Aerie (2 page)

That influx of people had been more than enough to push the Jousters out.

And, truth to tell, a city full of the priestly castes was not a comfortable place to live, not for Kiron at least, and mutterings from the other Jousters made him think that they felt the same. The latest batch of youngsters, chief of which were Coresan’s hatch, were already at Aerie, and though repairs were far from complete, there seemed every good reason why the move should be speeded up. When they had first come to Sanctuary, they had taken over a temple complex that seemed to have been dedicated to Haras, or some god very like him. That had been all well and good when there were only a handful of priests, but the devotees of Haras had descended in droves, and had made it quite clear that while having dragons and their Jousters dwelling in the workshops of the god was not precisely blasphemy, it was certainly being looked at with a somewhat stern eye.

Having the Priests of Haras looking over one’s shoulder with a certain amount of impatience was more than enough incentive to find some other quarters for the dragons.

Well, now the priests had taken possession of the god’s temple. They were happy. Presumably the god was happy. The Jousters were far from the eyes of the priest, and so it was to be hoped that they were at last happy. And, truth to tell, when it was finished, and even now in some ways, Aerie was far more suited to the dragons than Sanctuary was.

Here they had good shelter from the
kamiseen
winds and sands, as good or better than he’d enjoyed in the dragons’ own compound in Mefis. There were cliff tops for dragons to bask on, and a hot spring for the humans to bathe in. Here, pens were set up as the bottom floor of these rock-carved “houses,” so there was no need, ever, to shelter them from the rains. They were central to all the good hunting grounds, and there was enough browse here for them to keep their own herds to supplement that hunting. Eventually, when Kaleth’s scheme to farm incense and rare plants here came to pass, they would even be self-sufficient. And here dragons could prowl or romp in the canyon bottoms that served as streets, unlike in Sanctuary, where they could scarcely fit in the narrow avenues between buildings and where an increasingly large number of people regarded a free-roaming dragon with apprehension.

There was a lot to appreciate here, even if the place had been abandoned for centuries. So had Sanctuary, and Kaleth, the original band of refugees from Alta, and the Blue People had made it livable
while
living in it. If they had done so to Sanctuary, the Jousters could do so for Aerie, and if the Jousters were not particularly suited to the task, well, neither were those who had initially followed Kaleth out here.

And he ought to be personally grateful for this much; as someone who had been camping out here for some little while—first when he was keeping an eye on the half-wild dragon Coresan’s nest, and later, after the destruction of Alta’s fabulous city and port in order to get some desperately needed privacy, he’d been able to lay claim to a spot before anyone else. He’d gotten one of the dwellings cut into the sides of the canyons of this place that had required the least amount of repair: two rooms with very high ceilings, one above the other, and the lower room had been hewn out to be lower than the street level, which seemed to be the case with roughly half of the dwellings. He had to wonder again if dragons had once been quartered here. The dwellings seemed designed for them, for sand wallows on the lower floors. There had been no need to do much to the place other than have the shutters made. A little subtle magic worked by one of the priests during a
kamiseen
and enough sand to make a tolerable pit for Avatre had been deposited literally at his door; the canyon street had been knee-deep in it. He (and everyone else who had moved to this section) only had to shovel it inside.

Shovel it inside! It was a good thing he had spent most of his life as a serf and was used to hard labor! Even with Avatre’s help—and she had been, surprisingly, a lot of help. Digging and shoving alongside him, once she understood that the sand was going to be her new wallow—it had taken a lot of backbreaking labor. At the moment, there were very few spare hands to be had in the canyons of Aerie, and the Jousters were all getting their hands dirtier than they ever dreamed possible. For most of them, it was more physical work than they had ever done in all their lives put together. There had been a lot of complaining about sore muscles, and a great many people soaking their aches in the hot spring before they went to bed.

Furniture had been problematic; it was whatever anyone could bring across the desert or could spare, and there wasn’t much of either, though more was coming in all the time. Most of it was Tian, since the priests were bringing caravan loads of things with them.

Kiron was of two minds about that. Tian furniture was more practical out here, made for a desert climate, but seeing it gave him twinges from a lifetime as a captive. At least he had an Altan-style mattress and blankets to sleep on. He could not imagine how the Tians managed with their benchlike beds and neck rests instead of pillows. It didn’t look comfortable. In fact, it looked rather like the sleeper had been laid out for the embalmers.

He had collected bits of furnishings through begging, trading, and actually fetching a few items himself when he had to take Avatre across the desert to tend to more serious matters. So far, he had collected a chair, his bed, a clothes chest, a desk, a brazier, and some lamps. Avatre had her wallow, properly heated now by magic. It looked bare, in the big, empty room, but then, he didn’t actually spend a lot of time here. There was just too much work to be done.

He punched his pillow a few times and settled back onto his side. But something in him kept listening for that pesky cat.

He was not sure how he had acquired the little beast. It seemed to have decided that he was the one privileged to play host to it. Which wouldn’t have been bad, since it definitely kept down the vermin, except for the way it kept trying to suck his earlobe when he slept and use him as a ramp to get itself into the air.

