Aerie

by Mercedes Lackey

  The wet sounds in the darkness ceased. And a moment later, the nameless cat strolled up Kiron’s legs to his hip, and stood there, attempting to knead it into a soft bed. Its claws were very sharp and long, and he gritted his teeth as they stung him even through the thick wool of his blanket, reminding himself over and over that one must not strike the avatar of the Goddess Pashet. . . .

  He knew better than to roll over to try to dislodge it. Doing that in the past had resulted in the cat sinking its claws into his hip in an effort to keep its balance.

  Finally, the cat gave up hip kneading as a lost cause and strolled down his legs again. Presumably, now that it was full, and he had, once again, proved to be a less-than-satisfactory sleeping partner, it would pad down the stairs to Avatre’s magic-warmed sands and curl up on a ledge at a respectful distance from the dragon. After all, she might not intentionally harm it, but dragons did occasionally heave themselves up out of their sands and roll over. They also were known to lash their tails in their sleep, or flail their wings. Kiron, on the other hand, was not a satisfactory place to sleep. He was too bony, and he moved too much, and he would not allow the cat the two thirds of his pallet that it wanted. Clearly, he was being ungenerous to the avatar of the goddess.

  Maybe that was why he couldn’t get Aket-ten to stay here. Pashet was the goddess of love as well as cats, cats being well known for their amorous nature. Maybe he had offended Pashet herself.

  That . . . could be bad. He made a mental note to find something to make the cat a warm bed with down on that ledge. And find another way to keep it from sucking his earlobe. And make an appropriate sacrifice at Pashet’s Temple in the morning.

  Aket-ten was one of a handful of Jousters who were staying in Sanctuary to run courier to the new city the Great King and Queen were building on Great Mother River between Tia and Alta. He could hardly blame her for wanting to stay there instead of here. Her family was there, or at least, her mother and father were; most of her brothers had gone back to Alta to take care of the family estates and help resettle the refugees of the city. The only one of her brothers who had stayed was Orest, who was one of the first of Kiron’s wing in Alta. He was here in Aerie, though.

  Maybe she’s living in Sanctuary to get away from Orest, he thought with amusement. The two had something of the usual sibling quarrels, exacerbated by Orest having decided quite on his own that, since all of his brothers were off and their father was immensely busy helping Great King Ari reconcile Altans and Tians, it was his duty to “keep an eye on” Aket-ten.

  Maybe he ought to give Orest more to do.

  Maybe I ought to give all of us more to do.

  Maybe. But there was already too much work. That was the problem, really. It was all work they weren’t particularly good at. There were just not enough hands to make Aerie livable, to free up the Jousters to do—

  To do what? Yet another problem. What was it that the Jousters should be doing? Not fighting each other. Not fighting each others’ nations. What could a man and a dragon do that half a dozen fighters couldn’t?

  Honest answer: not much.

  Still turning this question over and over in his mind, he finally fell asleep.

  Avatre greeted him as he came down the stone stairs with a croon of pleasure. He couldn’t help but smile. Since she wasn’t bothered by the cat, he never put the shutters over her window unless there was going to be a kamiseen storm, so the light of midmorning reflected off the sands of the canyon and into the room.

  It was a bit more rough-hewn than the one above it, leading him to wonder once again what the original purpose for it had been. There was no sign that dragons—domesticated ones, anyway—had ever lived here. And yet—There were the sunken, rough-cut lower rooms. What would you put in such a room if not a dragon?

  Could they have been stables? Pens for livestock? Not stables; no, probably not. The first time Tians or Altans had ever seen horses, they had been in the hands of the Nameless Ones.

  But pens for livestock. Goats. Maybe camels. Donkeys. That made sense. And it explained the huge doorways even a dragon could pass through. You had to have a doorway that wide or you’d have a devil of a time getting livestock to pass through it.

  Now that there were no patrols to be flown, the dragons could awaken at their own time and pace. Now that they were each flying out to hunt alone, it didn’t matter that the wing never flew together anymore except during rare practices. Avatre, given the choice, was a late riser.

