Joust (51 page)

With that, the Mouth stalked off again, leaving Vetch to stare after him.

“Don’t look for friendship from them,” Ari warned. “We made a bargain; that’s all. The Bedu don’t care for our little wars, nor our pretensions at holding dominion over the land.”

“You sound as if you admire them,” Vetch ventured.

“Say, rather, that I envy them. Their only enemies are the land and the weather, and they are the freest people in the world, though they pay a heavy price for freedom.” He sighed. “And the Mouth is right; finish that meal, and we will both be on our separate ways.”

So there it was—the moment he knew was coming. But he had never thought that it would be like this.

“Master—” he began.

“Ari,” the Jouster corrected firmly. “I am no longer your master. Though I’ll have a hell of a time replacing you.”

Vetch winced, and hung his head. He felt horrible, leaving Ari in the lurch like this. But what could he do? He couldn’t go back. . . .

“I’d try to get Baken, but Haraket would fight me for him. I think I’ll exercise my rank and purloin one of those youngsters that Baken is training,” Ari continued. “Though I think not a serf, this time. If another dragon boy gets it into his head to emulate me, I at least want to get another Jouster out of the situation.”

Vetch looked up, and caught a twinkle in Ari’s eye, and felt a little better. Not much, but a little. “I wouldn’t have run—except they’d have taken her away from me,” he said softly. “And I knew it would break her heart. And mine—”

“That’s how you should be thinking, from this moment on. Whatever you decide, do it for her sake,” Ari replied, firmly. “Nothing else. Nothing less.”

“I won’t,” Vetch said, drawing himself up and looking Ari straight in the eyes.

“Good.” There was a long moment of very awkward silence—awkward on Vetch’s part anyway.

“Can’t you come with me?” he asked finally. “We don’t have to go to Alta—we could go east, to Beshylos—”

“No we couldn’t,” Ari said, sadly, but firmly. “I took certain oaths, and I will do my duty. I must. I wish—well, it can’t be otherwise.”

“I’m sorry, Ari,” he said, overcome with guilt. “I—”

“Don’t be. I’m not.” For the very first time in all of the time that Vetch had known him, Ari broke into a broad and unshadowed smile. “It’s the best thing in the world, to see a young thing fly free. I suppose—I suppose I should give you all sorts of advice now, but I can’t think of very much.” He sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

Finally, Vetch got the courage to ask the question that had been in his mind all along, since the first day Ari had plucked him out of Khefti’s yard. “Ari—
why?
Why—everything?”

Ari looked at him quizzically. “I’m not sure myself.” He looked up into the hard, cloudless blue bowl of the sky. “When I first saw you, so angry with me for stealing your water, I thought you were amusing, like a kitten that’s ready to attack a lion for some imagined offense. Then, when that fat idiot of a master of yours came out and you turned from angry to terrified, it wasn’t so amusing, and when he laid the lash on you, I knew I couldn’t leave you there. And I
did
need a dragon boy.”

“But the rest of it—” Vetch suddenly had to know, desperately. “Finding me a shrine—”

“Because it was right. Because I never had a younger brother. I’m the youngest in my family. Because—” He sighed, and looked inexpressibly sad. “Because I feel guilty for all of the wretched things that are being done to Altans, and perhaps at first I thought I could assuage some of that guilt by being good to you. But after a while, Vetch, you
earned
your place, and everything I did for you. By the time that wretch Khefti showed up again, you’d earned it. The other boys may not have liked you, but they could never claim you hadn’t earned your place. And—I don’t know, but I’m a man who believes in the gods, and I’ve had a feeling all along that the gods have some purpose in mind for you, and I was just the means to that purpose.”

Vetch sighed; that was another dark fear put to rest. In the back of his mind, he’d wondered all along if Ari had a darker purpose for him.

But no. It was all as simple, and as complicated, as guilt, faith—and just maybe, friendship.

“Now, I have a question,” Ari said into the silence. “You aren’t really named Vetch, are you?”

He smiled; he almost had to. “No—that’s something we Altan peasant farmers do, to protect precious boy babies. We name them something awful, so that the demons think they aren’t worth taking in the night.”

“So, just what is your real name?” Ari asked. “No—wait, let me guess. Kiron. Like your father.”

Vetch nodded, and felt a sudden sting in his eyes that he blinked away.

