Aerie

by Mercedes Lackey

  Letis eyed the dragon with misgiving. “But women—”

  “Make as good a Jouster as a man, if all one is doing is courier work,” Peri said firmly. “This frees men to hunt bandits.”

  Letis looked as if she was digesting this. “I cannot like this,” she said sourly. “This is too much rising above your place.”

  “Your son is Lord of the Jousters of the Two Lands,” was all Peri said. “And now it is time for me to feed my dragon.”

  Letis beat a hasty retreat, and Peri did not see nor hear from her for the rest of the day, although the servants said she had gone to Kiron’s quarters and was waiting there for him.

  That was fine with Peri. This was not at all how she had planned for this to go. . . .

  Kiron’s head was swimming by the time he got to the Palace. He could hardly believe it. After all this time—

  And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been looking for her . . .

  Well, admittedly, he hadn’t personally been looking for her. One of the scribes in Ari’s service was, trying to trace her through the various sales of their land. But hers was not an uncommon name, and the war had complicated matters, and so far the scribe had had no luck.

  But to have her simply turn up like that—He was happy—oh yes—but he was as much shocked as he was happy. And she looked old, old and bitter.

  Well . . . given all that she had suffered, it was no surprise that she looked bitter. Really, he should have been surprised if she had not.

  Still, Jouster Peri-en-westet was Altan, and would take care of her until he got back. He ran on to the Palace, trying to regain a sense of calmness. This was duty, and duty came first. Duty always came first.

  Where did she come from? Where has she been? And how did she come to the Dragon Courts? And as important as how, why?

  She couldn’t have been looking for him. She had been as shocked to see him as he was to see her.

  By now, he was a familiar sight in the Palace. Servants parted crowds to let him through. He arrived at Nofret’s rooms without any significant delay.

  He half expected Rakaten-te to be there, but it was another, a junior priest of Seft, who waited diffidently for his arrival.

  Nofret gazed at him somberly, as did—Ari! He had not expected the Great King to be here in the middle of the day, but one look at Ari’s face told him why. The Priests of Seft had no good news for the Two Lands.

  “This will be ill hearing,” Nofret said, as he bowed to her and to Ari, then waited for the latter to wave him into a seat. “The Chosen of Seft had already sent word, so I decided to wait until we were all here to listen to it.”

  Kiron nodded and sank into a chair. The young priest cleared his throat with care.

  “Our sort of hunting has found a place where the darkest of magics have been performed,” the priest said. “And, as was warned, there are many deaths in that place. It is not far from where your trail from the city ends—

  “So the deaths were probably the children and elderly.” Kiron felt ill. The priest nodded.

  “We all will want you to confirm that,” Ari said into the awkward silence. “When you go back out there, we’ll want you to find the place where the bodies are.”

  Kiron nodded; there didn’t seem to be any sort of graceful response to that order. Then again, a graceful response really wasn’t what was needed. “Has anyone been chosen to go from your temple yet?” he asked with great care and deference.

  “The Chosen of Seft believes it will be himself, but the god himself will decide,” the priest replied, with a look that warned he should ask no further. Kiron closed his mouth on all the other questions he wanted to ask. “And, as yet, we have been as unable to See past that barrier as the priests in Sanctuary.”

  Kiron shivered at that, for it implied that the magic that had hidden the town was either very dark indeed—or very powerful. Or both.

  “There is a flavor about it of the Magi,” the priest was continuing. “But also a flavor of another sort. Something very . . . foreign. And that is all that I can tell you at this time about the magic. As for when you must be ready to leave, Lord Kiron, it will be at the end of three days. By then, the Chosen will have completed his preparations.”

  Kiron nodded, as did Nofret and Ari. “By then, Aket-ten will be back,” Nofret observed, “and Kiron will be free to go. You had better begin making your own preparations, Kiron.”

  Taking that as a dismissal, Kiron bowed and backed out of the room.

