over her shoulder with an expression of absolute terror, and hadn’t even noticed he was there.
He expected her to scream or at least gasp, but she must have recognized him the moment she touched him, for as he fought to keep his balance, she grabbed his shoulders with both hands. “Kiron!” she whispered, frantic with fear. “Help me! Hide me!”
He didn’t even think; he just flung the folds of his rain cape over her, disguising her completely, for it was made for someone his height and it covered her down to the floor. Then he led her into a side chapel where he pushed her to her knees in front of the little image of Ater-oth, Goddess of Lovers, and knelt beside her, taking both her hands in his.
Just in time, too, evidently, for a moment later, he heard heavier footsteps out in the forecourt. He wasn’t worried; the only trace that had been left was the water dripping from the rain cape, and there was no way to tell whether that had been left by one person entering from outside, or two. He was wet enough to have come here without a cape.
The steps stopped for a moment—then moved toward the chapel. Aket-ten’s hands trembled in his, and he was astonished; he would never have imagined her being afraid of anything or anyone! Yet clearly, whoever this was, she was petrified of him.
And that was enough to put a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the storm outside.
He heard the steps stop again, just outside the entrance to the chapel. He did not turn around, and he clamped his hands down hard on Aket-ten’s to keep her from moving. In the dim light here, with both of them kneeling, there was no way for anyone to tell how young they both were, much less what they looked like. Nevertheless, he felt, rather than saw, the fierce glaring of someone’s eyes, and the back of his neck prickled.
There was no sound but the rain outside and on the roof, and the thunder cutting across the sound of the downpour. He was deeply grateful for both sets of noises; otherwise, their unseen watcher would have been able to hear Aket-ten’s frightened breathing.
Finally the footsteps began again, walking purposefully away. When there had been only silence for a long moment, he started to stand up.
This time it was Aket-ten who restrained him. “Not yet,” she whispered in a shaky voice. “Not until they’re gone.”
So he waited, while his knees began to ache from kneeling on the stone. Then, at long last, he heard more footsteps. Quite a lot of them, in fact. They shuffled across the forecourt, then out the door into the rain.
What struck him as uncomfortable and even frightening, even as he listened to the newcomers, was the lack of voices. In a group that big, someone was always talking. Even if they had been prisoners, someone would have been saying something—complaining, whispering, whimpering.
Not a word, not a noise. Only the sound of feet going out into the rain. And once again, the hair on the back of his neck crawled.
Silence descended on the temple, and Aket-ten slowly stopped shaking. Finally she stood up, and so did he, grateful to at last be off his knees.
“What—” he began.
“That was the Chief Magus and six of his underlings,” she said, fear warring with anger in her voice as she pushed back the cowl of the rain cape. “They came here to collect Winged Ones to ‘assist’ them in sending out the storms against Tia. Only they don’t allow you to say ‘no’ to them, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that the Chief Priestess, the Teachers, or the Pedagogues can do to stop them, because the Great Ones have said that we must do this. They took me yesterday, and—and when they were done, I found myself back here with no memory of coming back, no memory of where I had been, no memory at all of anything other than hearing that horrible man say, ‘You’re finally going to be of some use,’ and grabbing my shoulders.” She began to shake again. “And worst of all, I was practically faint with exhaustion, and it took until nightfall before I could Hear and See again! For a little while, it was as if I was as blind and deaf as—as Orest!”
From the way she had said “Hear” and “See,” the inflection of her voice, Kiron was pretty