Sanctuary

by Mercedes Lackey

  Kiron controlled his expression with an effort. He had been trying to get Aket-ten alone ever since they all arrived here in Sanctuary, but one thing and another had always interfered with his plans. But it seemed that she had some plans of her own—

  “Let me just leave word—” he said, because the one rule he had imposed on all of them, himself included, was to never fly off dragonback without first telling someone where you were going. If he or Avatre or both had been hurt by that wild green dragon back when he’d first found the new city, at least someone would have known the general direction to go looking.

  That done, he hurried for the pens, to discover that Aket-ten was already in the saddle and waiting, with Re-eth-ke perched on the wall, fanning her silver-edged blue wings while Avatre watched them both with no sign of hostility. His breath caught as Aket-ten turned her head a little; she and her dragon made a wonderful pair. Re-eth-ke’s scales shone the same blue-black as Aket-ten’s hair; Aket-ten’s lithe body moved so easily with Re-eth-ke’s that the two of them might have been a single creature, like the human-horses in Akkadia that Heklatis told tales about. The linen tunic she wore was exactly the same as the boys all wore, but it certainly looked better on her than on any of them. . . .

  She turned toward him at that moment, saw him, and grinned and waved. He felt his heart pound a little faster. His feet certainly started to move as if his whole body was suddenly lighter.

  And his hands, when he saddled Avatre, seemed to have eyes at the ends of his fingers.

  The mere thought of being far away from Sanctuary with only Aket-ten made him feel almost deliriously happy.

  “Got your sling?” she called when he was in the saddle at last, and Avatre shuffled her feet impatiently, waiting for him to give her the signal to take to the air.

  He nodded, and held up the sling for Aket-ten to see. He didn’t have to ask if she had her bow, it was there, with her arrows, in the quiver at her hip.

  But she waited, as a good Jouster should, for him to go up first. He was the wingleader, after all, even if today the wing consisted of two.

  Re-eth-ke fell in slightly behind, a position that seemed to take less effort to hold, for the dragon who wasn’t in the lead didn’t have to cut through the air. All he could figure was that air acted like thin water, and the lead dragon cut a wake that the ones behind could ride. He decided that since there were two of them, he would try for a more challenging prey today: wild ox. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t go after one. They were tough, and even Kashet found them a challenge. As a consequence, they hadn’t been hunted much in his territory, so they were plentiful and unafraid. This might be the time to take down one or more. The dragons weren’t hungry yet and could probably be persuaded to cooperate in a joint hunt—

  Especially since one of them was being flown by Aket-ten.

  “Wild ox!” he shouted to her, over the flapping of the dragon’s wings and the wind in his ears.

  She nodded. Her main Gift as a Winged One was that she could speak to animals. She—and to tell the truth, the priests and priestesses in charge of the Fledglings—had thought that a lesser Gift. But if it had not been for her ability, she would never have been able to save Re-eth-ke from mourning to death after the murder of Toreth, whose dragon she had been.

  And, thanks to Aket-ten’s abilities, the training of the entire wing had been swift and smooth; much smoother than it would have been had she not been able to explain to the dragons exactly what their riders wanted.

  He had a good idea that she was “speaking” to both dragons once he told her the quarry he planned to hunt, and when Avatre looked back over her shoulder at Aket-ten several times, he was sure of it.

  “Stooping runs?” she called forward, over the steady whump, whump sound of the dragons’ wings. He nodded. That meant that he would dive in first, trying to stun the quarry with a stone, but not allowing Avatre to close and bind. Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke would follow, with Aket-ten using her bow. Then he would come in again, and this time, if they’d managed to do enough damage, he’d let fly with a second stone and allow Avatre to attack and bind. Meanwhile Aket-ten would be ready to come to his rescue if the ox turned on them.

  It was a maneuver they had worked out to use against chariots. They’d never actually had to use it in that manner, but they’d practiced it enough that it should work.