  Nofret and Ari scarcely noticed, so deep were they in plans with the young priest. This was fine; Kiron had no real head for strategy, and he knew it. The best thing he could do now was to go back to the Dragon Courts and begin writing out his requisitions.

  And, of course . . . deal with his mother. Who was probably still waiting for him

  He made himself hurry.

  He had expected to find Letis with Peri. Instead he found her waiting in his rooms.

  “By the gods, it is you,” she said from out of the shadows of the little palms planted in their jars beside the pool. “Kiron—you look so like your father—”

  And then she began to weep, and he caught her in his arms. He felt helpless and awkward then, and gradually it dawned on him why.

  This might be his mother, but she was also a stranger to him.

  The mother he had loved and cherished was gone into the past. He had no doubt that this was his mother. The trouble was, he had no idea who that person was anymore.

  And he had even less of a notion how to let her know this thing.

  FOURTEEN

  THE Chosen of Seft might be blind, but there was nothing wrong with the rest of his senses. He sat in a shaded corner of Avatre’s pen, wearing the same tunic as Kiron himself, and because he was not used to riding, a pair of the leggings that Heklatis called “trews” such as the barbarians wore, to keep his legs from being chafed raw on the inside. “Curious,” he said to Kiron, as the latter patiently tested every bit of harness and rigging on an increasingly impatient Avatre. “You seem both apprehensive and relieved at the prospect of this journey. I can understand the apprehension, but not the relief.”

  Kiron took his time in answering the implied question, and not just because he was trying to avoid that particular subject. Even if Avatre was getting impatient, Kiron had no intention of taking off without making sure of every piece of equipment, every buckle, every strap. There would only be three people out there this time; himself, the Chosen, and—Aket-ten. If anything went wrong, there were only two that really had the skill to fix things. And if one or both of those two were incapacitated, the result could be very ugly. So Kiron was taking every step he could think of to prevent anything from going wrong.

  The Chosen said that the fewer living people there were in the area, the easier it would be for him to “read things.” He did not specify what “things” he would be reading, nor how, and Kiron was not entirely sure he wanted to know. The more he learned about magic, the less he wanted anything to do with it himself.

  The surprise had come when the Chosen informed all of them that he wanted Aket-ten to accompany them and assist him. Kiron gave the priest a sideways glance as he tightened another strap, then adjusted it minutely. And not for the first time, he wondered; could they really trust this man?

  The reasons seemed good, sound, logical as he enumerated them for the little conference. Aket-ten was still technically a priestess, was definitely still a Winged One, had been trained to assist at rituals. “She also has been used by the Magi,” the Chosen had said bluntly. “That left a mark on her that I can use for many purposes. It is one of the laws of magic, that things that have once been touched still retain the traces of that touching.”

  Oh, Kiron could certainly understand it. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. And there was no real reason why she shouldn’t go, no pressing duties with training her wing, because she had returned from Aerie with two victories. Huras, the patient, had agreed to be the trainer for her
new Wing—and word from Haraket that he was, grudgingly, giving living room to the Queen’s Wing in Aerie once they were trained and on duty. Aket-ten was thrilled, though she would have been less than thrilled had she heard what Huras had to say privately about it.

  “Haraket’s still predicting doom,” the big man had said with a rueful smile, and an apologetic shrug. “He says that the girls will only serve to make the men act like idiots. But, he says, ‘Better to have them acting like idiots under my nose, than having them finding excuses to fly off to Mefis every time I’m not looking. ’ He also thought it might discourage them, or even make them quit, if they left the luxurious life they have here and had to put up with what our life is like.”

  Haraket definitely had a vindictive streak in him. And no, although Peri was used to hard living, none of the priestesses had ever done without very much. When they discovered the state of the food, the fact that they were unlikely to get twice-daily baths or relax in bathing pools, and that everything was in short supply, it would not make them happy. They would not like Aerie, or at least, they would not like it as it was now.

