Alta (44 page)

Yes, well,
you
set off across the desert alone on a barely fledged dragon,
part of him whispered.
So you’re hardly one to talk about being foolhardy, are you?

But I had guides!
he protested.

Fat lot of good those little pebbles were going to do if you got caught up in a sandstorm, or were ambushed by predators,
that part of him retorted.
And let’s not even mention that you were supposed to be hunting for Avatre and yourself, and when was the last time you had hunted before that trip? You’d slung pebbles at lizards and the odd bird, hoping to bring something down to add to the scraps Khefti-the-Fat gave you. You’re two of a kind, you are. You see something that you want, really want, and you don’t let anything stand in the way of getting it, do you?

He decided to ignore that little voice, as he rubbed Avatre down with sweet-scented oil-soaked polishing cloths. Let her be offended; she’d just have to get over it on her own. Besides, there were other things concerning him right now.

Resolutely, he shoved Aket-ten out of his thoughts.

With Avatre clean and oiled, he led her to the pen, where her dragon boy was waiting with her meal. She crooned with pleasure and set to, while the boy laughed at her eagerness. The boys assigned to the tame wing had long since learned what their charges were like, and most of them were hoping for tame dragons of their own one day.

Well, it still might happen,
he thought, as the boy moved fearlessly about the pen, casting fond glances at Avatre.
There are swamp dragon eggs to steal, and one day, ours might well mate.
That was far more likely since the babies had been playing together before they fledged. He had noticed an interesting difference in Avatre’s behavior, compared to any of the youngsters. She held herself aloof from the youngsters, as if she wasn’t aware that she was a dragon—whereas they were in and out of each other’s pens as soon as they were allowed to wander. They had learned the command to stay, once they were old enough to learn any commands at all, and they obeyed pretty well—but there was a great deal of fraternization among the eight over the course of a day, whereas Avatre greeted any interloper in her pen with a distinctly aloof and offended gaze.

He left Avatre to her dinner, for there was something else he wanted to know.

Two somethings, actually. And he didn’t have to go to Aket-ten to find out either of them.

Heklatis spent most of the morning making the disease dust, and most of the afternoon and evening resting afterward. So he was resting in the courtyard just off his rooms when Kiron went looking for him. He was lying on a cot in the middle of the tiny courtyard, basking in the sun like a lizard on a rock, and he greeted Kiron’s footsteps with a raised head and an ironically lifted eyebrow.

“I hope you are not seeking my aid in reconciling you with Aket-ten,” the Healer drawled. “I am not particularly interested in mending the quarrels of young lovers.”

Kiron flushed. He thought about protesting that he wasn’t Aket-ten’s lover, and thought better of it. If he did protest, Heklatis would only be more certain that he was. And probably tease him about it. The Healer had an acid wit, and was not reticent about exercising it.

“I wanted to ask you about the dust you’re making, and about some other things,” he said, sitting down on a stone bench in the shade. “But first, I want to know about the dust. Is it safe around people? I mean, could I get the disease by breathing it or something? And how are you making it, exactly?”

“Well! Sensible questions! I stand amazed.” Heklatis raised both eyebrows in an exaggerated look of surprise, turned on his side to face Kiron, and propped his head on his hand. “You cannot get the disease; it is a disease of plants. However, because the dust is poisonous in large quantities, you could become ill if you stuck your nose in a bag and inhaled, so I advise against doing anything of the sort. Doing so would also make you liable to lung sickness, which would also make you extremely ill and might kill you.”

So. That meant that to release the dust, they would not want to be in its path or below it until most of it had been carried off. “In that case, the best option would be to carry it in leather bags, cut the bottom of the bag when we get above the storm, and keep climbing, zigzagging back and forth, until the bags are empty.” He nodded. “How are you making it?”

