Aerie

So now she made as much light work as possible for the nearly invisible girl to do.

But Letis, of course, frowned, then with an exaggerated sigh, picked up the tunic, folded it neatly, and put it on the bed before following Peri into the bathing room. This place was a true wonder to Peri, what with cool water appearing like magic in the bath jars every day. It wasn’t magic, of course; it was the servants, but it might as well have been magic.

Peri dipped out water and cleaned herself, sighing with relief to feel the sweat and grime sluice away. This was usually a peaceful part of the day for her, but Letis clearly had something on her mind, so Peri thought it best to get it over with.

“So Lord Kiron is in Sanctuary?” she said quietly.

“And I would like to know why he is not here, with his mother!” Letis said angrily.

“I presume because his duty took him there. He was escorting a priest, after all. Is there something that you need?” Peri asked. “I can certainly see that you get it—”

Letis gave her a withering look. “Only my son. And what of you? Are you not anxious for him to return?”

Peri flushed a little. Letis took that for maidenly blushes, and finally smiled and nodded knowingly. But the truth was that Peri had been so busy with Sutema that she hadn’t actually thought much about Kiron.

“It would be good to have him here, but his duties truly rest in Aerie,” she pointed out. “And that is likely where he will return.”

That made Letis frown again, and she was off on a scolding plaint about filial duty, the lost farm, and all the worn old complaints, until Peri was close to telling her to hold her tongue.

And long before the screed was over, Peri wished she had.

“Kiron . . .” Aket-ten was shaking his shoulder, as Kiron swam up out of dreamless sleep. He vaguely recalled someone rousing him earlier, about dawn, and steering him into the darkened comfort of the little room attached to the pen and the bed therein. Just as well; he’d have been turned to a strip of dried leather if he had slept out in the sun.

He yawned, stretched, and in a burst of mischief, started to reach for Aket-ten to pull her down beside him.

But the seriousness of her expression made him halt that impulsive gesture before it began. “You look as if we’re needed,” he said instead.

She nodded. “We are. There are three other Jousters here, and Kaleth has a task for us.”

Kiron made a face. “More courier duty—”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. At least, it didn’t seem that way to me. But he wanted me to get you, so he can explain it to all of us at the same time.”

He became uncomfortably aware of how grimy he was, especially after noting that Aket-ten had apparently had a bath and a change of clothing already. “Before I see anyone, I want to be cleaner.”

She nodded. “I’ll tell him you’re coming. Get something to eat, too. It might be a long meeting, I don’t know.”

Well, that was not exactly what he wanted to hear.

Bathed, in truly clean clothing for the first time in days, and fed, he checked on Avatre and Re-eth-ke again. A servant was just taking away the last of the empty barrows, and Avatre had flopped down in the sand again to sleep. Re-eth-ke was already dozing. The fast flight here had taken a great deal out of both of them.

He knew exactly how they felt, too. It seemed to him that he could easily sleep for a week. Unfortunately, he did not have that luxury.

One might have thought that the Mouth of the Gods and his mate would have the use of the largest temple building in all of Sanctuary. In fact, their choice was to have the smallest. Because there were priests of both Alta and Tia here now, and because even the least and littlest cult had sent representatives here, the largest was dubbed the “Temple of All Gods,” and there was a shrine to every deity with a representative here in the city. The next largest was given over to Haras, in no small part because ornamentation and carvings indicated it had once been the home to priests of the hawk-headed god before the city vanished under the sand.

After that, Kaleth had somehow apportioned out buildings to various sects without anyone having apoplexy. How he had done that, Kiron could not imagine. Perhaps the gods themselves had gotten involved.

However it had happened, the end result was that Kaleth and Marit, the Mouth of the Gods and his beloved, ruled over a building of only two rooms. There was the sanctuary, and behind it an all-purpose living space. There was no kitchen, but a kitchen wasn’t really needed, as food was brought over from other temples.

And, in fact, as Kiron entered the door to the sanctuary, he sidestepped a couple of young women in the robes of those who served the goddess Mhat, who were just leaving with large, empty platters. The sanctuary was empty, but voices coming from beyond the door curtain told him where everyone was. Like all buildings in Sanctuary, here in the heart of the desert, the walls were as thick as his arm was long, and had very few openings. Even the customary ventilation slits near the ceilings of Tian buildings were missing here. Small wonder. The sand crept in through every aperture under normal circumstances, and when a midnight kamiseen blew, you could have found yourself buried alive in your own home as the sand flooded in.

So the interiors of buildings were dark, except where there were lamps. But lamps made heat, so for the most part people preferred the dark.

He took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness before walking across the cool stone floor of the sanctuary to the curtained doorway at the rear.

Pushing aside the curtain, he found Aket-ten, Rakaten-te, Kaleth, Marit, and two priests he did not know sharing a somber meal. Rakaten-te turned his bandaged eyes toward the doorway, detecting Kiron’s presence before anyone else did.

“Ah,” he said. “The last of our group.”

Kaleth looked up and nodded at him somberly. “Kiron, come eat, and you will hear what we have been doing here in your absence. It bears directly on what we will be asking you to do.”

With a certain amount of trepidation, Kiron folded his legs beneath him and helped himself to food. One thing was certain, they were eating better in Sanctuary than they were in Aerie.

I am very tired of desert, he thought suddenly. He thought with sudden longing about Alta, the estate of Aket-ten’s aunt. Streams and ponds, and the river running alongside it. Not like Sanctuary, where the air was so dry it sucked water out of you.

He pulled his wandering attention back to the conversation, which had started up without him.

“. . . Heyksin,” one of the two stranger priests was saying somberly.

That got his attention.

“How sure of this are you?” Kaleth asked sharply. His head was up and he frowned, and well he might. This was not good hearing.

The priest shrugged. “We have but a few words from the written tongue of the Nameless Ones, copied down centuries ago, recopied over and over without the scribe that made the copies knowing what the words were supposed to mean. And we have the words on this amulet. Some of the characters are identical. Some are a mismatch. Does that mean that these Magi are of the Nameless Ones? We think so. Our written tongue looks nothing like this, the Bedu have no written language, and Heklatis tells us it looks like no language he knows.”

All fell silent at that point. Kiron felt chilled as a stone in winter. If there was one thing that the people of Tia and Alta feared equally, it was the Nameless Ones. And if they were the ones responsible for the disappearance of a town full of people . . .

“Then I must tell you still another unpleasant thing,” Rakaten-te said slowly, fingering the carvings on his staff. “You know that we of Seft are accustomed to keeping our own counsel and hold many secrets.”

Everyone nodded at that, but none more emphatically than Kaleth. The Mouth of the Gods raised an eyebrow but held his peace.

The Chosen of Seft coughed lightly. “Some seasons back, one of our . . . agents . . . got his hands on a book of spells of the Magi of Alta.”

He could not have secured their attention more fully if he had stood up, smashed Kaleth over the head with his staff, and proclaimed himself the Mouth of the Gods. Every eye in the room was riveted on him, as he sat there with the hint of a sardonic smile playing about his lips.

For that matter, Kiron felt rather as he had right after the Chosen had smashed him in the head with his staff.