Alta

And then, just when he thought the darkness inside the cloud would never end, just when he wondered if he and Vash had died back there, and this was the limbo of an unhappy ghost, she drove through the top of the cloud and up into the sunlight.

He barely had time to look around before Aket-ten and Letoth came surging up beside them like a leaping fish, trailing wisps of cloud stuff behind them.

Aket-ten recovered first. She shook back her woolen sheepskin cape as Letoth spread her wings and let the strong wind carry her, panting with exertion. With a nudge of his knee and a pull on the reins, Kiron sent Vash after her.

It was a different world. He had been high before, but never this high. Together they soared in a strange world, floored with white fleeces, roofed with the blue sky, and empty but for swift, strong winds. Cold—it was as cold as he had ever remembered being, and he dared not think how high they must be. And it was silent, but for the high, thin whistle of the wind in his ears, and the beating of the dragons’ wings. Surely this was far, far higher than he had ever flown, even on Avatre.

It was wonderful beyond words. He took a deep breath of the clean, clear air, and felt as intoxicated as if he had drunk three jars of palm wine. This was freedom such as he had never tasted before. It was as if he and Aket- ten were the only two humans alive in the world, a world made solely for their pleasure.

Aket-ten cast him a wild glance, full of delight, and despite the gravity of their task, he grinned back at her.

Even the dragons seemed to enjoy this place of white and blue and intense light. They soared and tacked back and forth on the wind, staying just above the cloud tops, as he and Aket-ten whooped and laughed with the sheer pleasure of the flight. The air might be cold, but it was also as dry as that over the desert; in no time their clothing and even their cloaks were no more than damp, and the wool was doing its proper job of keeping them warm. Only his nose, his hands, and his ears were cold, and he solved the last by hunching his head down into the fleece of his cloak.

Finally, with a sigh, Kiron recalled himself to duty. He waved a hand at Aket-ten—not wanting to take more than one hand off the saddle hold—and pointed at the bags. She nodded, and pulled the wooden handle on the one nearest him so he could signal her if it had ripped loose properly.

The patch on the bottom ripped off, exposing an open gash in the thick leather—and a thin, gray dust began to drift out, to be caught up on the wind and whipped away in moments.

Satisfied that Heklatis’ creation was working as it should, Kiron signaled to Aket-ten that all was well, and ripped loose the patch from the first of his bags. She nodded vigorously after a moment—

And then, with the best possible combination of business and pleasure, they sent Vash and Letoth in great swooping curves and shallow climbs followed by long dives, kiting their way all over the sky. He had been afraid, given Heklatis’ warnings, that the dust would be so thick it would be dangerous to breathe, but in fact, the wind was carrying it away so fast that he couldn’t even see it except as a bit of misty gray right under the bag. So that meant they didn’t need to try to avoid it, and they just flew where they wanted to, until the first two bags were empty and flapping loose against the dragons’ sides, causing them no end of annoyance. Vash even bent to bite at it, and since Kiron saw no reason to take it back down again, he simply cut it loose and let it fall away into the clouds. When Aket-ten saw what he had done, she did the same, and then they pulled the patches on their second bags and began the procedure all over again.

By this time their clothing was dry and they were actually warm. Or at least, Kiron was, and he thought by the pink of Aket-ten’s cheeks that she was, too. The release of the second lot of dust was no more difficult than the first, and when they had cut their second bags loose, Kiron felt an extreme reluctance to fight their way back down through the clouds again.

All right, he decided, There’s no reason to be down there until we have to. Why don’t we just fly until the dragons are hungry? We’ll let them decide when they want to go home.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Aket-ten waving at him; she mimed diving down. He pointed at Vash’s head, tried to mime being hungry, and pointed at Vash’s head again. She frowned—then smiled, and nodded.

For the rest of the morning, they circled and rode the winds together, and the only way in Kiron’s mind that it could have been more perfect would have been if they were on the same dragon. As it was, they only way they could share their pleasure was by signs and smiles.

Still, he absorbed every moment, cramming it into his memory along with the precious memories of Avatre’s first flight above the desert into freedom, of her first good hunt, of the long flight above the swamps of Alta. He would hold these memories, storing them to take out and savor, as an antidote to fear and grief and pain to come. There would be bad times; just as surely as there were good times, there would be bad ones, and he would need memories like this when they came. If ever there had been a perfect moment in his life, it was this, and he gave in to the intoxication of pure flight.

But eventually, as he had known it must, it had to end. He felt Vash tugging in one particular direction, and she made a huge turn, then went from soaring to real flying, beating her way against the wind with powerful wing thrusts. For a moment, he was puzzled—but then he realized that he had forgotten a little detail.

Up here in the clouds, he had no idea where he was. But Vash knew. Just as the birds knew where “home” was, even when they could not see it, Vash and Letoth knew where the compound was. They were hungry, and the compound meant “food”—they might have soared leagues away from it, but they were used to flying enormous distances to get to the battlefield or on patrol. The wind was strong, but the kamiseen was stronger, and they flew against it as a matter of routine; it was no match for their powerful muscles.

Letoth, with the lighter burden of Aket-ten, swiftly overtook Vash and then went into the lead. This spurred Vash on to better efforts, and the two of them labored across the sky as Kiron marveled that they clearly knew exactly where they were going despite the fact that there was nothing visible but clouds that looked exactly like all other clouds beneath them.

Then, without any warning at all, ahead of him, Letoth suddenly folded her wings and dove. Surprised into a scream, Aket-ten grabbed the saddle with both hands as her mount vanished into the clouds.

Kiron had only that much warning to grab the saddle himself, as Vash did the same.

His stomach got left somewhere far behind him. It might be a controlled dive, but it felt exactly like plummeting, and his body reacted with terror. A scream ripped out of his own throat, and his hands clenched onto the front of the saddle so hard that they ached.

Trust Vash. She knows what she’s doing. She won’t crash. She was wild-caught as an adult, she must have done this before. Trust Vash!

They were through the clouds and the turbulence inside them in two heartbeats, falling like a pair of stones out and into the rain. And as they fell through the bottom of the clouds, he saw Letoth and Aket-ten beside him, her hair streaming behind her, her sheepskin cape flapping loose, her mouth still open in a scream—

—and then the rain curtains parted for a moment, and he saw a canal—a bridge—the compound! The rain closed in, then parted again beneath another gust of wind, and the compound was rushing at them, fast— too fast—

Then Vash snapped her wings open, slowing their fall. The rain and the wind slowed it further, and she began to backwing, pulling her hindquarters under him, making her body into an enormous secondary “wing” to slow them still further—

And then, with three thunderous wingbeats, they were down, and Letoth beside them, down in the landing courtyard, skidding to a halt on the rain-slick earth. A slip, and a skid, and Vash folded her wings.

And there they were, safe again, with rain pouring down over them, soaked to the skin, and frightened out of their bodies, almost, and yet, at the same time, full of triumph.

And there were four people running toward them, shouting welcome over the drum of the rain—two Jousters, two dragon boys. And Kiron realized in that moment that—bless them!—Vash and Letoth’s riders had figured out from their long absence that when they came back, he and Aket-ten would be in no shape to tend to the dragons themselves.

He managed, somehow, to get his leg over Vash’s saddle, and slid down to splash into the courtyard to land on legs that shook with fatigue. Vash’s rider steadied him, then slapped him on the back.