Alta

by Mercedes Lackey

  But Orest had gotten his own way quite enough—not enough to make him into an overindulged monster, but enough that he was too careless and carefree. And Kiron—

  I’ve lived through a hundred times more than he has. Maybe I’m right to feel old.

  “How would you feel if you ‘forgot’ to feed your dragonet because you were chatting with your friends, and she became ill with hunger?” he demanded. “Or worse, you weren’t looking in on her, and something bad happened to her? She could tear a wing membrane and bleed to death, she could break a wing bone and cripple herself, she could even wander out of her pen and into the pen of one of the Jousting dragons and be killed and eaten!”

  Orest hung his head. “I know,” he mumbled. “I know you’re right. It’s just—a fellow likes to have friends.”

  “Well, if they can’t adjust to you working harder, they aren’t friends worth having,” Kiron replied. “You don’t want friends who’ll encourage you to be a lay-about if you want to raise a dragon and be a Jouster, Orest. You want friends who’ll say, ‘listen, why don’t we get together after you’ve done what you need to do?’ Those are the ones worth hanging onto.”

  Orest raised his head and smiled wanly. “You sound like one of my tutors. So why do I like you so much?”

  “Maybe because I want you to have a dragon, and I want you to be a Jouster, at least as much as you do,” Kiron replied warmly. “And maybe because I might be the right kind of friend?”

  “That might be the answer. Good night, Kiron. If I’m going to be virtuous, I had better get my sleep so I can read that blasted scroll over breakfast.” Orest stood up, and motioned to the servants to clear away the remains of dinner.

  “Good night, Orest,” he replied warmly. And once he was alone again, he got up and went to his cot, which today had been placed behind a woven grass screen for a bit more privacy, and beneath a canopy for shelter from weather. As he lay down on it, he wondered at the strength of his feelings for Orest—and yes, even Orest’s rather overbearing little sister. He liked both of them a very great deal; liked them in a way that he had not felt for anyone except perhaps Ari. Was this what it felt like, to have a good friend? If so, well—it was a good feeling. And with Orest and Aket-ten, he didn’t have to worry about much of a difference in age, the way he had with Ari.

  And as for a difference in rank, well—maybe he hadn’t been born into the noble class, but the Mouth of the Bedu had said that having a dragon conferred nobility, and what the Lord of the Jousters said seemed to confirm that, so there wasn’t any real difference there either.

  He still didn’t own more than he could pack onto Avatre’s back, but—

  But possessions weren’t everything. Look at all that Ari had owned, and how he had just given away the Gold of Honor as if it were nothing more than a lot of cheap clay amulets!

  If only Ari could have come along. . . .

  The regret was just as much of an ache as the pain in his shoulders, and just as real.

  The latter would heal. Somehow he doubted that the former ever would.

  FIVE

  OREST was as good as his word. He awoke—or rather, had his servant awaken him—as soon as the meat was delivered to Kiron to feed Avatre. By that time, of course, Kiron was already up and dressed in yesterday’s tunic (for there was no point in putting on a new one that was only going to get blood on it) and Avatre was stretching her wings and making inquisitive noises in the direction of the barrow. Orest made a great deal of noise himself, groaning and grousing about it being so early, though by Kiron’s standards, he’d been sleeping quite late of a morning, and Orest was positively lounging about.

  The thing was, in Tia, it had been easy to tell when dawn was coming long before it actually arrived. The air changed, the bitter cold of desert night lost its edge. Here, there was no change of that sort; the night never got all that cold, and so it was the light, and not the change in temperature, that woke him. This place was softer than Tia, with softer air and softer beds.

  The scents were softer, too, but heavier; they wafted in and clung. Perhaps that was because of the humidity. And there were more of them. He wondered why it didn’t bother Avatre—but perhaps dragons had a different sort of sense of smell.

  By the time Kiron was ready to bathe and change into a clean tunic and loin wrap, the servants had brought breakfast and a sleepy-eyed Orest was eating with one hand while he read his scroll with the other. Kiron hastened to get himself clean while the bread was still warm enough to be at its best, tender and not tough.

