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.
Kaleth looked up at Kiron’s entrance. “Good, you’re here.
Now
we have all the pieces. Everything just erupted; there was no warning. All at once, we’re looking at a full-scale invasion of Alta. The war we’ve had up until now is nothing to the war that we’re about to see.”
“The Tian army is on the move,” said Ari, studying the map with a frown in his face. “They’re actually invading Altan lands right this moment; they’ve crossed the last border and they’re into the delta.”
“And I think I know what the Magi are saving Aket-ten for,” Kaleth said, bluntly, looking up at him as he winced. “Look here, what season is this?”
“Rains,” Kiron replied, wondering why that should be relevant—except that the season of rains was a miserable time to be invading the delta. Normally, the Tian army remained on simple border guard during this season. If they were invading now, they must have a compelling reason to think they needed to.
Or—perhaps the advisers believed there was a compelling reason to mount their invasion in the face of constant rain and rising waters.
“And the Magi can’t use the Eye when it’s dark, or there’s cloud cover,” Kaleth said, his mouth set in a grim line. “The Magi now posing as advisers to the Great King of Tia know that. They were waiting for the rains. They must have been.”
Kiron nodded, interest fading fast. What did he care what the Tian Magi did or did not decide to do? What could this invasion possibly matter? How could it change anything?
“It looks like real war between the two sets of Magi,” Kaleth told him. “I don’t know what happened that the ones with the Tians got exiled from Alta, but it looks as if it isn’t just that they’re battening on the war dead that keeps them there, and it certainly doesn’t look as if they’re cooperating with the Altan Magi. They seem to want it all, and they’ve now got the army to get it for them.”
“But—if the Magi are really fighting each other—” Could this be the key to getting Aket-ten free?
“We forgot one thing,” said Ari, as Kiron nodded. “And so did the Tian Magi. The Magi have been—and are—weather workers.”
Kiron shook his head. “Which means what, exactly? They haven’t the power anymore to send a storm down on the Tian forces—”
“No,” Kaleth agreed grimly. “But if they use Aket-ten,
they have the power to clear the storm over Alta City.
At least, for a little while.”
He blinked, and suddenly it all made sense. “The Tians were waiting for the rains to invade!” he exclaimed. “But the Altans were waiting for them to invade and get as far as where the Eye would reach before clearing the storm!”
It all made perfect sense. Horrible, perfect sense. Once the Altan Magi knew that their exiles had attained positions of power in Tia, they must have known what would happen, that their exiles would challenge them. But the Altans had the advantage; they knew what the exiles knew, so they could predict what the exiles would do.
Kaleth nodded. “I told you it would all become clear when we put the pieces together. They planned this all along, as soon as they knew the Magi that had been ousted had gotten established in Tia. They
knew
the Tian Magi would know the Eye didn’t work without sun, and that the rains would be the only safe time to invade.” He shook his head. “The exiles are playing right into their hands. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they’ve pulled back some of the Altan army to tempt them. Certainly by the time we found out about this and went to look, the Altans had already fallen back to here—and here—”
Kiron nodded; it made altogether too much sense to him, too.
“Look here—” Lord Khumun pointed to where squares of stone were playing the part of the Tian forces on the map. “This is what Gan and Huras reported to me when I sent them to scout, and the Tians are definitely being funneled.”
“But how does this have anything to do with Aket-ten?” he demanded desperately. “How can this possibly connect to her?”
“It’s the timing; Aket-ten is captured, and then by midafternoon, the Tians are making their way across Altan lands,” said Lord Khumun. “It’s too much to be a coincidence, not when a fast courier could have gotten to those in command of the Altan forces by early afternoon, telling them the time has come to start the trap. If the Tians had been waiting for an opportunity to open up, the Magi just gave it to them on a platter.”
He shook his head; not that he disbelieved them, because it made entirely too much sense, but what would the Magi have done if they hadn’t gotten their hands on Aket-ten?
“They probably planned this a long time ago,” Kaleth mused aloud. “Then they lost the Winged Ones. They must have been frantic, trying to figure out how to get the power they needed to clear the skies and use the Eye.”
“Frantic enough to be willing to try draining a Healer by touch,” Ari said, with a nod. “And knowing they could lure some of us there by putting the Healers under siege is probably why they didn’t just lure a few of the Healers by touch out and have their men seize some of them. When they discovered who the Jouster was that they had captured, they must have been beside themselves with glee.”
Kiron gritted his teeth. He could well imagine it, especially the couple of Magi that had personally given Aket-ten trouble in the past. “Or because the Healers aren’t going anywhere alone anymore, not after some of them have been drained by stealth in the past.”
“They only have to clear the clouds for a little while,” Kaleth went on. “For that, given how strong Aket-ten is, and that she hasn’t been drained over and over—well, they probably only need her to give them open skies for as long as they want. They’re going to allow the Tian army to close in, then close the jaws of the trap on them and wipe them out with the Eye.”
“And then—then they can take Tia at their leisure,” Lord Khumun said somberly. “Aket-ten is their key. Small wonder they want to use her now, before the Tian Magi know they have her. And the Tians’ greed has made them play right into the Altan Magi’s hands.”
“We have to get to her before—” he couldn’t finish the sentence; he choked on the words. “But—where?”
“Ah. That part I know,” Kaleth said, much to his relief. “The Tian priests came to me with the news of the invasion, then, when I sent Jousters to scout, turned their attention back to the Magi of Alta. The Tian Far-Sighted Priestesses didn’t see
much,
but one of them did see the single piece of information that was crucial—one of those who sees the future got a brief glimpse of Aket-ten in what I suspect must be the Tower of Wisdom, in a chamber with some mechanism holding an enormous piece of crystal. We believe, the Haras priests and I, that in that future moment they were preparing to clear the sky, then somehow tie her power into the Eye.”
All in an instant, his mind went from grief-clouded and leaden to alert and sharp as a shard of obsidian. Hope! Now he had it; now he could think again.
“We’ll have to divide the wing,” he said, thinking aloud. “Five need to go after the Tian forces; I’m sure the Magi calling themselves advisers will be with the army, and we can’t risk
them
getting away.” He paused. “That should be you, Orest, Menet-ka, and Gan under Kalen, I think. Get both Menet-ka and Orest away from the rescue attempt, so they don’t feel as if they need to kill themselves in the rescue or have the opportunity to try something without thinking first.”
“Good,” Ari said, nodding. “And the rest—except for you, that is—under Pe-atep to run a feint, while you go for the actual rescue, I presume?”
He rubbed his eyes with one hand, and felt something inside him falter. “I—that’s what I want, but it might be better if you were the rescuer, because I’m afraid
I
might try something stupid—”
“You won’t,” Ari said flatly. “And of the two of us, you are the most likely to be able to get into that Tower. Avatre will do anything you ask; I do not have that level of cooperation from Kashet. No, you’ll keep your head, and you do the rescue attempt while we run a feint, let them think we’re trying to rescue Healers.”
“All right, then.” He closed his eyes a moment to think. “You’re right in thinking our best chance is to rescue her out of the Tower; I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where they’d be keeping her before then. We’ll have to come in above the clouds for the surprise to work in our favor, and it will have to be at night.”
“Kashet would never do that,” Ari said firmly. “He went in where there was light, but he will refuse to land in the dark. And on the top of the Tower? Impossible.”
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.