Aerie

trails dangerous to use.

When those eight wings were wings of warriors again, well—

It wouldn’t be just incense trees and rare plants that supported them all.

But first he had to get through this.

TWO

THESE people were Jousters, at least. They let him get Avatre unharnessed and turned loose, to go and socialize with other dragons if she wished (which she did but very rarely) or fly alone, or go back to her hot sands and sleep off her breakfast (which was what she usually did). And they let a Jouster whose dragon had not been as good or lucky a hunter as Avatre come and claim the extra meat from him.

But then they descended on him with their problems.

The first to reach him was a trio of the newest Jousters, one older former rider of a swamp dragon from Alta, the other two dragon boys who had gotten themselves fertile eggs. All three of them wanted use of the few workmen they had here. Kiron listened patiently to their arguments before he made a decision.

“Resket-teren gets priority,” he said finally, and held up a hand. “I understand. All three of you have housing problems. But Resket-teren’s can be fixed the fastest. When people have all got about the same level of urgency, that’s how I’m deciding who gets priority.”

The other two grumbled a bit at that but reluctantly admitted that was fair. “You two might help each other,” he suggested to the “losers” in this situation. “You aren’t trained workmen, but there’s a lot that can be done with four hands rather than two.”

They exchanged a wry look, because this had become one of his favorite answers these days. No one could deny the wisdom of what he was saying, even when they didn’t much like it.

With that disposed of, he went the rounds to see how each of the eight wings was faring. Not, of course, that he didn’t already know how they were faring. The names changed within each wing, but each of them had the same triumphs and the same problems. In each wing there were two people who simply did not get along, mostly because of personalities. In each wing there was at least one show-off who would have to take a fall and learn his lesson. In each, there was one dragon slower to learn than the others. There were some riders who were better at cooperating than others—the recalcitrant ones did tend to be the older riders—and these would just have to get over their attitudes, or eventually form a wing of their own, which was certainly a viable proposition, and one he was considering already.

In fact, the more he thought about it today, the better the idea seemed. In the last day or so there had been two incidents of older riders flaring up at their wingleaders, objecting to serving second or third to “some jumped-up dog boy.” The older riders were, by and large, all aristocrats, and the differences in social standing were beginning to rub some of them raw. Finally, after listening to Huras sigh over his particular problem rider, he came to a decision, and as soon as practice was over for the day, he collected the wingleaders in a group while the rest of their Jousters took themselves off to work on their housing.

By now the sun was fully overhead, and it was like a furnace down in the canyons. Kiron squinted against the white-hot glare on the white sand covering the bottom of the canyon, feeling the heat reflecting from the surface as well as hammering down from the sun-disk. Small wonder that the Tians regarded the Solar Disk as a destroyer, rather than the life giver that the Altans called it. It was even hotter up on the cliffs, which was exactly the way the dragons liked it. There were jewel-bright dragons sprawled over every available ledge, wings spread out to absorb the sun, turning the cliff tops of Aerie into an abstract mosaic of color.

Avatre had forsaken the dark and her hot sands to soak up sun just like the others, a sprawl of gilt-edged ruby glistening in the sun. She had her favorite perch atop Kiron’s dwelling, and, on hearing his familiar step, she raised her head a little to look down at him with her great, golden eyes. She made a little crooning sound on spotting him, and put her head back down again. He smiled up at her, and then simply gazed around the canyon for a moment, taking in the peacefully napping dragons. Every one of them was within snapping distance of at least one other. A couple of them were even lolling side-by-side. This was normal behavior for wild dragons; unheard of in the Jousting dragons that had never been raised by humans.

Oh, yes. This was a far cry from the hissing, complaining dragons of the Jousters’ Compound in Tia . . . hissing, complaining, and at times, dangerous. The wild-caught dragons, even when drugged with tala, needed to be chained and regarded other dragons as potential rivals needing to be trounced. Though they had never hunted on their own, wild dragons classed human among the “prey animals,” and there was no telling which of the young dragonets brought in by hunters might have feasted at one point or another on a two-legged meal. Nor how many of them might remember doing just that thing, and try another two-legged morsel.

So far as these dragons were concerned, humans were fellow dragons, nestmates and parents, and the very little naughtiness they got into could readily be dealt with by a fist to the top of the nose. Not that they did very much; most misbehavior occurred before fledging, when they were still small enough to discipline easily, and when they learned that a fist to the top of the nose meant they had been bad.

And never had a human-raised dragon even snapped at a human, not even when most irritated. They were safe around adult humans; that was a surety.

Maybe not children. No one had volunteered to test the theory so far as a young child went. Though there was no reason why they shouldn’t be just as safe; with Aket-ten there to “explain” to the dragons that a child was a nestling. . . .

With that safeguard in place, so far as Kiron was concerned, it could be done. It definitely should be done before very much longer. Sooner or later there were going to be small children running about here. Once there were more workmen, more folk raising those incense trees, and yes, servants—those would attract bakers and brewers and tradesfolk—there would be families and children. They had better have the problem fixed before it became a problem.

When he looked back down at the faces of his friends, he saw that they, too, were gazing at the lazy dragons with a combination of pride and affection in their eyes. Well, all the new sort of Jousters, even the most argumentative of the “old” Jousters who had gone through the difficulty of hand-raising their new dragons, shared that pride and affection. So that much bound them all together; you couldn’t raise your dragon from a wet-winged hatchling to a flying adult without loving it, and surely that shared experience would help to sort things out, if the irritations could be brought down to a reasonable level.

They filed in the front door, crossed the little distance to the stair cut into the wall, and went up it one after the other. The upper room was full of reflected light, betraying his attempts to paint Avatre on one blank wall of his home, plastered over for the purpose. The painting looked out of proportion. The neck and legs were too long, the head too big, the wings too stretched out and too thin. Well, he was no artist and had never pretended to be. At least nobody laughed at it.

It might be furnace-hot in the canyons, but in the back of Kiron’s second room, it was cool and comfortable. Kiron half closed the shutters to cut down on reflected glare from outside. With a sigh of relief, the nine friends sprawled out in various positions of comfort, some of them taking advantage of the cool stone floor to let the heat leach out of their bodies.

Kiron didn’t exactly have a kitchen area—perhaps that was another reason why Aket-ten wouldn’t move in with him—but he did have some heavy storage jars with even heavier pottery lids that kept the vermin out. From them he took out strips of dried and cured meat and flatbread, and dipped out beer into pottery cups that he handed round. Hardly fancy fare, but none of them were complaining. Perhaps later today, though, he should stop by what passed for a marketplace and get some onions. About the only time he got cooked food anymore was when he visited Sanctuary.

“So, what is it that is buzzing in your head, Kiron?” asked Orest lazily. “Not that I mind all of us getting together for a change. We don’t do that nearly enough.” Aket-ten’s brother, like all the Altans, was of a paler skin tone than the dark Tians, though the people of both kingdoms shared the same straight black hair and dark eyes. He had matured immeasurably over the last several moons. Then again, they all had. He used to be forgetful, and could be terribly lazy when he had to do something that didn’t particularly interest him. Not anymore. Though he still had not broken himself of the habit of speaking first and thinking after.

Kiron nodded at that last with a pang. For people who had been such close friends, and had gone through so much together, it troubled him that they saw so little of each other these days. And yet, there just was not enough time in a day for them to do everything they needed to. If only they could get some workers out here, or youngsters