Kiron cursed under his breath, but also gritted his teeth on a savage grin; his blood was up, just like Avatre’s and Avatre had an advantage that wild dragons didn’t.
She had him.
Avatre saw where they were heading, and put on a last burst of speed to try and cut them off before they reached their shelter, but it was too late; they made it into the crack as she dove desperately through the dust at what she thought was the last of them.
Her reaching talons came up empty, and she had just enough room to end in a controlled landing before she smacked into the rock face. She skidded to a halt in the fine dust that passed for sand in this part of the desert, tucking her haunches under her and back-winging as Kiron clutched the saddle and waited for her to stop.
The sudden quiet as she shook herself and hissed at the rock told him that the oryx herd had done exactly what he expected them to do. They hadn’t run on wildly through what was probably a maze of passages—the passage they had ducked into wasn’t all that wide, and they had probably slowed to a walk the moment they knew that they were safe from Avatre. And now they had stopped, somewhere inside that canyon, where Avatre could still sense or scent them. She knew they were there, and she was angry. And there they would stay until Avatre went away, safe, where she couldn’t reach them.
But he could.
He slid off her back, and got his sling and stones ready, and smiled to himself as he realized what a good team the two of them made. She would not go hungry or frustrated for much longer. And those oryx were about to get a big surprise.
He wouldn’t have tried this with a herd of wild oxen, but the oryx wouldn’t charge him the way oxen would.
Avatre was still hissing and tearing at the ground with her talons to vent her frustration and anger at missing her kill; he pounded her shoulder to get her attention, and was rewarded with a snort and an astonished look as she craned her neck around to peer at him. Her golden eyes flashed as the pupils pinned, then dilated, in her excitement.
“They haven’t beaten us yet, my love. Up!” he said, suiting the gesture to the word. “High up, my girl! Fly!”
She gave him a long and level look—but this wasn’t the first time he’d hunted on the ground while she waited in the air and her frustration vanished as she realized what it was he meant to do. She pushed herself off, the dust blowing up in a huge cloud that made him cough and cover his mouth and nose, as he headed into the narrow crack of a canyon.
The transition from light into shadow was startling; the dust didn’t follow him for more than a pace or two, the temperature dropped, and he had to pause a moment for his eyes to adjust. He found himself in a passage just big enough that he couldn’t quite touch the walls when he spread his arms wide, with a worn path running right down the center of it. Rough stone walls towered high above his head, showing mostly the effect of wind erosion to smooth them out. When the wind whipped down through this place, it must howl like a jackal.
The crack was one of those twisting and turning affairs, and he went around a couple of corners before he found the oryx that Avatre had scented. In fact, he practically blundered into them. The crack had begun to widen at that point, and they were milling about restlessly; his sudden appearance took them entirely by surprise, as their startled snorts proved.
For a moment, they just stood and stared at him out of astonished eyes, then a couple of them danced sideways, as if trying to make up their minds whether to run or stand their ground.
A stone from his sling against the leader’s flank and a wild shout decided them.
Within moments, the herd was off and running again, this time concentrating on him, and not on whatever was above. Which was exactly what he wanted, of course. He had no intention of trying to bring any of them down with his sling; he was going to drive them ahead of him until they burst out into some place where Avatre could get to them.
Whooping at the top of his lungs and swinging his sling, he urged them on, his voice echoing above the pounding of their hooves as they charged away from him. At some point this crack would widen out enough that Avatre could dive in from above, and by now she had already found just such a place. She was probably perched on the edge of the cliff above, waiting to plunge down as soon as the herd galloped into ambush. He and she had played this game before. The thunder of hooves echoed back to him, along with squeals and grunts—and then, a scream.
He put on a burst of speed of his own. The crack did widen out, rather abruptly, turning from a passage to a sun-drenched dry valley, and as he ran out into the sunlight, it was to see the last of the oryx vanishing into another canyon, and Avatre in the middle of the space with her talons on not one, but two dead oryx, feeding on one with a savagery born out of frustration as much as hunger.
But that wasn’t what stopped him dead in his tracks. Avatre was devouring her prey in the middle of a deserted, and heretofore hidden, city.
EIGHT
AVATRE was oblivious; she had an oryx in front of her, another beside her, she was ravenous, and all she was interested in was getting herself on the outside of that beast. Kiron, however, stared in astonishment, and it wasn’t until his mouth began to dry that he realized it was hanging open and shut it quickly.
Kaleth had told him he would find a city. The thing was, Kaleth had not told him what kind of a city he would find. He had expected something like Sanctuary, newly uncovered in the sand, perhaps with the rounded lines of Sanctuary’s buildings. And truth be told, he had expected something more derelict even than Sanctuary, with roofs gone, walls caved in. Even if it was made of that strange stuff Sanctuary had been built of, the legends all said Sanctuary had been buried (and preserved) in a single day. He calculated the new city to have been abandoned over the course of years.
This was a city hidden in canyons, and it had not been built of the hard stuff of Sanctuary. It had not been built at all. It was carved out of the living rock of the cliff face. It didn’t look abandoned at all—well, except for the fact that there were no doors, and no shutters for the windows. Otherwise, he would not have been at all surprised to see people come hurrying out of those doors to see what the noise was about.
There was—so he had been told—a temple like this in Mefis, the funerary temple for one of the many Great Kings buried across the river in the City of the Dead. As he stared at building after building, turning slowly in place, he could see resemblance to the buildings of Alta and those of Tia, but not as if this was a blending of the two styles. The style of carving here was older, simpler—more as if this was the father of both styles, and each had gone its own separate way.
The amount of work here made him shake his head a little in disbelief. Every bit of cliff face was carved, in clean, simple, geometric lines. And these buildings were not single-storied, either, which made a vast difference from both Altan and Tian styles. Two and three sets of windows looked down into the canyon from each site.
There must have been thirty separate “buildings” —or at least, building facades—in this canyon alone. Each one was subtly different from the one next to it. That might reflect the tastes of the original owners, or it might reflect the passage of time—each building having been carved later or earlier than the one next to it. The pale gold of the sandstone of these cliffs made the whole city look as if it had been made of that precious metal.
He had to know what these buildings looked like inside! Were they just caves, or were they as elaborately carved inside as out? Could people actually live in them?