Mercedes Lackey - Alta

But he still had a great task unfinished. “Let’s hope it is indeed a sanctuary for those who need it,” he said stoically, as Marit and Kaleth at last broke their embrace, and finally came to help Nofret with the bags. Re-eth-ke had finished the last of her meal; Avatre was on the last mouthful. “Right now, if we aren’t to need it prematurely, we need to get back. I want our part in this all to be over with as little shed blood as may be, and that will need all nine of us.”

“Indeed.” The Mouth bowed his head, then raised it again, and looked at Kiron shrewdly. “In the depths of the night we count those whose lives our actions have cost, yet the gods never tell us the numbers of those whose lives were spared because of what we have done. You may choose to think on that, when the night seems long.” He blinked owlishly above his veil. “And that is as it is. Your part is yet to come, and after that, it is in the hands of the gods. Fly fast and safe, Jouster. We will meet in Sanctuary.”

Aket-ten was already in the saddle again, buckling on her restraining strap. She looked back at him, grinned, but gestured upward. He took the hint, and signaled Avatre to kneel, climbing up in the saddle himself.

“Ride swift and safe, Mouth of the Bedu!” he replied, as he buckled on his strap. “We meet in Sanctuary!”

His last sight of them, as the two dragons clawed for height into the clear sky, was of the four camels plodding back into the desert. He hoped that whatever was to come, Sanctuary would live up to its name.

TWENTY

ITdidn’t look like anything at all, really; just a faint, grayish haze on the surface of the three ripe tala berries in Kiron’s hand. It could have been dust, except that dust didn’t rub off. It could have been almost anything, or nothing at all, just an odd color on the hard little berries. Kiron handed them back to Heklatis, who took them with a smile and a raised eyebrow. “The harvest looks good this year,” he said.

“Yes,” Heklatis replied blandly. “They’re all like that, plump and well-colored. From here to the southern border of Tia, or so I’m told by the few who venture there. Whatever else, the rains were good for the tala. ”

Lord Khumun nodded gravely. “So a week to dry, and then we can use them, which is just as well, since I think we have scarcely a week in stockpile.” He knew, of course. He had frowned at the odd color of the berries, had looked up at Heklatis who had nodded, then both of them smiled, just a little. Kiron contained his glee with an effort, for he knew that the Tians had no more tala stockpiled than the Altans did. The Altan agents had not been able to steal any tala, but they had done the next best thing; during the rains, they had made holes in the roofs of the storage rooms where it was kept, to deny it to the enemy. The rain and the rot that followed spoiled it, or most of it. Only the tala actually stored at the Jousters’ Compound had been spared.

Lord Khumun’s smile was a weary one; once the rains had ended, his lot had been fraught with difficulty, for the Magus placed in governance over all of them had flexed his muscles and ordered impossible things. A return to traditional Jousting; that had been the first thing, of course—well, he could order all he wanted, but the Magi could not compel obedience on the battlefield, at least, not yet, and the Jousters had bowed their heads and continued with Kiron’s tactics. But besides that, he had ordered all of them into the sky, twice a day, every day, with no rest and little recovery for the injured, and that was taking a toll on them. As tired as they had been during the rains, they were bone-weary now. Lord Khumun’s sad smile told Kiron that he would be glad to see an end to the situation at last, even though it meant there would be no more Jousters and he would have no more command.

Kiron could not imagine what the Magi were thinking of. Were they trying to be rid of the Jousters themselves? It seemed unlikely—

Or were they only trying to get rid of the old Jousters, seeking to replace them with young men of their choosing?

Kiron decided to ask Heklatis about that, this evening. Right now, he had a practice session to run.

They had gone back to using that distant practice field the day that the rains started to taper off, even though the senior Jousters were so much in the air that they didn’t have time, much less the need, to practice. Kiron didn’t want an audience where the Magi could see that they had gathered one. He did not want attention drawn to his wing.

They did have an audience, though, for their new exercises, which were quite exciting, even though there wasn’t a single person out there other than the wing and Heklatis who knew what they were for.

He got back to the pen in time to find his dragon boy cinching the last strap down on Avatre; he checked them all, as he always did, and smiled. “Good job,” he said. “As always.”

The lad grinned, as he gave Avatre the command to kneel. No more vaulting into the saddle from the ground for him anymore; Avatre had gotten too big for that. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind now that tala slowed the dragons’ growth as well as dulling their minds and instincts. Avatre was much bigger than her mother had been, and might even be a hair bigger than Kashet when he last saw Ari’s dragon, and she still had another two to four years of growth ahead of her. She was bigger than every other adult desert dragon in the compound.

He gave her the signal to fly, and she leaped straight up from the pen, just as Kashet always had. He took her up over the compound and waited, circling on a thermal, while the rest finished their harnessing and joined him. They lined up in a V-shaped formation, with Avatre at the point, and headed for the practice grounds.

He was the target, since Avatre was the oldest and most experienced flyer. By now she could perform everything he remembered Kashet doing, which meant that she could outperform most, if not all, of the Tian dragons. The exercises they were all running now—which would be crucial very soon—were harassing maneuvers. Kiron had gone to the swamps and watched as the swamp dragons challenged each other and drove each other out of hunting territories. Then he had come home and taught the harassment techniques to the wing. Avatre hated this; what the others were doing spoke to her deepest instincts, and she wanted, badly, to turn on them. That she didn’t bespoke her deep bond of trust with Kiron; he only wished he could reward her patience as it deserved.

Tala -drugged dragons would respond with irritation, but would continue to obey their riders. Undrugged dragons, or those for whom the tala was wearing off, would try to chase the interlopers out of their territory until they realized that the dragon was immature—he’d seen that, too, in the swamp. Then they would realize that there was a sky full of better targets and potential mates, and there were wretched little hairless baboons on their backs that should be gotten rid of before the proper business of draconic life could be taken up.

And that would be the end of the Jousters.

There was still one matter that he had not come up with a plan for—warning the Altan Jousters of what was to come. He wanted to do that; it didn’t seem at all fair not to. But there might be one or more among them who would tell the Magus, and he did not know what would happen then. . . .

But that was a week or more away, and he still had time to think of a plan, or so he hoped.