Kaleth rose, paced slowly to where Baket-ke-aput was stretched out, and touched his shoulder. “I do not need minions, holy one of Tia,” he said quietly. “I need—Sanctuary needs—partners. Friends who share the work and the dream.”
Baket-ke-aput rose also, and once again, he and Kaleth clasped arms. “Those, you have. I swear it. For myself, and for these.”
“Then that is all I can ask.” With a radiant smile, Kaleth went back to his seat. “Now,” he continued, looking around again, “There is the little matter of where we are to put all of you. . . .”
SEVEN
THE acolytes of the various Tian gods were surprisingly willing to help with the work on the new dragon pens. Not that acolytes of any sort weren’t used to working hard, but they were generally not accustomed to the kinds of labor that might be termed “common.” Nevertheless, they turned their hands to it, fitting stones into place, making cement to hold them together, although the task of trimming them to fit was left to Lord Ya-tiren’s experienced stonemason. But perhaps that was because the four buildings surrounding the original pen were destined to become temple quarters for them all once the Jousters moved; at the moment, the priests and acolytes of the entire Tian party were all crowded very closely together in Kaleth’s Temple to All Gods, sleeping with scarcely a place to put a foot between them, and it could not be comfortable for any of them. At any rate, with their help, and the help of some of Lord Ya-tiren’s people, the conversion occurred within a few days. The original doors—which fortunately had no lintels anymore, if they ever had possessed such a thing—were bricked halfway up, and the walls raised, so that a real sand wallow could be made deep enough for a dragon to dig him- or herself in.
Then, before the sand was brought in, a walkway was constructed around the periphery of each pen, just as the pens in Alta and Tia had been constructed, with a wider platform at the rear. Last of all, copying the pens in Alta so that the riders could live with their dragons, a single-roomed shelter was built on that platform at the back of the pen, and a water trough where a dragon could drink.
Since Kiron had been put in charge of the new Jousters, there was one thing he had made very clear. Everyone, including Ari, had agreed with him.
No Jouster would ever live apart from his dragon again.
Jousters were going to change; it was time for that change to begin. They would no longer live as lesser nobles, not that they’d be able to under the current conditions anyway! They would be housed in conditions no better, and no worse, than any officer in the Tian or Altan armies.
Jousters would still be like no one else, and part of that difference would be signaled by other ways in which they lived besides the bare fact of their housing.
It was no longer possible, with the bonded dragons, to treat a dragon like an inanimate thing, the chariot that one drove, the sword in one’s hand. It was no longer possible to shrug, walk away, and get another if one’s dragon was ill or injured, or worse, died. Not that anyone with a bonded dragon would be able to do anything like that. Look at the way every Jouster in Kiron’s wing fussed over their darlings, fretting over a bit of scuff on a scale, seeing that their dragons were fed, watered, and comfortable before they even considered their own needs!
They hadn’t much cared for having walls between them and their beloveds, but now that the new quarters were built, that would end. The new Jousters were partners with their dragons, and like the faithful hound that slept at the foot of his master’s bed and followed at his heels, the dragon would spend as much time as possible with his own Jouster. Which was, after all, the way that both dragon and Jouster wanted things. Kiron had not really slept easily without being able to wake in the night and hear Avatre’s breathing. . . .
Perhaps one day, when there were more resources, the quarters could be enlarged. For now, they were comfortable enough, and at least when the temperature dropped, as Kiron very well knew, they would be better than most.
The one thing they didn’t have to worry about out here was rain; any rain that fell in the desert was sporadic and wouldn’t turn a pen into sand soup the way it did in both Tia and Alta, so no awnings were going to be needed over the pits. A sturdy roof on the Jouster’s shelter to keep out the sun, however, was a must. Otherwise in summer, the heat would be a punishing thing, even for a dragon.
Once the construction was done, the biggest job, other than raising the walls and making the walkways, was in filling the pens with sand. Kiron had a hope that perhaps the gods would oblige with another sandstorm, but in the end, it was done by the simple, if more back-breaking means of having every single able-bodied person in Sanctuary get together to spend a single day helping to carry and dump sand into the waiting pens.
Then the Thet priests, with Heklatis watching closely, invoked their spell. It was the same magic used in Tia and Alta both that kept the sand in the pens at a temperature comfortable for the dragons. Without the need to impress, as Heklatis had shrewdly guessed, it was a much simpler affair than Kiron had observed when he spied on the ritual. What Heklatis had not realized, however, was that the little priestesses were actually needed and were not merely decorative.
In fact, in many ways, they were crucial.
Theirs, it seemed, was a passive power; Kiron suspected that if the Magi had guessed what it was they did for the priests, their names would have been first on that list of those who had been called to “serve” the advisers, and their status as priestesses would not have saved them.
They amplified the power of the spell, giving it, not merely strength, but reach, sending it far beyond the area in which it would normally operate. So the Thet priests were able to “steal” heat from somewhere far outside the walls of Sanctuary, and sink it into the sands. But they also created, at long last, one of the “cold” rooms where meat could be stored for days at a time at need, channeling the heat from that space into the pens as well. In the times when there was more game caught than the dragons could eat that day, it could be stored against greater need. The Thet priests were adept from long practice at finding good ways to channel the heat, but it was clever Heklatis who suggested one change that had never occurred to them—to move the heat through time as well as distance, taking heat from Sanctuary during the day to be used at night, keeping the buildings cool by day, as the Palace at Mefis was.
The mere concept made Kiron’s head spin, but apparently they worked out how to do that. It seemed so impossible that he finally decided to just pretend he hadn’t heard any such thing.
When they brought the dragons to the new Compound, there was not a moment of hesitation out of them on seeing their new quarters. The dragons had never been so happy since they had left Alta. They lofted over the walls and plunged into the hot sands with little squeals of glee, and every one of them, even Kashet, immediately buried him- or herself to the shoulders in the sand, leaving only the wide, leathery wings spread out across the hot surface.
The Thet priests, who back in Mefis had never actually stayed around long enough to see what the dragons made of their pens when the heating spells were renewed, watched them with spreading grins on their faces. By this time, they had all made the acquaintance of one or more of the dragons and had, predictably, been charmed by them. It was hard not to be charmed by indigo-colored Bethlan with her assumption that everyone she met was a friend, and by the gentle green Khaleph, and beautiful tricolored Tathulan who could excite admiration in the dullest of observers, but each of the others had their little coterie of admirers. All of the dragons liked people, even shy scarlet-and-sand Deoth. And why not? People had never hurt them, and people were the source of satisfying attention and even more satisfying scratches on the sensitive skin under the chin and around the eye ridges and the join of head to neck. In Tia, everyone had heard of Kashet, but few had seen him up close; dragons were to be admired from afar, but were dangerous, even deadly, up close. And of course, all that had once been true of the wild-caught, tala-controlled dragons. Although a dragon that killed a man would be put down, nevertheless, it was possible to be seriously hurt by one that was clever enough to know he could harm his handlers.