Alta

by Mercedes Lackey

  Kiron tried to reckon up the years in his head. “Toreth—does it seem to you that the war between Alta and Tia began about that time?”

  Toreth’s eyes narrowed. “As a matter of fact,” he said slowly, “It does. There is a thought in your head. What is it?”

  “The Magi can take heat from one place where it is not wanted, and put it in the sands of our pens,” he said, feeling his way to the heart of the thought. “But where does one get extra years of life? Except that in war. . . .”

  Toreth rocked back on his heels, eyes wide. “I like that thought not at all!” he said, and though it was a whisper, the shock in his tone made it as “loud” as a shout.

  “No more do I,” Kiron replied grimly. “But it is one way to ‘profit’ from a war.”

  “There are others,” Toreth said, after a long silence. “Yet were I to examine things closely, I doubt not that I should find the Magi’s hands outstretched there, too. They are wealthy men; wealthy enough to be above such things as mere noble blood. And when one has the ears of the Great Ones, there are many ways of obtaining more wealth. Theirs is shadow power, but the shadows can hold many things.”

  Kiron thought silently of all the ways that one could profit from war. The making of weapons, certainly. The supply of tents, of food for the army, of horses, of other gear, from cooking pots to the linen for bandages. And he wondered; certainly the Great One of Tia was a man of no more than middle years, and there were no Magi as such in Tia. But had he not heard of a certain adviser, a little man, a crafty man, a man to whom the Great Onelistened more often than to others, who had remarkably served in the same capacity to his father, and his father’s father? How long before that adviser whispered in the Tian’s ear, and was heeded and believed—being, in fact, his own best evidence?

  He could not be sure. The thought made him ill.

  It also had a terrible logic. How else to explain something as senseless as this war, unless someone profited by it?

  “I wonder who began it.” A peal of thunder punctuated the question.

  He did not realize he had said the words aloud until he saw Toreth shrug.

  “I do not think that it matters now,” Toreth replied. “The question is, how to stop it?”

  The words hit Kiron like a hard brick, and stunned him nearly as thoroughly. Once again, he spoke without thinking, as his mind put handfuls of bits of disparate thoughts together. “So long as the Tians have more Jousters than we, there is nothing Altans can do to stop it. If the war were fought man to man—”

  “Then they could advance no farther, and might be driven back.” Toreth nodded approvingly. “Kaleth thinks that if the Tian Jouster advantage could be nullified, so that we could say to our people ‘there is no more to fear from the Jousters of Tia, let us have a truce,’ then no matter what was whispered in whose ear, the Altans, common and noble alike, would support a truce. The Priests would support a truce; no few of them have lost brothers, fathers, and children to the armies. If the Priests were united, and the Great Ones fostering it, even the Magi would not dare to oppose it. And he believes that if the Tian Jousters no longer ruled the skies, that they could no longer descend upon a village and terrorize it, then the Tians would begin to think on the possibility that it might soon be one of their villages that is served the selfsame dish, and support a truce.”

  “But what of those who poison wells and burn fields by night?” Kiron asked reluctantly.

  Toreth sighed. “We had not thought that far,” he admitted. “But we have a start. And the Great Ones are old. They grow no younger, and stolen years are not healthy years, they only prolong life, not turn back the sands of time. Eventually, Kaleth and I will take their places, and then—” his eyes gleamed. “—then the Magi had best look to themselves. We will not be gulled by promises of stolen years. We are not greedy. We will content ourselves with power and wealth, and let the gods send as long a life as they may.”

  “And in the meantime?” Kiron asked.

  The prince tilted his head to the side and shrugged. “We think. We plan. We gather friends to support us when the time comes. Friends of all sorts,” he added meaningfully.

  Once again, Kiron felt as if he had been stunned, as the pieces came together. “Like a wing of a new sort of Jouster?” he asked dryly. “Am I the last?”

  Toreth laughed, although it was a laugh with a great deal of irony in it. “No, not quite. Is Orest to be trusted, do you think?”

