Was it simple, blind arrogance, a false sense of surety that they could not be conquered on their home ground?

Or was there something that they knew that he did not?

He never got an answer to the question of why the priests and the Magi were two different castes, but he finally got the first clue to his second question one day when he was listening to the historian scholar. For once, the subject was not the current state of the war, but the beginning of it.

Although it was interesting to hear the story from the Altan perspective, as he had already gotten the tale from Ari from the Tian point of view, it was nothing new—until the moment that the scholar said, “. . . and then, of course, the Magi created the Eye of Light, and the direct threat against Alta City was ended and . . .”

That was when he woke up. The Eye of Light? What in the name of all that is holy is the Eye of Light? He couldn’t imagine—was it some sort of Far-Seeing Eye that any Magus could use that allowed them to keep the land around Alta City under constant watch? But what good would that do? But by the time he gathered his wits, the scholar had finished his lecture, and it was time to feed Avatre. She was putting on another growth spurt of her own and was constantly hungry, and he knew that he didn’t dare delay her dinner for even a single question.

So he hurried off, his curiosity a fire within his belly, his thoughts circling around that tantalizing bit of information. At least now he had a name for the reason why the Altans did not fear invasion of their city, even if he did not know what that name meant.

However, he was, by the gods, going to find out.

“The Eye of Light?” Orest said, and blinked. “Um—actually, I don’t know what it is. I mean, I know what it does, but I don’t know what it is. No one knows what it is, except the Magi. It’s up in the Tower of Wisdom, and no one is allowed up there except the really powerful Magi.”

Kiron sighed. “All right, what does it do, then?” he asked.

Orest licked his lips. “Mind you, I’ve never seen it myself. The Magi don’t show it off all that often—by the gods, they don’t have to! But Father has, and—you know that stretch of slag glass, right by the Haaras Bridge over the Fourth Canal?”

Kiron nodded; it was a strange feature, following the line of the canal itself, a slab of black vitrified earth about as wide as a chariot and as long as three dragons, nose to tail. He’d wondered if it was the remains of some terrible fire.