Jirana had managed to badger J’riz into making her a shoulder halter for her Meeyu; she attached a lead rope to it and walked her Meesha everywhere as if it were a Hold canine. The Meeyu was not quite as obedient as that, but seemed content enough to stay more or less at the trader girl’s side. Pretty soon all the Meeyus had halters and leads, Xhinna’s Scruff included.
Jepara shook Xhinna awake in the middle of the night. “Something’s bothering Sarurth.”
The difficult queen rider had chosen to sleep with Xhinna, ostensibly for warmth and proximity to Scruff, but really, Xhinna had quickly realized, for advice on relationships. Apparently X’lerin was being aloof to her, spending more time in the company of the other weyrwomen, and Jepara was near frantic with worry.
Their conversation had turned intimate and Xhinna was not surprised to learn that Jepara had not realized that one love was much like the other, no matter who gave it or to whom it was given. When they finally decided to sleep—after the topic had been talked over far longer than Xhinna cared—Jepara had rolled over with her back to Xhinna in a clear statement. Xhinna had smiled to herself, and was not at all surprised when, sometime later, Jepara heaved a huge sigh, rolled back over, and draped an arm lightly around her. Cold nights made for the strangest of bedfellows, Xhinna thought as she rested her head on the pillow nestled up against the egg she was warming. She considered rudely forcing Jepara to move around to the far side of the egg, but Tazith was already there and little Scruff would complain at being wakened, having just found the perfect spot at the back of Xhinna’s knees.
Now, Xhinna could feel the little Meeyu tense against her and she reached to Tazith. The blue was awake.
Xhinna felt for the Meeyu’s lead, found it, and gripped it firmly in one hand as she used the other to probe through her clothes. When she found the hilt of her knife, she rose, saying over her shoulder to Jepara, “Stay here.”
The night was cold and the wind blew through her gown, causing her to shiver, but Xhinna continued onward with some sense of dread.
She saw a figure moving toward her. It was Aliyal with her Meeyu.
“Something spooked you, too?” Xhinna asked when she recognized the red-haired green rider.
“Amber woke me,” Aliyal said.
Suddenly Amber veered left, flinging sand; at the same moment, Scruff leapt in the same direction. Wordlessly, the two women let the Meeyus have their lead, Xhinna edging forward, knife in front of her.
They heard the sound of a weyrling moving anxiously and Xhinna started running toward the sound even as Scruff strained at her lead. The Meeyu stopped in front of an egg and turned back to Xhinna anxiously, making her pleading meeyew noise.
Xhinna moved forward, gesturing with her hand for Aliyal to stay back, and cautiously touched the egg in front of her. One of the bronze dragonets came around the far side at that moment, sniffing at Scruff and blowing at Xhinna.
Something is wrong, the bronze—Feyanth—told her. G’rial went for help.
Xhinna paused, listening, her knife moving back toward the egg. There was a faint, scratching sound—coming from inside the egg!
Xhinna slammed into the egg hard, rocking it. Loud growling came from both Meeyus, and Scruff lunged under the egg, grabbing and pulling at something with his teeth. A tunnel snake.
“Take my knife, kill it!” Xhinna yelled, raising her knife hand up behind her as she strained to keep the egg leaned over, away from the Meeyu and the tunnel snake.
As soon as Aliyal took the blade, Xhinna put all her weight into keeping the egg tilted while the green rider grunted, swinging wildly. At last there was a sick, fleshy thunk. Scruff gave a satisfied sound and pulled back, and Tawny leapt forward, buzzing happily to join her littermate in gnawing on the warm morsel.
The egg is dead, Tazith reported sadly. Xhinna could see the sand under the egg growing darker as the egg’s vitals leaked out.
“Eat it up, gnaw it, tear it all you want, you two,” Xhinna encouraged the two Meeyus. “You deserve it.”
With a tear in her eye, she stepped back, letting the dead egg rock upright once more. She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned as Aliyal handed her the still ichor-slimed knife.
“Well done,” Xhinna said, taking the knife and sliding it into the sand to clean the worst of the mess off.