  “With my life, yes,” he replied honestly. “With my secret—I am not so sure.”

  Toreth shook his head with mock-sadness. “Gossips worse than a girl, that one. Perhaps raising a dragonet will steady him. Right now, I would sooner trust his sister. And I wish that she were one of us; she has sense, that Aket-ten, and she is as good a scholar as my brother. And if she grows into the promise of her powers—I could do far worse than have a Far-Sighted Winged One who is not afraid to speak the truth as an adviser. I hope she recovers from her illness and returns to the city soon.”

  It was on the tip of Kiron’s tongue to tell the prince the truth about Aket-ten, but he bit it back. This would be a bad time to spill someone else’s secret. Nevertheless—“I might find someone as useful,” he said instead. “A Healer, perhaps. I have a friend in the Temple of All Gods.”

  “ ‘Trust your wife with your household, your brother with your purse, and a Healer with all,’ ” Toreth quoted the old proverb. “A Healer would be a good addition to our cadre.”

  “Well, I will wait and speak with her, and perhaps bring her to you.” Kiron decided to commit to no more than that.

  “Oh, a she is it? You sly young jackal!” Toreth grinned and winked. Kiron blushed, which only made it worse. Fortunately, Toreth was not the sort to pursue it any further, except to say, “Well, if she has a sister or a pretty friend, think on me.”

  “And you a betrothed man!” Kiron chided.

  Toreth shrugged and grinned further. “I do not prevent my betrothed from seeking things she finds pleasurable, and she makes no demands upon me. Which is just as well, since I would pay no heed anyway. It was our parents made the arrangement, not us.”

  That seemed to be the end of the dangerous revelations, but Kiron was perfectly satisfied to leave many more questions unspoken and unanswered. He had more than enough to think on as it was.

  Looking back on that conversation a few days later, he could point to it as the moment when his life took another unexpected direction. He seemed to have passed some sort of test, and been accepted into a fellowship that he had not, until that moment, known even existed, a fellowship of which Toreth and Kaleth were the tacit leaders. Nevertheless, when it came to the dragons, he was still the trainer and the leader, and if anything, the others tendered him even more respect.

  Perhaps that was because he was earning it. Knowing that he would have to show them what to do, even in the midst of the rains, he was training with Avatre. She did not like it, not in the least, but he insisted that she fly in the rain, and learn to handle the tricky currents of the storms. He would not fly her when there was lightning, or up into or above the clouds, but otherwise they were going up once a day at least.

  With Toreth’s plan already in his mind, he was looking for all the advantages he could find. The Tian Jousters did not fly in the rain; therefore, Altan Jousters would learn how to, beginning with himself and Avatre, for every tiny advantage was something to be snatched. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no one could force even the most heavily drugged wild-caught desert dragon into the sky in the rain, but the tame ones—well, that was another story. And in this, at least, the Altans were better equipped, for the swamp dragons found it no hardship.

  He had figured that he could coax Avatre into it, for certainly even the desert dragons living in the wild had to fly and hunt no matter what the weather, so the thing was possible. And Avatre complained, but cooperated.

  He did make sure to reward and praise her lavishly whenever the task w
as done.

  Lord Khumun was astonished—but a handful of the riders of swamp dragons watched them with speculation, and soon began taking their mounts up for short practice flights as well. Rain flight was dangerous; everything was slippery, leather straps stretched and loosened, and the wind was hard to read. Sudden downpours could leave you blinded at a critical moment, and the really important thing was to make sure to get the dragon back down before she was chilled, or she would start to weaken. And a chilled dragon could sicken, even die.

  Rain flight was miserable, too; it was not possible to wear a rain cape, of course. It wasn’t hard to remember to get the dragon out of the sky before she chilled, when the rider was getting numb in the fingers and toes long before that point.

  Still, it was an advantage, and the riders of swamp dragons were able to go out on patrol and even thwart some Tian raids by being “where they shouldn’t be.” Lord Khumun was pleased. The swamp dragon riders were more than pleased; finally they were getting their own blows in, and though the victories were small, the effect on morale was enormous.

