Mercedes Lackey - Dragon Jousters 3 - Sanctuary

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Lackey, Mercedes - Joust 03 - Sanctuary (v1.0) (html).html

It was the silent, blue time before dawn. The air hung cool and still above the

pale sand, not a hint, not a breath of breeze, so still one could hear the tick of

grain against grain as a thin trickle at the crest of a dune. The desert stretched out

all around Sanctuary, as if beneath the calming hand of a god. Or a goddess,

perhaps; Nofet, whom the Altans called Nefer-et, the Goddess of Night, had not

yet withdrawn the hem of her robe from the land. Re-Haket, the sun, still

lingered in the Summerland beyond the Star Bridge.

It would not be cool for much longer, nor still.

Kiron stood on the roof of one of the four buildings that surrounded a courtyard

that had been given over for use as the dragons' sand wallow and leaned on the

parapet to watch the dawn come in over the desert. Not difficult; at this point,

although there were still refugees finding their way here all the time with the

help of the Bedu (also called the Veiled Ones), there was no structure in the

entire city that was more than three buildings away from the open sand.

He was, given a choice, not usually awake at this time. But in a little while, the

dragons would, slowly, begin to rouse from their slumber, and they would be

hungry. Here in Sanctuary, unlike in Alta and Tia, there was no butchery from

which to feed them, no Temple sacrifices to provide the carcasses. If the dragons

wished to eat, they must hunt like their wild brethren. Hunts were always more

successful when the Jouster and dragon hunted as a team. So if the dragons

wished to eat, their riders must waken and go out with them.

Kiron might be the first one awake and out today, but by now, the others of his

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wing were stirring at the very least. He generally didn't beat the rest by very

much. Besides, the terrible heat of the desert at midday in the middle of the Dry

meant that their schedules were much changed from Alta. Here, they flew at

dawn and dusk, and spent the hottest part of the day well away from the burning

rays of the sun.

The sun—Altan Re-Haket was not the kindly Solar Disk, the bringer of life here

—oh, no—not "beautiful with banners." He was not even the Re-Haket that the

Tians knew. Here in the desert, he wore the harsher visage of Se-ahketh, the

Tester, the Scourge of Fire, He who had no mercy, only an unwinking Eye that

tested to destruction. Even the dragons sheltered beneath a canopy from His Eye

at midday. Sometimes Kiron wondered—was this where the Magi of Alta had

gotten the idea for their unwinking Eye, their scourge of fire?

Kiron preferred to greet Avatre with a clear head and unclouded eyes, this

morning especially, because it was all the more needful on this day that each

dragon of the wing fly to the hunt and return with prey before the sun reached its

zenith. Because today, they had another reason besides the sun's implacable

hammer to be well in shelter. There would be a great sandstorm today, so said

Kaleth, and Kiron saw no reason to disbelieve him.

And when Kaleth meant a "great" sandstorm, he was not speaking of a quarter

day of wind and blowing sand. Kiron and the others had not yet weathered a

"great" sandstorm, but the Veiled Ones had, and so had Kaleth; the Midnight

kamiseen, the storm without rain that brought the darkness of night at midday.

The Bedu spoke feelingly of a sky black at midday, of wind too strong to stand

against, of air so thick with dust and grit you could not breathe—

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—of a storm full of sand like millions of miniscule knives that flayed clothing

from the body, and flesh from bone, and packed every open orifice with wind-

driven dirt. Get in the shelter of a rock or a dune, and you might survive, if you

could get a clear space for your face, breathe through cloth, and manage to keep

from being buried alive.

There was no sign of such a storm. The thin, clear light and the cloudless sky

held nothing but peace.

Kiron did not trust the promise of such "peace." He trusted Kaleth.

Kaleth was, without a doubt, god-touched. Had he not led them all here, to the

once-buried city of legend they now called Sanctuary? If he said such a storm

would blow up, Kiron would believe him. Certainly the Veiled Ones did. Those

within the area of the storm had either taken themselves out of its path, or moved

into the city, little though they liked living within walls even for a single day.