Some priests had followed the Jousters out here to Aerie, prompting a couple of snickering remarks about priests looking for captive worshippers. But it was not to be denied that there were temples here, too, and no real need for any Jousters to claim them. The priests of the cat goddess Pashet had found what seemed to be an ancient temple to their deity and had claimed it, bringing with them a veritable horde of four-legged avatars. Cats being cats, the
mau
cats brought to Sanctuary had thrived and bred . . . cats being cats, the ones brought here did the same. Not that they weren’t useful, because the half-ruined city swarmed with all manner of things that the cats simply gobbled up, but cats did have minds of their own, and some of them were minded to find places to live other than the temple. This despite the fact that they were literally worshipped and adored at the temple, and had their pick of the daintiest portions of the kills and sacrifices that went to feed the dragons.

So they were likely to be found not only in the temple, but outside of it. Some of them didn’t seem to realize they were supposed to be in the temple at all—One of them being the
mau
-cat that kept trying to derive nourishment from Kiron’s earlobes.

He sighed, now wide awake despite the fact that it was so pitch-dark he wouldn’t be able to see the cat, or know where it was until it—

He refrained from leaping to his feet and screaming when it dashed across the length of his body and used his shoulder for a launch point into a tremendous jump.

He heard it land, heard a brief scuffle and a squeak, and then heard the wet sound of a cat dining on a fat desert rat.

Neither Avatre nor any of the other dragons bothered the cats, or bothered about them either, much to Kiron’s relief. He wasn’t sure how he would explain to the priests that one of their avatars had gone down the gullet of a dragon. Fortunately, dragons were too slippery for cats to want to sleep on, and most of them preferred warm human and blankets to warm sand of the wallows.

The wet sounds in the darkness ceased. And a moment later, the nameless cat strolled up Kiron’s legs to his hip, and stood there, attempting to knead it into a soft bed. Its claws were very sharp and long, and he gritted his teeth as they stung him even through the thick wool of his blanket, reminding himself over and over that one must
not
strike the avatar of the Goddess Pashet. . . .

He knew better than to roll over to try to dislodge it. Doing that in the past had resulted in the cat sinking its claws into his hip in an effort to keep its balance.

Finally, the cat gave up hip kneading as a lost cause and strolled down his legs again. Presumably, now that it was full, and he had, once again, proved to be a less-than-satisfactory sleeping partner, it would pad down the stairs to Avatre’s magic-warmed sands and curl up on a ledge at a respectful distance from the dragon. After all, she might not intentionally harm it, but dragons did occasionally heave themselves up out of their sands and roll over. They also were known to lash their tails in their sleep, or flail their wings. Kiron, on the other hand, was not a satisfactory place to sleep. He was too bony, and he moved too much, and he would not allow the cat the two thirds of his pallet that it wanted. Clearly, he was being ungenerous to the avatar of the goddess.

Maybe that was why he couldn’t get Aket-ten to stay here. Pashet was the goddess of love as well as cats, cats being well known for their amorous nature. Maybe he had offended Pashet herself.

That . . . could be bad. He made a mental note to find something to make the cat a warm bed with down on that ledge. And find another way to keep it from sucking his earlobe. And make an appropriate sacrifice at Pashet’s Temple in the morning.

Aket-ten was one of a handful of Jousters who were staying in Sanctuary to run courier to the new city the Great King and Queen were building on Great Mother River between Tia and Alta. He could hardly blame her for wanting to stay there instead of here. Her family was there, or at least, her mother and father were; most of her brothers had gone back to Alta to take care of the family estates and help resettle the refugees of the city. The only one of her brothers who had stayed was Orest, who was one of the first of Kiron’s wing in Alta. He was here in Aerie, though.

Maybe she’s living in Sanctuary to get away from Orest,
he thought with amusement. The two had something of the usual sibling quarrels, exacerbated by Orest having decided quite on his own that, since all of his brothers were off and their father was immensely busy helping Great King Ari reconcile Altans and Tians, it was his duty to “keep an eye on” Aket-ten.

Maybe he ought to give Orest more to do.

Maybe. But there was already too much work. That was the problem, really. It was all work they weren’t particularly good at. There were just not enough hands to make Aerie livable, to free up the Jousters to do—

To do what? Yet another problem. What was it that the Jousters should be doing? Not fighting each other. Not fighting each others’ nations. What could a man and a dragon do that half a dozen fighters couldn’t?

Honest answer: not much.

Still turning this question over and over in his mind, he finally fell asleep.

Avatre greeted him as he came down the stone stairs with a croon of pleasure. He couldn’t help but smile. Since she wasn’t bothered by the cat, he never put the shutters over her window unless there was going to be a
kamiseen
storm, so the light of midmorning reflected off the sands of the canyon and into the room.

It was a bit more rough-hewn than the one above it, leading him to wonder once again what the original purpose for it had been. There was no sign that dragons—domesticated ones, anyway—had ever lived here. And yet—There were the sunken, rough-cut lower rooms. What would you put in such a room if not a dragon?

Could they have been stables? Pens for livestock? Not stables; no, probably not. The first time Tians or Altans had ever seen horses, they had been in the hands of the Nameless Ones.

But pens for livestock. Goats. Maybe camels. Donkeys. That made sense. And it explained the huge doorways even a dragon could pass through. You had to have a doorway that wide or you’d have a devil of a time getting livestock to pass through it.

Now that there were no patrols to be flown, the dragons could awaken at their own time and pace. Now that they were each flying out to hunt alone, it didn’t matter that the wing never flew together anymore except during rare practices. Avatre, given the choice, was a late riser.

“Ready to hunt?” he asked her. He was never entirely sure how much she understood, but she certainly knew what that meant. She snorted eagerly, and positioned herself to best advantage for getting harnessed up.