  Kiron was now getting the respect of the older Jousters that he had not gotten before. First, his training (or in some cases, retraining) suggestions, using falconry techniques, had made intractable dragons a bit easier to handle. Now, it was clear that his tame dragon was not “spoiled” since she was doing for him what no other desert dragon was willing to do. He had, with his experiments, given them victories at last. And he was taking the punishment of riding in this miserable wet weather, learning how to do it all the hard way, since there were no other examples. He sensed this new respect in the changed ways that the older men looked at him at first—then the demonstrations went from covert to overt. Someone would have their dragon boy waiting in the landing court with a flask of hot wine when he came down. The best table—the one nearest the kitchen—was left open for him and whoever cared to sit down with him at meals. Greetings went from a cool nod to a slap on the back and a hearty “Saw you up today, good flying, boy.”

  These were, after all, veterans, and men as much as ten or fifteen years his senior. They were hardly going to socialize with him, and he didn’t expect it—nor particularly want it. But the respect, after all those years of being kicked and beaten and regarded as low as the lowly weed he’d been named for—that was victory for him, and it tasted as sweet as the victories over the Tians.

  And by extension, the boys of his new wing got some of that respect, too. If they didn’t have the background required to savor it as much as he did, they still appreciated it. He had proved that they were not some crazed experiment doomed to fail. And some of those older Jousters who had come to see him and Avatre when they were recovering in Lord Ya-tiren’s villa were now speculating enthusiastically about the day when there would be enough of the “youngsters” up and flying that these old veterans could afford the time to raise a tame dragon of their own.

  Well, he thought, when he first overheard one of those conversations at mealtime, I will make a point of seeing you get a fine egg on that day.

  He watched the prince watching these scarred veterans, and now that he knew Toreth and Kaleth’s long-term plans, he could see Toreth weighing the men in his mind. At some point, the prince’s cadre would have to expand beyond the dozen or so of his peers that he had taken into his confidence, and the logical place to start was here, among the Jousters. Of all of the inhabitants of Alta, these men were the ones who had the least fear of the Magi, and possibly the most (though carefully veiled) contempt—though Kiron suspected that if one was to investigate, probably most soldiers felt the same. And of all of the fighters of Alta, these were the men who saw the most combat. Front-line troops would face Tian troops for short periods in pitched battles; Altan Jousters faced Tian Jousters every day outside the season of Rains. And this had been going on for generations—while the Magi sat safely in their tower and did—what? They said they were working their spells against the Tians, and protecting Altans, but how could you tell? Until recently, that is—there was no doubt with the new storms that they were sending that they had hit upon something that obviously worked.

  But still. They were safe in their tower while they did it. There were probably few fighting men who could view that with less than contempt.

  So the prince’s plans would probably meet with a great deal of approval here.

  “But not now,” Toreth said calmly, as he, Gan, Kalen, Oset-re and Kiron gathered one night in Can’s pen. It was no kind of formal planning session, but whenever any of the cadre got together, talk tended to drift toward the future, and often a good idea or two came out of it. It was Gan, not Kiron, who suggested seeking support among the older Jousters, and Toreth met the idea with approval. “But not now,” he repeated. “First, we have to prove ourselves. All we are this moment is mother hens, sitting on our eggs. Kiron hasn’t even proved himself yet, except as a flyer and someone who knows his dragons. Until I am a fighting Jouster, and can talk to them as an equal, I won’t have respect that I have I’ve earned for myself.”

  “But you have the rank,” countered Gan, with the unconscious air of superiority of the noble-born. Kiron wondered when he would see how much that rankled those who were of more humble birth. That he would, eventually, Kiron was sure; that languid manner covered a keen mind. “That demands respect!”

