“You’ll have to take that up with Fiona,” Xhinna said.
Jepara shot her a startled look. “Didn’t you ask her?”
Xhinna shook her head. “The matter didn’t come up.”
Jepara harrumphed and rose to her feet. “Well, then, I’ll bring it up right now!”
As she stormed off, Taria and Alimma rose behind her, saying in chorus, “This I’ve got to see.”
“Two Marks says she wins,” Xhinna ventured calmly.
All eyes turned toward her. “Against Fiona?”
Xhinna nodded slowly. She glanced around at the remainder of the wing—about half had trailed after Jepara. She raised her plate and asked pleadingly, “Anyone going for more?”
M’gel offered, saying, as he scampered over to the cooking fires, “Call me when she comes back.”
Fortunately, he was back and Xhinna had finished her seconds before they heard a triumphant shout and the sound of people racing back to their gathering.
“She won!” Taria said to Xhinna in amazement.
Xhinna smiled, laid her plate to one side, and held out a hand, palm up. “Pay up.”
“The first Threadfall was over Benden Weyr and Bitra Hold on the first day of the new Turn,” K’dan said as he, M’gel, R’ney, Danirry, Xhinna, and Fiona were clustered around the Council table in the stone hall early the next morning.
“So we’ve got about a bit under a month,” Fiona said. Colfet had been called upon to use his navigational skills in reading the night sky to verify that they currently were in the seventh day of the last month of the Turn, the five hundred and seventh Turn since Landing.
“We know that Thread falls on a seventy-five day cycle,” K’dan continued. “So if we can match the Fall here with a Fall back home, we’ll be able to predict all the other Falls.”
“Well, only after we’ve mapped the Falls here,” Fiona corrected.
“True,” K’dan agreed. “Which is why we decided that sending watchers up to the Dawn Sisters was the best idea.”
“I don’t understand,” M’gel said.
“Are you saying, Weyrleader, that we use the location to spy Threadfalls and then use the difference in time to check for similar falls over the Great Isles?” R’ney asked.
“Yes,” K’dan said, rewarding the brown rider with a grin.
“But because of the time difference, Thread falling over Benden could be matched by Thread falling here the day before!” Danirry exclaimed with a horrified look.
“Which is why we’ll need to send our watchers up in pairs,” Fiona said.
“Two pairs,” Xhinna corrected.
The Weyrwoman motioned for her to explain, so Xhinna said, “We’ll need one pair to watch on this side of Pern, another pair for the other side.”
“Why pairs?” K’dan asked, his eyes narrowing.
“We’re going to be up so high, we have to worry about our air,” Xhinna said. “So we’ll need—”
“We’ll need more dragons,” Danirry interrupted, her brows puckered in thought. Before anyone could respond, she held up a hand begging for attention. “We’ll need to switch off quickly—say every ten minutes or so, and we’ll need, as Xhinna said, two pairs of watchers. And we’ll need a twenty-four-hour watch.
“Until we try,” she continued, “we won’t know how long we can keep sending up pairs before we have to rest them—”
“Certainly no more than six hours,” K’dan said. “As long as a Fall.”
“I’d say less than that,” R’ney said. “We want the riders and dragons to be alert; we don’t know if we can even spot Thread at that height—”
“And we can’t time it to find out, either,” Fiona interjected with a rueful look. “We’re too near the knot in time for us to try.”
The knot between had been created when Fiona and the others from the Eastern Isle had jumped forward in time—only to find themselves trapped with the old dragonriders of Telgar Weyr in a trap or “knot” of fear. Lorana had broken the knot but it still existed between at that point in time, as Xhinna had discovered when she’d tried to jump forward to Telgar Weyr nearly three turns past. X’lerin and the other riders had volunteered to take the risky jump back in time to aid Xhinna. They had succeeded and discovered that the trap only snared those jumping forward in time through the time when the original “knot” was formed.
Everyone agreed that the simplest way to avoid the “knot” was to wait until they were past the time when the knot had been formed.
And that meant that they still had to wait. There was a risk in going between at all—that they might choose to go exactly when the “knot” had formed—but that risk was much less when going between places than it was going between times.
“Let’s start with one hour and see how things work then,” Xhinna suggested. “I’d prefer to be more cautious than foolhardy.”
“But with that, you’d want …” Danirry’s eyes took on an abstracted look at she worked the numbers in her head. “Ninety-six,” she said firmly.
K’dan glanced at Fiona. “We’ll have to ask the other Weyrs, then.”
“But the bronzes could—” M’gel began in protest.
Fiona raised a hand to cut him off. “I think I’d prefer to have your bronzes full-grown rather than half-frozen.”
M’gel sat back in his chair, reluctant to press his position further.
“There will be plenty for us to do soon enough,” K’dan said. “And in the meantime, the best we can do is pretty good.”
K’dan’s Lurenth was no older than M’gel’s Turenth, and he imposed upon his dragon the same restrictions he’d imposed on all the others, following the advice of T’mar and the other more experienced riders in allowing the younger bronzes to mature as much as possible before beginning their strenuous training.
“If Thread falls here, Weyrleader, we may not have a choice,” Danirry said.
“I know,” K’dan agreed. “Which is why we’re going to start drilling all the dragons who have two Turns or more with firestone.”
“Firestone?” Xhinna exclaimed, thinking of Taria and her green.
“Yes,” K’dan said. “We don’t have as much as we’d like, so we’ll be sparing, but T’mar has suggested that we’ll want to be sure that each Weyr is able to defend itself. And for that we’ll need more than the older dragons we have.”
“Well, I suppose it’s about time we had the greens chewing firestone,” Fiona said. “Another set of mating flights and we couldn’t find enough Candidates to match on all Pern.”
Xhinna flicked her eyes away so that the Weyrwoman wouldn’t guess her thoughts—for it was clear to her that Fiona was miffed that the greens had so outproduced the queens, going so far even as to produce six queens on their own. But there was no denying the truth in what Fiona had said—they were now at a point where another round of clutching would leave Western unable to support the increased dragon and human populations.
In addition to the original 128 older dragons, there were another 1,558 who had two or more Turns of age.
“We’ll start with the oldest wings and work down to the young ones,” K’dan said.
“So in addition to everything else, we’ll be training with firestone?” M’gel asked.
“Yes,” Fiona said. She turned to K’dan, who nodded in agreement to her unspoken question. A moment later a loud, long rustle of wings outside announced the arrival of a large number of dragons. K’dan and Fiona rose, heading to greet the newcomers, gesturing for the others to follow.
Outside were the rest of their wing.
“Can I have the bronzes over here?” K’dan said, indicating a spot to his right. Perplexed, the wing split, with the fourteen bronze riders moving to one side. K’dan waited until there was silence and then a moment longer, as though sad at what he was going to say. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to break up this wing.”