Sky Dragons: Dragonriders of Pern Page 26

  A Greeting Foretold

  In the end, beyond talking quietly and hugging, Taria was too exhausted for more than sleep. Xhinna fed her carefully, a light broth, and kissed her on the forehead as she lay beside her, as though Taria had never left.

  J’keran was an issue that would wait for another day.

  Ask the queens. She shook her head in wonder at Jirana’s words. The little girl was almost too trusting. Her gift made it hard for her to distinguish between what was real and what was wanted.

  She wandered over to the egg that held Laspanth. She no longer doubted Jirana about that: She’d felt the strangeness of the dragonet inside, felt the quiet strength that was such a mirror of Jirana’s own strength. A queen from a green—how could that be?

  K’dan and X’lerin must have been right. In the evolution of fire-lizards, the queens, bronzes, and browns must have come after the blues and greens. The queens were smarter than all the others, the leaders of their clutch. But what about that first queen? She couldn’t protect herself in the shell, how had she survived? How had she made her green mother dame and blue sire know about the tunnel snakes?

  With a sudden insight, Xhinna moved to Laspanth’s egg, placed her hands on it, closed her eyes, and opened her mind.

  Laspanth, where are the tunnel snakes? she thought, hard, at the form inside the egg.

  Nothing. And then— She heard it first, a rustling, rock-moving noise, slithering, sliding. And then suddenly it was as if the ground beneath her were lit with glows, showing map lines where tunnel snakes burrowed, digging and rising toward their helpless prey …

  “Xhinna? What is it?” Bekka cried.

  Xhinna realized that she had been screaming. “Rouse the Weyr!” she called, crying to Tazith, sending bursts of thought to the queen weyrlings, to Pinorth, to X’lerin.

  “Xhinna, are you okay?” Bekka called anxiously, rushing to her side.

  “Grab my hand!” Xhinna said, clasping Bekka’s wrist tightly and pulling her hand to Laspanth’s egg. “Reach out, feel, close your eyes, and see!”

  Bekka gasped as she felt and heard the first whisperings of Laspanth’s thoughts.

  Beyond her, dragons bellowed in anger and excitement. Xhinna felt Tazith, pictured a large site underground, heard the blue digging furiously and then roaring with glee as he surprised a group of tunnel snakes and tore them to pieces with his jaws.

  All around her, the dragons roared, the riders cried, and the night air was rent with the sounds of dying tunnel snakes.

  A noise alerted Xhinna and she spun as she saw Jepara approach with Scruff on her lead, chewing on something greenish and spitting out bones, buzzing with pride in her achievements.

  “She got six!” Jepara cried happily. “And Sarurth got three.” She grabbed Xhinna and hugged her, as Scruff ran in circles, wrapping her lead around the pair of them. “And Sarurth can hear the tunnel snakes, she can spot them. She says that Laspanth showed her how.”

  Xhinna saw Taria approaching, eyes wide in surprise. Xhinna bent down and picked up the Mrreow. “This is Scruff—she killed six tunnel snakes.”

  “She’s pretty,” Taria said, letting the grime-stained Meeyu sniff her.

  “I should have listened to you,” Xhinna apologized once more.

  “And I should have come back. The Mrreows aren’t enough.”

  “They are now,” Xhinna said. “The dragons find them, the Mrreows dig them out and kill them.”

  “Indeed, they are!” an ichor-covered Jepara agreed fervently.

  Certain that all the eggs were once again safe, Xhinna went back to check on Jirana.

  “It’s a wonder she’s still asleep,” Bekka snorted in disgust.

  “She’s not,” Xhinna said as she peered down at Jirana, watching her chest rise and fall. “But she’s too tired to talk, too excited to cry, and too sore to do either.” She stroked the child’s hair once more, smiling down at her. “Behave, little one, or I’ll talk to your queen.”

  A small smile played across Jirana’s lips, and then she let out a deep, slow sigh and slipped into sleep.

  Xhinna assigned J’keran to guard Jirana, saying, “If she dies, you die.”

  The brown rider had been abject in his apology, but it hadn’t spared him her wrath. True to her word, she’d beaten him to a pulp, limiting her revenge to a swift kick where it hurt the most, followed by a double-fisted blow to his chin as he collapsed.

