Dragongirl (7 page)

Fiona noticed Cisca absently chewing on the edge of her finger, a sure sign that the Weyrwoman was worried about something.

“Weyrwoman?” Fiona said, raising an eyebrow inquiringly.

“What is it, Cisca?” K’lior asked with a nod toward Fiona—grateful that she’d commented on the Weyrwoman’s mood.

“It’s not our place, I know,” Cisca said, forcing her hands under her thighs, “but I’m worried about Telgar.”

“Worried, why?” M’kury asked.

“They’ve got the strength; they even sent their injured back in time to Igen,” H’nez said.

“They’ve still got sick dragons, don’t they?” Cisca said, nodding toward K’lior.

“They do,” K’lior said slowly, his expression grim.

“They’re not going to fly with them, are they?” Fiona asked, turning to Tintoval for confirmation. When the healer shrugged, Fiona turned her questioning look to Cisca. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It is,” Cisca agreed. “M’tal tried it once …”

“And it was a disaster,” K’lior finished. He shook himself.

“The Weyrs are autonomous, they rule themselves,” H’nez said.

“Maybe …” Cisca began tentatively. All eyes turned toward her and she flushed. “Well, it would be awkward, but perhaps we could offer to help them.”

“Help?” H’nez exclaimed, eyebrows arched in surprise. “Help a full-strength Weyr?”

“I doubt D’gan at Telgar would appreciate such an offer,” M’kury said with a sideways glance toward H’nez.

“I’m not sure
I’d
appreciate such an offer in similar circumstances,” K’lior said. Cisca gave him a shocked look. “Coordinating different riders from other Weyrs can be difficult, can even cause greater injuries.”

“So we’re to say nothing to Telgar?” Cisca asked, glancing at the wingleaders, including K’lior. K’lior pursed his lips in a grimace and then nodded. “Even though his dragon is among the sick?”

The others looked at her in surprise, so she added, “Didn’t you hear the drum message to Kentai this morning?”

“I did,” Fiona said. She flushed as she confessed, “But I didn’t think about what it might mean.”

H’nez glanced at her, then said to Cisca: “You can’t ask a man like D’gan to—”

“See reason?” Cisca asked.

“Stand down in the face of his duty,” K’lior corrected her.

“No,” Cisca said with a sigh, “I suppose not.”

Fiona reached over and patted the Weyrwoman on the shoulder. “It will be all right.”

Cisca glanced up at her and shook her head. “You can’t say for certain.”

“No,” Fiona agreed, “but we can hope.”

Tintoval caught her eye. “Could you help me with the last of the rounds?”

“Of course,” Fiona said. Immediately, she summoned Talenth, who carried them up to the first level on which they had patients.

“You seem to have read my mind,” Tintoval said as Fiona helped her dismount. “I was hoping we’d avoid the stairs this time.”

“Actually, I wasn’t really thinking,” Fiona admitted.

“What did you do during the mating flight?”

“I went to Igen,” Fiona said. “I thought reading Records might distract me.”

“And did your search of the Records give you any hints on how to deal with Weyrwomen?”

Fiona shook her head.

“I would have thought as much myself,” Tintoval said to Fiona’s surprise. With a laugh, the healer explained, “They were written by the Weyrwomen, mostly.”

“Oh,” Fiona said, “I missed that.”

“So what would have helped were Records of how they dealt with their terrible, upstart, snappish, recalcitrant junior weyrwomen,” Tintoval said, smiling. “Take that and just reverse it for how to deal with Weyrwomen.”

Fiona frowned. The topic was not something she wished to pursue at the moment. The healer seemed to notice, for she merely gestured with a nod for Fiona to precede her as they made their way to their first patient.

I
t was late when Fiona finally settled back in her bed, exhausted by the day’s events and her efforts, but also strangely nervous, anticipatory, strung out. Xhinna had decided to stay at Seban’s that night, along with Bekka, to keep the ex-dragonrider company.

Fiona slept fitfully, as she always did when she had to spend the night by herself. Even so, she still slept better than she’d ever slept in her old home at Fort Hold: Here, she always had Talenth’s comforting presence in the back of her mind, a constant reassurance that she was never
truly
alone.

