Sanctuary

hunting here, and none of them are afraid of humans. That means they’re forming wild wings of their own, and making new territories all over this desert. In fact, I think I’ve been seeing some of them in the distance. I just didn’t think about it, because as long as they didn’t bother me, they didn’t really matter.”

“I believe I have, too,” Ari replied thoughtfully. “But I’ve been so busy hunting I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the wild dragons in the distance.”

“I know I have,” said Menet-ka, quietly, from behind Kiron. “There’s a natural hot spring in my hunting area, and there’s a whole—flock? herd?—a group of them, anyway, that I see there most mornings. They sleep around it at night. I know they’re Jousting dragons, because they let me get pretty close before they fly off.”

Baken’s eyes lit up. “Females?” he asked eagerly.

“At least four. And they’re all breeding age.” Menet-ka chuckled. “They left us alone, I don’t know whether it’s because I’m with Bethlan, or because Bethlan is too young to be considered a rival.”

“I think I know where there’s at least one or two,” Kiron said slowly. “I think I’ll go look; I have to go there anyway to hunt tomorrow. It’s where the mountains meet the desert.”

“Then I think we should construct a hatching pen,” said the young priest firmly. “We haven’t the need to hurry, the way we did to work on these pens so we could all move to better quarters, and it won’t take all that long to do a single pen.”

“We’ll help!” replied Baken. Then he hesitated, and looked at Kiron. “That is, if—”

A memory flashed through Kiron’s mind, of how Baken had made friendly overtures to him despite being given very unfriendly treatment on Kiron’s part. How Baken had inadvertently been the one who had taught him what he needed to know to train Avatre. Without Baken, he probably would never have escaped successfully with her.

“Baken, we’ve done without dragon boys this long, why start spoiling us?” he said with a laugh. “No, this is important. Kaleth has said we must have more dragons, and until ours are old enough to breed, this is the only way we’ll get them. You build the hatching pen, and as many more new pens as you can. We’ll see if we can spot any groups of the old Jousting dragons about, and when we find them, we’ll start watching them, or asking the Bedu to, and—trust to luck and to Haras.”

“Haras will favor us,” said the young priest firmly.

“He must. If he fails to do so—he may well find himself with no one to worship him but those the advisers deem too unimportant or ineffectual to repress.”

Kiron winced. But after what he had seen in Alta, he couldn’t find it in him to disagree.

He slept better that night, with Avatre literally within reach (she had elected to rest her head on the platform, with her nose just inside his shelter!) than he had since the first days of utter exhaustion following their arrival in Sanctuary. It was good to be with his beloved again, good to have her scent of hot stone and spice in his nostrils, good to know that if anything disturbed her in the night he would be right there to soothe her.

Not that anything did. She slept as soundly as he; perhaps she was as comforted by his presence as he was by hers. They were both up and awake without needing outside prodding as soon as the sky lost its stars, and she was truly awake and ready to move immediately, with none of the sluggishness of having spent a cold night. It was just light enough to make out the shadows of things against the lighter stone and sand; the rack for the harness and saddle, the stone trough that had been moved here with much grunting and labor for Avatre’s water. She stood waiting for her harness, as good and obedient as anyone could have asked. It was a distinct pleasure to be able to saddle her without jockeying for space with the others. He had done this so many times that he really didn’t need to see the worn-familiar straps and buckles to get her harnessed up. And as for Avatre, she kept looking upward and making little contented snorts, not the grumbling that had been her usual accompaniment to this chore. It seemed that everyone else in the wing was having a similar experience with their dragons this morning, because he didn’t even hear whining from Deoth, Pe-atep’s scarlet-and-sand male. And although he and Avatre were the first in the air, it wasn’t by much. Aket-ten took off right after he did, and before he had gotten too high, Pe-atep and Ari were a wingbeat behind her.

Mindful of his promise to range farther today, he took Avatre up high. She followed his signals and his encouraging hands, rising upward in as close to a vertical climb as a dragon could manage. He was glad of the saddle straps today, leaning over her neck and feeling the thrust of her muscles under his legs with each upward surge of her wings, each wingbeat a flash of glowing scarlet in his peripheral vision, and when they could see the distant mountains, he signaled her to level off and head in that direction. By moving her up as high as he could safely take her while she was still fresh, she had the height to take some glides, saving her some laboring in the thin, cool, morning air.

Cool? It was more than cool, it was cursed cold—but that was the way of things in the desert. He glanced down; at this point, a wild ox would look smaller than an ant, but the only thing he saw was a single Bedu on a camel down below, and the only reason he knew there was a Bedu on the back of the camel was by the barely visible flapping of his robes. It was probably one of the outriders, bringing back waterskins full of precious water from the spring below Sanctuary to his clan or family group.

They flew on as the sky lightened, going from deep, velvety blue to gray, as the eastern horizon brightened, and at last, the very edge of the great disk showed at the world’s edge. The sun gilded the tops of those distant mountains at their halfway point, though the land beneath them was still in shadow. He held himself back from asking her to fly faster, even though he feared that if there were dragons in there, he would miss the sight of them taking off for their morning’s hunts. She needed to save her strength for her own hunting.

But he kept his eyes strained toward those low, rough crests, rather than looking for game as he usually did—and so luck was with him, and he did catch sight of them as they powered up out of the canyons cut into the rock. The sun struck them as they came out of the darkness, flashing on their scales, and making them look like distant, iridescent gems being flung into the sky by a careless child.

Ten of them, altogether: ruby-red, deepest maroon, two sky-colored blues, a blue-green like a beetle’s wings, a green-gold the color of sunfish scales, a red-gold like an enameled pendant, an indigo, and a coppery brown. They scattered to every direction in order to avoid each other as they hunted, though they spread mostly to the north, but there was no doubt in his mind that they were using that canyon as their den. He marked it in the map in his mind, and with a feeling of relief, turned to the important task of helping Avatre with her hunt. He could scout the canyon later; she was hungry now. He could feel her impatience in the way she kept scanning the desert below, and the sudden way in which she changed direction when she thought she spotted something.

And a good thing, too, for the hunt was singularly frustrating.

They spent most of the morning gaining height, searching for prey, gliding down and having to labor for height again. All the while, she was getting hungrier and more impatient—and, in fact, losing her temper. Finally, just as the thermals were starting to help, he spotted something, a dust cloud, in the direction he had least expected it, the mountains where he had seen the dragons taking off from their canyon.

If they’re living there—then they’re used to avoiding dragons. This isn’t going to be easy. . . .

Avatre saw it, too, and by now, she was so hungry she didn’t wait for his signal to pursue that distant clue, she tilted sideways and slipped around in a tight turn that sent her straight for the sign. She wasn’t wasting any time either; with grim determination, she clawed for height in a stomach-lurching series of powerful wingbeats before flattening out into a racing flight. She had seen those dragons, too—and she was not going to let one of them get “her” prey.

When this kind of mood was on her, the only thing Kiron could do was duck down over her neck and hang on. Woe betide anything that got between her and her meal. . . .

With a feeling of great pride, he realized after a while that she was a lot faster, and a great deal stronger, than she had been just a few moons ago. She hadn’t put on a burst of speed like this in a very long time, and there was no doubt in his mind that the ground was speeding past down below them much faster than it had before.

But triumph—and breakfast—was not going to come easily today.

As he had expected, these oryx—he had just enough time to identify them before they threw their heads up and bolted—knew what dragons were. They probably knew every single step of their territory and the best places to