“So, we have the vanished priests, who might have been done away with by evil Altan sea witches,” Ari continued. “And to this, you add the cattle raids and the night demons. Well, who could have sent those evil creatures but the Altans again!”
“And then, the last piece falls into place,” Kaleth said sadly. “I have seen this. I wish I had not. When the fear and hatred are built up, then comes the next edict. The gods have turned their faces away, not because they disapprove of what the Great King and his advisers decree, but because they grow weary of softness, and to bring them back, it is time to worship their harsher faces. It is time to purge the nation of those who do not support the Great King in all he says and does. It is time to rid the country of those who believe the time has come to speak of peace.”
Kiron winced. It was true enough that the gods always had two faces—a kind and gentle aspect, and a darker side. Even the Altan goddess of Healing was also the Dark Lady, the bringer of the sleep that ends in death. But the Tian gods took this to an extreme—the god of justice was also the god of revenge. The goddess of love was also the goddess who devoured men, heart and soul. Even the great sun-disk who brought life and light was also the Scorcher of Earth, who withered all before him.
Pe-atep took on a stubborn look. “The people will not abide it,” he said. “Look what was happening in Alta before we fled! They will grow weary, worn down by fear until they are accustomed to it—and then they will see the truth! When they realize they have little left to lose, the veil will fall from their faces and they will rise up and—”
“And that will be long in coming,” said Ari dully. “The truth is, the less people have, the more fiercely they cling to it. And the less likely they are to risk losing what little they have. Not all slaves are like Baken, striving to be freed. Most think only of the next day, the next round of bread and jar of beer, and no further than that.”
“Left to itself, it would be long in coming,” Kaleth agreed. “But it will not be left to itself. There is Sanctuary; we will not sit idle while the Magi have it all their own way.”
Ari roused at that and shrugged. “True. And even though it may be turned against us, we must have those cattle. There will be hungry mouths to feed, and no way to feed them, else. The Bedu have secret canyons in which to hide them, bringing over only what is needed, for we surely have no way to feed so many beasts here. Are you two going to take Kiron’s offer?”
Pe-atep looked at Kalen, who grinned. “I suppose we must,” said Kalen. “If only to show him how a true wingleader handles his men!”
Cautious exploration of the new city had proved that there were two water sources—or, rather, that the hot spring fed into an underground cistern that also collected rainwater from all over the city, mingling the two sources. The constant addition of springwater kept the cistern fresh, and by the time the sulfurous water from the spring was diluted by the rainwater, it was as drinkable as the source beneath Sanctuary. A wing of wild dragons was using the city to den-up in, but the mere presence of the Jousters and their dragons was making them uneasy, and Kiron suspected that they might well choose to move on without being harassed or driven out.
And refugees from both Alta and Tia continued to trickle in—by ones and twos and small family groups now, rather than entire Great Houses or temples full of priests. Kaleth and the priests of both nations had managed to establish escape organizations for those who were desperate enough to try hunting for a myth rather than endure another day in lands in which the Magi were growing ever more powerful. There were still Tian temples—those in which there was not, and never had been, a tradition of magic—where the priests still remained in place. The Temple of At-thera, for instance, the goddess who, in one of her aspects, was the Divine Cow, the Holy Nursemaid who nurtured the rest of the gods as children with her sweet milk. She was a minor deity, and her priests and priestesses often came from rural and modest backgrounds. There was no great prestige in serving her, so no great families ever offered their children to her service. But there were small temples to her scattered across the countryside, and it was easy to move escapees from one to the other, as humble pilgrims looking for the blessing of children, unnoticed, until one moved out of Tia altogether.
Most of these new refugees were Healers, the sort who, like Heklatis, used magic in their Healing, and to say that they arrived in Sanctuary profoundly divided in their emotions was something of an understatement. Healers had a sense of duty so powerful it bordered on the suicidal, and it took a great deal to persuade them to abandon their patients and their duty. But many of these men and women also reported disturbing encounters with Magi, encounters that were disturbing because afterward, they could neither remember what had happened, nor exercise their magic for a time. A typical example—a call would come concerning a brain-storm, the sort of thing that only a Healer who used magic could cope with. He or she would follow the servant ostensibly sent to fetch him; the servant would lead him to a veritable wreck of a house that looked utterly abandoned—
But of course, many homes in Alta looked like wrecks these days, what with all the earthshakes. Plenty of people went on living in the ruins—where else could they go? So the Healer would go in, and find he had been called to the bedside of a Magus and——and he would come to himself back at the Temple of All Gods with no recollection of how he had gotten there. He would find, if he tried to use his Healing magic, that it was as if there was a well within him that had been drained dry. Within a few days, he would be able to Heal again, but this experience would be nothing like the sort when a Healer simply overexerted himself. It was—so one reported—actually painful to work Healing magic for a time, as if something had been ruthlessly torn out within him, with no regard for what was damaged when it was stolen. And that was more than enough to send most of them looking for an escape.
Not all of them came to Sanctuary. Plenty went to Akkadia, which had a fine school of Healing, and where Healers of every nation, even nations at war with Akkadia, were considered sacred and always welcome. Some took ship with the tin traders, for Healers were always welcome on such long and uncertain voyages, and some in Tia went south, into the lands called the Kingdom of Saambalah, ruled by the Lion Folk, strong and skillful warriors with blue-black skin who sometimes came north into Tia to serve as fighters for hire. There, Healers were so eagerly sought after that they were considered royalty of a kind, and commanded the highest wages—wages which were necessary, since there was no temple to support them. Five and six villages would pool their resources in order to attract a Tian Healer and keep him in comfort and even luxury.
There was a long tradition of alliance and mutual cooperation between the Lion Folk and Tia. Once every few generations, one of the Lion Kings would even send a daughter to the Great King of Tia as a wife, to renew the bonds of alliance between the two lands.
“And what will happen when the Lion Folk learn of what the Great King’s advisers have done to the acolytes they took, do you think?” asked Lord Khumun of the latest arrival, a Healer with the blue-black skin of the southern race, the child of one of those well-paid warriors and his wife, who had elected to settle in Tia rather than return home when his fortune was made. The Healer was a very old man, his head of curly hair as white as clouds was a startling contrast to his dark skin.