She arose shortly before dawn, cold and anxious. She heard Talenth in the weyr beyond, shaking and making strange noises in her sleep. Perplexed, Fiona sat up, pulled on her nightgown, found her slippers, and paced over to her queen.

She slipped her mind close to Talenth’s, resting a hand on the great queen’s neck, trying to ease her fears. The queen wouldn’t quiet, her twitches and noises abating only slightly. Fiona stiffened, feeling some of the pain and worry that was troubling Talenth.

Something bad was about to happen.

Something terrible.

Alarmed, Fiona shook Talenth.
Wake up!

The gold dragon startled awake, turning her head to gaze at Fiona in surprise.

What is it?
she asked worriedly.

Do you feel anything?
Fiona asked, sending a tendril of memory toward her, reminding her of how she’d slept.

Something is coming, something soon
, Talenth responded, trembling. Fiona moved beside her, her hand raised to an eye ridge in an attempt to soothe the great queen, but Talenth turned away, her head craning toward the weyr’s entrance, her nostrils flaring.

Fiona moved up beside her, onto the queens’ ledge. The Weyr Bowl was silent and still.

Suddenly fear gripped Fiona as Talenth bugled loudly in the dawn, her cry alerting the watch dragon, who echoed it and—

Fiona was lost, stricken.

“D’gan, no!” The words that tore out of her mouth were not hers. In that moment she felt a wave of horror and wrenching loss.
The Weyrs! They must be warned!

The voice wasn’t hers; it came to her from elsewhere, like a horrified echo that raked her mind.

“Fiona! Fiona!” Someone was shaking her. She opened her eyes and looked up, only barely recognizing Cisca. “What is it? What happened?”

“The Weyrs,” Fiona said aloud, tears streaming down her cheeks as panic, fear, and an unbearable sorrow tore through her, “they must be warned.” Her eyes went wide. “D’gan’s Kaloth is too confused by the sickness. D’gan—Telgar—they went to fight Thread but they’re lost. Lost
between.”

“Rouse the Weyr!” K’lior’s voice shouted. “Rineth!”

In moments all of Fort Weyr was awake, dragons soaring from their weyrs down to the foggy Weyr Bowl, their cries deafening, wave after wave of sound that beat through Fiona’s chest and reverberated with her heartbeat. Talenth was beside her, reaching for her protectively, grabbing her with her talons, jostling Cisca and K’lior aside as she placed her rider firmly on her back and launched herself into the sky with one blaring scream.

Fiona had only an instant to marvel at Talenth’s behavior before she was struck again from the inside out as though she were being blown open by a force not her own—and then, suddenly, she knew. She felt Rineth and Melirth beside her, T’mar’s Zirenth, felt all the bronzes, all the browns, all the blues, all the greens of Fort Weyr.

Felt them as though they were inside her and she screamed. She screamed with pain, she screamed with awe, and she screamed with power. In desperation, she spread the power to Cisca and then K’lior, and the two stood below her on the queens’ ledge transfixed. The power grew even more and she felt it—thankfully—shift from her.

No longer the sole focus, Fiona found that she could still breathe, that her chest was heaving, her ears were smarting from all the sounds, her eyes were cried out, and her panic was still overwhelming.

The power had gone to Benden. To one person. How could one person hold such power? She felt an echo, the slightest of contacts—was this the person who had brought her back in time to Igen? The sensation felt similar … but not quite the same.

The power was searching, searching, seeking frantically—and not finding. Its desperation grew, and Fiona found herself gasping again as more power surged up through her from the dragons and riders of Fort Weyr to join with Cisca before flowing to Benden … and still failing to find what it sought.

Finally, a lone dragon was found, clasped, recovered. And even as the power triumphed, it felt something that caused it to pause.

And then Fiona was herself once more, gasping and crying out in relief as Talenth stopped bugling, as the dragons settled, as the power faded, and she felt only like someone who had been burned from the inside out.

The pain and suffering, the loss of all those Telgar dragons, felt like a hole inside her, tugging at her with a desperate urgency.

“We need to go,” Fiona whispered to herself. “We need to go to Telgar.”

