Aerie by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online

“You’re learning,” he said smugly. “You are learning.”
    Kiron just shrugged. In so many ways, the old order of things had been uprooted and they were all having to learn new paths. He looked around at them all, his friends, the young fellows he had fought beside and helped to train, and suddenly it was as if he was seeing them for the first time.
    “We’ve—all changed,” he said aloud, feeling just a little stunned.
    Because they really had changed, all of them, some out of all recognition. When he had first seen them, lining up before him to be told what being a raiser of dragons would be like, they had been an oddly assorted crew. There had been the commoners: quiet Huras, the baker’s son; tall Pe-atep of the booming voice, who had tended the great hunting cats for a noble; small, wiry Kalen, who had done the same with falcons. There they had stood, in their soft commoners’ kilts, no jewels, no eye paint, their hair, like Kiron’s, tied back in a tail. Common as street curs, all of them. Kiron could not boast any great bloodline, for before he had been a serf in the power of the Tians, he had been nothing more than an ordinary farmer’s son.
    And the others. Orest, son of the great and wealthy Lord Ya-Tiren; Kiron’s friend, yes but under normal circumstances, they would never have met, much less become friends. So Kiron had met them because he had rescued Orest’s sister Aket-ten from a river horse—so they had become friends because Kiron had done so by flying in on the back of the first tame dragon that the Altans had ever seen. A simple farmer’s son would never have been a Jouster in Altan society; the notion was as outlandish as the reality—that a serf bound to the Tian Jousters had stolen a fertile dragon egg, hatched it, raised the hatchling to adulthood, and escaped with her. Impossible.
    Yet there he was, and there they were. And he had been set the task of teaching a new lot of Altan Jousters how to have truly tame dragons, that obeyed out of training and love, instead of drugs and training.
    Then there were the others, that he had not until that moment met. Ganek-at-kal-te-ronet, known to his friends as simply Gan, the oldest of the lot, handsome to a fault, with a languid air of laziness and a passion for women, with the highest bloodline of all of them but one. Menet-ka, also nobly born, though of a minor house, shy, but like the others, wearing garments and jewels, eye paint and hairstyle that proclaimed him to be far above the common touch. Oset-re, almost as nobly born as Gan, almost as handsome, with a superficial vanity that had swiftly fallen before his desire to partner a tame dragon.
    Kiron preferred not to think about the one who was no longer with them. Prince Toreth, who had stood between the Magi and the power of the Altan throne, and thus, had died at their hands. . . .
    Now, though . . . now, there was no telling which of them was common-born and which noble. They all looked alike. There was no eye paint, no one wore his hair in the elaborate braids of nobles. All were clad alike in the wrapped Jouster’s kilt; all were equally tanned and hardened by work. All had the hands of warriors, and some scars, too. Except for some superficial differences of face shape and size, they could have been brothers. Paler than Tians, but like Tians, black of hair and brown of eye, what marked them most was the look they all wore, what Heklatis called “the look of eagles.” Even Aket-ten had that look about her, now that he came to think about it.
    They were no longer what they had been. Now they were men.
    And one woman . . . no, two. Because Kaleth had crossed the threshold into adulthood before any of them, and with him, Marit, his lady, and her twin sister Nofret.
    It was Menet-ka who understood at once what Kiron meant. He nodded. “We have,” he said gravely. “Now I think it is time we truly showed that.”
    Orest made a face. “Alas! We must be responsible? ” he said in