  “Ready to hunt?” he asked her. He was never entirely sure how much she understood, but she certainly knew what that meant. She snorted eagerly, and positioned herself to best advantage for getting harnessed up.

  He paused for a moment to reach his arms up toward her. She bent her head down on her long, long neck and rested it over his back while he embraced her neck. In so many ways she was his first love, and for so long she had been the best thing in his life. Truth to tell, she and Aket-ten were tied for first position now. If he lost either of them—well, he just didn’t want to think about that.

  She was beautiful, and not just in his eyes. Her colors of scarlet shading to gold and topaz on the extremities only grew deeper and more intense as she grew older. When she was in the air, those colors shimmered against the hot turquoise bowl of the sky. She might not have been the most beautiful of the dragons, but everyone who saw her was struck by her combination of color and regal bearing.

  He scratched the soft skin under her jaw for a bit, then patted her neck. “Come, my Sunrise. Let’s get you fed.”

  He intended to go a great deal farther afield today, to give the regular hunting grounds the opportunity to replenish. And while he was at it, he was going to look for more dragon nesting sites. Though he was going to make it a condition of egg ownership that the potential Jouster have his own dwelling and pen with hot sands ready and waiting before any egg was bestowed.

  And what was he going to do about the girls?

  He strapped on Avatre’s saddle and flying harness, adding the flat bulk of the game bags to the rear over her haunches, just in case. He threw open the huge double doors to the outside, and she crouched, extended her neck, and eased herself out the doors. It never failed to amaze him how the dragons could stretch themselves out and make themselves thin to fit through places one would never dream of seeing them go. She didn’t even scrape her harness on the door, though in time he would probably have to saddle her outside to prevent that from happening. No one really knew how long a dragon could live, nor when they stopped growing. The best guesses were “about as long as a man” and “until they die.”

  Ari’s Kashet, for instance, was still larger than any of the Altan-born dragons, and fitting him into one of the new pens here would have been a challenge. Fortunately, that was not an issue. For now, Kashet and Ari were dividing their time between Mefis, where the old quarters for the Jousters were, and the new city that did not yet have a name, with side trips to Sanctuary. Quarters for Kashet, and for The-on, Great Queen Nofret’s dragon, had been the first things finished on the new palace. The Great King and Queen were still sleeping in tents when Kashet and The-on were luxuriating in their wallows.

  Those pens were built to the old plan, open to the sky, sheltered from the rains by canvas awnings that could be pulled across the top, with huge doorways. The pens were big enough that Kashet and The-on could triple in size—which wasn’t likely—without running out of room.

  Kiron didn’t even need to command Avatre to let him mount now; she crouched down and extended a leg as a stepping place as soon as she was out in the open. She kept glancing up with one eye at the sky overhead; clearly she wanted to be gone and hunting.

  Well, so did he. Morning and evening hunts were about the most amount of time he got to spend with her now, and it displeased him not at all that the hunts for the next several days or even weeks were going to be longer. And it actually would not have been all that bad if what he was doing was merely physical labor. No, he was s
pending most of his time acting as de facto leader for all the Jousters . . . except that, of course, there were those who were objecting to that on the grounds of his youth. Which he wouldn’t have minded in the least, if only they had put forward some reasonable person to take over in his place.

  But Baken didn’t want the position, and neither did Haraket. The only people who did weren’t Jousters, and Kiron had had a bellyful of being ruled over by people who knew nothing about dragons, Jousters, or the unique bond the human-raised dragons shared with their Jousters.

  Well, for right now, he wasn’t going to think about it. He was going to hunt with Avatre, and that was absolutely all he was going to concentrate on.

  He felt her muscles tense under him, but she was on her best behavior, waiting until he checked the quiver at his knee for broad-headed hunting arrows, made sure of the tension on his bow, and that the straps holding him into the saddle were sound and cinched down tight. In the old days his dragon boy would have done all that. He didn’t particularly want a dragon boy actually. Where would he put one? In his own home? He liked having the privacy. He liked being able to be with Aket-ten, knowing that no one would bother them.

