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 the 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.
The Mrreow had flung itself in the air with a menacing growl, and as Xhinna turned, thrusting out her knife to protect herself, she felt a second tunnel snake’s claws rip into her scalp just before the Mrreow’s paw connected with it and flung it far.
But it was too late for the Mrreow. Xhinna’s knife and her intincts moved faster than her brain, and in the startled moment she had to recognize that the Mrreow had attacked the tunnel snake and not her, its momentum and hers drove the sharp dirk hard into its chest.
“No!” Xhinna cried, too late. She and the Mrreow continued in motion, and as they fell, Xhinna’s weight drove the point of the dirk home. “No, no, no!”
The Mrreow hit the ground, Xhinna on top of it, her dirk beneath her. And then she spotted its collar. It was Razz.
“Bekka!” Xhinna cried. “Oh, no, no, no!” The tawny beast had been trying to save her, attacking the tunnel snake she hadn’t seen. “Bekka!”