“I would have preferred to kill it before it got the egg,” Aliyal said with a hard edge to her voice. She met Xhinna’s eyes squarely. “I’d kill them all, by myself, if I could catch them.”
Xhinna nodded; the green rider had reflected her sentiments exactly.
“I’m sorry, T’rennor,” Xhinna said as Kisorth’s rider watched the crew haul away the wrecked egg.
“You did your best,” T’rennor said. Beside him, hand on his shoulder, V’lex frowned.
“It wasn’t good enough,” Xhinna said, glancing directly at the older rider. V’lex looked up, flinched, and then dropped his eyes. Xhinna turned away, toward X’lerin, who stood close by, watching the egg as the work party moved it to the shore and slid it gently past the surf, into the sea.
“Weyrleader,” Xhinna said around the heavy lump in her throat. X’lerin lifted his eyes to her and shook his head slightly. “I may not be able to keep my vow—”
“No,” X’lerin said with a fierce undertone in his voice, raising a hand to forestall her words, “don’t say it.”
“But—”
“You gave your word, I expect you to keep it,” he said sternly. Around them, heads turned to watch the interplay. “We know now that the tunnel snakes can attack through the sand, and we know our Meeyus can find them, so your job has gotten that much easier.” He gave Xhinna a slight wink, barely visible, as he said, “Now do it.”
X’lerin wasn’t blaming her, Xhinna thought with a wave of relief. The Weyrleader trusted her still.
“Very well,” she said. “If you’ll join us at the hold, I’m calling a meeting to discuss our options.”
“Strategies,” he corrected absently, tearing his eyes away from the sea, where they had wandered once more, and focusing back on Xhinna. “I believe that’s the word you were looking for.”
“Precisely,” she said with a curt nod. She marched briskly to Tazith, nodded thanks to Jepara, who was watching Scruff this morning, and ordered the blue skyward.
Ahead in time, from whence they’d escaped, without these new eggs fully hatched, Impressed, and matured, Pern had no hope, only the last remnants of those fighting against steadily increasing losses until the last dragon on Pern died, overwhelmed by masses of unopposed Thread.
If she could not find a way, Pern would die.
Tazith started his spiral down to the half-finished stone hall. X’lerin’s bronze was already there.
Xhinna sprang down quickly and trotted into the room where she’d slept. As she did she heard voices becoming clearer ahead: R’ney, Danirry, X’lerin.
“We can’t put the eggs in the broom trees. How would they stay warm?” X’lerin was saying.
“And when they hatched?” Danirry said.
“Stupid idea,” R’ney said, his voice weary. “Sorry I said it.”
“Don’t be,” Xhinna said as she stepped into the room. She smiled. “It was an honest thought, keep going.”
“We could bring them here,” R’ney said.
“Wouldn’t we need sand?” Danirry asked.
“I don’t know,” R’ney said. “If the sands are for warmth, then anything that keeps them warm will help.”
“But we know the sand insulates from losing heat to the ground,” Danirry told him.
“And the sand lets the tunnel snakes through,” X’lerin countered in R’ney’s defense.
“Could we carry all the eggs from the sands here?” Xhinna asked, glancing at X’lerin. She raised an eyebrow toward R’ney and Danirry. “If we used slings, couldn’t we bring the sand they’re sitting on?”
“Perhaps,” X’lerin said. “But we’ve fourteen fit dragons and fifteen
healthy eggs.”
“And we figure with the sand we’d need, we’d need four dragons for each load,” R’ney said.
“That much,” Xhinna said with a grimace. She shrugged. “Well, it was an idea.”
“It won’t help anyway,” R’ney said, shaking his head. “We’ve got another month or two—at least—before the rock here is clear enough to lay out an area large enough for all the eggs.”
Xhinna frowned. “Just the area outside now would be enough.”
“For Kisorth’s eggs,” R’ney corrected her. “But—for all the eggs we’ll need?” He shook his head. “Whatever answer we find has to work for all of them.”
Xhinna slumped her shoulders and nodded wearily.
“It’s a pity that the eggs can’t talk, like the dragons,” Danirry said wistfully. “Then we could ask them if the tunnel snakes were near.”
