On the one hand, she was capable and competent. On the other hand, this was magic,