  He had awakened, groaning, to find a knife pointed at his neck.

  “Say it,” Xhinna growled, standing above him. “You know the words.”

  J’keran swallowed, feeling the tip of the knife prick his skin. “Wingleader, I have struck another in anger; my life is forfeit.”

  “Louder, so the others can hear,” Xhinna said, flicking her knife to the left and right before resting it, once again, under the point of his chin. J’keran’s eyes followed her blade, saw those standing around him in a tight knot. He recognized X’lerin, K’dan, W’vin, bronze rider J’sarte, T’rennor and—V’lex.

  “Weyrleader, my life is forfeit. I struck another in anger,” J’keran said more loudly, his eyes darting toward X’lerin, his heart sinking as he acknowledged his shame. The person above him was no longer a mere girl, a mere blue rider, an upstart. He’d been wrong not to accept what he’d seen, arrogant to think that he might know better.

  He had clenched his jaw tight as he felt the knife bite into his skin. He would not cry out; he would at least die with honor.

  The blade stopped. “Your life is forfeit,” Xhinna said, standing back, sheathing her knife, and gesturing for him to rise. “You live for the Weyr now.”

  J’keran rose slowly and knelt before her, head bowed, ignoring the drop of blood that spilled to the ground.

  “Wingleader, my life is yours,” he said.

  “Heard and witnessed!” the crowd called. Behind him, he heard dragons roar, heard his beautiful, precious Perinth among them. He would live. He could fly again, fight Thread as he was meant to do.

  He glanced up at Xhinna and was surprised when she winked at him, reached down and slipped her forearm behind his, and heaved him to his feet.

  “Live long, brown rider,” she told him quietly. As he looked into her deep blue eyes, he saw that she truly meant it.

  “Thank you.”

  “One more thing,” she said, raising a hand warningly. “You belong to the Weyr, and so for it I say: You may not drink again unless the Weyrleader gives leave.”

  “As you say,” J’keran had said, bowing his head once more.

  And now, he followed Jepara’s orders without a word, collecting the best scraps from the newly-butchered herdbeast, placing them in a clean light bowl, finding a wooden hammer, and placing all the items near to Jirana’s hand.

  Then, at Jepara’s gesture, he sat and waited as the sun slowly rose in the sky.

  He said nothing when Xhinna woke and rose, throwing on her tunic and rushing off to gather the Candidates. She was back moments later at a surprise summons from Bekka, who glided from the sky to land behind the strange brownish-green egg. Sarurth walked sedately to the other side, forming a triangle of queens, with Jirana’s bed and the egg in the center—they were thrumming in anticipation of the hatching.

  The thrumming grew louder and Xhinna looked down at Jirana. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” the girl said, reaching up her arms as Xhinna leaned down and lifted her to a sitting position.

  The thrumming grew louder and the egg cracked.

  “Come on, girl, you can do it!” Jirana called encouragingly. She looked around and was surprised to find the wooden hammer placed into her hand. She beat—feebly—on the shell. Cracks grew, and the queen dragons thrummed loudly in greeting.

  The shell cracked wide open, shards flying, as a small gold head thrust through.

  “Hi!” Jirana called, dropping the hammer. “I’m happy to see you, Laspanth!”

  And I, you, the newest queen on Pern replied. A moment later, wi
stfully eyeing the nearby scraps of food, she asked, Is that something to eat?

  J’keran raised the dish up to Jirana, who happily fed a great gob of warm, fresh meat to her queen.

  Xhinna, smiling so wide her face hurt, supported Jirana until the little queen was completely out of her shell and her hunger sated, at which point the trader girl asked to be put down so that she could have her queen lie with her.

  As Xhinna settled the girl back on the sand, Jirana looked up at her, smiling. “See? You did it, Xhinna! You saved the eggs! You saved Pern!”

  “No,” Xhinna said, smiling back at her as she reached out to pull Taria to her side, “you did it, little one.”

  Jirana shook her head and, freeing one hand from Laspanth, pointed to Taria and Xhinna.

  “We all did it.”

