Thread! Thread falls at Nerat! Mirressa’s green Valcanth cried as the image from high in the dark blue sky came to Xhinna.
Tell them to follow it, Xhinna said, then have the catchers move into position and have the wing—
Lorana says we need to stay with the catchers, Tazith interrupted.
With a stubborn cry, Xhinna ordered Tazith to close up with the queens and the browns who flew as catchers.
They came out from between just as the other dragons bugled in distress and bunched close together.
Mirressa! Xhinna cried, seeing her and her green dragon tumbling toward them. Xhinna had just an instant to wonder who was trailing the Thread when the answer came to her and she cried: Go, Tazith!
Between again and back, high, high over the eastern edge of the Nerat peninsula—still lush and green even in midwinter.
Find it! Xhinna urged her blue as she strained her eyes for the telltale smudge of Thread. Her teeth were chattering, and she shivered from the multiple trips between and multiple returns to the high cold, airless spaces way above where dragons normally flew and flamed.
And then she saw it—a line of what looked like large pebbles or stones but dirtier. Tazith rumbled in agreement and turned his head for more firestone. Even as the small balls started to glow and spread into the long, thin wisps that were Thread, she and Tazith were diving on it, flaming. Tell the others!
They come, Tazith said. A moment later, he and Xhinna were surprised when he opened his huge jaws and no flame burst forth. Warm, the blue said to her.
Xhinna blinked in surprise. Her teeth weren’t chattering anymore. She was warm, as if she were resting in a hot tub after a long day’s flying and flaming. Idly she wondered why the air was so warm. And why didn’t Tazith’s flame burst around the Thread?
It was getting dark, too. The colors were going gray and darkness was closing around from behind her. But she was warm, Tazith was warm. It was nice being warm.
And then the darkness closed in.
TWENTY-TWO
The Kiss of Hope
Someone was crying. They’d been crying a long time because they were in that awful, horrible heaving stage where they could barely breathe and when they did, all they could do was sob once more.
It was cold. The ground was cold. She was freezing.
Someone was kissing her.
“Breathe!” she heard someone beg. “Breathe, please breathe!”
Whoever was kissing her was doing a poor job. Xhinna tried to respond and then—
“Ewwww! Yuk!” another voice cried and the lips were gone as the voice spat, “Ptah, yuk! She tried to kiss me!”
“Move away!” another voice, the one that had ordered her to breathe, said irritably, and then there were lips on hers once more, lips that she knew, and suddenly Xhinna realized that she was alive, lying on cold, hard stone, and that the first kisser had been—
“Lift me up,” she whispered as she broke the kiss and met Taria’s tear-stained eyes. She reached for and found Taria’s hand and Taria clenched it tightly. She saw resistance rise in Taria’s eyes, but shook her head just enough to communicate her need. The green rider nodded just as lightly, then tightened her grip on Xhinna’s arm and helped her to sit up, moving quickly to come around behind her, propping her back up with her knees.
“Ptah, ptui, ptui!” Jepara said, still trying disgustedly to remove the last vestiges of her life-giving kiss from her lips. She eyed Xhinna and said darkly, “Don’t ever expect me to do that again!”
Xhinna heard a gasp and looked up to see Jirana launching herself at her.
“You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive!” Jirana cried at the top of her lungs, grabbing Xhinna tightly around the middle and kissing her madly with relief. Jirana pulled back, her face crumpling as she said, “You were blue, you were dead. I saw it.”
“And now you’ve seen me breathing the life back into her,” Jepara said sourly. She looked down at Xhinna and ordered, “Don’t ever make me have to do that again!”
“Thread?” Xhinna asked, finding it hard to breathe and even harder to speak.
Jirana shook her head in exasperation, then threw herself back to her feet and started dancing around once more, crying, “She’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive!”
“The Thread’s gone,” Taria said. “The rest of the wing managed it.”
“We caught you just after Mirressa,” J’keran’s deep voice said from the distance.
“Mirressa?”
“She’s well,” Lorana said, moving into Xhinna’s line of vision and smiling down at her. “She recovered quickly once we got her on the ground.”
“Which we’d no sooner done than Jirana was screaming about you and how you were dead—” R’ney called from the distance. Xhinna guessed that he was tending to Mirressa.
“And you were,” Jirana said, moving back into view, no longer dancing. She knelt down before Xhinna and grabbed her hand. “I saw it. You were dead.”
“Well, not anymore,” Jepara said briskly, moving to stand behind the younger queen rider. “And from now on, a little more telling and a little less dwelling, young lady!”
Jirana leaned her head back to rest against Jepara’s stomach and met the eyes of the Weyrwoman looking sternly down at her.
“But I can’t!” Jirana complained. She lowered her head and looked to Xhinna, then Lorana. “I can’t break time.”
“No,” Jepara said, “but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer in silence.” The gold rider dropped down behind Jirana and wrapped her arms around her, leaning in close but speaking clearly enough for everyone to hear. “A burden shared is a burden lessened.”
“Are you part of Sky?” Taria chimed in. Jirana looked her way and nodded once, firmly. “Then you talk to us.”
“But—”
“We’ll keep your secrets, little one,” Xhinna said, annoyed that her voice was still so wispy. Jirana’s eyes strayed to hers. A spark of understanding passed between them, and Xhinna’s lips quirked. She raised a finger and beckoned the trader girl close enough to whisper, “If it worries you, try me first.”
EPILOGUE
Eight Months Later
Xhinna looked down at the sight arrayed below her. The sky was full of dragons. All six Western Weyrs had gathered here at Sky Weyr for the last time.
A white line on the sleeve of her wher-hide jacket distracted her and she moved her arm so she could, once again, count the twenty white lines—well, only ten on that arm; there were another ten on the other sleeve—that each marked a Fall flown by her and the Sky dragons.
Twenty Falls. Two casualties. And no burrows.
Cliova had joined Danirry in the Sky Weyr roll of honor after she and her green Bemorth had succumbed to the altitude sickness at a moment when the catchers had been busy elsewhere. Like Danirry before her, tragically, her absence had not been noted until it was too late. Her death had caused Xhinna to change her tactics—much to her personal annoyance even though to the relief of others—and now the wingleaders all flew with the catcher dragons, maintaining constant alert. Since then there had been no other losses.
Cliova’s Bemorth had had a clutch on the sands, and her eighteen hatchlings were among the ninety-six others greeted fervently at the last Hatching of Sky Weyr.