  The burning air coming up from the baking desert smelled of dry grass, furnace-hot earth, and a faint hint of animal musk. A herd of oryx saw them and went to shelter under a grove of thorn trees. They only got a glimpse of camels from a distance, as wild goats scattered and fled away into the hills, and a herd of wild asses ducked into a canyon too narrow for dragons to get into. Not that any of those ploys would work against a dragon partnered with a human, but it showed they were used to being hunted from the air now. Which might mean more wild dragons were somewhere about.

  Finally, he spotted what he was looking for—a herd of six or seven wild oxen grazing on the tough, sparse grasses in the lee of a hill.

  Clamping his legs on Avatre’s saddle, he got a rock in his sling, and sent her into a long, flat dive, with the oxen at the end of it. Just before she reached them, and their heads came up to stare belligerently at him, he whirled the sling and let fly, striking the nearest right between the horns. It staggered and went to its knees, as Avatre pitched up and began working her wings, trading speed for height.

  In the end, the kills were a little anticlimactic. With two dragons attacking, rather than one, even a tough wild ox didn’t have much of a chance. The hardest part was pulling Avatre off her kill to help Re-eth-ke with another, and that was the moment where it helped to be hunting while neither of them was hungry. The pull of the chase and the kill combined with Aket-ten’s persuasion overrode the need to eat.

  But when both were finally down on their respective kills, Kiron deemed it wise to allow both dragons to stuff themselves. Even so, they could hardly eat more than half of the kill, and he and Aket-ten got the unpleasant but necessary chore of dividing up the remains so that neither dragon was unbalanced nor overburdened with the extra meat.

  His original intention had been to leave it in the back of one of the bigger houses while he and Aket-ten got a chance to spend a little time alone together.

  But that was before they reached the city.

  They came in on an odd tangent that took them over a part of the city where midnight kamiseens had dumped a great deal of sand, half-burying the entrance to the houses, and filling the canyon to a depth that a dragon would find comfortable—

  And, in fact, to a depth a dragon was finding comfortable.

  The sprawl of scarlet on the pale sand was startling, but not nearly so startling as the four mounds uncovered when she looked up at them and moved her wing. Eggs! There was a nesting dragon here—

  As if Aket-ten really did have the Gift of hearing human thought as well as animal, both dragons tilted over and soared back so they could all get a second look.

  Since the female didn’t seem at all disturbed by them, Kiron sent Avatre in a little lower this time. He didn’t like what he saw. The female’s ribs were starting to show, and her movements were slower than he liked. She wasn’t in good shape, and when she crouched over her eggs and mantled her wings over them, Aket-ten called out, “She won’t leave them—and her mate’s not bringing her food!”

  As the words left Aket-ten’s mouth, he was already sending Avatre back for a third pass, and sawing at the cords holding the ox quarters to Avatre’s back. Luck and timing were both with him; the first quarter landed nearly under the scarlet female’s nose, and the second within easy reach.

  As he looked back over his shoulder, he saw Aket-ten doing the same—and the nesting female devouring the gift as if she hadn’t seen food in a week. Which she probably hadn’t, actually. She wasn’t wasting a scrap; she might be eating quickly, but she was eating neatly.

  He sent Avatre up to land on the cliff above the nesting female, and
a moment later, Aket-ten landed beside him. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she called, as Re-eth-ke backwinged to land.

  “If you’re thinking we need to keep feeding her, yes,” he said, watching the wild dragon make short work of the first quarter, and leap on the second, with one eye on them and the other on her food. “Mothering instincts like that need to be fostered, not allowed to die out. But I’m wondering. Because that dragon looks—familiar—”

  “Wondering what?” she asked, sliding out of Re-eth-ke’s saddle, and coming over to stand at his knee, still watching the wild dragon eat.

  “I’m wondering if she isn’t Coresan,” he said slowly, peering at her and trying to match up what he saw with a memory. “Avatre’s mother. . . .”

  TEN

  SO I think it’s Coresan,” Kiron finished. “And—look at her! She doesn’t even react to us being here now!”

  They both took a look down into the floor of the ravine, where the dragon was giving her entire attention to the food and not even looking up at them.