  Well, none of that was going to happen until the little dragons were old enough to fly the enormous distance from Mefis to Aerie. And that would not be any time soon. They weren’t even flying yet, much less flying with weight or for any distance at all. Who knew what would happen between then and now?

  But having Huras in charge of training the Queen’s Wing freed Aket-ten for this journey, which pleased the Chosen. Kiron was still not entirely certain how he felt about her coming with them. On the one hand, it would be very good to have Aket-ten to himself for a while. On the other hand, it meant that she was going into a potentially very dangerous situation. On the one hand, she was capable and competent. On the other hand, this was magic, and unknown magic to boot.

  “So,” the Chosen prompted, breaking into his thoughts. “What is it that makes you relieved right now? I would have thought, with all we are hazarding, you would have been entirely uneasy.”

  Kiron sighed, and gave a last tug to his saddle harness. “It is nothing, really.”

  The Chosen gave him a skeptical look.

  He felt oddly like someone who has been caught in a lie. “Why do you want to know? It is only something personal . . . .”

  “In magic, all things reflect one another and are reflected in one another,” the Chosen said calmly. “I would not ask if I did not feel the need to know.”

  Kiron considered that. He really didn’t want to discuss his feelings . . . but if this was going to affect the magic, he didn’t have a choice. “It is truly nothing. Only that . . . my mother—”

  “Ah. I heard something of that. Long lost to each other, discovered by accident in the Dragon Court. Like a market storyteller’s tale.” The Chosen’s lips quirked a little. “I take it this was not the storyteller’s ending.”

  Kiron sighed. “No . . . she wants me to . . .” He shook his head. The Chosen tilted his to the side.

  “She wants you to be something you are not. She wishes to have again the small boy that was separated from her, who is always at her side, like a faithful hound, has no inconvenient duties that take him away from her, and who always obeys the least little wish his mother might have.”

  That was close enough. Too close for comfortable hearing, actually. He shut out the far-too-clear recollection of unceasing demands that he drop everything and get the family’s farm back, that he give up being a Jouster and go back to his “real work” of being a farmer. Assertions that he would do this if he really loved his mother. Prim lectures on “knowing your place,” and dark hints that all the people he called “friend” were merely using him and that once he had done what they wanted, he would find himself out of the Jousters and without a dragon. Three days of this, nonstop, every waking minute he had been with her. It had begun with subtle hints. It was far, far past subtle now. “Something like that . . .” He gave a last tug to the harness; good, it was as solid as the hand of man could make it. “It will be easier on you, sir, if we take off from the landing courtyard.”

  The Chosen got to his feet. “Very well. Lead the way. I shall follow.”

  Kiron gave a soft whistle, and Avatre got to her feet. He led the way into the corridor; usually, they took off straight from the pen, but he and Avatre had taken off from the landing courtyard often enough that she followed him with no sign of confusion.

  He couldn’t help but contrast this mentally with the “old days,” of the dragon boys having to lead their charges with chains. Mostly they had been so drugged with tala that they didn’t resist, but sometimes—sometimes it had taken two or even four strong handlers, with the danger that the dragon might stop resisting and start clawing or biting.

  Aket-ten was waiting for him, already mounted on Re-eth-ke, when he arrived. In fact, there was quite a little audience to see them off, even though only he, Aket-ten, the Chosen, and Huras knew where they were going and why.

  Letis was there, of course, and to his relief the presence of the Chosen of Seft was enough to keep her from asking questions he couldn’t answer, or making any kind of a nuisance of herself. Huras had brought the Queen’s Wing, under the guise of having them watch an expert flat take off. He and Kiron exchanged nods, while Aket-ten gave him detailed instructions that she had probably already given him twice over.

