Dragon’s Time: Dragonriders of Pern

by Anne; Todd J. Mccaffrey Mccaffrey

  “Do you think we could go to the Red Star?” Terin asked, with serious consideration in her eyes.

  Kindan gave her a worried look. “I think we’d be wiser to stay as far from it as we can.” He thought on it a moment more and added hastily, “And whatever you do, don’t mention it to Fiona or she’s likely to try.”

  “Good point,” Terin agreed.

  Mekiar was waiting for Fiona when she entered Talenth’s weyr.

  “You heard?”

  “News travels fastest when shouted,” the ex-dragonrider explained. Fiona made a face. Jirana came out from Fiona’s quarters and saw her expression.

  “Why were you crying?” the solemn-eyed girl asked.

  “I heard something that made me sad,” Fiona said, not wishing to distress the youngster.

  “What?”

  Fiona sighed, realizing that Jirana would continue to ask questions until she got to the bottom of the matter. “The others think that my friend was too sad to continue and that she went between forever.”

  “They’re stupid,” Jirana declared with childish certainty.

  “How so?” Mekiar asked, peering down at her with a kindly expression.

  “You’re talking about Lorana, right?” Jirana asked. Fiona nodded. “Well, it’s not her time.”

  “How do you know?” Fiona asked, feeling hope ready to rise within her once more.

  “Father told me,” Jirana said.

  “He told me it would turn out all right,” Fiona said morosely.

  “He said that it’s always darkest before the dawn,” Jirana said as if in response. Fiona cocked her head at the youngster and Jirana explained, “If it’s going to turn out all right, doesn’t it have to turn darkest first?”

  “She has the right of it,” Mekiar said with a dry chuckle. His expression sobered as he added, “But we can’t be sure that it is darkest just yet.”

  “Even so,” Jirana persisted, “if my father said that it will turn out all right, it will.”

  Fiona smiled and nodded. “I suppose you’re right,” she said, trying to keep her voice cheerful.

  “In this much, Weyrwoman, she’s correct: We still have hope,” Mekiar said.

  “While we have you,” Jirana agreed, turning her gaze to the older man with interest. “Your eyes are sad, but your mouth smiles.”

  “This is Mekiar,” Fiona said, making introductions. “He works the pottery wheel and if you’re very nice, he might teach you.”

  “What color was your dragon?” Jirana asked.

  “I rode a brown,” Mekiar replied with just the slightest waver in his voice.

  “I’ll bet you were good,” Jirana said. “When I get my dragon, will you teach me?”

  “You’re a bit young yet to be thinking of dragons,” Mekiar temporized.

  “My father was the seer for the traders,” Jirana said. “I’ll be a seer too, when I’m older.”

  “Is that so?” Mekiar asked with the polite tone that adults use with children they don’t believe, but don’t feel pressed to correct, either.

  “It is,” Jirana returned with aplomb.

  “Mekiar, are we keeping you?” Fiona asked, offering the older man a way out of the conversation.

  “No, you’re keeping a wheel from its work,” the pottery master told her with a small nod of his head. He smiled wryly at Jirana as he added, “Perhaps two of them.”

  “Did we schedule a time?” Fiona asked, eyebrows narrowed as she rubbed the back of her neck, trying to recall the appointment.

  “No,” Mekiar told her. “The time is always yours, Weyrwoman, but I thought that perhaps this would be a good time for you.”

  “Okay,” Fiona agreed. “I don’t think there’s much else I could do anyway.”

  “If I make something, can I keep it?” Jirana asked, spreading her question amongst the two adults.

  “If you wish,” Mekiar said.

  “Could it be mine for always and forever?” Jirana persisted, suddenly becoming all bouncy child again, fidgety with excitement and worry.

  “Always and forever,” Fiona agreed.

  “Then I will make something for you,” Jirana said, nodding toward Fiona. “For you to keep always and forever.”

  “And I will make something for you, always and forever,” Fiona said, reaching for the youngster’s hand. Jirana gladly took hold and, swinging arms together, the two traipsed back to the Kitchen Cavern and Mekiar’s pottery wheels.

