Alta

Orest stuck around then, to help him give Avatre a cursory grooming (the best he could do without proper sand and oil, and he wondered how hard Aket-ten had worked in order to get her as clean as she was), then harness her and help him onto her back. “I’m going to take her for—well, take her out like a dog,” he said to Orest. “I’m fit enough to do that much, and she needs both the exercise and to keep from soiling your courtyard.”

“Then take her to the waste ground just past the fruit trees that way,” Orest said, pointing eastward. “It will be just a hop for her. I have to go to my tutor now, but I’ll be back.”

Avatre had been sorely puzzled by the lack of sand or a proper corner to use; she was glad enough to see the bit of waste ground, for the ashes and cinders that were dumped there were enough like sand for her to be content to use them. It was just a hop, but by the time Kiron returned, Orest was nowhere to be seen.

Somewhat to his shock, later that morning, Lord Ya-tiren himself appeared at the courtyard, just as he returned with Avatre after another short flight so that she would not leave her droppings on the pristine stone of the courtyard.

The Altan lord watched in fascination as Avatre backwinged to a soft and graceful landing, and Kiron slid off her back, wincing, but not without patting her affectionately. She turned and nuzzled his hair as he unharnessed her.

“My guest,” called the Altan lord, a prudent distance from both of them, “My son tells me he wishes to emulate you, and hatch a dragon. Here. He tells me you can help him do so.”

Kiron took a deep breath. “If an intact egg can be brought here, warm, he should be able to,” he admitted. “And I have promised to help. But only if he got your permission first.”

Now Lord Ya-tiren’s expression was a curious mixture of emotions; wistful, as he looked at Avatre, resigned as he looked at Kiron.

He would rather not see Orest becoming a Jouster—Jousting is dangerous, as dangerous as any other fighting. But he can understand why Orest wants to do this, and if he were younger, I bet he would do the same.

“Well,” he said at last, and his words were an uncanny echo of Kiron’s own thoughts. “Though it means sending my youngest son into great danger once he is a Jouster, how can I deny him the chance to try what I would try were I younger?” He sighed “All right,” he continued, after a long pause. “You have it. You have my permission. And may the gods grant you success.”

FOUR

OF course, it wasn’t going to be as easy as all that. Putting a dream into action never was.

Complicating this was that it soon became apparent that Orest was not the only person in Alta City to want to raise a dragon from the egg. Furthermore, once Kiron’s existence was made public, he and Avatre ranked as the curiosities of the moment, and it wasn’t only Jousters who wished to see these curiosities for themselves.

In fact, beginning that afternoon, and all through the rest of the day until the evening meal, Lord Ya-tiren admitted a parade of guests who wished to see the tame dragon and the boy who rode her for themselves.

Avatre was on her best behavior, although she could not resist showing off, preening under all the attention. For most of her life, she had only had one person around; nevertheless, she was still young, and on the journey she had gotten used to seeing many who would come and look at her from a near distance when they had stopped with the Bedu clans. Now, however, there were others, who came much nearer (though none of them cared to touch her) and made admiring noises.

She loved it. Although Kiron couldn’t give her a proper grooming, he, Orest and Aket-ten had given her a good wash (though at the expense of a fair amount of pain from his cracked ribs) and he had oiled the more sensitive skin with almond-oil from the kitchen. She glowed in the sunshine as if she’d been made of jewels, the ruby of her body shading into the topaz of her extremities, her gorgeous golden eyes more beautiful than anything made by a jeweler.

Some of the visitors were Altan Jousters, and although all of them were interested in the concept of raising a tame dragon, for the most part their interest faded quickly when they discovered how much work was involved in tending to a dragon like Avatre. As Ari had already discovered among the Tian Jousters, when the aristocratic Jousters of Alta learned that all of this work had to be undertaken by the man who wished to bond with the dragon, they were very much inclined to go back to their current ways.

For a very few, it was not the work that was involved, it was the fact that a man who was already fighting would have to spend so much time out of combat. “Two to three years before she’ll be fit to fly combat!” snorted one, when Kiron told him Avatre’s age. “We can’t afford to have Jousters out for that long! The old way may be hard, but—no. Better to have as many trained men on the battlefield as we can. The old way works; imperfectly, but it works.”

But the last visitor of the day, before Lord Ya-tiren let it gently be known that he was wearied of the stream of strangers and near-strangers trotting through his courtyard, was not just any Jouster. It was the same man who had first come to look at Kiron and his dragon, but this time, he came in an official capacity, and looking so splendid that at first Kiron did not realize it was the same man.

He came strolling—not striding—in, at Lord Ya-tiren’s side. Kiron had not been in any condition to pay close attention to his visitors when he had first awakened, but that had been yesterday. Today he felt a hundred times better, and there was no doubt in his mind that he had better pay attention to this man.

The visitor was a fine figure of a man, with a nose like the beak of an eagle, high cheekbones, deep-set eyes beneath a craggy brow, and he wore his own jet-black hair cut sensibly short to fit under his helmet. This set him in stark contrast to many of the other visitors, who wore theirs fashionably long and braided into a club if they did not sport wigs. By now, Kiron could recognize the Jousters’ “uniform” of a soft, wrapped kilt, buskins to protect the shins, wide leather belt, and a leather chest harness; this man wore a completely different variation on that uniform today. His chest-harness was ornamented in bronze, and sported a medallion of a ram’s head right where the straps crossed at his breastbone. He had bronze armor plates that could not possibly serve any practical function fastened to the harness over each shoulder, and bronze vambraces. His kilt had a band of embroidery about the bottom, and the leather helmet he carried was gilded and ornamented with bronze plaques that matched the one on his chest. It came to Kiron then that one of the subtle oddities that had been nagging at the back of his mind was that thus far, everyone he had met had been several shades paler than the Tians. He had been used to being the freak among the darker dragon boys. Now, neither his longer hair, nor his lighter skin marked him as different.

This then was the man he had to impress, and his stomach tightened with tension.

“Kiron, rider of Avatre,” said Lord Ya-tiren as Kiron made a low bow to both of them. “I would like to make you formally known to Lord Khumun-thetus, Lord of the Jousters and responsible for their training and that of the dragons.”

Lord Khumun-thetus was not paying any attention to Kiron. All his attention was on Avatre, who knew a true admirer when she saw one. Kiron’s tension eased a little. If their welcome here rested on Avatre’s shoulders, then there was very little to worry about.

“You know, she gets better on second viewing, when she’s rested, fed, and clean,” said the Lord of the Altan Jousters. “I’d like to see her after a proper sand bath and oiling. And when she’s full-grown, she’ll be amazing. I don’t suppose she’d let me touch her, would she, young Kiron?”

This was the first of the Jousters, the first of any of the visitors save Orest and Aket-ten who had asked to touch Avatre, and given how positively she was acting, Kiron saw no reason to forbid the contact. “I believe she will accept that, my Lord. The soft facial skin is particularly sensitive.”

Khumun-thetus approached confidently, but with care, holding out his hand to Avatre, who stretched out her neck and sniffed it before permitting him to lay hands on her. From his demeanor, Kiron had no doubt that this man enjoyed working with animals and was good with them, and his next comment told the truth of that. “I was a cavalry officer before I became a Jouster,” he said, to no one in particular. “Though I was not reluctant to give over my dragon when I was made Lord of the Jousters, if I had a dragon like this, there would have been a fight! What a wonderful creature this lady of yours is!” As she stretched out her neck so that he could reach the soft skin just under her jawline, he chuckled. “She’s very like a horse in her enjoyment of being petted.”