  “I think she can hear my voice from here, and I’m sure she recognizes me, or she’d be watching us,” Kiron continued, thinking aloud. “She’s the only wild-caught dragon in either Alta or Tia that spent a significant amount of time on half-rations of tala while also being tended by humans. And I was the human who made sure she was properly fed and tended during that period. I think she knows exactly who I am, I think she pairs good things with me, and I think she might trust me, at least at a distance.”

  “It would be awfully good if we could get one of her eggs,” Aket-ten said, wistfully, gazing down at the dragon with one hand shading her eyes. “But I know we’d never get her away, given how she’s protecting them. But she’s such a good mother and Avatre is magnificent—”

  Kiron sucked on his lower lip. “But if we bring the food in a little closer to her each day, we might be able to get her to let us close enough that the dragonets take humans for granted. If they see us feeding her, when they fledge, they might come to us for food.”

  “Maybe—closer,” Aket-ten mused. “If I can get close enough to her to talk to her, she might let us quite near, and when I can talk to the dragonets, I can make sure they know humans are all right. Especially if I get a chance to touch them. That won’t happen right away, but—but given time, if she starts leaving them to hunt, I think I can get right to them.”

  He looked at her askance, trying not to let her see how horrified that idea made him. It was one thing to approach a tala-drugged wild-caught dragon in a pen. It was quite another to approach an undrugged dragon tending eggs or youngsters. “Are you sure it’s worth even trying?” he asked cautiously. Cautiously, because he knew exactly how Aket-ten would react to being told she shouldn’t do this.

  Poorly.

  “Oh, this is probably one of the least-clever things I’ve ever considered doing,” she admitted cheerfully. “But it’s still something I think I can do and, more importantly, get away with.”

  Re-eth-ke snorted anxiously, and Aket-ten patted her shoulder. “I feel the same as Re-eth-ke does about you getting close to Coresan,” Kiron admitted. “I’d rather you didn’t try at all. I didn’t actually think about trying to get as close to Coresan as I did when she was in the pens.”

  Aket-ten shrugged, and then put her hand on his bare knee, and the touch made him feel very—odd. Good! Oh, yes. But—odd. Like all his skin was doubly alive. Aket-ten seemed oblivious to the effect she had on him. “That’s all I’m going to do, really. I don’t have to get close enough to touch her to talk to her.”

  He looked down at her. “I don’t like it. But I won’t tell you not to. You’re the Winged One. The gods might not speak to you as directly as they do to Kaleth, but maybe they’re the ones saying you should do this.” He laughed ruefully. “And to think I was planning to have you all to myself for part of the afternoon! Trust a dragon to interfere with that!”

  She blinked at him, then, unexpectedly, blushed. “I like you, Kiron,” she said, quite out of nowhere. And that would have been fantastic, except it was the sort of statement that was usually followed by “as a friend” or “you’re my best friend” with the implication it shouldn’t go any further.

  He felt his heart sinking. “But?”

  Then she shook her head, blushing harder, and his heart rose again. “No buts. I like you—rather a lot. I’d rather spend time with you than anyone else I know. And it’s not because you keep making a habit of rescuing me either.”

  His heart rose further, and he tried desperately to think of something clever to say. Unfortunately, he couldn’t manage to come up with anything. Awkwardly, he put his hand over hers. “I just—think you should stay you,” he said, and cursed his thick tongue for not managing anything more eloquent.

  “Well, that’s good, because it would be very difficult being someone else!” she laughed, her eyes twinkling. But he got the feeling she understood what he was trying to say. That he didn’t want her to change, didn’t want her to stop taking risks just because he was terrified she’d be hurt. Maybe someone else wouldn’t have felt the same, but he had been a serf, and he knew what it felt like to have chains, visible or invisible, binding you. He wouldn’t do that to anyone else, but especially not her.

  And she didn’t say, as he half-expected her to, “Well, we should be getting back.” Instead, she stood there at his knee while they both watched Coresan finish the meal they’d brought her and settle herself around her precious eggs, then fall asleep.

  “Do you think she’s starting to trust us already?” Aket-ten asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” He sighed. “We need to get back.”