Xhinna rose and headed outside, toward Tazith. “Well, keep working on it. I’m going to check on the camp.”
Through the rest of the day, whenever asked by a rider or weyrfolk, Xhinna would give the cheerful answer that they were working on a solution and she was certain they’d find one soon. And each time, as she saw the relief and trust light up their eyes, she felt worse. She had no answers—but she couldn’t tell them that.
Bekka found her wandering the beach and stopped her long enough for J’riz to massage the tense muscles of her shoulders and neck. It was a momentary comfort, for when he was done, she felt the weight of all the Weyrs of Pern fall on her back once more.
It was almost dusk when Jirana accosted Xhinna and casually grabbed her hand, swinging their arms together. Xhinna, too tense to think clearly, instantly felt alarmed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, stopping to look at the girl.
“Nothing,” Jirana said. Xhinna give her a harder look, grabbed Jirana’s other hand, and boosted the child up on her hip so that she could look directly into the worried brown eyes.
“What’s wrong, little one?” Xhinna asked softly.
Jirana wouldn’t meet her eyes as she said again, “Nothing.”
Xhinna felt a tremor: Jirana was shivering. “Are you cold?”
“No,” Jirana said curtly, suddenly straining against her. “I’m fine, let me down.”
“Why don’t I sleep near you tonight?” Xhinna suggested.
“No,” Jirana said, and darted away into the gloom.
FOURTEEN
A Body Torn
Once more Xhinna woke with a feeling of dread. The thick morning fog had rolled back in from the sea, shrouding the sands in a blanket of muffling white. She felt for Tazith and found him awake, standing on all fours, nervously scanning around him.
She had chosen to sleep by an egg at the outskirts of the group, far enough from Jirana that the trader girl couldn’t get angry, but close to hand. Two Candidates shared Xhinna’s egg, sleeping soundly in their thick pile of blankets. Because she was often interrupted in the night or got up to patrol on her own, Xhinna had elected to be on the outside and they, young holders that they were, glad to be rescued from certain death by starvation, did not argue with her—a trait she had come to appreciate. And they adored Scruff who, despite all Xhinna’s efforts to keep an emotional distance, had become such a sweet ball of fluff that she slept with them, tethered by a collar attached to a long rope.
Xhinna was just beginning to think that it was unnecessary, that the Meeyu had come to accept her as her mother. She wasn’t quite sure whether she should take that as a compliment or an insult, but she’d given up worrying about it, glad that this Meeyu, at least, had proved more biddable than Razz’s dead siblings.
Follow. The “voice” was muffled, faint, no more than the barest of whispers in her mind.
She turned her head, sensing: The faint sounds of a dragon rising came to her, muffled in the fog, from a direction she couldn’t trace.
Flying in fog was dangerous—all the riders knew that. Xhinna had trained with K’dan and T’mar back on Eastern and they’d been demanding taskmasters—fog was no mystery to her: She treated it with the respect and wariness it demanded.
She heard a noise to her right and moved toward it. A figure emerged from the fog. Javissa.
“Have you seen Jirana?” the trader woman asked. “I thought I found her egg, but she wasn’t there.”
A deep sense of unease gripped Xhinna and she grabbed Javissa’s arm. “Come with me.”
As they ran toward Tazith, Xhinna saw two more figures appear: Bekka and J’riz.
“Come with us,” she ordered, not stopping for questions. As soon as they reached Tazith, Xhinna hustled them up onto him. She was glad to see that both Bekka and J’riz had their small medicine pouches with them: The healer had insisted that all her apprentices carry them at all times. “You never know when you’ll need them,” Bekka had told Xhinna when asked.
“Someone’s got Jirana,” Xhinna said as she climbed up after them.
“How are you going to find them in this soup?” Bekka asked.
Jirana? Xhinna thought, passing her query through Tazith. Faintly she caught an echo, no more than a whisper and an image: darkness, fog, a large black spot. It was not enough to go between; the image needed to be clearer. Can you see stars?
Xhinna sat tensely, waiting for a response. She felt Bekka’s hand grip hers, knew that Bekka had gripped Javissa’s and J’riz’s hands, tying the four of them together, felt a slight rush of power from them and then—there! An image of stars came to her, just above the fog and the dark spot.
