Joust by Mercedes Lackey Page B

when they were far from home and the mountains so temptingly near.
    Though, in fact, one had returned from combat this very day. Its dragon boy was not envied; a dragon without a Jouster didn’t get regular exercise, and it was prone to get irritated or sluggish under such circumstances. If the former, well, it was the boy that the dragon took his ill temper out on. And if the latter, when the dragon did get a new Jouster, it would become irritable when forced to exercise and lose the fat that it had gained in the interim.
    The boys’ talk concentrated on the dragon that had returned, and commiseration with its boy, not the rider that had fallen. In fact, they didn’t even once mention his name. That was not callousness on their part, in fact, Vetch considered such caution very wise; too much talk of him might bring his spirit here, instead of it staying properly in his tomb.
    Night-walking spirits were not known for their gentleness. A hungry ghost might remember old grievances, or feel jealous of the living. There were a hundred ways such a ghost could revenge himself on the living. He could bring fever spirits, or the demons of ill luck; he could plague the sleep with nightmares. He could even lead stronger spirits to the sleeping victim, or drive one mad.
    So the fallen Jouster would be remembered, oh my yes—with proper offerings and sacrifices in the Jousters’ little Temple, tonight; the Temple was consecrated ground, and the Priest of Haras knew how to propitiate a spirit and give it a resting place it would be content with while it waited for proper housing.
    Then all that was right and proper would be accomplished at the Tomb of the Jousters when his body was finished with the forty days of embalming. But that would be across the Great Mother River, in the Vale of the Noble Dead, and was the duty of the mortuary priests. The Tians believed that to enter into the Summer Country, the deceased must have a proper anchoring in an embalmed body, and proper offerings for at least forty days, and more offerings to take with it when it crossed the Sky River. If this was not done, it wandered. If it was not done properly, it wandered, and the longer it wandered, the angrier it became.
    That was why it was not a good idea for the living to walk about at night, for fear of encountering angry or hungry spirits, the more especially if someone who actively hated you had ever died. Khefti, for instance, had made so many enemies that he hardly dared stir at night, and on the few occasions that he did leave the safety of his house after sundown, he was so hung about with charms and amulets that he looked like an amulet hawker, and he rattled with every step.
    Vetch had no experience one way or another with spirits; with Khefti for a master, by the time he was let go for the day, he was so weary he always fell dead asleep. He had tried to set up a tiny shrine for his father, but it kept getting swept away when he was at his labors, and anyway, he didn’t have anything to spare for offerings but the clay loaves and beer jars and other goods he molded in miniature and left there.
    Certainly his father’s spirit had never returned to give him any signs . . . there were tales of that, as well, of spirits that returned to help the living. Though in truth, those tales were fewer than the tales of vengeful ghosts.
    But then, how would his father even know how to get here, or even where Vetch was? In all of his lifetime, his father had never been farther from his farm than the village.
    “Haraket ordered her fed up and given a double dose of tala, ” the boy who was in charge of that returned dragon said. “So she won’t be much of a handful for a while. And I heard straight from him that he’s got a new Jouster for her, so she won’t get a chance to go sour. I can handle her.”
    “There’s a lot of new Jousters coming, I heard,” one of the younger boys ventured cautiously.
    “You heard right. The Great King, may he live a