Mercedes Lackey - Joust

He's not taking us back? How can he not take us back? Isn't it his duty?

But it was Ari, who had never told Vetch a lie—

Then Kashet, full of dignity and twice the size of Avatre, interposed himself between the dragonet and his Jouster, looking down at her with an expression of weary condescension. Avatre, who had never seen another dragon but Kashet except as a head over a wall, or a shape in the sky overhead, just hissed at the bigger dragon, defying him along with his Jouster.

"Very brave," Ari chuckled. "I hardly think I need to worry about you encountering trouble. She'll certainly protect you from anything and everything, or die trying. And at the moment, there isn't much that will be able to take her on except humans."

Vetch swallowed. Hard. "You're—" he began.

"I am not taking you back. I never intended to," Ari replied. That was when Vetch's legs failed him, and he sat down hard on the ground.

Avatre stood over him, making it very clear that she was not going to allow anyone or anything near him.

The Jouster looked at both of them for a long moment, then sighed, shaking his head. "Look," he said. "We're in the middle of the Dry, practically midday, and it's damned hot out here in the sun." He beckoned. "If you can get up, follow us."

Vetch struggled to his feet. Ari and Kashet were already halfway down the slope, heading for the dry streambed that cut down the wadi. Evidently, he knew where he was going, and Vetch took hold of Avatre's harness and followed behind. Avatre resisted at first, not wanting to follow the creature that had threatened Vetch, but at his insistence, she reluctantly and suspiciously plodded after Kashet.

Ari turned down a crack in the earth so narrow that Kashet's folded wings brushed both sides of the wind- and water-sculpted passage. The sun might be right overhead, but here, everything was still in shadow, and it was a lot cooler. It was deep, too; they might have been going down one of the corridors between the pens, except that the farther they went, the taller the "walls" became.

The sandstone was carved in weird, smooth, many-layered curves that twisted and turned without any rhyme or reason. This tormented, contorted passage was far wider at the bottom than it was at the top; above them, the crack couldn't be wider than a two feet or so, while down below Kashet was able to squeeze along without too much difficulty. The floor was a thin layer of sand over a harder rock; Vetch felt it under the hard soles of his bare feet. It was strangely beautiful here, and completely without the mark of man on it.

Then, with no warning, the walls opened up into a sort of pocket about the size of a dragon pen, again, with only a small opening to the sky overhead. The rock of the ceiling framed the irregular oblong of turquoise sky like a gold mounting surrounding a gem. At the far end of the pocket was a patch of green where sun must fall during some part of the day—a twisted, ancient tree, a few flourishing bushes, some grasses—all surrounding a tiny pool of water fed by a mere drip of a spring that trickled down the side of the rock through that hole above.

Ari bent and drank a palmful; he gestured to Vetch to come up beside him. With his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth and his eyes as dry as sand, and sore with weeping, Vetch didn't have to be asked twice.

But first, he let Avatre drink her fill.

She drank down the basin to about half its depth, and only when she was satisfied did he drink, and take a handful of water to carefully wash his eyes.

Ari watched him with tired satisfaction; Kashet with benevolence.

When he had drunk and cleared his eyes, Vetch looked up at the Jouster with one question in his mind. He felt such a whirlwind of contradictory emotions that he literally shook with them—relief, anger, gratitude, defiance, hope, disbelief-He distilled it all down to one word.

"Why?" he demanded.

Ari sighed, and looked around for a place to sit, choosing eventually a smooth outcropping wind-sculpted into a shape vaguely like a toad. He sat down on its flat top, and Kashet folded his own legs underneath him.

"That's two questions, I think. Or, perhaps three. Why did I save you, why did I follow you, and why did I do so, intending to help you make your escape?"

Vetch nodded; his legs were still shaking, his knees still weak, so he followed Ari's example, except that since there was no outcropping to sit on, he sat down on the ground.

"I was just coming in as you took off," the Jouster said meditatively. "I'd had my suspicions about that little scarlet dragonet ever since you asked to sleep in her pen, by the way. How did you manage to purloin her away from Baken?"

Vetch managed a shaky smile of triumph. "I didn't," he said proudly. "I hatched her from Coresan's first egg, just like you did with Kashet."

"Great Haras!" Ari exploded, looking astonished and delighted at the same time. "No wonder she follows you like a puppy! Is that why you volunteered to take Coresan in the first place? And she's been in the pen next to Kashet all this time?"

He nodded, and smiled. At least he had managed to deceive Ari in that much! That was no mean feat.

"By Sheshet's belly! I can scarcely believe it! And you tended and hatched the egg and tended Kashet and Coresan? When did you sleep?" the Jouster asked incredulously, then waved off the answer, while Avatre gave a huge sigh and flopped down beside Vetch. "What do you call her?"

"Avatre," he said proudly, and she raised her head at the sound of her name.

"Fire of the dawn—" Ari smiled at the dragonet. "Well… to continue, we were coming in to land after our patrol; Haraket waved us off, after another couple of Jousters, and pretty soon it was clear enough why we were in pursuit. I recognized you, of course, and the little scarlet, and at first I thought this was some sort of accident, that you'd been exercising her for Baken and she'd broken the tether or something. But by the time we were halfway across the desert, it was clear enough to me that it was no accident, and that you were trying to escape with her." He took a deep breath, and shook his head. "What was going to happen when you were caught—well, it was pretty obvious, too. So when the second rider dropped out of the chase, I kept it up; I'd already decided to help you, but I wasn't sure yet what I was going to do. I figured I'd force you two to ground and work that out once I got you down. I didn't expect you to do what you did."

He leveled an accusatory look at Vetch. Vetch matched him with defiance. "I would rather die than lose her," he said, quietly. "She's all that I have."

"You made that abundantly clear," Ari said dryly. "And you nearly turned my hair white when you rolled over her shoulder like that. I wasn't sure we could catch you."

Vetch remained silent. Ari examined him closely; Vetch put his arm over Avatre's shoulder, and wondered what, if anything, Ari saw in his expression.

"Well, no one is going to find us down here," Ari said at last. "You can overfly this place as much as you like and you'll never spot it. I only found it by accident because I was following a dragonet one day and I couldn't work out why he had dived into a crack in the hill. So, we have time enough to work out what we're going to do."

"We?" Vetch repeated, incredulously.

"Yes," Ari replied, settling back against the rock. "We. Let's start with where you think you're going to go from here."

WITH those words, Vetch wondered wildly if Ari was going to come with him, and a strange, wild hope rose within him. It was not just that it would be so much easier to make his way northward with Ari—no, it was that he would not lose his friend—

But Ari's next question dashed that thought, and that hope, to the ground and broke them.