“Ah, now that is a truly interesting question!” Heklatis’ eyes finally lit up with enthusiasm. “We had a small quantity to begin with, and we proved what it did without using more than half of that store. It is related to a fungus very common in the swamp, and what I am doing is this: I have sent slaves to gather the common stuff, and when I have extracted as large a batch as I can manipulate, I magically prepare the batch, then take a pinch of the disease dust and drop it in. And by what we Akkadians refer to as the ‘Law of Contamination,’ the pile of fungus dust is converted to disease dust. Not,” he added, “without great effort, however. The Magi in the Tower have the Winged Ones to draw upon for their storm-magic, for instance; I have only myself, Aket-ten, and now Kaleth. And I refuse to drain my young assistants as the Magi drain the Winged Ones.”

Kiron stared at him in fascination. “Can you make anything into anything else that way?” he asked.

“In theory, yes,” the Healer replied, and sighed heavily. “In practice, however, the nearer that what you want is to what you are transforming, the easier it is. As I said, the fungus is a very near relative to the disease. Gold, for instance, is nothing near as like to lead as the alchymists would prefer to believe. I could make fresh water out of marsh water, for instance, about as easily, but turning spelt into barley would be nearly as difficult as changing lead to gold. This is why an Akkadian Magus, no matter how skilled he is, is unlikely to be a wealthy man.”

“I see,” said Kiron, who didn’t see at all. He decided that it didn’t matter.

“This is why Akkadian Magi have as many apprentices as they can afford,” Heklatis went on wistfully. “The young have so much more energy than an adult, and they simply squander it. It does them little good, for they don’t have the skills to use it properly . . . ah, I digress.”

Kiron nodded. He hadn’t come here to learn about Akkadian Magi, but about Altan Magi. “What about the Eye, then? Do you have any idea how that works? Better still, have you any idea how to make it stop working?”

“Ah, the Eye—” Heklatis’ whole face lit up. “Before I saw it, I would have had to tell you that I had no idea what it was or how it worked. Now however, I do have some notion. Wait a moment, and I will get something to show you.”

The Healer got up—slowly, Kiron noticed, and as if he was as weak as someone recovering from a long disease—and went into his rooms. He came out again with a piece of polished glass. “Watch,” he said, as he put a bit of dried leaf and some bits of bark in a little pile on the ground. He held up the glass between the sun and the pile, and moved it back and forth until a tiny, very intensely bright spot appeared on the top of the pile. Then he held the glass quite still.

In a few moments, a wisp of smoke wreathed up from the bright spot, and the leaf began to blacken.

Then, suddenly, a flame leaped up from the black spot! Kiron jumped back, startled.

“Remind you of anything?” Heklatis asked slyly, standing up and crushing out the tiny fire with his sandal.

“The Eye!” Kiron exclaimed. Although he had seen no beam of light, the bright spot on the ground, and the way the fire sprang up under it, were strongly reminiscent of how the Eye had worked.

Heklatis nodded. “I have looked back into the records and I can find no accounts of the Eye being used at night, or even on a cloudy day. No, it is always bright sunshine, and usually on or around noon. I think that the main part of the Eye is a lens, and the rest is perhaps some magical or mechanical way of gathering and concentrating a great deal more sunlight than just a simple lens could account for. A simple lens would not be able to reach very far, for instance. But I expect it would be as much a mechanical contraption as it is magical.”

“Which explains why they have not made a smaller Eye?” Kiron hazarded. “A smaller Eye would not be nearly as powerful?”

Heklatis nodded. “Such an apparatus would not be very portable either—and I suspect that there is some source of power there, in or under the Tower, and only there. That would account for the beam of light.”

“So if we were to go and try to wreck the Eye at night, or on a cloudy day, they would not be able to use it against us?” Kiron said, in sudden speculation.

“So I believe.” Heklatis nodded. “And the best way to get to it would be to come at it from above.”

They exchanged a look. “Dragons,” breathed Kiron. “And
that
is why the Magi dislike the Jousters!”

