Thread! she cried. Tazith bellowed, turning his head toward her even as she loosened the opening of the nearest firestone sack. Feeding him chunks of firestone, she commanded him to fall upon the Thread, ordering the rest of her wing and the wings of Jerilli and Avarra to join her.
They fell from the dark nothing of space through the freezing cold of the thin, unbreathable air until they were approaching the smudges of Thread and then—
Tazith flamed. In an instant, flames erupted to her left and right and suddenly the sky was full of flaming dragons.
Thread! Thread falls over Eastern!
Who? Xhinna thought in surprise, and then her face crumpled into horror as she thought of the unguarded Eastern Isle, lush and—
Tazith, go! she shouted. Rouse the Weyrs!
In an instant they were between, and then Xhinna was in the air over the Eastern Isle, searching frantically for Thread. She found it, and Tazith started flaming unthinkingly. They dived, rose, dived again, always keeping to the highest heights, the great blue’s lungs laboring to heave in enough air to breathe, Xhinna gasping with him, unable to tell if it were her need or her sympathetic imitation of his need and—
Maleena, Torra, to me! Xhinna called, adding, Tazith, tell Avarra to lead the Fall over Benden.
I have, Tazith relayed as he turned to her for more firestone. Lurenth says that the Weyrs are flying over Eastern.
Xhinna had a sudden memory of flashing light in the distance the day she had brought K’dan and the other weyrlings back in time from the Eastern Isle to Western—that had been today! The lights had been dragons flaming!
She shook the thought from her mind as Tazith relayed Avarra’s answer to her, and she led her wing in the assault against the fresh-streaming Thread.
She lost all track of time. Suddenly she and Tazith were hovering in the high, thin air, and Xhinna realized that she was shivering uncontrollably.
Come down! A voice called to them and Xhinna found herself obeying, returning to the Sky Weyr. She smiled as she made out the shape of a little girl standing at the top of the Kitchen Hall’s broom tree: Jirana.
“Drink this up, put this on,” Jirana said, peremptorily handing Xhinna a mug of hot klah and a blanket the moment the blue rider hit the top branches of the broom tree. “And when you’re done, I’ve warm mash for Tazith.” She waved a hand at the blue commandingly, shouting, “And you’re to eat it all, no excuses!”
Tazith rumbled in reluctant compliance. Jirana, seeing that Xhinna was taking care of herself, hefted a steaming bucket and hauled it over to the blue’s muzzle. “Eat it all! You’re practically frozen!”
Xhinna found herself shivering in the blanket and sank to her haunches, then sat cross-legged, twitching the blanket more tightly around her as she sipped the marvelously warm liquid.
“The others?” she asked when her teeth stopped chattering. The sound of wings and riders landing half-answered her question, with Jirana saying, “You were the worst; they’re being taken care of.”
Xhinna looked around. Aside from her wing they were alone. “Where’s Fiona?”
Jirana paced back to Tazith and stood in front of Xhinna, considering her words.
“Where is everyone?”
“There were burrows,” Jirana told her simply. “They’ve lost a quarter of Eastern Isle. They’re building a fire-break.”
“What?” Xhinna said, starting to rise only to be waved back down.
“They’ll have it under control,” Jirana said. “It was worse than they’d thought. The burrows spread quicker than they normally do—the soil here is too rich.”
“And Avarra? Jerilli? The others?”
“They’re coming back now,” Jirana said as another figure joined them: Taria. Xhinna patted the ground beside her, and the weary green rider collapsed, leaning against her and murmuring gratefully when Xhinna spread the blanket inclusively over her shoulders.
Xhinna recalled her duties and checked in with Tazith. Have R’ney and Danirry report in.
Even as she thought that, she recalled the frantic moments that had just passed and—
“Danirry?” Xhinna said.
“We couldn’t catch her,” Jirana said, the tremble in her voice suddenly loud in Xhinna’s ears. Why hadn’t she heard it before? Why hadn’t she noticed that the girl was crying?
“We tried,” Jirana said, lowering herself to her knees in front of Xhinna. “We tried. Laspanth and I almost caught her but—but we couldn’t—she slid off and we—”
“We lost her,” another voice added from the darkness in stone-cold tones. It was Jepara. She came up through the passage from the High Kitchen and sat next to Jirana, looking at Xhinna, her eyes spangled with tears. “I’m sorry, Xhinna, we tried but—we weren’t enough, we weren’t fast enough and—”
“Where is she?” Xhinna asked softly, trying to concentrate beyond the sound of Taria’s crying.
“She fell into the sea,” Jirana said. “We couldn’t find her.” She turned to Jepara. “They dived into the water, but they couldn’t find her.” She was silent for a moment and then offered in solace, “I don’t think they felt any pain. They were out of air—they’d fainted and they didn’t even know what had happened.”
Xhinna wrapped a hand around Taria’s and clasped it tight. The green rider clenched her hand in return.
Xhinna looked at Jirana, saw the red-rimmed eyes in the dim evening light, saw the darker look in them, and realized—Jirana had known.
Worse, in the young queen rider’s eyes she could plainly see the future. Without words, Jirana’s sad, miserable expression told her: You’re next.
TWENTY
Farewell to a Dreamer
“Now we know the worst,” T’mar said as the Weyrleaders gathered in the Council Room of Sky Weyr’s stone hall early the next morning.
“True,” K’dan agreed, “but we also can now plot our Falls, and there’s good news in that.”
“Good news?” H’nez echoed skeptically. He gestured eastward. “One burrow and we nearly lost a whole island! What happens if a burrow strikes here?”
“We’ll have to be certain that none does,” T’mar said with a wave of his hand. He nodded to K’dan. “Your Sky wings worked admirably. Why can’t we use them?”
“We could,” K’dan agreed. “But the dangers of fighting Thread so high were amply demonstrated—”
“One rider is not a great loss,” H’nez said.
“One experienced rider,” K’dan countered. “In two Falls, we’ve lost one—”
“That’s much better than we’ve seen in any Fall on the Northern Continent,” C’tov reminded him. He waved a hand at K’dan in sympathy. “Any loss is hard, and by all accounts, your Danirry was a marvelous and talented person but—”
“I know,” K’dan said. He shook himself and continued, “But now that we know when the Falls will come here, perhaps we don’t need the Sky wings anymore.”
“What?” C’tov said.
“We were lucky,” K’dan said.
“I’m not sure I could say that after fighting that burrow in Eastern,” H’nez replied.
“It took nearly three full Weyrs to even start to control that mess,” X’lerin said, shaking his head in awe.
“If we’d caught it sooner, it wouldn’t have been so much trouble,” K’dan said.
“I don’t know,” T’mar replied. “That burrow was faster and rooted in deeper than we’ve ever seen them—we were lucky to lose only as much as we did.”