  Kiron went straight to his mother and hugged her tightly, then kissed the top of her head. “I will see you soon, Mother, as soon as the Chosen releases me,” he told her. She had begun hinting that he should allow her and Iris to move here—but Jousters had never had family here before, and at the moment he was reluctant to break that tradition. Instead, with the help of the Dragon Court overseer, he had settled her and his poor, damaged sister in their own little house, and arranged for them to get provisions and anything else they needed from the Dragon Court. There was that tradition, thank the gods; though Jousters seldom married, there was an arrangement for the care of dependent parents or siblings within reason; small houses in a little area near the court, mostly now as empty as the court itself. For now that would do, until he came up with another solution.

  “When will that be?” she asked, her voice anxious.

  “Only the Chosen knows, Mother,” he was able to answer. She spared a nervous glance for the man who had already been helped into the second saddle behind Kiron’s. Kiron gave her another kiss, then turned and trotted for Avatre, not even waiting for the dragon to extend her leg to scramble into the saddle ahead of the Chosen.

  “Ready?” Aket-ten asked, and didn’t wait for his answer, sending Re-eth-ke into the sky.

  And Kiron was only too pleased to follow.

  “Wings!” shouted Peri, raising her arms, and Sutema flapped her wings madly, raising a huge dust cloud that made her very glad she had decided to do this in the landing courtyard rather than the pen. The little green-and-gold dragon clung for her life to not one, but two perches, one for the hind feet and one for the front, made of palm-tree trunks on legs that were weighed down with bags of sand and gravel. It had taken some persuasion to get her to climb up there, and more to get her to understand what Peri wanted, but now this was one of her favorite games. It made Peri wonder if there was something about the strengthening wings that gave the little dragons a strong urge to flap. The others, all younger than Sutema, were starting to do the same thing, and Huras had ordered three more sets of the perches after seeing Sutema exercising on them.

  Despite the dust, Peri was enjoying herself. The wind from Sutema’s wings was a fine thing on a hot day, and the way Sutema’s eyes flashed suggested that she was having a lovely time.

  The other dragons were being exercised, each by his or her own Jouster, as Peri had been exercising Sutema a few days ago, by running them about in games of “chase.” Huras had a very interesting way of dealing with the tendency of the other girls to delegate such things to someone else—usually Peri. Aket-ten had confronted them on it, which had si
mply made most of them shrug and privately roll their eyes and mostly ignore them. Huras had caught them at it, telling Peri that they were going bathing and “would she play with the babies” then starting to walk off in a giggling, gossiping group without waiting for her answer.

  But Huras had blocked the door with his considerable bulk and looked at them all reproachfully.

  “If it was only once,” he said, as they stilled, “I would have no issue with this if Peri does not. But the servants tell me that you do this every single day. Is this fair? Does Peri somehow not want to bathe in the heat of the day because she is not a priestess like all of you are? Is this how you want others to think of you, as the pampered priestesses who foist all of the work on Peri? Because they do.”

  It had been an interesting moment. Some had looked crestfallen, some shamefaced, some astonished, as if it had not even occurred to them that they were doing this. Peri had felt rather gratified, because on the whole, she liked all of them, and she wished that they were not doing this to her. They made her feel like—

  “You are treating Peri as a servant, not as a fellow Jouster, nor a friend, which—if she is not—I am sure she would like to be,” Huras continued, in an echo of her own thoughts. “She is senior to all of you in this wing, yet she does not demand that you defer to her.”

  Left unspoken, but certainly not unfelt, was the rest of that sentence. Do not require or expect that she should defer to you.

  The entire encounter had been very gratifying for Peri. It remained to be seen whether the others would truly take it to heart, but she suspected that Huras would be continuing to keep an eye on them.

  As for Sutema—

  This was much more vigorous an exercise than being chased by Peri around a pen, or even the landing courtyard. It did not take long before Sutema was open-mouthed, panting, and exhausted. It was time to take her back to the pen, and there would be time afterward, once Sutema was napping, for Peri to have a swim herself.