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Two days later, the nursery had settled down again, the hens starting the long
process of weaning their remaining hatchlings. In the oasis, Jakkin had to do
the same. He made himself stay away, going back every third or fourth night
with dread, fearing to find that the dragon had died of starvation without
him.
Each time he returned, the dragon greeted him joyfully, larger by another
handbreadth than the last visit, and the weed and wort patch full of signs of
its browsing. Jakkin was torn between pleasure at his dragon s growth-it was
now as tall as he was-and a lingering disappointment that the snatchling did
not seem to have needed him during his absence. But his pride in the growing
strength and ability of his dragon soon overshadowed everything.
It was on the last day of the training season that he taught it a move that
was in none of the books. It was an accident, really. They had been playing,
though Jakkin now had to play with the dragon much more carefully. It was a
little higher than his head, and its legs were the width of half-grown spikka
trees. The scales of its back and neck and tail were as hard and shiny as
new-minted coins. Only along the belly and where its legs met the firm trunk
were the scales still butter soft.
Jakkin had rolled on the ground, propelled by a light tap from the dragon s
tail, and had ended up on its left wing. The wing s ribs were encased in the
hard grayish skin that contrasted sharply with the dragon s dark red body.
Only at the knobby part of the wings, where the rubbery skin stretched taut,
was there a hint of red in the gray. Shakily Jakkin stood up on the dragon s
wing, careful not to scrape or tear it.
The dragon turned its head slowly to look at him, its eyes black shrouds.
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 See, mighty worm, if thou canst free thyself of this encumbrance, said
Jakkin, standing very still.
The dragon opened its mouth and yawned, then fluttered its free wing slowly.
Jakkin began to relax.  Nothing? Canst do nothing? he taunted gently. He
watched the fluttering free wing.
Suddenly the tail came around and swept him off the pinioned wing in a single
fluid motion. Caught unaware, Jakkin tumbled back ward and rolled into the
embrace of the dragon s left leg. For a full minute it would not let him go.
He could feel its laughter in his head, great churning waves of blue and
green.
 And that, said Jakkin when the dragon let him up at last,  that we will call
the Great Upset. He dusted his clothes off with his hands.  I let you knock
me down. A dragon in the pits will not be so easily fooled. He had started to
walk away when the dragon s tail came up behind him and pushed him into the
sand once again.
Jakkin laughed and turned over on his back.  You win. You win, he said as the
tail came down and nudged under his arm, where the dragon knew he was
especially ticklish.
chapter 32
AND THEN IT was the season of stud.
The bonders were kept busy day and night, helping the studs to preen, leading
them one at a time into the arena-sized courtyards where the chosen hen
waited. As the humans watched, the dragon courtship began.
The female stood, seemingly uninterested, while the male paced around the
yard, measuring it with his eye. Every once in a while, he stopped and sprayed
the floor with the extended scent glands on the underside of his tail or
breathed smoky gusts onto the sand. His hackit s rose. The circling continued
until the hen either curled into a ball, pretending to sleep-which indicated
that she was uninterested in the
male-or until she leapt several feet in the air, pumping her great wings and
lifting her tail.
If she turned down the courting male s offers, the bonders would jump into the
ring and take the deflated dragon away. Deflated was the word, Slakk commented
once, as he led Bloody Flag out of the ring. The male dragon s scent gland
hung as loose as a coinless bag and his hackles had returned to normal size.
But once a hen accepted the male, showing her preference by her leap above the
ring, the male winged into the air after her. Then they both shot into the
sky, above the roofless courtyard, the female screaming her challenge to the
male, who followed always slightly behind. They rose screaming and spiraling
above the nursery, higher and higher, until they were merely black, swirling
specks in the sky.
An hour later, the frantic courting flight over, the two returned together,
wingtip to wingtip, to the courtyard, where a moss-covered floor pad had been
rolled out by the bonders. There, in full view of the watchers, the cock
dragon mounted and mated with the hen. Then they lay side by side for the rest
of the night. The following morning, separated by mutual consent and the
prod-sticks of the bonders, the stud went back to his own stall, the female to
the incubam.
Jakkin only managed to get to the oasis one evening a week during the season
of stud, for he was suddenly promoted to helping with the matings, under
Likkam s direct supervision. It was not an easy job. It also meant that he
shared Bond-Off with Likkam. Jakkin s one worry was that the old man would
track him over the sands just for spite, to get even with him for every
mistake-real and imaginedthat
Jakkin made in the mating courtyards. But each Bond-Off Likkam disappeared
first. After the third
Bond-Off, Jakkin relaxed his guard. He guessed that Likkam had found someplace
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away from the nursery to spend the day smoking blisterweed, since each morning
after Bondoff Likkam s eyes were a furious red.
It was on that third Bond-Off, as Jakkin and his dragon were lazing in the
sand after a hard session of training, that Jakkin thought about the latest
mating flight he had seen.
 Canst use thy wings yet? he asked, picturing the wild mating spiral in his
mind.  Canst thou do more than a hover?
The dragon responded by pumping its wings strongly, stirring the sand and
making little frothy eddies in the stream. Then, as Jakkin watched, the dragon
began to rise. Its great wings pumped mightily and
Jakkin could see the powerful breast muscles moving under the shield of skin.
The dragon rose as high as the shelter roof; then two more pumps brought it
above the treeline, where it hovered a minute. Suddenly it caught a current of
air and rode off into the sea of sky.
Jakkin stood, one hand over his eyes, straining to follow the disappearing
dragon. He bit his lip and touched his bag. Now that it knew what its wings
were for, the dragon might never return. It might go feral, finding a colony
of wild dragons out beyond the mountains. Loosing a feral-that had always been
a possibility. And yet he hadn t believed it. Not with his dragon, not really.
In the nursery only the mating dragons were ever allowed to fly. And since
they were not ready for mating until the females were two years old, the males
three and quite settled into nursery routines, there was rarely a nursery
dragon that went feral. Only one that Jakkin could remember had ever gone from
Sarkkhan s nursery-a red-gold stud on its first mating flight, a stud named,
appropriately, Blood s A
Rover. It had happened when Jakkin had first helped in the barns. Likkam had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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