  At least Tians and Altans both shared proper ideas about bathing. He’d sorely missed his twice-daily baths in the desert, and here, if he’d wanted to, he could have a bath five times a day.

  “What’s that about?” Kiron asked, joining him. The servant had even brought a table and stools. How strange to be waited on, rather than being the one doing the serving.

  “It’s sacred poetry,” Orest said, making a face. “All about Te-oth, the god of the scribes. Fifteen stanzas, if you please, on the glory of the god and on the superiority of those who master language and writing!”

  “Maybe your tutor is trying to tell you something,” Kiron suggested, slathering honey onto some bread and taking a bite.

  “He’s telling me that sacred poetry is a dead bore, that’s what he’s telling me,” Orest complained, reaching for more grapes. “But at least he isn’t making me memorize it. All I have to do is tell him in general what it’s about.” He sighed. “I hate memorizing.”

  “Maybe now that you’re going to be a Jouster he’ll assign you those scrolls your sister was reading yesterday about dragons, instead of the things you have been reading,” Kiron pointed out. “Where is she, by the way?”

  “Up and out before dawn, and hanged if I know how she can stand it,” Orest replied. “The Nestlings don’t have to attend Dawn Rites, but she does, and she’s wretchedly perky about it, too.” He glanced at the sun, then at a series of lines carved into the courtyard paving. It was only at that moment that Kiron realized they were the marks of a sundial that used the shadows of the courtyard walls to mark the time. The whole courtyard was one enormous sundial! No wonder the courtyard was bare! And no wonder Orest had his rooms here, if he required a reminder of the time that was so impossible to ignore. “Well, if you’re done, we might as well go take our punishment. At least you’ll be there to share it with me.”

  With a great deal less trepidation than his new friend, Kiron rose and left the servants to clean up after them.

  Servants! he marveled, as they left. What wonderful things servants are! No wonder everyone wants them! Oh, he’d had people to bring him food and clean his table back at the Tian Jousters’ Compound, but in everything else, he had been the servant. It was quite a different matter to be the one who was waited on.

  He’d taken the precaution of having the servants bring a large kapok-stuffed leather ball, a couple of enormous leg bones, and one of the bells that were often used as wind chimes to leave with Avatre by way of toys. “I’ll be back later, love,” he called to her as he left; she gave no evidence that she was concerned by him leaving her alone, but then, she was used to being left alone by now. In fact, she seemed more interested in the leather ball than in his leaving. He hoped that she would play with it, and not rip it to bits.

  They didn’t have to go far. Orest’s tutor Arit-on-senes was waiting for him in a large, airy room with good lighting from a southern-facing window that was just off the next courtyard. There were two small carpets in front of where he sat on a leather-padded stool, with a cushion on each little carpet, a lap-desk in front of it, and a jar of scrolls beside it. His appearance surprised Kiron; he wasn’t Altan or Tian. His hair was yellow and curly, and his eyes were blue. He was astonishingly handsome, and far more athletic-looking than Kiron had expected a scholar to be. His good looks were only slightly marred by the sardonic smile he wore when he saw Orest entering first, and reluctantly.

  He was
also clean-shaven, and his hair was cut even shorter than a Jouster’s. Kiron wondered if he was a slave—but if he was, he certainly didn’t act like one. He acted like a lord, actually.

  “Well, Orest,” he drawled as they entered the room. Kiron noted a faint accent there, different from his own. “I suppose I can count on the fact that you read your assigned scroll?”

  He sounded as if he meant the opposite, that he could count on Orest not having read the scroll.

  “It is fifteen stanzas in praise of Te-oth, the god of scribes and the bringer of writing to mankind,” Orest replied, taking his seat on the cushion, and settling his desk on his lap. Kiron followed his example, a little awkwardly. “There are two initial stanzas about Te-oth specifically, several on how much a blessing writing and being able to write are, several more in praise of the profession of scribes and contrasting that profession with the misery of all others. I did notice that the author did not mention either Jouster or Councilor to the Great Ones as being inferior to the position of scribe, however.”