Let’s go, Tazith.
The blue was airborne in one leap, between in the next instant.
The stars guided them. They came out over another bank of fog, broken in places. Seeing a darker spot, a break in the shoreline, Xhinna guided Tazith to land near it.
As she jumped down, she heard voices talking loudly, quickly stilled by one barked command from a male voice. She had expected J’keran and Taria, but what if there were others?
“You stay here,” Xhinna said.
“I’m coming with you,” Javissa said. “That’s my daughter.”
“And my sister,” J’riz added, moving up beside his mother, his belt knife drawn.
“And my—” Bekka cut herself off. “My weyrmate, if nothing else.”
J’riz touched her shoulder comfortingly and she grabbed his hand.
“We might need a healer,” Xhinna allowed. “Let me go first. J’riz, you follow. And keep that knife out.”
“Do you expect trouble?” Bekka asked. As if in answer, a Mrreow growled low in the distance, a hunting sound. A higher-pitched growl came from in front of them, followed by a girl’s squeal, suddenly cut off.
Xhinna moved, darting from shadow to shadow, silent in her soft shoes. Bekka’s heavier boots could be heard, but both Javissa and J’riz moved inaudibly. Bekka stopped moving, apparently aware of the noise she was making. Xhinna could hear a grunt from Bekka’s direction and decided that the healer was removing her boots.
The darkness in front of them grew larger and larger until it revealed itself in the mist—a huge cave, carved out of the face of the shoreline Turns back by the river that flowed idly from it.
No wonder no one had found it, Xhinna thought as she scrabbled from rock to rock across the river to the wider expanse on the far side.
A Mrreow’s roar broke the silence of the night, punctuated by a child’s scream.
Xhinna shouted and broke into a run, knife ready.
“No!” a voice cried—Taria. “Razz, no!”
Xhinna heard more noises then, echoing throughout the cave: girls and boys crying out and rushing around.
“Come back, the dragons need you!” J’keran cried in frustration.
Another Mrreow roared, from near where the girl had screamed.
“Come back, they’re attacking!” J’keran yelled again. “If you split up, they’ll hunt you down.”
Tazith, get help, Xhinna told her blue as she raced toward t
he location of the last roar and the child’s shriek.
Dim glows provided just enough light for her to dodge the eggs as she came upon them. A hiss came from her side, and farther away she heard more shrieks and a muffled cry—it sounded like Taria.
“Tunnel snakes!” J’keran cried. “Come back, we have to fight them!”
That sounded so much like the old J’keran: stupid but brave.
“Jirana!” J’riz yelled.
Shards! Xhinna thought. She’d wanted to keep their presence a secret.
“Jirana, it’s me, Xhinna!” Xhinna called, even as she dodged blindly to change her location. She paused, panting as quietly as she could, straining to hear. There! To the right, was that a whimper? “I’m coming!”
She took off again. There was a noise behind her. Some trick of light showed a flash of sickly blue, and Xhinna sliced the tunnel snake as it jumped from an outcrop above. She lopped off its head and continued to run toward Jirana even as she realized that the tunnel snake had been the largest she’d ever seen, fully half the size of one of the weyrlings.
“Jirana?” Xhinna called again. She heard footsteps, many sets—and then Bekka called out, “I’ve got her!” More quietly: “There, Jirana, it’s all right. I’ve got you, you’ll be all right.”
But Xhinna had known the healer for Turns now, and she recognized that tone of voice.
With berserk rage, Xhinna went charging toward Bekka, slicing tunnel snakes or anything that looked like them and looking for the large amber eyes of the attacking Mrreow.
A roar alerted her and she spun, falling backward as she thrust her knife forward. A huge male Mrreow flew over her, snagged her knife, yanking it from her hands even as its roar turned to a bellow of pain.
She scrambled to retrieve her knife and turned to face the Mrreow if it returned. Panting hard, she tried to hear anything beyond the sound of her breath.
There was motion above again and she pivoted, slashing the air, splitting the tunnel snake in half before spinning around again at the first touch of a large paw.
Sky Dragons: Dragonriders of Pern Page 24