Kiron gulped. Blinded? They blind their priest? But—but—
The priest chuckled. “I was Chosen at birth, boy. I have known nothing else. Do not feel sorry for me, I can know more things with my four senses than you can with five. And take my advice. Never wrestle with a blind man. You will always lose.”
He turned his head back in Nofret’s direction. “The dark magics are one thing. Blood magic is another. The more potential life is cut short, the more power is generated. I have no doubt that whoever lured those people away demanded the infants and children as compensation. You might find a grave full of them, but more likely, the scavengers have dragged them all away. A wise precaution and one any blood mage would take to keep them from haunting their killers.”
Kiron felt a shudder convulse him, Nofret choked on a sob, and Ari’s face went blank. Even the Captain of Thousands muttered a curse. The old man looked at them all with pity.
“The truths that no one wants to hear are the ones most needful to be said,” the priest told them all. “That is the way of things. My lord Seft is the god of all hard things. Hear this: the ignorant say that Seft slew Siris to take his wife. That is the fool and the common man who think this, for they would have done so, had their brothers taken to wife the Star of the Universe.” He snorted with veiled contempt. “Here is the great mystery that we are taught in Seft’s halls—Siris had to die to become Lord of the Dead. The Dead required a Lord and King on the other side of the Star Bridge, and Siris knew he must be that King. Yet a god cannot slay himself, and he laid it upon his brother, who is the Finder of the Way, to find the way to slay him. So Seft did, that Siris could cross the Bridge and take up the Crook and Flail among the Dead.”
“But what of his taking the Lady Iris?” asked Nofret sharply.
“Oh, that,” the old man said with a sly smile. “She was alone and a widow and the fairest of all the goddesses, with breasts as firm and round as young melons, and lips as sweet as pomegranates, so say the scrolls. Who could blame Seft for taking her into his house? Even a god is sometimes a man.”
Nofret flushed, though whether from annoyance or embarrassment, Kiron could not have said.
“But you did not ask me here to hear of the loves of the gods,” Rakaten-te continued. “You asked me to tell you whether or not this was dark magic, and I tell you it is, of the darkest. That those children are gone tells me that. I cannot tell you who or why, but I will uncover the mystery.” He turned to Kiron. “This will take time. You, Jouster, will wait here in the Dragon Courts while I do my work. I may yet require a dragon and his rider.”
There was only one reason why the old man would want him to wait. . . .
He started to open his mouth to say that there was not a chance under heaven that he would take an old blind man out to the deserted city. Started. Then he thought better of it.
What, after all, did he know of magic? Not much. And of the terrible magics the Magi used? Nothing at all.
It might be that the only way to unravel the mystery would be to take this man to where the mystery was.
“If I can send a younger man, I will,” Rakaten-te said, with a wry twist of the lips. “I have no more desire to undergo the rigors of such a journey than you want to take me on it. But it may be that I will need to go. Save the Great King, you are the most experienced Jouster riding these tamed dragons that there is.”
Kiron nodded reluctant agreement.
“You also have faced the Magi personally, Kiron,” Nofret pointed out. “You know something of what to expect.”
He nodded, though reluctantly, and the urgent discussion moved on to other aspects of the situation. And try though he might to stay awake, he found himself yawning when he no longer needed to answer questions.
At last Ari took pity on him and dismissed him. But only after calling in a servant to guide him back out again. A good thing, too, or he would have gotten lost.
He checked on Avatre; she could have been a stone for all that she moved. He thought about stumbling as far as his usual quarters—
But the sand was soft and comfortable and he thought he would just curl up with her for a little.
And that was the last thing he knew until dawn brought a chorus of birdcalls and the stirring of all things in the Dragon Courts to wake him.
TWELVE
IT had all started like a perfectly unremarkable day. Sutema woke, ate, begged for caresses, and slept again. Peri then got her bath and fresh clothing, as always, reveling in the scent of the clean linen and marveling anew that she had the luxury of clean clothing every single day. Then she went in search of food for herself before the day’s lessons, both for Jousters and little dragons, began. There had been some fuss over the last few days about comings and goings from the Palace, but really, though those who had been priestesses might find such things worth chattering endlessly about, for Peri, it was not anything that would make any difference in her life, so she ignored it.
And that was where “ordinary” ended. Peri stopped in surprise at the doorway to the courtyard where all of the Jousters and Jousters in training ate, and stared, hardly able to believe her eyes. It was Lord Kiron. What was he doing here? No one had said anything about him appearing. It wasn’t as if he was a courier, to come and go unannounced.
He looked very tired, and he was plainly wearing a borrowed kilt, as it was a little too long on him and extended down over his knees. He must have arrived last night.
Perhaps all that business that the other girls had been so excited about had brought him; with so many comings and goings between all of the temples and the Palace, perhaps this was something that would make a difference to the Jousters.
Then something else occurred to her, that last night, it was rumored, the Chosen of Seft himself had made a visit to the Palace.
The Chosen of Seft! The Altan equivalent was Sheften, and in one of the rare cases of total accord between the Two Kingdoms, in both the Altan and Tian pantheons, the god had betrayed and murdered his brother, and tried to force his brother’s goddess-wife into marriage. Seft was the lord of dark doings, of rumors and shadows and hidden knowledge. His Chosen almost never left the Temple of Seft.
For indeed, Seft was worshipped, as was Sheften, and openly; both gods had temples, but that was largely on the basis of the idea that it was better to coax the god into leaving you alone than it was to leave him alone and take the chance that he would turn his attention on you.
Among the ordinary people, the serfs and the slaves, the tales of what went on in those temples ranged from the prurient to the profane. In general, anyone wishing to propitiate the god into indifference simply delivered his or her sacrifice at the door, to be collected by the silent and faintly menacing acolytes, then hurried off. Seft’s Temple was not a place where you wanted to linger—oh, no.
And yet—it was said among the Jouster-priestesses that, other than being a place where shadows instead of light ruled, and the most sacred sanctuary was all in darkness, the temple of Seft was, if anything, more ascetic, more spare, than any other in Mefis. That there were mysteries there too deep for common folk even to begin to understand. That Seft’s priests never offered their aid with dark magics and cursing, even when one came to them precisely for that purpose, and that no matter what occurred there, it had a profoundly important purpose.
Frankly, Peri didn’t believe them. First of all, they were all priests together, and priests protected each other, even when there was something bad going on. She remembered a scandal from her own home village and one of the temples there, and not that of Seft either, but of Ghed, who was a jolly god, and one of the few for whom there really were no darker or more violent aspects. People reasonably assumed that any house of Ghed was a safe one for children. The priest had been taking advantage of the little girls, inviting them to come and decorate the altar with flowers, then filling them full of palm wine, and when they were too dizzy to think, filling them with something else entirely. And what had happened to him when he was found out? Nothing. Other than that he was whisked away and another priest put in his place. He suffered no punishment at all so far as Peri knew. The other priests of other gods would not say nor hear a word against him, in turn saying only that “The matter is dealt with.”