  “Ah, but a Jouster is a sort of soldier, and a Councilor to the Great Ones has had to learn the craft of the scribe, so they are implied,” Arit retorted.

  Orest shrugged. “The final two stanzas praise Te-oth for being the god who most consistently blesses mankind.”

  All during this recitation, the tutor’s left eyebrow rose until it had climbed halfway up his forehead. “Well,” he said, when Orest was finished. “I must admit I am pleasantly surprised. If this new diligence is as a result of your association with my new pupil, I am going to revise my initial negative expectations of his influence on you. And as a reward—” Here he bent down, removed the jar of scrolls that had been at Orest’s side, and replaced it with a different one. “—here is literature you will find much more to your liking. Pick any of the three, you’ll be reading all of them and more eventually. I want you to read and then copy each of them, and since you will be needing them in your new career, I suggest you be more careful than you usually are in your copying.”

  At that, Orest eagerly plucked a scroll out of the jar, unrolled it, and began scanning it. His face lit up. “Te-karna’s Natural History of Swamp Dragons! Thank you, Master!”

  “Don’t thank me, thank your sister,” said the tutor, “and the Lord of Jousters. She’s the one who suggested that you would probably be more attentive if you were to concentrate on this particular subject, and she is the one who ran over after Dawn Rites with these scrolls borrowed from the temple librarian. What is more, by this time she has already spoken to the Lord of the Jousters about getting the loan of more scrolls. I fully expect him to agree. I believe he will be charmed by her audacity, which is just as well, since he is a man whom I would not care to cross.”

  “Nor I,” Kiron murmured, earning himself a glance of approval from the tutor.

  Orest’s face was a study in shock and chagrin. “I guess I owe her my thanks,” he said slowly.

  “And an apology,” Kiron muttered, feeling as if Aket-ten was due more respect from her brother than he had seen. He had been very patronizing last night, even if she had been acting like a know-it-all, and this was how she had responded.

  “You owe her more than that. You owe her the courtesy of being diligent from now on. Now, get to your work.” The tutor made an impatient gesture.

  “And remember when it comes to your copying, if you mar the original—”

  “—you have Father’s permission to beat me,” Orest said, with an air of having heard that before.

  “No. I have the temple librarian’s orders to beat you until you will have to stand to eat,” the tutor said grimly. “She said, ‘A boy’s brains are in his buttocks; he learns better when beaten.’ I suggest that it would prove wise to take extra care and not force me to prove that theorem.”

  Kiron was very glad that he’d had so much practice in keeping his feelings from showing, or he would probably have destroyed this new friendship by laughing at the expression on Orest’s face until he was sick.

  But now it was his turn, as Orest bent over the scroll and the tutor turned to him. “So, boy, what do you know?”

  “Nothing, master,” Kiron replied truthfully. “Or practically nothing. The little script I know is Tian.”

  “Ah, chicken scratches.” The tutor dismissed Tian writing with an airy wave of his hand. “Just as well, then, you have nothing to unlearn. Well, here is your scroll, and here is a box of potsherds, and this is your pen. Take your scroll, and lay it out before you with the weights.”

  It was a very short scroll, and fit perfectly across the top of his lap-desk. The weights were handsome ones, carved pale-brown soapstone images of—such a coincidence—the god Te-oth, in his bird-headed human form, his long, curved ibis bill poking out from beneath his wig.

  “That’s right,” the tutor said approvingly. “Now take your pen in your hand as you see Orest doing. Good. Dip it in the ink. Not so much that you will drip, not so little that you will make an unreadable scratch.”

  That was a little trickier; the reed pen had to be dipped several times before the tutor was happy.

  “Now,” he said, pointing to the first symbol on the scroll with a longer reed. “This is aht.”

