Sky Dragons Dragonriders of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

  “As I said, we’ll let the rains do the hard work,” he told her. “We burn off our target area, dig out ruts all along its length, and, as I said, let the rains do the rest.”

  “What?” Xhinna asked. “How?”

  “Have you ever watched rain falling on newly turned earth?”

  Xhinna thought for a moment, her eyes narrowed. Then she shook her head.

  “Ever been to a Gather?”

  She nodded, even more confused.

  “And seen how the horses dig up the ground?”

  She nodded again.

  “And what happens when it rains?”

  “You get mud,” Xhinna said, wondering what by the First Egg the brown rider was going on about and if he would ever get to the point.

  “And if it’s a hill or a place where there’s lower ground, what happens to the mud in the water?”

  “It sinks into the ground, doesn’t it?”

  “Some,” R’ney agreed. “But when there’s too much mud and there are deeper places for the muddy water to go—say, downhill—where does the water carry all that mud?”

  “Downhill,” Xhinna said, annoyed at such an obvious question.

  “And when enough rain falls and takes away all the mud, what’s left?”

  “Nothing?”

  R’ney shook his head, his eyes twinkling. “Bare rock.”

  “Wait, instead of us digging up all the earth, we dig up some channels and let the rains clear the rest of the dirt?”

  R’ney nodded, looking relieved. “I was afraid I was going to have to draw a diagram.”

  “You should have—your explanation took far too long,” Xhinna told him. Then she felt a hand touch her waist and she turned around.

  “Did I miss much?” Danirry asked, peering up at the wingleader with a smile.

  “No,” Xhinna said, just as R’ney said, “Yes.”

  The girl looked from wingleader to wingsecond and back, confused. Xhinna laughed and laid her hand over Danirry’s in reassurance.

  Somehow, Xhinna promised herself, she would do the right thing by Danirry. It was just another one of the duties of a leader she’d never before considered.

  Danirry took the touch for an invitation and, wrapping her arms around Xhinna’s waist, moved in close, resting her head on Xhinna’s shoulder.

  “You can lean on me,” she told Xhinna, “I’ll hold you.”

  R’ney raised an eyebrow and gave Xhinna a warning look but, unfortunately, the blue rider’s head and chest were almost exactly what Xhinna needed for her sore shoulder and she found herself leaning back ever so slightly.

  “So, first you get your half wing of dragons to flame all the new growth back to char, then they dig grooves along the plateau, and then what?”

  “We just wait,” R’ney said with a shrug. He lowered his brow once more and jerked his head at the girl behind her, but Xhinna ignored him.

  “And while we’re waiting, brown rider, what do we eat?” Xhinna asked.

  For a moment he looked thunderstruck, and Xhinna couldn’t help feeling delighted. But he recovered quickly, saying, “I thought I’d leave that to you and the Weyrleader.” He paused just long enough for her to see it coming, then added, “But I can see you’ve got enough on your shoulders, so I’ll have think on it myself.”

  His stress on the word think wasn’t lost on her, and she stuck her tongue out at him in as dignified a wingleader manner as she could manage. R’ney paused for one moment, brought himself up to his full height, and stuck his tongue out in return.

  “May all your problems be as easy as mine,” she told him with a glare.

  “Honestly, Wingleader, I wouldn’t trade my problems for yours for all the gold on Pern,” R’ney said. His words seemed to startle him, and suddenly he looked as if he wanted to hug her.

  “What?” Xhinna asked, wondering just how things could get worse.

  “Gold!” he exclaimed, turning toward the burnt plateau and pointing.

  “You found gold?” Xhinna asked. Danirry was wobbling a bit, so she straightened up. The girl might have her blue’s determination, but she still had none of his stamina. Xhinna hoped that would change.

  “No,” R’ney said, shaking his head. “But we could!”

  “How?”

  “All that water,” he told her. She shook her head at him, confused. “We’ll be taking an entire plateau’s worth of soil! There’s got to be enough gold dust in there for—” He shook his head. “—I don’t know how many grams, maybe whole kilos.”

