It looked as if the bottom floors had been made with dragons in mind; twice as tall at least as the ones above. But the only way to find out, was to look.

He headed for the nearest, after another glance at Avatre to be sure she was all right, but she was nose-deep in her prey, and oblivious to anything else. He crossed the threshold—noting as he did so that there were places for hinges and, presumably, doors which were long gone—and paused inside for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

For dark it was, despite the windows cut into the façade. Kiron could see, however, this was a man-altered cave. And yes, the ceiling here was as tall as in the Temple of Haras in the Court of the Jousters in Mefis, a place where Kashet had walked comfortably. A dragon could live here.

The interior was simple: a box of a room, with thick square pillars holding up the ceiling, the spaces between fully wide enough for two dragons to pass. It was a big box, though, and that high ceiling gave it a cavernous feeling. After his first feeling of vague disappointment, he realized that the simplicity was the opposite of crude. Floor, ceiling, and walls, all were polished so smooth that when he touched the wall, and then the floor and the pillars, they felt like sueded leather under the hand.

And at the rear of the room, climbing up toward the ceiling, was a stone staircase. So there were more stories above this.

He moved toward the back, hearing his footsteps echo in the emptiness, feeling the room growing cooler and cooler as he got closer to the rear and away from the windows. This could be very good. With magic heating the dragon’s sand, the bulk of the stone would keep living quarters more than tolerable, they’d be comfortable.

And this was where the Jousters would eventually live?

Could there be any more perfect place for them to live?

He found himself smiling, then grinning with glee. How could anything be better? There was more rain here, as evidenced by the signs of flash floods and the bits of green here and there. But you wouldn’t have to worry about rain when your dragon’s pen was sheltered by all this rock. And there were midnight kamiseens, but when you were behind this sort of wall, who cared? The worst that would happen would be that you had a bit more sand to sweep downstairs into the pen. And if this became a city for Jousters and their helpers—

There might be problems in supplying all those dragons with food if there were no temple sacrifices to feed them, unless—