  Satisfied that everything was in order, he gave Avatre the wordless order with hands and legs, and she launched herself up with a leap and a tremendous downbeat of her wings.

  He was so used to the bounding surge of her flight that he didn’t even think about it now, he just automatically shifted his weight with her movement. But he never lost the thrill of flight, of watching the earth below, of soaring among the falcons and vultures. He loved feeling Avatre shifting the planes of her wings as she spiraled up a thermal, then glided down to the next. He loved the heady rush of speed when she folded her wings and dove into an attack.

  Ah, but he also missed the thrill of combat. . . . He would never admit that to Aket-ten, but it was true. He had enjoyed every aspect of combat. He knew, however, that she didn’t, and that she was relieved that the only “combat” taking place now was competition to catch streamers from one another.

  Well, there was still the hunt.

  He took Avatre far out past her normal hunting grounds and well into scrub-covered hills. This was good territory for her to hunt in, too; the trees were twisted things with tiny leaves, and hid nothing beneath their contorted limbs. There were no canyons for game to run into and hide. There was more browse here, which should mean more game—

  Just as he thought that, he saw a cloud of dust on the horizon. A cloud like that was only kicked up by the hooves of many herd animals, and sure enough, as Avatre drew nearer, he saw it was a herd of antelopes, a bit smaller than the oryx he was used to hunting. But that was fine; a herd of wild oxen this size would have been too dangerous for Avatre to tackle by herself.

  He pulled an arrow from the quiver at his knee, nocked it on the bowstring, and gave Avatre the signal to make a fast pass over the heads of the beasts.

  He was hoping to spook them into dividing, and it worked. He signaled Avatre to chase the smaller of the two groups, sighted carefully along his arrow, and fired.

  The beast he had chosen took the arrow in the ribs, stumbled, and tumbled headfirst into the ground in a cloud of dust and tiny clods, and a moment later, Avatre’s front claws connected with her chosen victim. He braced himself for the impact as she used the momentum of her strike to spin herself around with the beast in her foreclaws as the pivot point. The rest of the herd thundered off into the distance. He dismounted and made sure the one he had struck was dead.

  He let her feast, bundled the remains up in the game bags and fastened them to her harness, then glanced up at the sun and sighed. He’d be back by midmorning. Plenty of time to be cornered by half a dozen people with agendas of their own.

  Oh, well. Putting it off was not going to make it go away. He sent Avatre into the air again, and prayed that today, at least, he was not going to find himself enmired in someone’s private quarrel.

  As he approached Aerie, he could see younger dragons and riders practicing in the thermals now rising above the canyons. None of them had colors yet, though each of the original eight had his own wing now. Besides the population explosion of Sanctuary, there had been a population explosion of Jousters and dragons after the final battle between Alta and Tia that had ended the war with victory for no one. Many of the dragons that had gone wild when their controlling tala became useless had mated and laid clutches, then abandoned the eggs. And surviving Jousters and aspiring Jousters alike had gone out and kept watch over dragon nest sites, just in case that very thing happened. Eggs kept warm and tenderly cradled in carts full of sand were brought back to Sanctuary, then Aerie. And now there were eight wings of eight dragons each, with this year’s hatch only now taking to the sky.

  Only Aket-ten had no wing of her own. . . .

  Not that she didn’t want one. It was only that she wanted one composed only of young female Jousters.

  And while he sympathized with her desire, he also knew what a hornet’s nest he would stir up if he gave eggs to young women when there were so many males—dragon boys, former Jousters, and warriors—who wanted to join the ranks of the new Jousters. This, despite the serious load of hard work it took to become one now that the dragons had to be human-raised.

  Maybe that was why she would not move in with him. She was still angry at his last refusal.

