And one came to him. “Aket-ten and I can get where no one else can, and see what no one else can—from above. And the people of Alta know Jousters, and probably trust Jousters more than anyone else right now.”

Aket-ten wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and gently shoved at him to get him to loosen his arms. She stood away from him a little bit, and sniffed, but raised her chin. “I am Aket-ten, Winged One, Daughter of Lord Ya-tiren. People will listen to me. We will guide folk off this ring, and off the next, until they are safely away from danger. But Alta is dead, and there is no saving it.”

The Healer dropped his head, and when he raised it again, Kiron saw the marks of grief on his face. “You say no more than what we have thought these many moons, Winged One. But it is an ill moment, hearing it spoken aloud.”

“Someone must say it, or we will all perish.”

The speaker was an old woman, hair entirely white, falling in the “royal” hairstyle of hundreds of tiny plaits, each ending in a gold bead. She stood very erect, and her eyes, dark and shadowed, looked directly into Kiron’s. He had never seen her, but he knew who she was, the Eldest, the Chief Healer of the Temple of All Gods. “We must save what we can. We will take the boats and make for the harbor—”

“No!” That was still another Healer, a rough-looking old fellow with a fair number of scars. “Not so, Eldest. I know the sea, and the sea does strange things in shakes; it can withdraw for leagues, then come rushing back and overwhelm all in its path. No, we must take the boats and make our way through the canals inland, to one of the Daughters, and thence up the Great Mother River if we must.”

“I bow to your experience, Te-ren-hatem,” she said, after a moment. “But there is one thing we must do; it is more important to Heal that dragon now than anything else, no matter how much it costs our Healers by touch.”

The man looked at her aghast. “But Eldest, it is but an animal, and there are many, many injured and more to come!”