  Much later, when the sun had gone down and the Weyr recovered some semblance of calm, Fiona and Jirana returned to her quarters. Their “gifts” were still drying, to be fired in the kiln. Neither was extravagant; Jirana had managed a passable mug and Fiona had designed a nice plate, but the young girl was thrilled with the thought of painting her finished work over the next few days.

  Fiona was getting ready for sleep when footsteps announced the arrival of a pair of people at Talenth’s weyr. It was Kindan and Javissa. Javissa smiled at her daughter and gestured for her to come with her.

  “You’ll stay with me tonight, little one,” her mother said. Jirana turned a gimlet eye on Kindan and warned him, “Don’t make her cry.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t try,” Jirana said sternly. “Your word as harper.”

  “My word as harper,” Kindan responded in all seriousness. Jirana bit her lower lip while she considered him, then nodded, slipping her hand into her mother’s and tugging her out along behind her, exclaiming happily, “I made a mug today, Momma!”

  The sounds of the happy banter died away, leaving Fiona alone and awkward with the blue-eyed harper.

  “Terin tore strips out of me,” Kindan said into the awkward silence that fell. Fiona said nothing and Kindan strode forward, reaching for her hand, which she allowed him to take, unresisting. “If our child is a girl, I hope she takes after you.”

  “Children.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Children,” Fiona repeated. “I’m having twins so they’re our children.”

  “Isn’t one T’mar’s?”

  “Will anyone know?” Fiona asked. “And do you seriously believe, Kindan of Telgar, that you can turn your heart on to one and off to another?”

  Kindan frowned, shaking his head. “No.”

  She pulled her hand out of his. Kindan stepped back, shocked, worried. Fiona smiled and shook her head at him, raising her hand to stroke his cheek.

  “It’s late, let’s get to bed,” she said, lowering her hand. Kindan grabbed her lowered hand and brought it back to his lips, kissing it. He heard her sigh of joy and pulled her toward him, kissing her deeply.

  “ ‘Step by step,’ ” Kindan said by way of apology.

  “Shut up, harper, and get into bed,” Fiona said, throwing off her tunic, and sliding under the sheets. “I want your apology in silence.”

  Kindan paused only for a moment as he absorbed her meaning. Then, with alacrity, he turned the glows, shucked his tunic, and climbed in beside her. Gently, he stroked her cheek, traced the line of her nose, caressed her ears, lowered his lips to hers.

  In the end, she was demanding and she would not rest until she got his complete and abject apology—three times over.

  “Where is she?” Tullea’s harsh voice bellowed and echoed around the Bowl walls early the next morning.

  Fiona woke in surprise and quickly threw on her robe in the dim light, rushing out to join Kindan, who, by his absence, must have roused sooner than she.

  “How can we help you, Weyrwoman?” Fiona called when she spotted Tullea stalking grimly up the slope of the queens’ ledge.

  “You can give me that dragonstealer so I—”

  “Minith is gone?” T’mar asked as he stepped blearily out of the spare queen’s weyr that was his quarters.

  “No, not Minith,” Tullea snapped, pointing toward the bulking outline of her dragon in the distance. “Where did she take Lin and the others?”

  “What others?” Fiona asked, her eyes going
toward the weyrling barracks with a sudden sense of dread. Talenth, where’s Kurinth?

  She’s not here, the queen reported a moment later. Miserably she added, None of the hatchlings are here.

  T’mar must have received a similar report from Zirenth, for he turned toward Fiona with a look of alarm on his face. “They can’t all have gone between, could they?”

  “And taken Kindan with them?” Fiona replied, shaking her head.

  Tullea observed their exchange first with surprise and then with growing comprehension even as Fiona asked Talenth to take tally from the other Weyrs.

  “All the weyrlings, queens included, have left all the other Weyrs,” Fiona told T’mar. “As well as their riders and several other—” She broke off abruptly then shouted loudly, “Jirana! Where are you?”

  A moment later she heard a muffled sound followed by Javissa’s voice. “Weyrwoman, what’s the matter?”

  “Is Jeriz with you?”

  “No, he was with Terin,” Javissa called back a moment later. She darted out of the dormitory into the Weyr Bowl, bustling over to the queens’ ledge. From the ground she looked up to Fiona, Jirana holding on to the side of her nightdress and swaying with fatigue. “Is he in trouble?”