  She had a great many logical arguments. Women were smaller and lighter than men. Women tended to be more nurturing, which was what a young dragon needed. Women had good senses of balance and were good with bow and arrow and sling. And since there was not, and (the gods be willing) never would again be aerial combat between Jousters, other than ribbon chasing, there was no need for great strength.

  She was right about all of that. He couldn’t argue with her on those points. But the plain fact remained that until he had satisfied every single male who wanted a dragon, he did not dare distribute a single egg to a young woman. The resulting outcry would be more than he cared to think about.

  Aket-ten could only see that there were plenty of young ladies like Nofret who felt the same longing for the companionship and freedom of flight and, yes, love that the bond of human and dragon brought to the human. She couldn’t see that people still thought of the Jousters as warriors. That he was still training the Jousters to be warriors. She thought warfare was over. And so it was—between Alta and Tia.

  But what about the lands to the south? And what about those to the east? That was where the Nameless Ones had come from and might come again.

  And besides all of that, there were the desert raiders who plagued the Blue People and made the old caravan trails dangerous to use.

  When those eight wings were wings of warriors again, well—

  It wouldn’t be just incense trees and rare plants that supported them all.

  But first he had to get through this.

  TWO

  THESE people were Jousters, at least. They let him get Avatre unharnessed and turned loose, to go and socialize with other dragons if she wished (which she did but very rarely) or fly alone, or go back to her hot sands and sleep off her breakfast (which was what she usually did). And they let a Jouster whose dragon had not been as good or lucky a hunter as Avatre come and claim the extra meat from him.

  But then they descended on him with their problems.

  The first to reach him was a trio of the newest Jousters, one older former rider of a swamp dragon from Alta, the other two dragon boys who had gotten themselves fertile eggs. All three of them wanted use of the few workmen they had here. Kiron listened patiently to their arguments before he made a decision.

  “Resket-teren gets priority,” he said finally, and held up a hand. “I understand. All three of you have housing problems. But Resket-teren’s can be fixed the fastest. When people have all got about the same level of urgency, that’s how I’m deciding who gets priority.”

  The other two grumbled a bit at that but reluctantly admitted t
hat was fair. “You two might help each other,” he suggested to the “losers” in this situation. “You aren’t trained workmen, but there’s a lot that can be done with four hands rather than two.”

  They exchanged a wry look, because this had become one of his favorite answers these days. No one could deny the wisdom of what he was saying, even when they didn’t much like it.

  With that disposed of, he went the rounds to see how each of the eight wings was faring. Not, of course, that he didn’t already know how they were faring. The names changed within each wing, but each of them had the same triumphs and the same problems. In each wing there were two people who simply did not get along, mostly because of personalities. In each wing there was at least one show-off who would have to take a fall and learn his lesson. In each, there was one dragon slower to learn than the others. There were some riders who were better at cooperating than others—the recalcitrant ones did tend to be the older riders—and these would just have to get over their attitudes, or eventually form a wing of their own, which was certainly a viable proposition, and one he was considering already.

  In fact, the more he thought about it today, the better the idea seemed. In the last day or so there had been two incidents of older riders flaring up at their wingleaders, objecting to serving second or third to “some jumped-up dog boy.” The older riders were, by and large, all aristocrats, and the differences in social standing were beginning to rub some of them raw. Finally, after listening to Huras sigh over his particular problem rider, he came to a decision, and as soon as practice was over for the day, he collected the wingleaders in a group while the rest of their Jousters took themselves off to work on their housing.

  By now the sun was fully overhead, and it was like a furnace down in the canyons. Kiron squinted against the white-hot glare on the white sand covering the bottom of the canyon, feeling the heat reflecting from the surface as well as hammering down from the sun-disk. Small wonder that the Tians regarded the Solar Disk as a destroyer, rather than the life giver that the Altans called it. It was even hotter up on the cliffs, which was exactly the way the dragons liked it. There were jewel-bright dragons sprawled over every available ledge, wings spread out to absorb the sun, turning the cliff tops of Aerie into an abstract mosaic of color.