  SIXTEEN

  The Battle of Friends

  “Shards, Fiona, it may only be soft wood, but I’m still sore there, you know!” Xhinna cried, rubbing her chest where the Weyrwoman had scored—once again—on the front of her padded leather armor. “I’ve got a baby to nurse,” she added in a lower tone, “and he’s not going to like it if I’m wincing because of you.”

  “You can always yield,” Fiona said, eyes dancing as she circled the point of her practice blade in the vicinity of Xhinna’s chest. “And you’ve scored as much on me—also nursing!—as I have on you.”

  In the near distance, sheltered under the shade of a large canvas awning, Mirressa shook her head at the two women.

  “See, your mommies are arguing again,” she said in a singsong voice to the two babies sleeping on either side of her. Her voice carried as she intended and she waved mildly to Xhinna and the Weyrwoman, not at all apologetic.

  “On your guard, Weyrwoman!” Xhinna called, raising her blade once more.

  Instead, Fiona lowered her blade and raised her free hand in pax, turning away from Xhinna to glance down the long stretch of beach beyond them.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Fiona said as Xhinna moved up beside her. Xhinna followed her gaze and nodded in mute agreement.

  From where they stood, staring down the length of the coast, there was nothing for two kilometers but dragons, riders … and dragon eggs.

  The midday heat baked the sand and blurred the farthest images, but Xhinna knew that there were more than ninety eggs ready to hatch in the next sevenday or less.

  Around and over them a full Flight of dragons frolicked—three wings of thirty dragons each. And that was only the Rest Day Flight. Two other Flights were engaged in various activities: hunting, working, providing for the whole of Sky Weyr.

  That industry in nearly the same numbers was repeated no less than five more times across the width and breadth of the Western Isle.

  “Two thousand fighting dragons,” Fiona said to herself, reaching to grab Xhinna’s hand. “And no one in our time knows about it.”

  “Well …”

  “None that are saying,” Fiona agreed with a light chuckle. Nerra, Lady Holder of Crom, had been instrumental in helping them provide the Candidates for so many of the new dragons, aided in no small part by Javissa, Aressil, and a whole group of very tight-lipped traders.

  Pulled from the wreck of the Plague, twenty-three hundred people had been brought here, to the Western Isle, to rebuild the dragon strength of Pern.

  Fiona shook her head in wonderment. “I keep thinking …”

  “What?”

  Fiona turned to look up at the blue rider. “I just keep thinking that it’s too good to last.”

  Xhinna nodded silently. She’d had the same feeling.

  Footsteps crunched in the sand, causing them to turn. A small form approached. Jirana. Rider of the first of the “green queens”—queens hatched from green clutches. Two Turns had done little for her height, but her eyes showed an age far greater than her twelve Turns. “It won’t last,” she said. “In half a Turn, at most, we’ll be back in our own time.”

  She wore the light robe that was used as both towel and body covering by so many of the Weyr’s beach worshippers—she’d been part of one of several parties speckled up and down the beach who’d mixed their rest with swimming and sunbathing. Now her gaze swept down the sands toward Mirressa, sitting in the shade, and a look of pain twisted her face for a fleeting moment.

  Xhinna, who’d been watching, nudged Fiona. The Weyrwoman, rubbing where the blue rider had scored on her in the previous bout, nodded quietly.

  Presently, Jirana turned her attention back to them. “How did your practice go?” she asked Fiona. She turned to Xhinna. “Have you managed to disarm her yet?”

  “Bruise, yes; disarm, no,” Xhinna replied easily.

  “You fight like a girl,” Jirana said, deadpan.

  “Take a sword and you’ll see how I fight,” Xhinna challenged.

  “I think I’ve seen how you can fight, blue rider,” Jirana returned easily, eyes twinkling.

  “Did you want to challenge me, then?” Fiona asked with a grin.

  Surprised, Jirana gave her a shocked look and hastily shook her head. “I’d never do that, Weyrwoman.”

  A noise from above and a sudden darkening of the sky heralded the arrival of a dragon. The three craned their necks up as a bronze dragon overflew them and banked into a steep turn. K’dan and Lurenth.

  “Maybe you should practice anyway,” Fiona said, tossing her blade toward Jirana before racing off to the shaded awning.

  Jirana caught the leather-wrapped hilt easily and deftly sliced the air with a brilliant show of skill before lowering the blade to the ground.

