quieter than Valreus. “Couldn’t the dragon masters just let you study down here?”
“Being a dragon master is more than just studying.” Kalai slowed his horse when they reached the last houses. A stretch of open space led to the vertical wall and the bottom of the stairs. “It’s a way of life. Besides, no scriptures are allowed to leave the temples. Even briefly.” He rested a hand over the saddlebags where the books the Sky Guard had stolen from the dragon masters were hidden away.
Tauran wondered how the guard had managed it. The mountain hardly looked like a place you simply waltzed into. He dismounted when Kalai did, and they tied their horses to a hitching post and continued on foot. “Maybe if they knew how brilliant you are, they’d make an exception.”
For the first time since arriving, Kalai smiled a little. “Oh, they know. I got accepted as an apprentice.”
Tauran paused on the dusty stone path. “Wait, what?”
Kalai flushed, rubbing the back of his neck again in a shy gesture. “That was how I found out heights aren’t good for me. When the temple opened their doors to new apprentices like they do every year, I was one. The youngest. Eleven years old.” He smiled at the memory. “I aced their tests, recited their scriptures perfectly. At the acceptance ceremony, I fainted for the first time. A few of the others felt light-headed from the height, so they brought us to a lower level and let us recover.” He sighed, wrapping his arms around himself despite the heat. “The others got better, but as soon as I went back up, I fainted again. I was out for a whole day. Made Aunt Iako really worried. They let me return a week later. Same thing.” He shook his head, a bitterness in his expression. “They urged me to try again the following year, and I did, but I only made it halfway to the top before I started feeling unwell. The third year, I wasn’t even nervous to go through the apprentice application test, but I only managed to stay there for two hours before I blacked out.”
Tauran bit his lip. He hadn’t realized just how close Kalai had gotten to reaching his dream. To grasp it, only to be powerless to watch it slip from his grasp, not once, but three times. “Shit, I’m sorry.” He closed the space between them and wrapped an arm around Kalai’s shoulders.
Kalai dropped his head briefly on Tauran’s shoulder. “They would have let me return every year if I wanted to, but I didn’t see the point. I made friends with one of the old assistants. Asakio was his name. He sneaked me dragon scrolls from time to time. He told me he never got caught doing it, but I’m sure they found out more than once. I didn’t want to keep getting him into trouble for my sake, so I told him I was no longer interested.”
Tauran could imagine how much that had hurt. “He sounds like a great guy. Do you think he’s still up there?” He looked up. This close to the mountain, the height of it made him dizzy, even with his feet firmly planted on the ground.
Kalai laughed. “He was at least eighty at the time, but if he is, it wouldn’t surprise me. I swear, most of the masters are approaching a hundred. It must be something in the air up there.”
Tauran let his gaze follow the zig-zag of the stairs. They were empty, as far up as Tauran could see. “So…” He dragged out the word. “How are we meant to find someone to talk to?”
“We wait, I guess.” Kalai slipped from his grasp, but took his hand instead, pulling Tauran along to the stairs. Up close, they were considerably wider than Tauran had thought, easily wide enough to fit twenty people standing side by side. “The assistants will come down once a day to fetch supplies in the town in the afternoon.” He glanced at the sun.
Tauran gawked. “They walk up and down all those stairs, every day?”
Kalai chuckled. “No. The temples have internal elevators. You can’t see them from here, but there are platforms and doorways almost all the way up.”
“Oh.” Tauran wasn’t sure he liked elevators any better than stairs. At least stairs were static, and you only had to rely on your own legs to keep you safe. Elevators were unreliable, moving objects of potential death by falling. As cool as Kalai