Talenth rumbled in assent but, exhausted, could only glide back to the ground near their weyr.

“Telgar is no more,” Cisca said. She helped Fiona down from her dragon and wrapped comforting arms around the younger woman. Fiona let herself fall into the embrace and could only make the smallest of sounds when K’lior joined them and the three, Weyrleaders all, silently commiserated over their pain.

FIVE

Weyrwoman, your duty is clear—
To the needs of the Weyr adhere
.
Choose your mate with greatest care
So all the weyrfolk will best fare
.

Fort Weyr, later, AL 508.2.8

Fiona was the first to break the embrace. She gave Cisca and K’lior a look that made it clear that she was doing it reluctantly, that nothing would have pleased her more than to stay in their warmth much, much longer. She was not surprised to see Cisca nod in understanding; they had shared too much in the horrifying moments when they had felt the death of all the dragons and riders of Telgar Weyr—and the amazing display of power from Benden.

“I should go,” Fiona said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Talenth is the oldest queen not leading a Weyr; they’ll need us.”

Cisca nodded.

Fiona continued, “Melirth will be sure to lay a gold and …” She trailed off, not certain which words to use.

“We can’t leave Telgar empty with Igen empty, too,” Cisca agreed. “But are you certain you’re up for it?”

Fiona wanted to tell her no, she wasn’t, but her duty was clear. Fort was in good hands; Telgar in none. She didn’t trust her voice, so she forced herself to nod.

K’lior glanced at Cisca in a wordless communion before saying to Fiona, “I’ll send T’mar and a wing with you.”

“We’ll help with the Falls,” Cisca added, glancing to K’lior.

She shook her head, still in shock. “A whole Weyr! Lost in a moment.”

“D’gan’s Kaloth was too confused by the illness,” K’lior reminded her. “They jumped
between
without proper coordinates.”

“All of them?” Cisca asked, looking to Fiona, even though she knew the answer.

“I think so,” Fiona said. She made a face. “I was only part of it—you felt it—it was like all of me—of us—was grabbed and directed from Benden.”

“Lorana,” Cisca said. “She tried to find D’gan and the others.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how she did it, let alone why she chose you.”

“I’ve never met her,” Fiona said.

Cisca shrugged the issue off. “What do you need for Telgar?”

“I’d like Terin and Xhinna to come,” Fiona said. “I’ll need their help.”

“We’ll send them on with T’mar,” Cisca promised. She looked at K’lior. “Should we send anyone else?”

“Their healer was a dragonrider,” K’lior said with a frown. Whatever else he was going to say was lost as he glanced out toward the Weyr Bowl and saw the growing clusters of dragonriders and weyrfolk approaching.

“I should go
now,”
Fiona declared. “They’ll be grief-stricken at Telgar.”

She clambered back onto Talenth’s neck. “I’ll send word as soon as I can.”

“I understand,” Cisca said, gesturing Fiona skyward. “Go now, we’ll send others along as soon as we can.”

Fiona was just urging Talenth into the air when a voice cried out, “Wait!”

Xhinna was running toward her, her face wet with tears, her look determined. “You’re not going without me!”

Gladly, Fiona reached down for her. Dragonriders boosted Xhinna up to her and the young weyrgirl clambered up the rest of the way.

“You left me once—you’re not leaving me again!”

T
alenth had nearly reached the heights and the Star Stones when Xhinna jerked her head around and pointed, shouting over her shoulder to Fiona, “Look!”

As they drew closer, Fiona saw Seban and Bekka hurrying toward them. Seban was carrying a large carisak and had a coil of something on his shoulder, and Bekka toted a large, lumpy bundle.

“We’re coming with you, Weyrwoman,” Seban announced as Talenth steadied into a hover beside the Weyr’s edge.

“What about the Healer Hall?” Fiona called back in surprise, glancing from Bekka to Seban and back again.

Bekka merely shook her head. “We’re coming with you!”

Fiona smiled at the youngster’s spirit. With an abundance of energy and no lack of courage, Bekka leaped toward Fiona, whose surprised squeak was enough to alert Xhinna; between the two of them, they managed to haul the youngster into position on Talenth’s back. Seban, with a wry look for his daughter, managed a more practiced transition and was soon mounted in front of Xhinna, with Bekka placed carefully between them.