  “Gold?” Xhinna repeated. “How do you know there’s gold there?”

  “It’s the same type of soil where we found gold back home,” R’ney told her with a pitying look.

  “But it takes time and effort to get gold,” Xhinna protested, recalling scatterings of conversations with Fiona.

  R’ney raised his hands and shook them in disagreement. “No, no, no! You see, all we have to do is build the sluices right and we’ll get the gold coming straight out.”

  “Especially if we did it in several places,” Danirry added. With Xhinna’s weight removed from her, she’d sidled around to stand on the wingleader’s left. “It would be easy then.”

  “You’ve miner training?” R’ney asked, suddenly interested in her.

  “No,” Danirry said, “but our old harper insisted we learn all about mining, as well as the Ballads and reading and writing.”

  “Wise of him,” R’ney said, his expression dismissing her once more.

  “You’d be better with a cyclone chute—it’ll fling the gold out,” she added. R’ney’s eyes boggled. “And if you build it right, the gold’ll fall down into a catchment and the dirt will continue on over it.”

  “You, young rider, have just become my assistant!” R’ney declared. He glanced at Xhinna pleadingly. “I can have her, can’t I?”

  “I was told to stay with the wingleader!” Danirry objected, moving back behind Xhinna as if for protection. “She needs someone to watch over her.”

  “I do,” Xhinna agreed calmly, savoring the way R’ney’s eyebrows went up in disbelief and the set of his jaw as he prepared to argue with her. “But Mirressa’s also got that duty.” Behind her Danirry made a small noise of discontent, not quite a whimper. “What I really need are good eyes and ears that can go where I can’t and report back.”

  She reached around and tugged Danirry in front of her. “Tell me, blue rider, would you like to ride Tazith?”

  Danirry’s face lit with wonder and excitement. And again, for a moment, Xhinna could see the beautiful person behind the frightened eyes.

  The match proved perfect, and under R’ney’s concerned guidance, Danirry began to blossom. They were both ecstatic at being allowed to fly Tazith and, between frequent races to oil their weyrlings, fought like children over who was rider and who passenger. That R’ney was neither threat nor competition was especially easy on the blue rider, and Xhinna was amazed to see near-daily transformations in the way Danirry acted and behaved.

  Mirressa was a much easier person to handle, so, remembering R’ney’s sisters, Xhinna assigned Jepara to her.

  “She’s a sop!” Jepara complained the next day. “She’ll do anything—anything—I tell her to.”

  “And why does this bother you?” Xhinna asked.

  “Because—because—oohhh!” Jepara threw her hands up in disgust, unable to find words to describe her feeling.

  “So fix it,” Xhinna said quietly. Jepara stopped mid-tirade and turned to her with eyes wide in astonishment.

  “You can’t be serious?” Jepara said. “The girl’s got no spine! You might as well put a puddle on her green’s back, instead of a rider.”

  “The green chose her,” Xhinna said. Jepara started to say something, probably to castigate Mirressa’s green, but Xhinna forestalled her with a raised hand. “And I chose you.”

  The queen rider stopped moving and stood, fuming, her eyes locked with Xhinna’s in a contest of wills.

/>   “I think that behind all that puddle, there’s a real person who’s been hiding all this time, waiting for someone like her Valcanth to find her, to see her true worth.”

  “Greens aren’t very smart,” Jepara snapped. She colored slightly as she remembered that Taria rode a green, but pressed on unrepentant. “They don’t always make the best choices.”

  “Which is why they have riders,” Xhinna told her calmly. “And why their riders have Weyrwomen to guide them.”

  “Well … how will I know when I’ve succeeded?” Jepara demanded. “How will I be able to tell when that puddle of mud grows a spine?”

  “When that puddle of mud cuts off all your hair or turns your bottom red,” Xhinna told her, fighting back a grin.

  Jepara’s jaw dropped and she raised a finger at the wingleader. “You—how did you—he told you! It was your idea!” One of her hands snaked around to her behind and she gave the Weyrleader a long, simmering look. “I couldn’t sit for a sevenday,” she said, growling.

  Xhinna didn’t try to pretend ignorance and merely stood her ground.