“Dislike? I would have said that they fear the Jousters, as they would any force that can take that special weapon from them. It seems logical,” agreed Heklatis. “And I would go further than that. I believe that the stronger they grow in their power, the more they come to hate and fear the Jousters rather than less, and the more they wish to destroy them if they can.”

“You know,” Kiron said, after a long pause, “That is not the most comforting thing you have ever said to me.”

Heklatis did not smile.

SOMETIMES
Kiron had thought there would not be enough time before the rains began; others that the awaited day could not come quickly enough.

Meanwhile, the dragonets—swiftly and daily growing so large that they really needed to be called “dragons” now—continued to grow in more ways than just size.

Take little Re-eth-ke, for instance; she might be small, but she was as quick as a thought, and exquisitely sensitive to emotions. It wasn’t hard to tell how Aket-ten was feeling; all you had to do was look at Re-eth-ke. When Aket-ten was happy, the blue-and-silver dragon would bounce everywhere, and flit through the sky like a bit of thistledown. When she was depressed, Re-eth-ke became a shadow. And when Aket-ten was angry—well, it was best not to get in Re-eth-ke’s way.

Tathulan, the huge and striking female belonging to Huras, was, like Huras, quiet and serious. When she was in the air, she was all business, and very single-minded about everything Huras asked her to do.

And then there was Wastet, Orest’s beetle-blue male. Now, given how much like their riders both Re-eth-ke and Tathulan were, one might think that all dragons were like the ones who had raised them. Wastet could not have been more
unlike
Orest. Kiron considered Orest to be his first and best friend next to his sister Aket-ten, but he was not blind to Orest’s faults. Orest was still careless and forgetful, and now and then inclined to puff himself up. But Wastet was steady, just a little slower than the rest, and if a dragon could be “modest,” Wastet was every bit of that. Some of Wastet’s steadiness was rubbing off on Orest, and to Kiron’s mind, that was a very good thing. Of all of the dragons, Wastet was the one most likely to be right where he was supposed to be, no matter what was happening.

Se-atmen was fiery and temperamental. She was the one most likely to lose her temper in practice, and it was a good thing that Kalen was so experienced in handling touchy falcons, because he had his hands full with her. Oset-re’s Apetma could also be as fiery in temper as her copper red color.

Pe-atep’s Deoth was still shy—shy on the ground, anyway. He was a little lion in the air. He had been the last to fledge, and it had taken all of the persuasion Aket-ten could muster to get him more than a few feet off the ground. But once he discovered flight, it was hard to stop him; given the chance, he would have flown everywhere.

Gan’s Khaleph was as relaxed as Se-atmen and Apetma were fiery. Nothing ever flustered him; not mistakes, not accidents. He was the first to recover from the earthshake, and with Wastet, was the one who could always be counted upon to do exactly what he was asked.

Then there was Bethlan. First-born of all the clutches, she was another Kashet; clever, strong, agile, and possessed of a wicked sense of humor. Like Kashet, she was a blue, but an indigo-blue shading to purple. Like Kashet, she was gregarious and outgoing. Of all of them, she was the most likely to be in someone else’s pen. Some of her gregariousness was rubbing off on shy Menet-ka, and that was no bad thing.

So waiting for the rains was hardly boring, seeing all these emerging personalities working together. And when the announcement did come, it placed a new burden of worry and responsibility on his shoulders, yet relieved a burden of waiting.

The word had come, not from the Temple of the Twins, but from the Tower of Wisdom.
Tomorrow, the rains begin.

Kiron wondered just how ominous other folk in Alta City found it that it had been the Magi, and not the Winged Ones, who had announced the start of the rains this year. And why had it come from the Magi? Oh, certainly, they were the ones who would trigger the rains, but why had they elected to announce the fact? Was it that there were no Winged Ones fit to tell when the rains would start? Or were the Magi trying to supplant the Winged Ones, to take their place in the minds of the people?