Mercedes Lackey - Alta

He came strolling—not striding—in, at Lord Ya-tiren’s side. Kiron had not been in any condition to pay close attention to his visitors when he had first awakened, but that had been yesterday. Today he felt a hundred times better, and there was no doubt in his mind that he had better pay attention to this man.

The visitor was a fine figure of a man, with a nose like the beak of an eagle, high cheekbones, deep-set eyes beneath a craggy brow, and he wore his own jet-black hair cut sensibly short to fit under his helmet. This set him in stark contrast to many of the other visitors, who wore theirs fashionably long and braided into a club if they did not sport wigs. By now, Kiron could recognize the Jousters’ “uniform” of a soft, wrapped kilt, buskins to protect the shins, wide leather belt, and a leather chest harness; this man wore a completely different variation on that uniform today. His chest-harness was ornamented in bronze, and sported a medallion of a ram’s head right where the straps crossed at his breastbone. He had bronze armor plates that could not possibly serve any practical function fastened to the harness over each shoulder, and bronze vambraces. His kilt had a band of embroidery about the bottom, and the leather helmet he carried was gilded and ornamented with bronze plaques that matched the one on his chest. It came to Kiron then that one of the subtle oddities that had been nagging at the back of his mind was that thus far, everyone he had met had been several shades paler than the Tians. He had been used to being the freak among the darker dragon boys. Now, neither his longer hair, nor his lighter skin marked him as different.

This then was the man he had to impress, and his stomach tightened with tension.

“Kiron, rider of Avatre,” said Lord Ya-tiren as Kiron made a low bow to both of them. “I would like to make you formally known to Lord Khumun-thetus, Lord of the Jousters and responsible for their training and that of the dragons.”

Lord Khumun-thetus was not paying any attention to Kiron. All his attention was on Avatre, who knew a true admirer when she saw one. Kiron’s tension eased a little. If their welcome here rested on Avatre’s shoulders, then there was very little to worry about.

“You know, she gets better on second viewing, when she’s rested, fed, and clean,” said the Lord of the Altan Jousters. “I’d like to see her after a proper sand bath and oiling. And when she’s full-grown, she’ll be amazing. I don’t suppose she’d let me touch her, would she, young Kiron?”

This was the first of the Jousters, the first of any of the visitors save Orest and Aket-ten who had asked to touch Avatre, and given how positively she was acting, Kiron saw no reason to forbid the contact. “I believe she will accept that, my Lord. The soft facial skin is particularly sensitive.”

Khumun-thetus approached confidently, but with care, holding out his hand to Avatre, who stretched out her neck and sniffed it before permitting him to lay hands on her. From his demeanor, Kiron had no doubt that this man enjoyed working with animals and was good with them, and his next comment told the truth of that. “I was a cavalry officer before I became a Jouster,” he said, to no one in particular. “Though I was not reluctant to give over my dragon when I was made Lord of the Jousters, if I had a dragon like this, there would have been a fight! What a wonderful creature this lady of yours is!” As she stretched out her neck so that he could reach the soft skin just under her jawline, he chuckled. “She’s very like a horse in her enjoyment of being petted.”

“More like a great hunting cat crossed with a falcon, my Lord,” said Kiron diffidently. “She has much of the independent nature of both. I tended the adult dragon who was raised as she was. I found that Kashet was strong-willed and sometimes needed to be humored, and he was given to sly pranks, but on the whole he was as intelligent as a dog but without a dog’s fawning nature.”

“And she has the pleasure-loving nature of a great cat, too, I see.” Again the Lord of the Jousters chuckled. “It is a great pity that so few of my men are willing to invest three years of their dignity and lives in order to attain an achievement of this sort. If I had a wing of just ten fighters—”

Kiron refrained from mentioning that the same was true among the Tian Jousters. But Khumun-thetus was not finished. “However, as I have made some inquiries among the young, I have found some few who find it no hardship to become the slaves of an egg and a dragonet. Your host’s son is one among them, I am told.”

“So he told me, my Lord,” Kiron agreed, concealing his relief. Well, it appeared that they had been accepted, just as he had hoped, and with remarkably little interrogation.

“And among the young, who would not in any case be fit to fight for almost as long as three years, the loss of fighting time is of no moment.” Now he turned his head to look straight at Kiron, although he did not stop scratching Avatre. “So tell me, Kiron, son of Kiron, what does one need to hatch a dragon’s egg?”

Kiron could not help smiling in his relief. “First, my Lord,” he pointed out, “you need the egg.”

“Then come, sit, and tell me about the eggs,” the Jouster invited. Kiron took a stool from beside his cot, and began.

Carefully, and in great detail, he described what kind of egg was needed—gathered and transported carefully from where it had been laid, so as not to addle it. Brought still warm, so as not to kill the incubating creature inside, or taken freshly laid so that incubation would not yet have begun. He described the hatching sands to the best of his ability, and how the egg was mostly buried in them, yet turned at least twice daily. “The heat is brought to the sands by magic in Tia,” he added. “I am told that the heat is moved from places where things are wanted to be kept cold—storage rooms for meat, for instance, or the Royal Residences at midsummer—and moved to the sands. I did see the ceremony by which such a thing is done, but—” he shrugged. “I am no priest; I could not tell you anything except that it involves a great deal of chanting by numerous assistants, and four priests, and must be renewed periodically.”

“Hmm,” Khumun-thetus said speculatively. “Well, I expect the Great Ones will be able to persuade some of the Magi that such a task would be in their best interest. We have been using other means to heat the sands of our desert dragons, but it is clear that will not be hot enough to incubate the eggs. The Magi will complain that it is beneath them, of course, so I will have to approach the Great Ones when they are in a good mood.”

Since there was no graceful answer to such a statement, Kiron wisely kept his mouth shut.

“So. And when the dragon hatches?” the Lord of the Jousters continued his careful and exacting questions. And when Kiron finally answered all the questions that he could, the lord seemed pleased.

“Not as difficult as I had thought,” he began, and as Avatre delivered a reproachful look, he stopped scratching and began to pace. “I believe that I can find candidates for as many eggs as I can obtain. Which will be few! I must warn you that it will be difficult to collect these precious eggs of yours, but nevertheless, I believe I can get more than one. Can you train the candidates and the young dragonets if I do?”

“I can try, my Lord,” Kiron replied, feeling stunned. Me? A trainer? But —

“I am hoping we can learn something as you train the tame dragons that we can use to help us make our captured dragons tamer,” the Jouster continued, giving Kiron a penetrating look.

So, he wants to know if I really do know what I’m talking about, and if I can give him something he can use now. I can’t blame him. With the Tians building up the numbers of their Jousters, and the Altans already fewer, he needs help.