Kiron nodded to himself, as he looked out over a city that seemed very strange to

the eyes of one accustomed to the straight, clean lines of the buildings of Alta

and Tia. Once, Kaleth (then Prince Kaleth) had been nothing more than the

quiet, studious twin brother of the more charismatic Prince Toreth. True, he,

with Toreth, was one of the four designated heirs to the Thrones of Alta, but

until Toreth had been murdered, he had been something of a cipher to most.

Well, he certainly wasn't a cipher now. A Winged One of Alta, in truth, and a

Priest of Haras of Tia, he spoke for the gods of both peoples.

Gods, which were, Kiron was coming to understand, one and the same. Or at

least, there was so little difference it mattered not at all.

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Kaleth was accepted by the Veiled Ones, the Wanderers of the desert, the Blue

People, as a Seer, a Hand of the gods and a Mouth of the People as well. And if

Kiron only had an imperfect understanding of what that meant, well, he knew it

was a position of great respect, and that was enough for him.

As the city slumbered under the clear, predawn sky, Sanctuary hardly looked

like a city at all, more like a collection of squared-off mounds, very like wind-

sculpted, sand-polished mastabas, nearly the same color as the sand around

them. Hardly surprising no one had found it until Kaleth led the Veiled Ones to

it; even if it had not been buried beneath the dunes, when Kiron thought of a

city, he thought—well, he thought of nothing at all like this. To his mind, the

word "city" called up the image of the tall, angular sandstone or granite edifices

of Mefis, the capital of Tia, carved and painted with images of the gods and

Great Kings, reaching five, six, ten times the height of a man. Or the "city" of his

slave days, the mud-brick, two-storied, mathematically-laid out buildings along

the narrow streets where ordinary folk dwelled. Or, possibly, the white-

columned, long, low buildings of Alta, reflected in the shining surfaces of her

seven ring-shaped canals. He did not think of buildings the color of sand, with

rounded corners and edges, walls as thick as a man's arm was long, and scarcely

an opening to be seen anywhere.

But that was because the buildings of Sanctuary were armored against the

blistering desert heat by the thickness of their stone walls, and against the

sandstorm by their curves. Not even the dragons, much as they reveled in heat,

spent more time in the sun than they could help, once the great disk had reached

past the point of midmorning. Some of the buildings, in fact, were mere

antechambers into a labyrinth of rooms carved out of the rock bed beneath the

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sand, a network of man-made caves which all connected eventually to that most

precious of desert treasures, the water source that lay at the heart of Sanctuary

itself

Water. Water was the reason for anything made by man in the desert. Men

sought for it, fought over it, bartered what was most precious to them for it,

killed and died for it and for lack of it. And yet here, through long years gone,

and until the gods permitted it to be found again, was a kingdom's ransom of the

precious stuff.

Beneath the sand, beneath the rock that lay beneath the sand, there flowed a river

of the purest water, a quiet, steady stream, clear and cool, that widened here into

a channel as wide as Great Mother River, and deep enough that it took an effort

to touch the bottom, before narrowing again and flowing onward toward the

Altan delta. Kiron supposed it must come to the surface at some point, but no

one had yet been able to pinpoint that spot, not even the wise desert dwellers, the

Veiled Ones, who themselves had (until now) not even guessed that here was the

life-giver that fed a great many of their oases. Here was the reason for Sanctuary

existing at all, the reason it had been built in the far past. Here was the reason

why Sanctuary was able to prosper now. Even the Veiled Ones required water,

and in this part of the desert that they called the Furnace and the Anvil of the

Gods, they deemed it more valuable than the caches of gold that the new owners

of Sanctuary were still discovering when wind freed another building from the

grip of the sand.

Which might happen today, actually. Kaleth had hinted as much, calling the

storm the instrument of the gods, and saying that in the past, it had given what

was needed when it was needed. And, certainly, Sanctuary was still surrounded

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Lackey,Mercedes-Joust03-Sanctuary(v1.0)(html).htmlItwasthesilent,bluetimebeforedawn.Theairhungcoolandstillabovethepalesand,notahint,notabreathofbreeze,sostillonecouldhearthetickofgrainagainstgrainasathintrickleatthecrestofadune.ThedesertstretchedoutallaroundSanctuary,asifbeneaththecalminghandofago...

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Mercedes Lackey - Dragon Jousters 3 - Sanctuary

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