  “Yes, we do.” But she sounded reluctant. Nevertheless, she mounted Re-eth-ke and looked to him for direction. He gave it, sending Avatre up with powerful wingbeats, rather than letting her take her preferred path of diving down into the ravine and then trading speed for height at the last minute. He guided her away from Coresan’s valley at an angle. Re-eth-ke followed; Coresan did not even raise her head to watch them, which made him think that Aket-ten might be right, she might have already decided they weren’t going to hurt her or interfere with her or her eggs.

  They caught good thermals all the way back, which speeded up their return journey considerably. Most of the wing was waiting for them at the pens; for a moment he was afraid, as Avatre spiraled in to land, that something had gone wrong. But as they got nearer the ground, their expressions, of varying degrees of mischief, made him think otherwise. No, they were there to tease him—or tease both of them.

  Not if I give them something to distract them first.

  “Ari!” he called, as soon as Avatre folded her wings.

  “Coresan is nesting in the New City, and she recognized me!”

  All right, maybe saying that it was Coresan and that she recognized him was an exaggeration, but it got their attention, even though no one but Ari could know who, or what, Coresan was.

  As he slid off Avatre’s shoulder, and began unharnessing her, he gave them a detailed account of what had happened. Ari’s eyes glittered with excitement as he asked further questions; all of them were excited, really, once they understood the implications. “—and Aket-ten is going to try to ‘talk’ to Coresan,” he finished, and had to hold a flash of anger when Ari, rather than expressing concern over such a dangerous idea, overflowed with enthusiasm for it.

  “That would be ideal!” Ari said, “With Aket-ten there, once we get her close enough she can communicate with them, I’m sure Coresan will let us help with her dragonets. After all, the males help to feed and tend the nest, and we’re the closest thing she has to a mate right now. Her instincts must be telling her she needs the help, and if she was as starved as you say, between the food and what her instincts are telling her, we can probably get Aket-ten as close as she let a dragon boy in no time.”

  He could picture that all too easily. What’s more, he remembered Coresan snapping those formidable
jaws right over his head, and it was even easier to picture her making that show of aggression into a real attack on Aket-ten. And he very nearly started trouble over such a cavalier attitude, when Ari suddenly got a taste of what the bitter brew of anxiety tasted like.

  Because—“I want to help tend these dragons,” said Nofret, stepping forward from behind Menet-ka, her head up and her expression firm with determination. It occurred to Kiron at that moment that she looked very much the Queen.

  Ari’s face was a study in dismay. “But—” he began. Nofret cut off his objections with an imperious wave of her hand. “I want a dragon, too, Ari. If we’re to be co-consorts, as the Altan tradition demands, we must be equals in all things. How can we appear before your people or mine in that state of equality if I am riding behind you, like—like a piece of baggage? Besides, it is not fair to Kashet to keep asking him to carry double. I want a dragon of my own.”

  By the sun-boat! She’s come a long way from the woman who clutched me like death and didn’t dare look down! He couldn’t help but think this was all to the good. And if she was willing and ready to do the work needed to get a dragon, all the better.

  That was not how Ari felt, though, if his expression was any guide. “I absolutely—” he began.

  Just in time, Kiron managed to kick Ari surreptitiously in the shin, while simultaneously saying, with innocent enthusiasm, “I think that’s a good plan, Nofret. We already know that Coresan throws intelligent and steady babies. If Aket-ten can get her to accept us, the dragonets will do the same, and if you start tending and feeding the babies alongside their mother, you’ll have the best of both worlds, a dragonet that’s tame, but knows she’s a dragon. It’s going to take time, a lot of work, and concentration, though, I hope you realize that.”

  Ari opened his mouth again to protest, and Kiron kicked him in the shin again. He shut his mouth with a snap, and Nofret smiled at both of them. “Thank you for being reasonable about this,” she said and excused herself. “I’ll go talk to Heklatis and Lord Ya-tiren about shifting audiences and meetings to after sundown when the time comes.” She laughed a little, and winked at Kiron. “At least I can sleep in my own bed! You can leave me with them when you go to hunt, and get me at sundown, and that should serve very well.”