  “You need to practice more,” she said to Xhinna. “You’ve got to be able to disarm her.”

  “Wouldn’t it just be easier if you’d tell me why?” Xhinna asked irritably. The whole set of exercises, the months of sword practice, had all been at Jirana’s urging.

  “It might not happen,” Jirana said with the same resigned but wistful tone that Xhinna had come to associate with the youngster’s visions of things yet to come.

  Xhinna abruptly dropped her practice blade and grabbed the little queen rider by the shoulders, pulling her into a tight embrace. Pushing back, she raised Jirana’s head with a gentle hand to meet her eyes and said, “You’ve asked me to trust you, little one. Can’t you do the same with me?”

  Jirana jerked her head from Xhinna’s grasp and looked down at the ground. In a low voice she explained, “If I tell you, that might make it happen.”

  Xhinna sighed; it had not been the first time the girl had said such to her.

  “He’s chiding for his mother, yes, he is,” Mirressa said in her singsong voice as she passed little Xelinan up to Xhinna a short time later.

  Xhinna’s nose twitched. “And he needs changing,” she added ruefully.

  “Only just,” Mirressa said, rising awkwardly from the ground on which she’d sat for the last several hours. She searched the carisak that hung from her side, pulled out a diaper, and handed it over to Xhinna. “When you’re done, would you rinse out the others before bringing them back?”

  “If you’ll watch him.”

  “Of course!” Mirressa loved babies, and even though she had two herself, she was more than willing to look after any others.

  Xhinna smiled at her, laid Xelinan down on the changing towel, quickly unwrapped the soiled bundle, and cleaned him up with practiced ease. As she did, Mirressa prattled on. “Taria’s got R’ney watching Tarena and Taralin. Don’t you think it’s nice that he’s so helpful?”

  “I do,” Xhinna agreed with a slow smile. “But if you think after all these months that you’ll get me to tell you who’s the father, you’re sadly mistaken.”

  Mirressa sighed. “It’s just that it’d be a help, you know—”

  Xhinna stopped her with a quickly raised hand, then just as quickly returned to her task.

  “You’ve got the whole island guessing,” Mirressa persisted.

  “Good,” Xhinna said, finishing with Xelinan’s diaper an
d leaning down to plant a big kiss on his beaming face. “It makes a pleasant diversion and reminds everyone that we are all entitled to our secrets.”

  “I suppose,” Mirressa allowed. A moment later, as she handed Xhinna the wet-bag, she added, “And is it a secret about tonight’s meeting?”

  “Meeting?” Xhinna frowned and shook her head, thrusting the dirty diaper in the wet-bag and closing it quickly. “Tonight?” She shrugged. “I expect it’s for planning. I don’t doubt that K’dan is going to be reorganizing the fighting wings.”

  “Is he going to start the greens chewing firestone?”

  “I don’t know, Mirressa, he hasn’t told me.”

  “But you know everything that goes on!”

  “No, I knew everything,” Xhinna corrected her. “Since then, I’ve had a baby and am quite happy to let others handle the bigger problems.”

  Mirressa made an unhappy noise.

  “Can you watch him while I make a diaper run?” Xhinna asked, lifting Xelinan into her arms while at the same time deftly shrugging the heavy wet-bag onto her shoulder.

  “Of course,” Mirressa agreed easily, moving to take the baby from her. “Didn’t I just say I would?” She scrunched up her face. “Or does this mean you plan to make a run of the whole beach?”

  “Of course,” Xhinna allowed. “No point in not getting all the diapers I can.”

  “You’re a good person, you know.”

  It was a messy, stinky job made both more difficult and easier by doing it in the salt water on the ebbing tide. The diapers, so rinsed, would be boiled and properly cleaned when Xhinna brought them back to the burnt plateau, now more often called Meeyu Plateau; rinsing and recycling were more crucial now than ever, now that cloth was in such short supply with the added need to provide diapers and baby clothing.

  It was an unanticipated side effect of the widespread realization that here on the Western Isle and now, back in time before the Third Pass, was the best time for the young women who rode blues, greens, and queens to complete their families.

  Xhinna was chasing down a diaper that had gotten away from her and was threatening to be carried out to sea when a shadow above her alerted her to the arrival of Taria on green Coranth.