  “You cannot demand the respect of the common man, Gan,” said Kalen, from where he sat in the pool of light cast by Can’s lamp, stitching a giant version of a falcon’s hood, for use with new-caught wild dragons. “You can demand obedience and get it, and deference, surely, but you can’t demand respect, you have to earn it. Actually, that’s exactly how Toreth earned my respect.” He looked up with a lazy smile. “At the age of eleven, he and Kaleth had already figured that out, and came to where the hawks were mewed, working side by side with me, learning how to care for, tame, and train young falcons exactly as I had. Thus earning my respect. Clever lads.”

  “Say rather, observant,” Toreth replied. “Having a father who is a Commander of Hundreds with a low level of patience makes you observant rather quickly.” He pitched his voice to a growl. “Boys! Princes you may be, but until you are Great Ones, I can whip you from here to the Seventh Canal if you don’t care for that hound properly!”

  “Oh, I recall another bellow altogether,” said Gan, and put his voice into the same truculent tone. “I will drown you in the First Canal with my own hands if you do not return my seal ring!”

  “And just what were you doing with your father’s seal ring?” asked Oset-re, amused.

  “Trying to forge letters making us Captains of Tens, of course!” Toreth replied. “With chariots of our own, plumed helmets, and honey cakes in perpetuity.”

  Gan choked on his beer, laughing, and Kalen had to pound on his back until he stopped coughing.

  Sometimes Kiron could only marvel at the prince’s patience, working out plans that could not possibly come to pass in less than a decade. First, he would become a Jouster, while his brother insinuated himself into an administrative position where he would have access to the kinds of documents that would, in Toreth’s words, “map out the rot and tell us how far we have to burn.” Then he would make sure that no matter what else happened, the Jousters were built up until their numbers equaled or bettered those of the Tians, so that when he and Kaleth rose to the Thrones, they could call for that truce without sacrificing the safety of their people. Meanwhile, Kaleth would be collecting information, finding who among the powerful and the noble could be counted upon to back Toreth against the Magi, and slowly revealing to them some of their plans. Not the end of the war, however. That was to remain a carefully guarded secret within the inner circle until Toreth and Kaleth were securely in the Twin Thrones. Then would come the overthrow of the Magi, and the signing of a truce with Tia. The farther into the future, of course, the vaguer the plans became, until they were goals rather than plans—but for the near-term, Toreth and his twin had a great deal
already mapped out.

  Perhaps, especially given their suspicions about the long lives of the Great Ones, other young men would have been plotting the overthrow of the current Great Ones, not a peaceful transition. Not Toreth and Kaleth. “That would undermine everything—and probably get us caught and strangled,” Toreth confided to Kiron later that evening. “No. We will have the thrones legitimately, in our time. The only thing that anyone will ever be able to prove, even if someone betrays us, is that we wish to restore some of the power that the Magi took back to the priesthood. There is naught wrong with that—and much that would be considered pious.”

  “Have the Magi tried to cultivate you?” Kiron asked, curiously. He could not imagine the Magi not trying so obvious a ploy with the next in line to the throne.

  Toreth laughed aloud, and the others glanced up from the game of hounds and jackals they were playing. “What?” asked Can.

  “Have the Magi tried to cultivate my brother and me?” Toreth asked aloud.

  Oset-re snorted. “Like experienced old whores sidling up to drunken sailors!” he replied. Once again, he exercised his talent for imitation, somehow making himself look both haughty and oily at the same time.

  “Has my Lord Toreth any need for my humble services?” he oozed. “A spell to catch a young lady’s attention, perhaps? A talisman for gambling luck, or one against drunkenness?” He flared his nostrils delicately. “Or perhaps you, my Lord Kaleth—I have some scrolls you might find of—interest.” He pretended to unfurl a scroll.

  Toreth mock-gagged. “I tried to play the cocky—and none too bright—spoiled brat, who is so certain of himself that he mocks the very idea of needing any arcane help. I hope I didn’t overplay it. Kaleth simply looked myopic and horrified. He was horrified, and properly so—as erotic scrolls go, that one was singularly awful.”