By midmorning the thermals were strong enough for the dragons to take to the air again, spiraling up them lazily, looking for all the world like bits of debris caught in a dust-demon, only moving much slower than that. On a whim, Kiron decided to lead the wings a little off the direct route back to Aerie, to cover part of the route between there and the eastern border. Not that there was an actual road; there was not enough traffic for that. There might once have been a trade route, but that had ended when Aerie had been abandoned. Now anyone who wanted to cross that expanse of wasteland did so navigating by the stars and the sun, or went farther south or north to an established route. Even the garrisons of the army there went farther south, though straight across would have been far faster.
He was glad that he had when they were roughly halfway home.
The dot of color on the bleached earth caught his eye first; curious, he veered Avatre toward it. But as soon as he was able to make out what it was, he urged her to greater speed.
Because the blot below that lay without moving was the combined bodies of a man and a camel, the man slumped over the camel’s neck, the camel collapsed sideways. And as soon as Kiron landed, slid down Avatre’s shoulder and ran to them, he knew that both were dead. But the most critical thing about the bodies, aside from the terrible arrow wounds, was that the man wore the simple kilt, headcloth, and arm-band of a Tian border guard. And the last of the trail in the sand made it clear that he had come from the eastern border.
The rest landed, and stared with him at the poor victim, most showing at least as much alarm as he felt, if not more.
“Who—who did this?” someone ventured at last.
Kiron shook his head. The bodies were hit with several arrows, wounds that the victim had tried to bind up without much success. Kiron’s heart was thudding with alarm. There had been no stirrings of trouble from the eastern border in centuries. The position of border guard was, as a consequence, not sought for. The guards were far from most of the amenities of civilized life, and spent most of their time walking exceedingly boring patrols, and occasionally sorting out the altercations in tiny villages dotted along their jurisdiction.
But now—
This—this was a very bad sign. This did not look like the result of a private quarrel. If it had been—the man would have been tended to by his own garrison healer. If he had done murder, he would not have been trying to get back to civilization. Could it be the work of bandits?
Well it could, but if they had gotten fierce enough to take down the border guards . . . it would need the army to take them.
“Whoever did it, this fellow tried to get word back—” Huras ventured.
They all looked at Kiron.
“Huras,” he said finally, “you go to Sanctuary and get a priest to look at this body, or at least someone to fetch it back there. The rest of you go on back to Aerie. I’ll take word to Mefis.”
No one argued. Kiron remounted Avatre and sent her up, his mouth dry, his heart pounding.
It wasn’t that the man was dead. Kiron had seen dead men in plenty, far more than he liked to think about. He’d killed before today; not gladly, and certainly not easily, but he had done so. No, his fear was due to the fact that this was a sign, a sign that something was very wrong on the eastern border. If this man was the lone survivor of a massacre—
Well, that was high on the list of what could have happened. He must have been the only one left, or the only one still mobile, otherwise there would have been someone else with him. Something had gone badly wrong out there, and it must have come with no warning.
He stopped only long enough to claim a meal for Avatre at a temple; he was in such a hurry that he didn’t even notice which god the temple enshrined. Once she had eaten, he pushed her ruthlessly into the sky. She was in good condition; though tired, she was far from winded, and she obeyed his commands without a protest. She did keep glancing over her shoulder at him as she flew, as if she was picking up some of his anxiety. His mouth felt dry, no matter how many times he pulled at his waterskin, and he tried to reckon how long it would have taken that border guard to get to where he had been found. It didn’t look to Kiron as if he had been lying there for more than a day—and he would have thought, with all of the dragons in the sky, someone would have spotted him if he had been lying there for much longer.
I wish someone had spotted him before he died, Kiron thought, and then, with a flash of anger at himself, he realized that someone might have. But lone riders crossed that stretch of desert all the time, and none of his Jousters had ever been instructed to examine or even make a close pass to try to identify them. If they had . . . they would have seen the dried streaks of blood on the camel, the man . . . they would have known both were dying, and might have been able to get the man to a Healing-Priest in Sanctuary in time to save him.
Now all they had was a mystery.
Just as the sun-disk touched the horizon, the first of the buildings of Mefis came into view, and recognizing that rest and food were close in reach, Avatre found a little more energy and pushed herself to a little more speed.
He welcomed her effort and urged her on, leaning down over her shoulder to help her. She recognized her old pen and backwinged straight down into it, landing lightly.
The two pens on either side of hers showed recent occupation, and those on the right both held blue-and-green dragons, two of the four he had sent here as couriers. Their Jousters were, as he had trained them, giving their charges the final grooming of the day—more for affection and bonding than for any practical purpose. They both ran into the pen as Avatre landed, clearly recognizing him.
“Find me someone who knows who is in charge of the border guards,” he said without preamble, sliding down out of the saddle.
“That would be the vizier—” said the first, Wesh-ta-he, doubtfully. “Nef-kham-het. But he is surely at his meal—”
“Kiron would not have flown here if it had not been urgent, you goose!” exclaimed Aket-ten from the doorway. “Come on, Kiron, I’ll take you to him.”
“Take care of Avatre!” Kiron ordered. “She has flown long since her last meal.”
Aket-ten turned and trotted down the long, high-walled corridor between the mostly empty pens. Even though the complex was empty, someone had still stocked all the torch holders along the walls with torches, and as they turned a corner, they passed a servant lighting them. The passages had a haunting familiarity to them; the beautiful, larger-than-life-sized paintings of gods and goddesses and dragons, the flickering torches, the smell of hot sand . . .
He wanted to ask Aket-ten what she was doing here, but she didn’t slow down long enough for him to get in a word. As soon as they left the Dragon Courts, she broke into a run, pelting down the broad avenue leading to the Palace as if she were a runner-courier herself.
She headed not for the Palace itself but for the row of Great Houses near it, where important officials lived. Kiron almost balked at that; this might not be a matter for an overseer as important as that—
But then again, it might. And it was not his call to judge.
There were a few people out on the avenue in the dusk, one or two servants trotting along, and some of those important folks in their litters, borne aloft by slaves and lit by servants with torches. None of them even glanced at the two Jousters. Those servants had errands on their minds, and the important folk were likely thinking about what they were going to say and do at whatever banquet or meeting they were going to.