(eng) Mercedes Lackey - Dragon Jousters 03 by Sanctuary

Author:Sanctuary [Sanctuary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

THE next morning, and for every morning after that, Nofret was waiting to be taken out to Coresan without anyone having to fetch her. Aket-ten told Kiron that Nofret had arranged all of her audiences and meetings for the evening, after she came back. And she was brought back, every evening, if not by Kiron, by one or another of the other Jousters because no one was going to allow her to remain in that deserted city, unprotected, after darkness fell. No one knew what might prowl there, anything from cheetah to other dragons. There would certainly be poisonous snakes and scorpions. There might be ghosts or other evil spirits.

And Ari fretted, though he said nothing, and he was very careful to fetch Nofret home no more often than any of the others. In a way, Kiron couldn’t blame him for being anxious about Nofret’s welfare. If it had been Aket-ten out there alone, he’d have fretted, too—and as far as he or anyone else knew, unlike Aket-ten, Nofret didn’t have any special powers to protect her or help her. He’d have trusted to her good sense, but he couldn’t help but wonder—did anyone who would insist on spending time with a semiwild, nesting dragon in a deserted city crawling with unknown hazards really have good sense?

There were other ways of getting a dragon. She could even wait until next year. . . . What did she have to prove? She was already given all the deference anyone could ask for from the Altans in Sanctuary, and if the Tians didn’t quite understand yet that she was due the respect of a coconsort, they would soon work it out.

All he could guess at this point was that the person she was trying hardest to prove something to was—herself.

Still, she was clever, and if Coresan wasn’t exactly taming, she had come to accept Nofret’s presence and food without a sign of nerves or suspicion. Nofret still couldn’t touch her unless Aket-ten was around, and she still kept her body between Nofret and her eggs, but then, Coresan had watched while Kiron himself stole one of her last clutch, so he couldn’t blame the dragon for being cautious. No matter how many times Aket-ten “talked” to Coresan to reassure her, surely the first thing in her mind when she saw Nofret’s eyes going toward the eggs was that the human was going to take one. It did make him wonder, though, just how much Coresan was able to think—and if she was somehow able to recognize Avatre as her own offspring. And if so, was that making a difference in how she treated the humans who were with Avatre?

The days stretched on, much the same except that they slowly got a little longer every day as the time for the rains arrived and passed. Or what would have been rains, if much rain actually fell out here. There were brief cloudbursts, followed by an explosion of flowers and greenery, but nothing like what was happening in Tia, and to a lesser extent, in Alta.

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