  Slowly, the tutor took Kiron through the signs and hieratic shapes for the sounds of words. There were a great many of them, but fortunately the signs were all things that were easy to recognize, pictures of things which began with the sound in question, and the hieratic shapes were each a kind of sketch of that picture. Slowly, and with infinite care, he copied the hieratic shapes onto his potsherds. Over and over and over. When he came to the end of the scroll, he was required to go back to the beginning and copy again, forming the sound in his mind as he did so, melding shape, picture, and sound in his head. When he ran out of potsherds, it came as no great surprise to him that the tutor had another box ready for him. Bits of broken pottery were the logical thing to use to practice on; there were always plenty of them, and they served much better than precious papyrus.

  It was harder work than it sounded, and by the time the lesson was over, he had a much greater respect for scribes than he had ever had before. Such a lot of shapes! He was certain he would never get them all right. And somehow, he was going to learn how to put those shapes together into words, and words into meaning. . . . Well, if Orest could manage, so could he.

  Now he understood why the work of scribes was so important. Words, written words, must be magic, it took so much effort to set them down correctly. And he wondered, did scribes define the world and keep it from spinning off into other shapes with their hedge of words?

  He was absolutely so mind-weary by the time the tutor declared that they were finished that he felt as if he had just done a week’s worth of work in a mere morning—

  But there were, it seemed, to be a new set of lessons to replace the “mathematica” lessons that Orest had so despised.

  As Orest carefully rolled up his scroll, and Kiron capped his pot of ink, the tutor addressed them both. “This will be something new for both of you, I think. You, Kiron, should have no difficulties, even injured as you are, but it is the opinion of the Lord of the Jousters that you, Orest, are in need of conditioning before you undertake to tame a dragon. Therefore, you are both to follow me, now, and I am to deliver you to the kymnasi.”

  Now Kiron had not the faintest idea what the tutor was talking about; this was an Altan word that he had never heard before. But Orest looked considerably happier at that moment, so Kiron assumed that whatever it meant, it was not going to involve more scrolls and pens.

  The tutor marched them out of the room, through several of the house’s public rooms, and straight out the door.

  This was the first time that Kiron had been outside of Lord Ya-tiren’s house, for the ash pit where he took Avatre was well inside the garden walls. This was certainly the first time he had seen Alta City except for fleeting glances as he guided Avatre in that tricky bit of a hop, and he had t
o stop dead in his tracks and just look for a moment.

  Lord Ya-tiren’s home was evidently in one of the outer rings of the city and stood, like its neighbors, on the top of a ridge. The ground sloped away toward the canal from this point. From here, Kiron got a good look at the area surrounding this—well, it was a minor palace, apparently. It stood among other fine homes; to the left was another palace like it, and to the right was a temple surrounded by a walled garden. He suspected that this was the temple to which Aket-ten was attached as a Nestling. These structures all stood along one side of a spacious avenue wide enough for several chariots to pass side by side. Beyond the avenue was one of the seven canals that ringed the city, and on the other side of the canal were more buildings, which seemed to be a bit smaller and crowded more closely together than those on this side of the canal. But beyond that, in the distance, was the heart and core of the city, a hill upon which the Palace of the Great Ones stood, as well as the Great Temple of Khum the Light-Bringer, and several other important buildings and temples. Built of alabaster and limestone, they shone in the sunlight as if they were gilded. And Kiron suddenly understood in that moment that no matter how big Mefis had been, Alta City was ten, a hundred times larger.

  “Come along,” the tutor said, a little impatiently, but not without a look of understanding. Kiron followed down the stairs of the villa to the avenue, feeling dwarfed and altogether insignificant in the throng of humanity swirling around him. The thick walls of the villa had kept out the noises of the traffic, and the hum of hundreds and thousands of voices, but now it all surrounded him, and he for just a moment he found it a little hard to breathe.

  But it appeared that this segment of the ring was a little city unto itself, for once they got past the next-door villa, there were markets, with shops and craftsmen. So everything that might be needed was here, within reach. And from the way people were acting, they were anything but strangers to one another.