  “Or dead,” Tullea snapped, her eyes flashing back toward Fiona. “Maybe your precious Lorana wanted company between.”

  “Oh, please!” Fiona said wearily. “If she’d wanted that, she would have left you, B’nik, and Caranth behind half a Turn before when we lost D’gan and Telgar.”

  Tullea gave the younger woman an affronted look, shocked that anyone her junior would take her on so sharply.

  Fiona raised a hand, gesturing toward the Kitchen Cavern. “It’s early our time, but our night staff should have something warming, why don’t you join us and we can discuss this further?”

  Tullea thought for a moment and nodded. She looked suddenly lost and helpless to Fiona’s eyes. How much of the woman’s irritating manner was a shield for her?

  “Javissa, if you and Jirana can’t go back to sleep, we’d welcome your company, too,” Fiona said, looking down at the trader woman. Javissa nodded once, bent down, and picked up her daughter, ready to carry her, but Fiona leaped down and rushed over. “Please, could I carry her?”

  “She’s heavy,” Javissa cautioned as she passed the girl over.

  Fiona placed Jirana easily on her hip and shot a grin toward the surprised trader. “My father made it a custom that I should offer myself to sit the young ones in return for all that their mothers had done the same for me.”

  “A wise man, a good custom,” Javissa allowed.

  “She’s lighter than most her age,” Fiona said. “She’s quite a charmer.”

  “She has her father’s temperament,” Javissa agreed with a chuckle.

  “And Jeriz favors his mother?” Fiona asked teasingly even as she turned politely and waited for Tullea to join them.

  “Why are you carrying that child?” Benden’s Weyrwoman asked suspiciously.

  “This is my sister,” Fiona explained. Jirana lifted her head enough at Fiona’s words to nod silently, then laid it once more on Fiona’s shoulder. “We adopted each other.”

  “I see,” Tullea said in a tone that clearly proved she did not. They took a few more steps and then Tullea said with ill-concealed longing, “Would you like me to carry her for a bit?”

  “Is that okay, Javissa?”

  “I’m not sure she’s awake enough to know the honor of being carried by two Weyrwomen,” Javissa said, even as she nodded permission.

  Fiona passed the small child over to the older Weyrwoman and gently instructed Tullea in the art of centering Jirana’s weight on her hip.

  “Why, she weighs nothing!” Tullea exclaimed, even as she moved to hike Jirana up and closer to her. She glanced down at the sleepy head resting on her shoulder and Fiona could feel the fear melting in the other woman’s heart, feel Tullea’s wonder at her tenderness grow.

  “I could take her back, if you wish,” Fiona offered a few steps later.

  “No, it’s fine,” Tullea said, trying to maintain her chill poise. Fiona exchanged a glance with Javissa; the other woman’s eyes danced in amusement. Several paces later, Fiona was not surprised to hear Tullea muse hopefully, “Do you think I might have one this small?”

  “I imagine a child of yours would be taller,” Fiona told her diffidently. “Especially if she were to favor B’nik.”

  “They all get bigger over time,” Javissa offered as she noticed Tullea’s look: It was apparent that the Weyrwoman was having second thoughts with this mention of size. “Your baby would be much smaller to start, and she’d probably not get as big as Jirana here until her fourth or fifth Turn.”

  By the time they were seated at a table and klah was on its way to them, Jirana had so completely beguiled Tullea that the Weyrwoman refused to give her up even when it was obvious that she was uncomfortable in her seat.

  Fiona neither asked for her back nor argued with Tullea’s silent possession, seeing the serene look in the older woman’s eyes. It was the trust, Fiona decided, the total trust that sleeping Jirana bestowed upon Tullea. It was a special insight to the mind and makings of Benden’s tetchy Weyrwoman; here was someone who returned trust with fierce loyalty.

  Javissa’s efforts to arrange her daughter more comfortably on the Weyrwoman were all met with stiff though polite rebuff, as though Tullea were afraid to yield this moment of bonding.

  “You must love her very much,” Tullea said, turning her head to kiss Jirana’s dark hair softly. “She’s such a kindly soul.”

  “She has her moments,” Javissa agreed.

  T’mar and Shaneese joined them then, Shaneese’s eyes going wide when she saw Jirana on Tullea’s lap. The headwoman gave Fiona a wry look, which the Weyrwoman returned sanguinely.

