“T’mar and the other Weyrleaders are working on that,” Lorana told them.
“Our mission is to find the Thread when it falls on the Northern Continent at the same time as it’s falling here,” Xhinna told them.
“Why can’t we go up now?” Jirana asked, her question receiving enthusiastic murmurs.
“Because to go to the Dawn Sisters now would require us to time it,” Xhinna told them. “And that we can no longer do.”
“What?” came a stunned chorus.
“It’s too dangerous,” Xhinna said. “We’re too near the time when D’gan and Fiona—”
“Oh!” Jirana exclaimed, her voice matched by sounds of understanding from the rest.
“We’d get trapped—”
“But Lorana would save us—”
“Only if she could find us,” Danirry reminded them. “And she only barely found Fiona.”
Her words prompted a thoughtful silence among the riders.
“Which is why it’s vital to get good images from the riders already in place,” Xhinna said. “In the meantime, I’d like us to practice going as high as we can—beyond where we can breathe.”
“What?”
“It’s been done before,” Xhinna said, raising her voice to quell the protests. “Lorana did it when she went to the Dawn Sisters.”
All heads turned to the ex-dragonrider. Lorana smiled.
“Minith and I took extra air with us,” she said. Seeing the puzzled looks of the others, she explained, “When you go between your dragon brings a bubble of air around it.”
“How will we know when we’re out of air?” Avarra asked.
“Well, some of you might not know Weyrleader T’mar too well, but those of you who do will not be surprised to hear that he’s come up with an experiment he’d like us to try,” Xhinna told them. “It’ll be important and it will fill the rest of our day—”
“Then the sooner you tell us, the sooner we can get on with it,” Jepara interjected.
“We’ll go up in our assigned pairs with the assigned queens keeping watch, but we’ll each bring a sack of firestone—”
“Firestone!”
“Some of our dragons haven’t chewed firestone yet!”
“Which is also part of T’mar’s plan,” Xhinna said, raising her voice once more to be heard. “We’ll start low and get everyone flaming, then we’ll go above the usual levels to see how well and long we can flame there, too. Slowly, we’ll work our way up to the point where the stars come out—”
“The stars!” Jirana cried excitedly. “Xhinna, please, please, can we get up there, too?”
“Maybe at the end, little one, when we can have others watch for you—”
“What are we watching for?” Jerilli asked.
“We’re watching for when we run out of breathable air,” Xhinna said.
“It’s not as easy as you might guess,” Bekka chimed in before either Jepara or anyone else could object. “For some, it’s rather like being drunk; for others it’s quite different.”
“Color starts to go from your sight and you get really sleepy,” Lorana recalled. “That’s the danger: not recognizing the signs in time.”
“And that’s why we go in pairs and we have a queen keeping tabs,” Xhinna said. She glanced toward Avarra. “No matter what some may think, we haven’t enough blues and greens to be losing any.” She turned toward Seban and said to the ex-dragonrider, “Seban, I’d like you to ride with me on Tazith.”
Seban’s eyes brightened and he nodded.
“You could come with me, Daddy,” Bekka offered shyly.
“I’d like that very much,” Seban told her.
“Lady Lorana, would you care for a view from the back of a magnificent brown?” R’ney asked with a regal bow toward the ex-dragonrider. Lorana accepted with a polite nod.
“I’ve already arranged for us to draw firestone,” Xhinna said. “We’ll each take a sack.” She gestured toward the other stone building at the far end of the Meeyu Plateau. “I’ve got a detail of weyrlings standing by.”
“We get our firestone and then what?” Avarra asked.
“We’ll meet on the beach, southside below the last clutch of eggs,” Xhinna said. “K’dan has offered to help instruct in chewing and flaming before we take to the skies.”
“Can we get all this done before dark?” Jerilli wondered.
“If not, we’ll flame on through the dark,” Xhinna replied. “In fact, T’mar has another experiment—”
“Why are we not surprised?” Avarra muttered, getting a laugh from the others.
“There’s a notion that the good air, as it gets colder, gets lower to the ground—”
“Everyone knows that!” Avarra protested.
“—the question is how low,” Xhinna continued, ignoring the interruption. “K’dan will start with the wingleaders and wingseconds, then we’ll train the rest of the flight.”
There were unhappy murmurs from the queen riders who would, by necessity, be excluded from teaching their queens to chew firestone lest they become sterile. Xhinna smiled at Lorana, who took her cue and told them, “While K’dan is teaching them to flame, brown rider R’ney and I will be teaching the queens how to use the agenothree throwers.”
The queen’s wing flew low, near the ground to catch any Thread that the higher-flying fighting wings might miss. Because queens couldn’t chew firestone and remain fertile, the queen riders used agenothree throwers. The throwers were bulky back-mounted cylinders filled with the agenothree acid and rigged with nozzles that directed the acid spray to burn Thread out of the sky.
“Excellent!” Bekka and Jepara cried in unison.
It took over an hour to get all the dragons in the three wings flaming efficiently. By then they’d consumed slightly more than a quarter of the sack of firestone they’d each been issued.
Xhinna, relaying through Tazith, had the wings separate into their working pairs. With the queens divvied up amongst the groups, they rose to the very highest levels at which dragons normally flew. Xhinna ordered them to confirm that their dragons could still flame and all had the chance to find out how difficult it was for their dragons to climb higher—R’ney’s brown and all the larger queens found they could still climb feebly, but the blues and greens were at their limit.
Then, with Lorana relaying, they went between to emerge a thousand meters farther up, the dragons flapping their wings frantically.
Stop, Lorana’s voice echoed calmly through the group. Slowly, one by one, the dragons stopped flapping—and discovered that they were falling no faster than when they had been flapping. Flame.
With some surprise, the dragons discovered that they could still flame, which calmed them.
Again they went between and up another thousand meters. When they’d climbed four thousand meters above their normal height—nearly seven thousand meters above the ground—the dragons found they couldn’t flame and their riders complained of the cold.
Back! Lorana sent, accompanied by the image of the warm sands of the beach.
The blessed warmth engulfed them and Xhinna took a deep breath, only to let it out in a rush.
Where’s Mirressa? Tazith, where’s Valcanth?
I see her! Lorana’s mental voice called, and before Xhinna could react, R’ney’s brown Rowerth, Bekka’s Pinorth, and Jepara’s Sarurth were all arcing skyward heading toward—
—a small dark shape, limply plummeting from the sky above them.
The two queens and one brown were suddenly joined by a burst of brilliant bronze dragons moving toward them, forming a large canopy beneath the dot, which resolved into the shape of a small green with a rider flopping about—Xhinna was glad that she’d insisted on full fighting straps for everyone.