  “You—oh!” Jepara said, twirling around angrily, waving her hands in the air. She settled herself, then said in a controlled, icy voice, “Very well, Wingleader, it shall be as you order.”

  Xhinna decided that silence was the best option and nodded at the queen rider, who walked off, chin in the air, toward where Mirressa was helping Javissa with chores.

  Perhaps, Xhinna thought, things were looking up. All she had to do was find Taria and kill J’keran and all would be right with Sky Weyr. Well, maybe not kill, she corrected herself; even if the brown rider’s transgression warranted it, there had to be a better way. The man had been addled out of his wits, after all.

  ELEVEN

  A Cry in the Silence

  Xhinna could tell immediately that something was wrong when she woke in the middle of the night. She’d been certain that she’d jinxed herself with the thought that things were going all right and now, she was certain, they were due to go wrong—seriously.

  The first thing she noticed was that Jirana was not keeping her front warm. The second thing she noticed was that somebody—but not Javissa—was lying against her back.

  Whoever it was was shivering and crying. And cold, very cold.

  Hadn’t the girl given up on her and grown some sense? Xhinna thought to herself with an inward groan. Danirry had spent enough time with R’ney and the other new riders—surely she’d worked through her infatuation.

  “Danirry …” Xhinna began quietly, trying to figure out how to get the blue rider back to her own bed without making matters worse.

  Instead, the body behind her stiffened and, with an indrawn hiss, rose swiftly, running away.

  “Danirry, no!” Xhinna cried, wincing as she propped herself up and slowly—achingly—stood up.

  And then, just before she heard dragon wings rustling, a number of things clicked into her mind. The body had been different from Danirry’s: round in the middle.

  “Taria, no! I can explain!” Xhina cried as the green dragon leapt into the air, beat its wings down once and was gone—between.

  “Xhinna?” Danirry’s voice called from a different direction.

  Xhinna had no chance to respond before Danirry was at her side, a questioning, concerned look on her face.

  “Just a bad dream,” Xhinna said.

  TWELVE

  Stretching Bonds

  “That’s three in three nights,” X’lerin said. He was reporting on their herdbeast losses. They were gathered on the rough platform that R’ney had laid down near Bekka’s infirmary, on branches just beneath the top of the broom trees. The light of mid-afternoon came through in splotches, tinged green by its journey through the leaves above, and did not do enough to warm the air.

  “We can only be certain that two were killed by Mrreows,” R’ney said, glancing meaningfully at Xhinna.

  “What about putting a cover on the cage?” she asked from where she sat, glad to be allowed to sit up for short periods. Her scar twinged, but she ignored it. The cage for the herdbeasts that had been built nearest their cooking fire was sturdy enough and big enough for several beasts at once; covering it would be a difficult and time-consuming task.

  “It would stop the Mrreows,” X’lerin agreed, leaving the other predator unnamed.

  “But we’d have to lift the cover to add more stock,” R’ney said. He mimicked grabbing and tugging with his hands, his expression doubtful.

  “We can’t afford to lose so many,” X’lerin said.

  “And extra guards won’t help,” Xhinna added.

  “Particularly with the other losses,” X’lerin said.

  “It’s hard to say no to someone who’s begging,” Xhinna agreed with a neutral expression.

  “What worries me is the sorts of conversations they may be having,” R’ney said, frowning.

  Xhinna sighed. That Taria had chosen to leave the Weyr spoke volumes about Xhinna’s leadership; she was constantly aware of that. That some might be sympathetic to Taria and J’keran was also a given. What worried Xhinna more was that some would consider it acceptable to permit theft of their own hard-won food. That might mean more than sympathy—it might mean active aid and rebellion.

  Xhinna’s enforced rest had eroded her authority among those who had to see her doing to believe she was leading. She’d heard snippets of conversations among the older riders when she’d been feigning sleep: “She’s not a proper wingleader; when she rides at all, it’s just a blue!”

  When she’d mentioned it to R’ney, the brown rider had grown very silent. His silence told her that he’d heard the same and worse. Under her questioning he admitted as much. Xhinna felt that the resentment stemmed from worries about the clutches to come and whether the eggs would hatch.

