IT was the business of the priests and priestesses of the goddess Nuth—or, more accurately, the Seers among those priests and priestesses—to predict the start of the season of winter rains. This was of vital importance to the Jousters, for once the rains began, their work would be much curtailed. Dragons didn't like the cold and performed sluggishly when the temperature dropped—and although you could get them to fly in the rain, not even tala would keep them in the air for long. So as the end of the dry season neared, the more closely the compound watched the Temple of Nuth for word. Haraket sent messengers daily, asking if a date had been Foreseen. Anxiety mounted, in no small part because the Jousters, and their dragons, were tired. They needed this respite, and needed it badly.
They need not have been concerned. Precisely when the Nuth priests said they would, the rains came.
Three messages arrived from the Avenue of Temples before Haraket could send his daily request; the first gave warning that the rains would certainly begin the next day, the second gave the exact hour (which was the second hour of dawn), and the third, that the first storm would be unusually heavy. Vetch and the rest of the dragon boys had all rehearsed what they were to do, and after the sun set and all the dragons had settled, they had gone down every row of pens and pulled the canvas awnings over every one of the sand wallows. There was no point in allowing even the unused wallows to become pits of hot sand soup, for green muck would grow in it if the water didn't steam away in time, and that would mean digging out all of the mucky sand and replacing it with clean.
When the rains actually began, Vetch was sound asleep. He woke to the sound of distant thunder and within an hour, rain poured out of the sky and drummed down on the awnings; it was still so dark that he couldn't even see his hand in front of his face, and the first rush of water put out the torches in the corridor outside. It was quite a storm, and he was glad to be under cover when it came, although all of the lightning stayed up in the clouds, and the thunder never was more than a rumble overhead. Still, as hard as the water was pouring down out of the sky, the roar as it hit the canvas and the ground was enough to drown out everything but that thunder. He couldn't help but contrast his position now with the same time last year, when he had actually climbed up onto the woodpile in Khefti's back courtyard to shelter under the canvas covering it—for he was not permitted an awning to keep him dry.
These rains would actually do very little for the state of the Great Mother River, for the annual flood that enriched the fields with a thick carpet of rich silt were caused by rain that fell in the lands of the headwaters, much farther south. And the winter rains in Tia were nothing like the ones in Vetch's home in Alta; storms could last for many days without a pause up there, but were gentle things, as much mist as rain.
The floods had less effect in Alta as well. By the time the Great Mother River reached Alta, she had spread out into the flatlands and swamps, and there was more room for the floodwaters to go.
On the first day of the rains, dawn did not truly arrive; the darkness merely lightened, gradually, to gray. The awnings were cleverly made to dump the rain into channels that carried the water away from the sand wallow; very little got into the hot sand, and most of that quickly steamed away. Kashet showed no signs of wanting to move; in point of fact, it looked to Vetch as if nothing short of an earthquake would budge the dragon from his wallow. Not that Vetch blamed him; he wished he could stay warm and dry—but the rains didn't stop the chores from needing to be done, so he would have to get up and join the other boys at their daily tasks.
He wrapped his woolen mantle about his shoulders, and left the shelter of the awnings for the corridor—
—where he promptly got soaked. No awnings there; it would have been a shocking waste of canvas, even for so prosperous a place as the Jousters' compound. The best he could hope for would be that he'd get to spend most of his time inside rooms rather than courtyards. At least the wool of his mantle stayed warm, though wet. The linen kilt went sodden and cold and distinctly unpleasant, it clung to him clammily and only impeded his walking.
He got Kashet's breakfast; the other boys were straggling in, as reluctant to leave their quarters as he was, and for once, they didn't pointedly ignore him. Shared misery was making for a semblance of amity, anyway. Haraket was there as usual, and made sure that each of the boys covered the meat in their barrows with much- stained squares of scrap canvas, hide, or some other covering from a pile of such things beside the tala-bin. Vetch did the same, although his load did not have tala on it; that was the main concern, that the tala not wash off. The dragons would be reacting to the onset of the rains according to their natures; some would be surly, some languid, some edgy, and the surly and edgy ones would need that tala if their boys were to handle them safely in their enforced confinement. He pulled his mantle over his head, squared his shoulders, and trundled his barrow back to the pen through the downpour.
Kashet raised his head lazily from the wallow when he entered the pen, and took his time in eating his meat. Perhaps he already knew that there would be no flying today; he was certainly clever enough to know that when the rains began, work ended. Kashet seemed to savor each bite, rather than bolting his food, but Vetch didn't care that the dragon lingered over his meal; he took the opportunity to bury his chilled feet in the hot sand, and spread his soaking mantle over the top of the wallow out of Kashet's way. The wool began to steam immediately, and the hot sand felt so good on his cold feet that he left the verge and sat himself right down in the sand himself, wrapping his skinny arms around his knees and resting his chin atop them. Long before Kashet finished his meal, Vetch stopped
