“Even more careful,” Kiron countered. “But—flying by night, even under a full moon? It’s never been done! The dragons are asleep as soon as the sun goes down!” He tried, and failed, to imagine flying in the darkness. It would be worse than flying in a storm, because no matter how high you went, you wouldn’t be able to see anything. How could you know where you were? Even at the full of the moon, how could you tell what was below you, or even how near it was?
“So there’s no reason not to try, because the Magi won’t be expecting it,” Kaleth countered serenely. “We don’t need to get them far, just out of the city proper, and then our human smugglers can take it from there.”
“We can take them to my sister Re-keron’s estate,” Lord Ya-tiren said instantly. “She has been one of our agents from the first. I can have word to her by the time the moon begins to wax. She can hide some and scatter the rest, so that they come to Sanctuary by ones and twos. No one will trouble her; she is known to take dangerously ill patients, and if she bruits it about that she has those with a pox—”
“But we need more than that!” Kiron said, throttling down his emotions as best he could. Not that he didn’t want to help the Winged Ones escape, but he wanted to have a reasonable chance of getting everyone out alive! “We need something to distract the Magi and their men from the temple, or we will never get more than a few Winged Ones away!” His stomach clenched, as he thought of trying to maneuver Avatre down to a landing when he couldn’t even guess where the ground was. “The only way we can get them is off the roof, and the only way we can do that is if we have light up there to see where to land. We need something so distracting no one will notice lights on the roof—” He shook his head. “I never thought I would ever say this, but we need something like an earthshake—”
Kaleth went white, and Marit put her hand on his arm.
He straightened, eyes wide, pupils dilated, and Kiron felt a touch of chill on the back of his neck
“What do you see?” Marit asked, urgently.
He stared straight ahead. “Fire—” he whispered. “Fire and smoke in the city, and fire from the sky, and then—then the earth crying out—”
He went rigid, sitting bolt upright, with his arms stretched rigidly along his thighs, and the chamber fell silent. The hair stood up on Kiron’s arms, his entire body went cold, and he had seen this before. Kaleth was in the grip of a vision, but not the “ordinary” sort granted by the powers of a priest or a Winged One. This was a vision sent straight from the hands of the gods, and their presence hung heavily in this room—now he was no longer Kaleth, once Prince of Alta. Now he was Kaleth, who spoke for the gods themselves.
“Train your dragons, Wingleader,” Kaleth said, his voice echoing hollowly, as though he spoke in a room much larger than this one. “Train them to trust you to be their eyes in the darkness. And make your ways of escape, Altan Lord, and ready your refuge. Watch well, Tian Priests, for only you will know when the time has come to act. This one will speak with the Winged Ones this night, and none shall prevent his voice, nor theirs, from being heard. Unhallowed fire will come from the sky, and the earth shall cry out after, and that will be your moment. So prepare to use it, and use it well, for there will not be another chance.” Kaleth’s face had a kind of inner light to it, as if it was a lamp made of alabaster, and his eyes looked into places no human was meant to see.
Kiron stole a glance at the Tians, who had never seen Kaleth speak as the Mouth of the Gods before. From their widened eyes and startled expressions, they knew very well what they were seeing and hearing. And they were also astonished beyond measure.
Has it been that long since one of theirs had that power? he wondered.
Well, it didn’t matter, for a moment later, that inward light faded, and Kaleth somehow—diminished—and became himself again. And, with it, that paralysis compounded of awe and a touch of terror eased, and it was possible to move.
Move, the Tian priests certainly did. Pta-hetop threw himself on his face, and the rest of the Tian priests followed suit before he was halfway to the floor.
“Oh, do get up,” Kaleth said mildly, rubbing his eyes and looking down at them. “Worship the gods, not their instrument. Do you honor the scalpel—or the surgeon? The hammer or the jewelsmith? The pen or the scribe? It is no great virtue of mine that makes me the tool of something greater than I.”
“Your humility is—” Pta-hetop began.
“—justified,” Kaleth said firmly. “I am a man, I have a gift, but it belongs to the gods and they may take it from me if they choose, just as they gave it to me. Now get up, so that I can tell you what they showed me. I hate speaking to the backs of heads.”
Slowly, and with some reluctance, the priests rose and resumed their places, although they still regarded Kaleth with trepidation and awe. Well, Kiron couldn’t blame them. He’d seen Kaleth serve as the Mouth several times now, and it never failed to make him want to fall on his face.
“At some point before the Winged Ones run too short of supplies, the people of Alta are going to take note of the fact that literally nothing is going into or out of the Temple of the Twins,” Kaleth said, as Marit held his hand. He was looking rather white about the lips, which was normal after he’d been granted a vision or used as the Mouth, and in this case, he’d been served with both. “I think it will be on or about the time of the full moon, but my vision didn’t give me too many details of that sort. They’re going to mob the temple to demand that the Winged Ones be let out. Finally, the Magi are going to loose the Eye on them.”
“No!” That cry of anguish and protest was wrung from several throats, Kiron’s among them, when Kaleth held up his hand.
“Don’t worry. They haven’t yet completely gone mad—they’ll be creeping the fire along at less than a walking pace. They’ll mean to frighten the mob away, not to really kill anyone.” Kaleth frowned. “I don’t think it’s out of kindness, though. I think it’s for some other reason. Maybe they’re afraid if they use the Eye openly on people who only want to protect their Winged Ones, the people will turn on them. Or maybe they think if they indiscriminately or openly kill too many with the Eye, people will flee the city in such numbers that there will be no one left to serve them. I don’t think even the army would remain if they overstepped this time.”
“They’ll use the Eye—” Heklatis repeated, and snapped his fingers. “By the gods! I just put things together! Using the Eye will trigger an earthshake, won’t it? And that’s our distraction!”
Kaleth nodded, looking sick but resolute. “Yes, it will. As it has from the beginning; most of us never noticed it because they used the Eye so seldom. I don’t know why it invokes an earthshake, but it disturbs something beneath the surface of the earth, and the more they use it, the worse the shake. By moving the beam of the Eye slowly, they will be using it for quite a long time, and the earthshake that follows, which will come right after sunset, will be very bad indeed.”
“Very bad?” Heklatis sucked on his lower lip. “Length of shake proportionate to time of use, chasing a mob—it’s going to be worse than anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.”
“Yes,” Kaleth replied, and shook his head. “Terrifying, and even the Magi will be afraid. There will be fires all over the city, a great deal of chaos, and the guards watching the temple will, for the most part, flee. And that will be the distraction you need, Kiron. For that night, and the next three, there will be no one watching the temple; instead, the Magi will order the doors blocked or sealed shut, certain that the people will have too many problems of their own to think about releasing the Winged Ones, and equally certain that the temple will also have its share of deaths and injury. They will trust to the Eye and the earthshake to drive the Winged Ones out and into their hands.”