they’ll need more gold to get the supplies to help me make the place livable for the rest of us.” He looked a little feverish, but had an air of triumph about him, and a look as if he had at last found meaning for his life and a great goal to pursue.
Well, if that was the case, Kiron couldn’t blame him for looking triumphant. In many ways, he had emerged from Toreth’s shadow and come into his own kingdom. . . .
“So if you’re going to be wandering out in the desert, just how are we supposed to find you and this refuge?” Oset-re asked, with a touch of irony. “I don’t fancy flying off across the wastelands trying to find a place that shouldn’t exist.”
“You won’t have to. The Bedu will find you and bring you to me when the time comes. The Mouth will know when and where to find you. That’s all I know.” He shrugged. “The visions showed me the city, but not how you’ll end up there, though I think it’s bound to be when the dragons go wild. And it’s getting dangerous for me to be here; I’m not sure why, I only know that it is. The Bedu said so, too. I’ll leave in the morning, so this is the last time we’ll all meet before I see you in Te-pa-ten-ke.”
Kiron cast a glance over at Heklatis, who interpreted the look correctly. “I believe him, Kiron,” the Healer said. “I think this is a true vision. I told you once that these things come in fragments; we should just be glad that he got enough to know the next part of the plan.”
“We essentially destroy the Jousters, then escape into a refuge,” Kiron mused aloud. “It could be worse, I suppose.”
Kaleth scowled at him. “Yes, it could,” he said with annoyance verging on anger. “You could come back to the compound after the battle, and the Magi could wipe you all out of the sky with the Eye. I’ve seen that, too, and I don’t want to see it truly happen instead of being a maybe-future!”
That stopped Kiron dead; in fact, they all went as still as stone for a moment, and in the silence, the rain outside was very loud indeed.
“All right,” Kiron said into the silence. “In that case, let’s all work on making sure that particular maybe-future never has a chance of coming true.”
Kiron half expected that no one outside of their little group and Marit and her sister Nofret would even notice that Kaleth was gone, and as far as he was able to tell, that was the case. Lord Khumun did not mention it, there were no rumors from the court, and in fact, Kaleth’s absence might well even be a relief for some. Kiron did not even attempt to keep up the fiction that he was still there, though if anyone asked him, he was going to say, truthfully, that Kaleth had left one night leaving no word of where he was going, and then add, “Though he spoke once of trying to find the Lost City.”
He figured that such a statement would brand Kaleth as completely mad. Even the Magi would probably not bother to look for him after that.
But no one outside the group ever spoke of him; perhaps, like Toreth, they were all trying to pretend he had never existed. Perhaps they were trying not to draw attention to themselves. Perhaps both.
But within half a moon, and deep into the rains, they all got a rude shock, and Kiron was very, very glad that Kaleth had gone. It went down as one of the black moments of his life.
Lord Khumun sent dragon boys around to the entire compound that morning as they all awakened, saying that he wished to address them over breakfast. Kiron fed Avatre without thinking very much about it; though it wasn’t unusual for Lord Khumun to address them all together, it wasn’t unheard of. Perhaps the work of the rains had gotten noticed and the Great Ones wanted to send a reward of some sort, or at least, a word of commendation.
They certainly deserve it, he thought, with more than a bit of bitterness. More than the Magi, if you were to ask me. After all, they were having to fly in that magic-befouled weather, and because of their efforts, the border had been pressed back yet again—almost to the place it had been when Kiron’s own village had