  “All Pern riding on her!” one of the older green riders had snorted derisively when he thought she was asleep. She recognized the voice: It was V’lex. Apparently she had failed to keep her opinion of him from showing, and he was reciprocating in kind, with interest. T’rennor followed along meekly, which was unnerving.

  Many of the male blue riders resented her, more for her gender than her authority.

  “You’re a threat to them,” R’ney had said, scowling. “Not only are you better than they are, but you’re a girl, too.” He shook his head. “They’re afraid you’ll take all the greens from them and they’ll be shamed through all Pern.”

  “They can keep their smelly old boys and stinky greens,” Xhinna said. She ducked her head in apology to the brown rider. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” R’ney had said, smiling. “I’ll be quite happy if you leave me those stinky men.”

  “Smelly boys,” Xhinna corrected absently.

  “Even better,” R’ney had said, smiling.

  “If we post only those we trust, they’ll feel punished,” Xhinna said. Fuming, she cried, “I’ve just got to get well!”

  “I don’t think that will be enough,” X’lerin said with a frown. Xhinna saw R’ney shoot him a restraining look, but she would have none of it, saying to X’lerin, “Go on.”

  “Seeing you up and about will not convince those who have decided that you’re not a proper rider,” he said unhappily. “The only thing they’ll judge you by is your success at the Hatching.”

  “But even T’mar couldn’t guarantee that when we were back in Eastern,” R’ney protested.

  “And that’s another thing,” X’lerin began, reluctant to add more problems to the pot. But Xhinna gestured for him to go on and the bronze rider said, “There are many, particularly among the older riders, who think that you tricked T’mar and Fiona into bringing us all here.”

  “Tricked?” Xhinna asked, eyebrows raised. “T’mar and Fiona?”

  “Hot heads and slippery tongues,” X’lerin said. “But they think they should have stayed back at Telgar and left you to shift for yourself.”

  “I don’t like where this is
going,” R’ney said.

  “Without the older dragons, we can’t survive,” X’lerin told Xhinna frankly. “The ones born in Eastern are solidly with you, but the ones who came with J’keran …”

  “And we’ve got to find Candidates, too,” Xhinna said.

  “We’ve got time,” R’ney said, trying to buck up her spirits. “We’ve got two months, at least, before Sarinth lays her eggs.”

  “Sarinth,” Xhinna repeated sourly. A sudden suspicion stirred her. “And what are the odds that V’lex has been talking with J’keran?”

  “That,” X’lerin said slowly, “is a very likely possibility.”

  “And a very scary idea,” R’ney agreed.

  Xhinna nodded. If V’lex convinced T’rennor to flee the Weyr before his green clutched, going to wherever Taria and J’keran were hiding out—a dark thought came to her.

  “What if there was only one Mrreow attacking?” she asked the other two suddenly. “What if it was being trained?”

  “Razz?” X’lerin asked, referring to Taria’s favorite Mrreow.

  “It’s possible,” R’ney said, nodding.

  Xhinna pursed her lips into a frown. A second, even darker thought she kept to herself: What if the attacks by Razz had been a demonstration? And a display to convince others to rebel?

  R’ney, X’lerin, and K’dan were glad when Xhinna finally took her first steps in a month up to the top of Sky Weyr. She chose her footing carefully among the strips of canvas that had been laid down as walkways, guided by Jirana. She was still shaky, which surprised and annoyed her—she hadn’t felt so bad when she’d been slit by J’keran’s knife.

  She pushed the worry aside, releasing Jirana’s hand and straightening to her full height. Oh, it felt good to stand again!

  “I suppose it’s too early to ride Tazith?” she asked wistfully. She had an entourage: Jirana, Mirressa, and Bekka had all insisted on being present as she showed off her recovery to the Weyrleader, Weyrlingmaster K’dan, and her own wingsecond, R’ney.

  “Can you touch your toes?” Mirressa asked.

  Xhinna shook her head.

  “Well, then, I expect you know the answer.”