Which was how Kaleth found him, at some point before sunset.
He heard the footsteps and looked up dully. “What?” he asked, not really caring to hear the answer, and hoping that Kaleth would respond to the rudeness by going away.
But Kaleth didn’t go away. Instead, he squatted down in the sand next to both of them.
“Don’t give up. She’s alive, and she’s not even hurt,” he said. “We’ve been able to see that much. They’re saving her for something—”
“They’ve killed her dragon,” Kiron interrupted, harshly. “They shot Re-eth-ke right out from under her. They don’t have to do anything to her to destroy her now! Don’t you understand that?”
Kaleth sat back on his heels, and watched him measuringly. “We aren’t even seeing a fraction of what is going on,” he replied, with an urgency that penetrated even Kiron’s grief. “Listen to me—they won’t hurt her, not right now. They’re keeping her for some purpose—and that gives us a chance; we can get her away. She’s tough. She knows we won’t give up on her, and she knows we’ll do anything we can think of to rescue her. She’ll stay strong as long as there’s any chance at all. And we will find a way—”
His heart leaped, and he seized Kaleth’s shoulders and shook him. “You’ve Seen it?” he gasped, hope making him choke on his own words. “You’ve Seen us rescuing her?”
And his heart plummeted again, as Kaleth shook his head. “Nothing so sure—nothing so definite,” he admitted. “But—”
“Then stop toying with me!” He shoved Kaleth away. “Don’t give me hope and snatch it away again!”
“Now listen to me, damn you!” Kaleth burst out, grabbing his shoulders and forcing him to look into Kaleth’s eyes. “In all of the futures I’ve seen that end in Sanctuary prospering, Aket-ten is there!” He gave Kiron a little shake. “Why would I lie to you? That was why I wasn’t concerned, why I thought, since she felt so resentful about being protected, I should just encourage you to let her do this thing!” He shook Kiron again hard, twice. “I cannot See the way to those futures, but I have Seen it, and I know that once we have all the facts, what is happening will make sense and we will find a way to rescue her!”
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?