  “All our weyrlings and dragonets are gone,” T’mar reported.

  “And several others, too,” Fiona said. On a hunch, she asked, Talenth, is Bekka here?

  No, Talenth said. I cannot hear her anywhere.

  Not to worry, Fiona assured her. She’s with the others, safe.

  “Lorana took them someplace,” T’mar said, his tone making his words a statement.

  “Obviously,” Fiona agreed, still looking serenely toward Tullea and the small Jirana. For some reason, she felt it vital to lodge the image firmly in her mind so that she would never forget this moment when she saw the Benden Weyrwoman for who she truly was—a loving, kind person who hid her fear in brash armor. A child would help her out of that armor, Fiona thought to herself, just as Jirana is helping her now.

  As though awakened by the intensity of Fiona’s thoughts, Jirana opened one eye and nuzzled more firmly against Tullea’s warmth.

  “Can I borrow a jacket?” Tullea asked, looking toward T’mar and then to Javissa. “I don’t want her to get cold.”

  T’mar took off his own jacket and, at Tullea’s urging, laid it over both of them. Satisfied, the Weyrwoman snuggled the young child closer to her and closed her eyes, absorbing the new sensation with relish. Tullea opened her eyes just long enough to say to T’mar, “Thank you.” A moment later she turned to Fiona. “Would you meet them outside? I don’t want to disturb her.”

  Fiona nodded and rose, imagining that Tullea would next ask them to land softly, for she’d felt the tension rise in the Bowl with the sudden presence of the other Weyrwomen and Weyrleaders. T’mar raised an eyebrow questioningly and she jerked her head for him to join her.

  “You might want to set out refreshments at another table,” Fiona told Shaneese as she made her way past.

  “Of course,” Shaneese agreed in an amused tone.

  Fiona could never afterward quite decide how she’d managed to calm the others, set a soft tone, and get them all seated without their even glancing at Tullea, two tables over. Perhaps it was something less spoken but more understood by women, some unvoiced feeling of motherhood that made it clear to all that Tullea
was having a special moment that required silence and respect.

  However it was, all the voices, male and female, never rose above a polite murmur.

  And even though Tullea never once stirred from her position with Jirana perched in her lap, Fiona felt certain that it was her serenity that made it possible for the others to believe Fiona’s claim that the weyrlings were all right, unharmed, somewhere and somewhen with Lorana.

  No one argued the point with her; instead they accepted it, merely trying to imagine this secret location and purpose.

  “We were gone less than three days,” T’mar recalled, raising a hand to stifle a yawn. “And we had three whole Turns in which to raise the weyrlings.”

  “I didn’t know they could go between so early,” Sonia said softly.

  “ ‘And in a month, who seeks?’ ” Fiona quoted quietly.

  “Do you mean to say that the Ballad says when they can go between?” D’vin asked.

  Fiona nodded. “It would be something they’d have to know back in the old times of the first dragons.”

  “Why?” Sonia asked.

  “Well, I’d imagine that in those early days, they’d have to know how quickly they could move the dragonets from one place to another,” Fiona said. “And, from what Lorana said about the Ancient Rooms, the Ancient Timers knew a lot about how dragons work.”

  “And the woman who brought you back to Igen?” Sonia asked. “Do you think that was Lorana?”

  “It could have been Lorana,” Fiona said. With a shrug, she added, “Just as easily, it could have been me.”

  “She’s the likely one,” Tullea called softly from her seat. “You do your defiance openly; she’s more subtle.”

  “Father said—” Jirana’s voice piped up only to be silenced by Tullea’s soft shushing.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” Tullea apologized.

  “Father said that it’s always darkest before the dawn,” Jirana said, yawning and curling up tighter against Tullea. “And the sun lights everything.”

  “Shh,” Tullea said, rocking as best she could in her chair. “Yes, that’s right, it’s darkest before dawn, then bright with sun.”

  Fiona reflected on Jirana’s words and rose slowly from her seat. She moved out toward the Weyr Bowl where the sun was even now rising. Silently, Cisca followed her. Sonia came next, then Dalia, T’mar, D’vin, and K’lior. B’nik remained behind, furtively eyeing Tullea and reflecting on the change in her.