The bead suddenly tugged at Vetch’s neck, just as the Mouth materialized again, looking significantly at the sun. Ari nodded, got to his feet, and whistled sharply for Kashet.

The dragon raised himself from where he’d been basking in the heat, beside Avatre, and moved toward his beloved Jouster. Ari swung up into his saddle without asking Kashet to drop to the sand, and from that lofty perch, looked down at Vetch.

“Whatever you do—try not to get on the opposite end of a Joust with me. I still have my duty, and I will hold to it.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

Ari smiled again. “I thought you would. Your gods go with you, in whatever you decide,
Kiron
.”

And he sent Kashet up into the sky, leaving Vetch—no, Kiron—and Avatre to watch, as they disappeared into the heavens that were, at last, no less bright than his hopes, and no lighter than his heart.

‘
W
ELL, young Kiron,”the Mouth of the Bedu ‘W said. “One more day, and you will be where you wished to be—across the border, in Alta. I hope that this proves to be truly what you desired.”

Kiron—he had told the Bedu at the beginning of his journey that this was his name, and how he wished to be addressed, so as to get himself used to the shape of a name he had not used in years all over again—looked out over the desert, and saw, in the far western distance, the faint haze that marked the beginning of land where things could grow. He licked dry lips. “It has to be, doesn’t it?” he replied, as straightforward as the Bedu had been. “There’s no place else for me to go.”

It had been a long journey, one in which he had lost track of the days, as he zigzagged from one oasis to another, following the pull of the little beads he’d been given. At each oasis, he would surrender the bead that had brought him there, to receive a new one. He and Avatre had learned, together, how to hunt, for only at an oasis—and only if they had not been at all successful in their attempts to find food on their own—would the Bedu supply them. This was not out of greed; when an oasis held herds and flocks that numbered, not in the hundreds, but in the handfuls of animals, it was very clear that the Bedu were not a wealthy people. Honorable, yes. True to their word, without a doubt. But not wealthy.

He and Avatre honed their hunting skills quickly. He could not bear to see the big eyes of the unveiled children watching every bite he took as if it was coming out of their own portions. Which it probably was. . . .

Sometimes he went hungry, though he never, ever let Avatre go without.

That was all right; he was used to hunger.

There had been nights spent in the open desert, the two of them huddled together against the cold, Kiron’s bedding pulled over the two of them. There had been days when he’d rationed out water by the sip, as they crossed expanses of desert. But the Bedu had never misled him, nor miscalled the distances, nor failed to provide him with at least enough water to get from oasis to oasis. But the closer they drew to Alta by their circuitous route, the better he and Avatre had gotten at hunting, and the more game there had been to hunt. Until now—they never went hungry at all. He was tougher; she was tougher, stronger, and much bigger than when they had fled the Jousters’ compound.

Mind, what they caught and ate might not be very palatable now, and they might be eking out their meals one scrawny hare at a time, but they never went hungry anymore. They were self-sufficient, and it felt rather good.

He had come to know as much of the Bedu as they ever allowed outsiders to see, and he came to admire what he saw. Not that he had a chance to see very much, for only the Mouths were permitted to speak with outsiders. Still, they were generous within their means, and they never once led him astray. When he slept within their encampments, they found means to give Avatre a warm wallow, by digging a pit, lining it with rocks, and letting a fire burn to ashes atop them before covering the hot rocks with sand. They gave generously of what they had, and he quickly came to the conclusion that they were not the barbarians he’d always been told that they were—not if a “barbarian” was a wild and lawless creature devoid of the understanding of honor, without religion, without wisdom, without learning. All these things, they had in plenty. It was only in material goods that they were lacking.

He mounted into Avatre’s saddle, and wrapped his legs into the bracing straps. He would not need a guide bead now, with his goal within sight.

“You undertake a different sort of trial, when you cross that border, young Kiron,” the Mouth persisted. “And perhaps things will not always be to your liking. We of the desert know little of the dwellers in the marshy delta of the Great Mother River, for they have little to do with us. I cannot tell you what to expect.”

“But I will be free,” he said softly, with one hand on Avatre’s neck. “And so will she.”

The Mouth bowed his head slightly. “This is so.” He stared with Vetch to that distant haze of green. “Then, I can only say, may your gods go with you.”

Kiron touched his brow, his lips, and his heart in thanks and farewell, and gave Avatre the signal; with a tremendous shove of her legs, she launched for the sky.

The free, and open sky, and the beginning of a new life for them both.