You shouldn’t anger someone who knows as much about pain as a Healer does.
Re-eth-ke and Menet-ka’s Bethlan came in together, one on either side of him, moving fast. Fast enough to knock Avatre down a few feet with the turbulence of their passing. Avatre was too busy trying to recover to notice that Orest’s blue Wastet was right behind them; he came in low enough to snatch one of the tear-away streamers from Avatre’s saddle with his foreclaws. Avatre was enraged, and gave chase; Kiron was thrilled. They could get an entire wing aroused with a single pass with moves like that!
And just as Avatre started to gain on the fleeing dragonets, they parted, going left, right, and straight up—and there, coming straight at them, was Oset-re and Apetma. Avatre yelped, and folded her wings to drop. Apetma passed right through the spot where she had been.
Poor Avatre had had enough. She went all the way to the ground, and Kiron had to spend a goodly amount of time soothing her hurt feelings while the others chased after each other to catch streamers in a general melee. She might have a ruffled temper, but he was extremely satisfied. The tala could run out tomorrow, and they would be ready.
Except for telling their own Jousters what was about to happen.
He still had no answer for that question.
When they got back to the compound, they all landed in the landing courtyard; not even Avatre was quite skilled enough yet to land in her own pen. Once down, he made sure to spend some time walking Avatre around to all the other dragons before they all went back to their pens, to make certain they were all friends again. Aket-ten went with him, “talking” to Avatre about it, and to the others as well.
“Does it do any good?” he asked her anxiously as they walked Avatre and Re-eth-ke back together. “Do they understand?”
“Actually, I think so, more each time we do this.
Avatre understands that this is part of training, and I think she understands that the others are harassing her because their riders are asking them to, not because this was their idea.” She smiled slightly. “I was going to say, ‘not because they want to,’ but I’m afraid they get a great deal of gleeful pleasure out of harassing her and getting away with it. But it’s like good-natured children being given permission to be naughty, not real aggression.”
“Good,” he said, with a sigh of relief. “The last thing we need is to have them start attacking each other right now.”
They parted then, with Aket-ten taking Re-eth-ke on back to her pen, and Kiron turning into Avatre’s. He and his dragon boy got her unharnessed and fed; once she had settled, he went to see Heklatis.
He found the Healer with one of the senior Jousters, splinting a broken arm. Kiron was shocked; a broken arm was not the only injury the man had sustained. His face was a mass of bruises, and so was the half of his body that had the broken arm.
“What happened?” he blurted.
The man grunted. “Strap saved my life. Tian had a lance with a wood core and a stone tip inside the papyrus. If I hadn’t been belted into the saddle, I’d be dead.” It was a little hard to understand him; his lips and jaw were so swollen that his words were slurred and muffled.
“They were following orders,” Heklatis said neutrally. “They were Jousting. However, no one told them that the Tians had new lances.”
“Bigger dragons to start with, and lances like that—we’ve not got a chance,” the Jouster growled. He might have said more, but at that moment, Lord Khumun, and what seemed like all of the senior Jousters in the compound descended on Heklatis’ quarters like a storm. All of them were shouting, or at least talking, at once, and all of them were angry. Heklatis shook his head at them; Kiron couldn’t make out more than a word or two either. Finally Lord Khumun held up a hand for silence.
Miraculously, he got it.
“What is this all about?” Heklatis asked, aghast.
“The Magus just gave orders that every senior Jouster is to fly every flight, no matter what!” shouted someone from the back. “He included everyone on the injured list by name! Even you, Ah-sheptah!”
“What?” The injured man and Heklatis spoke—or rather bellowed—at the same time. The cacophony started again. Lord Khumun held up his hand, and it died.
But it was Kiron who spoke first. “My Lords,” he said, enunciating each word with such care that he was sure even the most stupid of them would understand that he meant something far more than he was saying. “I do believe that my wing and I can help you with some new strategy. Will you rouse your mounts and come with me to our practice field? Lord Khumun, I can take you, Heklatis, you should go with Aket-ten, and my Lord Ah-sheptah, I believe you ought to ride behind Huras, rather than flying just now. Will you come?”
They stared at him for a moment, as if he was a baboon that had somehow produced human speech. Then Lord Khumun said, “Jousters, I think this is a very good idea. We need to practice where no one will interfere with us—”
There were still looks of total bewilderment, but no one demurred. In fact, after the first few began taking hesitant steps toward their dragon pens, the rest followed. Kiron and Heklatis helped the injured Jouster to his feet, and made their way to the boys’ pens. Fortunately, he met them in the corridor just as they were about to go elsewhere.
“Get the dragons harnessed and up,” he ordered shortly, to their astonishment. “We need to go to the practice field. Aket-ten, you have Heklatis, Huras, you take this man. Fast! I want to get there and back before anyone notices!”
The wing understood, at any rate. And to his immense satisfaction, although they were the last to know, they were all the first into the air, even Huras, with the injured Jouster.
They led the way to their field, and landed there. The dragons had all just been fed (and drugged) and were sleepy—and while they were irritated at being forced to fly, they were inclined to lie right down on the warm grass in the sun and bask rather than quarrel or wander. Simply staking their reins down kept them in one place. The Jousters all gathered around Kiron and Lord Khumun, who both looked to Heklatis.
“Give me a moment,” the Healer muttered. He closed his eyes, and began to chant under his breath, and shortly he was sweating as if he was trying to shove a heavy stone up a ramp all by himself. He grew paler, too—and just when he began to sway a little with exhaustion, he stopped, opened his eyes—and sat down hard in the grass.
“They won’t find us, not for a while,” he said heavily. “And if they try to scry, what they’ll see is all of you practicing up there—” he pointed at the sky above.
“He’s a Magus, as well as a Healer,” Kiron explained to the baffled faces. “And—that’s where our story begins, I suppose.”
He explained everything; Toreth’s original plan, and why he had decided to make the Jousters into a force to make the Tians forge a real peace, their long discussions, the change in the plan after Toreth’s murder by the Magi, Kaleth’s visions—and finally, what they had done to the tala. “In a few days, you’ll be using the new stuff,” he told them. “And so will they. Once the dragons aren’t drugged anymore, we thought they would probably obey for a while out of habit, but we planned to go along on one last flight and—goad the Tian dragons into rage, so they’d throw their riders and escape. We were going to warn you so that you could ride your dragons down to the ground and turn them loose.”