Mercedes Lackey - Alta

“I think she likes you,” Kiron said, and the servants laughed nervously, as if they were still not quite sure if Avatre “liked” them because she wanted to eat them. Nevertheless, they began to relax a little more around her, and in the end they were no longer afraid when she was done to take the cart away, nor to turn their backs on her. So that was progress, and another step to making certain that Avatre would actually be welcome here for as long as they needed to stay.

But as soon as the servants were gone, Orest came popping out of his door, looking as if he had not slept well at all last night. “Kiron,” he said without preamble, “I want to—”

“I’ll help,” Kiron said instantly. “However I can.”

Orest stopped dead in mid-sentence. Obviously, he had been working up to a speech all last night, which accounted for his current appearance, and to have it cut short was clearly a surprise. His jaw dropped, and he gave Kiron a goggle-eyed look that made Kiron want to laugh. “But you don’t even know what I wanted to ask you!” he exclaimed.

Kiron shrugged—carefully—and smiled. “It’s as plain to me as the sun rising. You want to try hatching out your own dragon and training it. I’ll help, as long as your father agrees. I could see it in your face last night, and everything you said to me just made me more certain; you want an Avatre of your own the same way I wanted a Kashet of my own.”

Orest sighed, looking immensely relieved that he wasn’t going to have to talk Kiron into helping him. “You’re right, of course. For a moment, I was afraid you were a Winged One yourself! Was I that obvious?”

“Like a fountain in the desert,” Kiron laughed. “But what I want to know is, how do you propose to get yourself an egg?”

“I don’t know yet,” Orest admitted. “But I know who to ask.”

“Well, the first person to ask is Lord Ya-tiren,” Kiron admonished him. “I’ve had my fill of sneaking around, trying to hide a baby dragon, and that was when there were other babies around to help disguise that she was there! Besides, you need both your father’s help, and possibly that of the Jousters themselves. No, you ask your father first if he’s willing to let you try this project and become a Jouster. Then I’ll help, if he says yes.”

Orest stuck around then, to help him give Avatre a cursory grooming (the best he could do without proper sand and oil, and he wondered how hard Aket-ten had worked in order to get her as clean as she was), then harness her and help him onto her back. “I’m going to take her for—well, take her out like a dog,” he said to Orest. “I’m fit enough to do that much, and she needs both the exercise and to keep from soiling your courtyard.”

“Then take her to the waste ground just past the fruit trees that way,” Orest said, pointing eastward. “It will be just a hop for her. I have to go to my tutor now, but I’ll be back.”

Avatre had been sorely puzzled by the lack of sand or a proper corner to use; she was glad enough to see the bit of waste ground, for the ashes and cinders that were dumped there were enough like sand for her to be content to use them. It was just a hop, but by the time Kiron returned, Orest was nowhere to be seen.

Somewhat to his shock, later that morning, Lord Ya-tiren himself appeared at the courtyard, just as he returned with Avatre after another short flight so that she would not leave her droppings on the pristine stone of the courtyard.

The Altan lord watched in fascination as Avatre backwinged to a soft and graceful landing, and Kiron slid off her back, wincing, but not without patting her affectionately. She turned and nuzzled his hair as he unharnessed her.

“My guest,” called the Altan lord, a prudent distance from both of them, “My son tells me he wishes to emulate you, and hatch a dragon. Here. He tells me you can help him do so.”

Kiron took a deep breath. “If an intact egg can be brought here, warm, he should be able to,” he admitted. “And I have promised to help. But only if he got your permission first.”

Now Lord Ya-tiren’s expression was a curious mixture of emotions; wistful, as he looked at Avatre, resigned as he looked at Kiron.

He would rather not see Orest becoming a Jouster — Jousting is dangerous, as dangerous as any other fighting. But he can understand why Orest wants to do this, and if he were younger, I bet he would do the same.

“Well,” he said at last, and his words were an uncanny echo of Kiron’s own thoughts. “Though it means sending my youngest son into great danger once he is a Jouster, how can I deny him the chance to try what I would try were I younger?” He sighed “All right,” he continued, after a long pause. “You have it. You have my permission. And may the gods grant you success.”

FOUR

OFcourse, it wasn’t going to be as easy as all that. Putting a dream into action never was.

Complicating this was that it soon became apparent that Orest was not the only person in Alta City to want to raise a dragon from the egg. Furthermore, once Kiron’s existence was made public, he and Avatre ranked as the curiosities of the moment, and it wasn’t only Jousters who wished to see these curiosities for themselves.

In fact, beginning that afternoon, and all through the rest of the day until the evening meal, Lord Ya-tiren admitted a parade of guests who wished to see the tame dragon and the boy who rode her for themselves.

Avatre was on her best behavior, although she could not resist showing off, preening under all the attention. For most of her life, she had only had one person around; nevertheless, she was still young, and on the journey she had gotten used to seeing many who would come and look at her from a near distance when they had stopped with the Bedu clans. Now, however, there were others, who came much nearer (though none of them cared to touch her) and made admiring noises.

She loved it. Although Kiron couldn’t give her a proper grooming, he, Orest and Aket-ten had given her a good wash (though at the expense of a fair amount of pain from his cracked ribs) and he had oiled the more sensitive skin with almond-oil from the kitchen. She glowed in the sunshine as if she’d been made of jewels, the ruby of her body shading into the topaz of her extremities, her gorgeous golden eyes more beautiful than anything made by a jeweler.

Some of the visitors were Altan Jousters, and although all of them were interested in the concept of raising a tame dragon, for the most part their interest faded quickly when they discovered how much work was involved in tending to a dragon like Avatre. As Ari had already discovered among the Tian Jousters, when the aristocratic Jousters of Alta learned that all of this work had to be undertaken by the man who wished to bond with the dragon, they were very much inclined to go back to their current ways.

For a very few, it was not the work that was involved, it was the fact that a man who was already fighting would have to spend so much time out of combat. “Two to three years before she’ll be fit to fly combat!” snorted one, when Kiron told him Avatre’s age. “We can’t afford to have Jousters out for that long! The old way may be hard, but—no. Better to have as many trained men on the battlefield as we can. The old way works; imperfectly, but it works.”

But the last visitor of the day, before Lord Ya-tiren let it gently be known that he was wearied of the stream of strangers and near-strangers trotting through his courtyard, was not just any Jouster. It was the same man who had first come to look at Kiron and his dragon, but this time, he came in an official capacity, and looking so splendid that at first Kiron did not realize it was the same man.