“We’ve got no straps!” Fiona cried, annoyed with herself and chagrined for the time, now Turns past, when she’d berated T’mar for a much milder stunt.

“We’ve straps,” Seban called, whipping a line of leather from around his shoulder and deftly looping it under Talenth’s chest. Catching the far end as it whipped up, he smiled at Fiona and said, “We’ve cargo too precious to lose!”

Even so, Fiona impressed upon Talenth the delicacy of their passengers, but she needn’t have worried: Talenth pumped her great wings smoothly and lifted the four of them effortlessly toward the Star Stones, where the watch dragon bugled in honor and his rider saluted them.

Fiona took a deep, steadying breath and pulled the image of Telgar into her mind, corrected it for the later time of day, and said to Talenth,
Let’s go
.

I
t looks abandoned, Fiona thought sadly as Talenth wheeled once more over the heights of Telgar Weyr. No dragon challenged them. Below, no one moved.

The air was cold, full of winter, with less of the dampness that she always felt at Fort Weyr.

There is so much to guard here, Fiona thought as she scanned past the Weyr Bowl and southward beyond to the great wheat plains of Telgar and then westward toward Crom and the coal mountains to its north.

She felt Xhinna’s hand grip her thigh tightly and realized that she wasn’t the only one who felt the pall that had fallen on the Weyr below them. She wondered if Xhinna also recognized the great importance of this Weyr. Without Telgar, the center of Pern could not survive against Thread.

Who, she wondered suddenly, was flying the Fall now raining at Upper Crom?

Talenth, check with Lyrinth; there’s a Fall at Crom
, Fiona said.

Lyrinth says that it is all right and asks you to stay at Telgar
, Talenth responded a moment later.

“We’ll land,” Fiona announced to the others.

“This must be the very worst for them,” Bekka said sympathetically. She glanced up at her father’s back, then turned back to Fiona, sharing her feelings with her eyes. Fiona had no trouble interpreting the look: The very worst was even worse than Seban losing his dragon.

“Yes, it must be,” Fiona agreed. “Our job is to make it better.”

Talenth descended smoothly into the Weyr Bowl. Just as she was ready to pull up and land, she let out a great bellow that echoed once around the Weyr, and then she repeated it, modulating her tone to a keen, a warble of pain and anguish.

Fiona was surprised at Talenth’s behavior, but quickly comprehended her purpose: The queen had returned, the Weyr would live, it would prosper
—she
declared it.

My beautiful, beautiful love!
Fiona cried in praise.

This is our Weyr now, we will do well here
, Talenth told her.

“Talenth has declared this to be her Weyr,” Fiona told the others as she threw her right leg over her queen’s neck and slid full-tilt toward the ground, certain that Talenth would cushion her fall with a well-placed leg. And so she did.

Xhinna was next, then Bekka, lowered down gingerly by Seban, who followed her with their baggage and then leaped nimbly down himself.

Fiona looked around, trying to decide what to do next. Talenth decided for her. With another loud bugle, the gold dragon took to the air, climbed steadily, passing by each and every opening until she arrived at the Star Stones, and with a sorrowful cry, took station: watch dragon for a mourning Weyr.

“We’ll need some
klah,”
Fiona said, spotting the Kitchen Cavern and setting off toward it. “And then some food and then—”

“A fitting ballad,” a grim voice spoke up from the distance. Fiona and the others turned to see a middle-aged man, stooped and stricken, dressed in harper’s blue, approaching from near the Hatching Grounds.

Fiona nodded to her companions, and Seban and Bekka continued on toward the Kitchen Cavern, intent on providing sustenance for the doubtless weary weyrfolk. Xhinna elected to wait for the harper, who said as he approached, “Norik, Weyr Harper.”

“Xhinna of Fort Weyr,” Xhinna replied. Then she shook her head. “Of Telgar now.”

“There is no Telgar,” Norik said.

“By the First Egg, there is!” Fiona exclaimed. She hadn’t meant to yell, but she heard her voice echoing off the Bowl walls. From on high, Talenth cried in loud agreement.

