Alta

that, Avatre was not at all loath to land.

Nor, truth to tell, was Kiron; flying required a great deal of the rider, as he shifted his weight and balance to help his dragon. Between that exertion and the exercises of the morning, he was sore.

On the whole, he was going to welcome these lessons, if it meant he might sit at his leisure and merely listen.

Orest hurried to help him take off Avatre’s harness; all of her attention was on that barrow, and when Kiron wheeled it close enough to her that she could reach it, she dove in. He knew that when she was sated, she would want to sleep, so she would not miss him for the rest of the afternoon.

“I was beginning to wonder if you’d decided to fly off again, after seeing all the lessons you were going to have to do,” Orest said, only half teasing, as they made their way out of the manor again, this time going toward the temple next door.

“Why, because you would have?” Kiron teased.

Orest made a face. “Well, yes, actually. We’re going to the temple where my sister is a Nestling; they hold lectures on philosophy and history in the courtyards there. Which do you want first?”

Kiron shrugged as much as he could without further jarring his rib cage. “It’s all one to me; you pick.”

Orest sighed. “History, then. Philosophers go on forever unless it’s close to dinnertime.”

Kiron laughed, and followed his friend in through the gates of the temple, which featured a pair of rainbow- colored wings supporting a slender golden flame. Despite Orest’s glum face, he had a notion that this was going to be interesting. He was beginning to have the impression that Orest was not, and never would be interested in anything that required exercise of his mind, but Kiron felt rather like a sponge that had been dry all of its life and had suddenly been put into water. Let Orest sigh and look gloomy; he was going to enjoy all this “tutoring.”

SIX

KIRON remained as still as a hungry crocodile lying in wait, as Lord Khumun-thetus surveyed the group of youngsters before him in the antechamber to the Jousters’ Compound. He did not yet want to draw attention to himself. Soon enough, these boys, some of whom were actually older than he, would discover that he, Kiron-son-of-unknown-Kiron, was to be, in essence, their trainer, their Overseer, and ultimately, the one who would pass judgment on their ability to raise a dragonet. Or not. That was going to cause some resentment, he feared, but it couldn’t be helped. In all of Alta City there was only one person who knew how to raise a dragon from the egg, and that person was not going to entrust a precious dragonet to careless hands.

It was a mixed lot, drawn from every possible class. There were several boys who had been animal handlers—Kiron had high hopes for the one who had been tending to lions and cheetahs, and the one who had been taking care of some high-ranking noble’s hawks. There were, of course, quite a few nobly born youngsters, of whom one was Orest.

And there was a prince.

Or at least, Toreth-aket was a prince as Kiron understood the term. Toreth and his brother had been frequent visitors to Orest, for Toreth had been Orest’s friend long before Ya-tiren’s son had the lodestone of a dragon in his courtyard. Kiron had been astonished when he learned just who and what Orest’s friend was.

Here in Alta, succession to rule was not in a direct line, nor was it even matrilineal as it was in Tia, where the man who married the firstborn daughter of the Great King was the man who succeeded to the throne. There were several royal families or clans here, and the thrones went to the two sets of married twins in the Royal Houses who were oldest when the thrones became vacant.

Toreth-aket and his brother Kaleth-aket were currently the oldest set of male twins within the Royal Houses, and they had been betrothed in their cradles to the oldest pair of female twins (who were actually three years older than they were). When one of the current set of Great Ones died or became incapacitated, it would mean that the rest of the group would have to step down. When that happened, Toreth and Kaleth, if not already married, would be wedded and crowned all on the same day, and take over the ruling of Alta.

Now, it might seem that Toreth would have been forbidden to take his place among the Jousters on that account alone, but if Kiron understood things correctly, the Altans had very specific requirements for their princes. One of the male twins was always to be a scribe or a priest, while the other was always to take some sort of military training. Becoming a Jouster counted, evidently.

If Kiron had not known that the two were twins, he would never have guessed it. He would have known that they were brothers, of course, for there was that much familial resemblance there, but otherwise they were nothing alike. Both had eyes of the same deep brown, and thin, angular faces, and both wore their own hair and wore it long, past their shoulders, braided with hundreds of tiny braids.

For anyone other than scion of a royal family or a merchant of dazzling wealth, this little quirk would have been impossible. Such a labor-intensive hairstyle required several body servants and was a sign that the wearer was of higher status than even someone who could afford the finest of wigs. The wig always remained perfect; one’s own hair needed unbraiding and rebraiding all the time.

So both had the “royal” hairstyle. But there the resemblance ended. Toreth was strong, tall, supremely athletic, and able to make lightning judgments. Kaleth was shorter than his twin, did not give a toss for games but was a brilliant scholar, who already read and spoke five languages fluently, and would ponder every question for hours before making a decision. Both were good-natured and hard-working, and generous to a fault. If Kiron had been asked to choose the people he would most trust, next to Aket-ten and Orest, it would have been Toreth and Kaleth.

Nevertheless, Toreth might face failure here for the first time in his life, for he would have to impress Lord Khumun of his sincerity. Might—though truth to tell, Kiron didn’t think it likely that Toreth would fail.

“You are here today,” said Lord Khumun, “because all of you want to be Jousters. I suspect that eventually all of you will become Jousters, but this is a group who will become a very particular set of Jousters—you will be beginning your training years earlier than any other Altan ever has, and you will be raising your own dragons, literally from the egg.”

There were nods all around, and some sighs. Of course, all the boys here knew this; it was why they had petitioned, begged, pleaded—some of them—to be allowed to join this group. But other than Orest and the two animal handlers, Kiron didn’t think any of them had any notion how much work was going to be involved.

“This means,” Lord Khumun continued, “that you will be doing things that no Jouster of Alta has ever had to do before. And I do not,” he went on, raising an eyebrow at one particularly enthusiastic-looking lad, “mean what you think I mean. No. What I mean, just to begin with, is that you who win the way to a dragon egg, will, at least in the first year, be doing all of the work that a dragon boy normally would perform and doing it by yourselves. This means feeding, tending, cleaning out the pen, exercising, grooming, training. All of it. While a dragon boy or other servant will be assigned to you to bring the dragonet’s food to you and tend to your quarters, you will be doing all of the work in the pen. There will be no exceptions, unless you are so ill or injured that you cannot move from your bed.”

From the look of shock on one or two faces, Kiron knew that this revelation had come as a complete, and entirely unpleasant, surprise.

“I have it on the authority of the second of only two men ever to accomplish this feat that this sort of thing is an absolute requirement to achieve the goal we want, which is a tame and bonded dragon,” Lord Khumun went on, “And from my own studies of animals, I am in complete agreement with him. So, if there are any of you for whom this requirement is too distasteful to contemplate, please, feel free to take your leave of us.” He paused, and looked straight at those who had been looking the most shocked or unhappy. “You will not be considered a failure in any sense. We will need true volunteers for this, young men who will find it no burden, will even find some pleasure in taking care of their charge’s every need. Dragons are immensely sensitive creatures and they will know and react to unhappiness on the part of their riders—especially since this group will be handled completely without the use of tala. So if you have misgivings, please take yourself from the group. There will continue to be wild dragons trapped, and we will continue to train and recruit Jousters of the old sort for some time. And this will not be the first wing formed from tame dragons, so if you decide you want to try, say, next year, there will be another wing recruited. Just because you elect not to join this wing means only that you will have to wait until you