No— Aket-ten’s hand slipped a little out of his grip, as she continued to scream at the top of her lungs, her eyes fixed on his and full of terror. Sweat poured down his arm, making his hand, and hers, slippery. He tried to pull her up to where she could grab a harness strap or something, but though his arm screamed with the effort, he couldn’t raise her at all. She flailed, trying to catch his hand with her free hand, but couldn’t seem to get a grip.
No! Her hand slipped a little more, despite the fact that they were both holding on as hard as they could. Now instead of holding to her wrist, he only had hold of her hand. And his fingers were loosening. . . .
NO! He felt it—she was still slipping, as the tower collapsed behind them in a tumble and roar of stone and dust, as the earth continued to shake, as Avatre fanned her wings and tilted over sideways, desperately trying to keep them from falling—
She screamed, he screamed—
And then, lumbering clumsily out of the dust cloud, canted to one side, an indigo-and-silver miracle.
Mouth gaping open with effort, Re-eth-ke tucked herself under Aket-ten just as her fingers slipped out of his.
And caught her, as they had all practiced with sandbags, sliding her head under the falling human and forcing the victim to slide down her neck to her shoulders. It was perfect. It was beautiful. He shouted aloud with elation.
Aket-ten sprawled athwart her dragon’s neck and shoulders, and as Re-eth-ke sank lower with every wingbeat, she clung on desperately without saddle or reins to help her.
There was a wound in the dragon’s shoulder that had been stitched shut, and holes in the webbing of her wing. Still she bravely fought to get her rider to the ground safely—which, in her mind, quite clearly meant away from the Central Island, across the canal.
Across the canal, where a line of fire divided the half-ruined Temple of All Gods from the armed force that had been besieging it (and which now was fleeing to a man). Well, staggering away, because the earth was still convulsing, and mounting wreckage made every step hazardous.
Re-eth-ke landed heavily in an open courtyard, with Avatre right behind her. Half a dozen Healers came running into the center of the courtyard to take Aket-ten from Re-eth-ke’s back, but she slid off by herself, and flung herself into Kiron’s arms as he jumped down from Avatre’s saddle to meet her.
Ah, gods! I have you, I have you safe at last!
“I knew you’d come!” she sobbed, as she clung to him, her wet cheek pressed into his chest. “I knew you’d come! I knew it!” She was trembling all over, his brave Aket-ten, but so was he.
As he held her, it dawned on him now just why she had been so aggressive and ready to fight, rather than sunk in mourning. She had known, of course, that Re-eth-ke was alive, something none of the rest of them had any way of knowing, and that had bolstered her courage and her spirits. She had what he did not, the bond of mind-to-mind communication with her dragon, so she had known all along how hurt Re-eth-ke was, that her injuries were being tended to (which they obviously had been), and what was happening to her. Very probably, it had been the Healers themselves who had gone out to bring the wounded dragon into the shelter of their temple when the guards had taken Aket-ten away.
And the moment that the injured dragon had sensed that Aket-ten was in deadly danger and afraid, she came, as fast as her damaged body would carry her. Given how slowly she was flying, she had probably begun looking for release from the moment that the Magus worked that magic that had so frightened them both.
But now, she needed human reassurance as well.
For that matter, so did he. He had come close, so close to losing her. He wrapped his arms around her and held her; his heart seemed to swell until it occupied his whole chest, and all he could think was how he never wanted to let her go. “I’d come for you no matter where you were,” he murmured into her hair. “I always will.”
Another earthshake rocked the courtyard, throwing them against each other. The dragons flattened out their necks and whined, looking anxiously from side to side, and as the shaking went on, something odd, some inner prompting, made him look up and across the canal to the central island——the central island. Which was sinking. Or least, the buildings were sinking. Even as he watched, bracing himself against the trembling of the earth, arms holding tight to Aket-ten, a great plume of mixed sand and water erupted from the place where the Tower had stood, and the remains of the Temple of Hamun vanished from sight.
TWENTY-ONE
WHEN the shake stopped, Kiron reached out to seize one of the Healers without letting go of Aket-ten. “Where are—” he began.
“The rest of the Jousters have already taken some of our people to safety,” the Healer replied, even though she was shaking with reaction. “They said they are coming back—”
“We cannot count on them returning soon enough, nor often enough to get you all out,” he interrupted her. “You have to get off this ring, maybe out of Alta altogether. The shocks are getting worse and—” He let go of her arm and gestured at the Central Island, at buildings half-sunk or completely vanished. “—Look. I don’t know why this is happening, but it is, and it isn’t—”
Another shake began, he and Aket-ten held each other up, and the water of the canal began to heave and splash. Across the canal a spout of sand and water erupted in a new place, and what was left of the Palace began to sink.
This one was definitely worse. Colonnades around the garden went over, one after another, and several people were knocked off their feet. And the Temple of All Gods had been made to withstand shakes.
“This isn’t right!” the woman cried, when the shake was over, from where she was kneeling on the ground. “They’re getting stronger!”
“And longer. We have to get you out of here.” He thought, hard. “On the water is safest. Have you boats?”
She nodded, relief suffusing her round features. “Enough for everyone, I think, since so many of us have already escaped. And people who know how to row them.” Without waiting for direction, she got to her feet and moved purposefully in the direction of the Healers clustered around Re-eth-ke.
One of them shortly came over to him. “We can get out by water,” he said soberly, “But there are hundreds, thousands of people on this ring.” And he looked at Kiron expectantly.
Kiron blinked, realizing that this man, this Healer—who was by no means an inexperienced man by his age—was looking to him for an answer.
And one came to him. “Aket-ten and I can get where no one else can, and see what no one else can—from above. And the people of Alta know Jousters, and probably trust Jousters more than anyone else right now.”
Aket-ten wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and gently shoved at him to get him to loosen his arms. She stood away from him a little bit, and sniffed, but raised her chin. “I am Aket-ten, Winged One, Daughter of Lord Ya-tiren. People will listen to me. We will guide folk off this ring, and off the next, until they are safely away from danger. But Alta is dead, and there is no saving it.”
The Healer dropped his head, and when he raised it again, Kiron saw the marks of grief on his face. “You say no more than what we have thought these many moons, Winged One. But it is an ill moment, hearing it spoken aloud.”
“Someone must say it, or we will all perish.”
The speaker was an old woman, hair entirely white, falling in the “royal” hairstyle of hundreds of tiny plaits, each ending in a gold bead. She stood very erect, and her eyes, dark and shadowed, looked directly into Kiron’s. He had never seen her, but he knew who she was, the Eldest, the Chief Healer of the Temple of All Gods. “We must save what we can. We will take the boats and make for the harbor—”