“Who says so?” Norik demanded, sweeping a hand around the empty Weyr. “Who will fly the Thread that falls even now at Upper Crom?”

“
I
say so,” Fiona roared back, turning to stare down the weary man. “I, Fiona of Igen, Talenth’s rider, say that there is a Telgar Weyr and that we will fight Thread whenever and wherever it falls!”

As if in answer, Talenth bugled once more, this time in challenge.

Fiona only had a moment to marvel at her actions: How much of her outburst had been her and how much her dragon? She didn’t know if what she was doing was right; to her knowledge, no one had ever done it before. But, just as she felt Talenth’s stalwart declaration, she felt that it was the right thing to tell those who survived at Telgar that there was a queen dragon who was theirs—and a Weyrwoman who would stand for them.

Her call was answered loudly by bronze Zirenth, bronze Ladirth, bronze Ginirth, and more than twenty browns, greens, and blues.

“Igen?” Norik repeated numbly, his gaze stuck on the approaching wing of dragons like a dying man offered a final glimmer of hope. “You come from Igen?”

“I was there, Turns back,” Fiona said, surprised by her own words. She raised her voice as she continued, “High Reaches flies for Telgar today, and Fort has sent its wings.”

“That is good,” Norik said, shaking his head. “But there is still no Telgar.”

“There will always be a Telgar,” Fiona said firmly.

Norik looked doubtful as he glanced toward the Bowl and the dragons and riders dispersing within it. “This is a sad day.”

“You were right: We will need a ballad,” Fiona told him, nodding consolingly. “And I would like you to write it, if you can.” She held his eyes. “Honor is due this day.”

“For the living or the dead?” Norik wondered.

“Both,” T’mar said as he approached. “You are Norik, the harper.”

The harper looked at him, straining as he examined T’mar, his eyes going wider as he recognized him. “You look like T’mar, but you seem older.”

“Three Turns at Igen,” T’mar agreed calmly. Norik mouthed the word “Igen” with something like hope. T’mar held out his hands to the anguished man, saying, “I grieve for your loss.”

“W
hat’s
he
doing here?” Fiona asked, pointing toward H’nez, as they settled themselves at the nearest table in the Kitchen Cavern and she had a chance to survey the riders K’lior had dispatched.

“He claimed the right,” T’mar told her quietly. “He’d argued for the first available transfer and this was it.”

Fiona frowned. She’d forgotten H’nez’s argument with K’lior, so many Turns ago for her and those who had come back in time from Igen Weyr, so recently for the bronze rider. H’nez had demanded the right to transfer to the first available Weyr.

“We need all the riders we can get,” T’mar reminded her. “We’ve only forty in all.”

“More would have come,” F’jian added with a nod toward her. “When K’lior asked for volunteers, nearly every man in the Weyr stepped forward.” He grinned as he told her, “All those who’d been with us in Igen, of course, but even those who hadn’t were eager.”

“Well, K’lior has his own Falls to fight,” Fiona said agreeably. Her expression fell as she glanced at H’nez once more.

“Don’t be fooled by him,” Seban spoke up from where he sat, nodding toward H’nez, as he helped Bekka tend a pot near the hearth. Fiona shot him a surprised look and the ex-dragonrider explained, “He’s a good leader, he looks after his riders and makes them look after his dragons.”

“You were in his wing.”

“And proud of it, weyrwoman,” Seban declared. She noticed that he hadn’t stressed her title and took it for the reproof it was.

“He needs a smaller head,” she muttered.

“Unlike some,” Seban teased in response, surprising her at his hearing.

Fiona dimpled, then made a dismissive gesture with her hand and turned back to T’mar, who gave her a worried look.

“What?”

“Until your Talenth rises, the question of who is senior wingleader is a problem,” T’mar told her.

“It’s not a problem at all,” Seban declared, jerking his head toward H’nez. “He Impressed Ginirth Turns before any bronze here.”

“Shards!” Fiona said.

If H’nez noticed that he was the topic of conversation, he didn’t show it. In fact, Fiona realized, he was busy playing with some of the younger weyrfolk; he’d coaxed them out of hiding with the promise of sweets in return for work and information. He was, she admitted sourly, doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing.