“Then waiting until she recovers consciousness is unlikely to be useful?” Lessa asked somewhat sardonically.
Depressed, Jayge nodded. “Thella will have found a dark cave. Or a deep pit. If Aramina can’t tell the dragons where she is, it doesn’t matter if she can hear them or they her.”
“Exactly my thinking. Raid—” Lessa got to her feet. “You surely must have Hold maps that indicate where the deeper cave systems are. They’ve had a head start of roughly six hours. We can’t tell when they reached their destination, so even nearby caves must be searched. We must bear in mind how far they could have marched over this terrain; we know they weren’t seen on the roads, haven’t been spotted since the dragons started looking three hours ago. Let us not waste more time.”
Haunted by memories of the black pit of Kimmage Hold, Jayge volunteered to go with one of the search teams. There were fire-lizards beholding to three members of the ten-man team, so they were in constant communication with Weyr and Hold. That night as they wearily exited the seventh cave they had thoroughly searched, word reached them that Aramina was still alive, and had spoken to Heth. She could not see anything in the pitch black, and she could take only six steps before reaching the other side of her prison. It was damp and smelled foul—more like snake than wherry.
“That’s a brave girl,” the team leader said. “Let’s eat, roll in, and start looking as soon as we can count our fingers.”
Bloodkin be damned, Jayge thought to himself as he tried to sleep—he was going to kill Readis, as well as Thella and Dushik, with his bare hands.
They searched for two more days, until a rockfall tumbled down on top of them. Two men were injured badly—one with a broken leg and the other with a smashed chest—and had to be dug out. Instantly suspicious about such a convenient rockfall, Jayge told the team leader that he wanted to check it out while the others took the injured men down to a nearby hold for treatment.
He was careful about his ascent, choosing a ridge that would overlook the point of the minor rockslide and picking a route that provided the best natural cover. Then he settled down to watch.
For a long time nothing happened. When a whiff of some foul odor tickled his nose, he had been cramped too long in one position to be able to move fast enough—one strong hand caught his arm behind him and wrenched it up high on his shoulderblade, and another was clapped over his mouth. Jayge had always considered himself strong, but though he struggled, he could not pull himself from those clever and painful holds.
“Always said you had the brains in the family, Jayge,” Readis whispered softly in his ear. “Don’t struggle. Dushik’s watching somewhere nearby. We have to get down behind him, go in from the other side, and get her out of that pit before the snakes eat her alive. That’s your aim, isn’t it? Nod your head.” Jayge managed some movement, and the hand over his mouth eased. “Dushik’d kill you as soon as look at you, Jayge.”
“Why did you kidnap that girl?” Jayge twisted around to look at his uncle, who maintained the tight armlock. The man was filthy with slime, haggard, and red-eyed, with gaunt cheeks and a very bitter line to his lips. His clothes were ragged and equally slimy, and he had a length of slime-coated rope slung over his shoulder.
“I didn’t! I’m not mad or malicious.” Readis’s whisper ended in a hiss. “I didn’t know what Thella had in mind,” he continued, mouthing the words with little sound.
Jayge kept his answer as muted as his fury would permit. “You knew she wanted to kidnap Aramina. You arrived at the Weyr with that bogus packet of letters.”
“That was bad enough,” Readis said wincing. “Thella has a way of making things seem rational. But throwing a young girl down a snake pit is not rational. Not rational at all. I think Thella went raving mad when the dragonriders attacked the hold. You should have heard her laughing all the way up that tunnel she made the drudges cut. I don’t think you’ll believe me, but I tried to stop her loosing that avalanche. Then I was stuck, trying to save Giron. He’s dead, by the way. She nicked his throat that first night.” Readis shuddered. “I’ll show you where the girl is, and I’ll help you get her out. Then I’m disappearing, and you bask in the glory of your heroic efforts.”
Jayge believed his uncle; believed the desperation behind the scoffing words. “Let’s get her out then.”
Readis headed around the ridge, pushing his nephew in front of him.” I threw her down a water bottle and some bread when I had a chance. Hope she heard it coming and ducked. Duck!”
Jayge’s head was pushed down, his cheek slamming against a boulder. He could feel Readis suspend his breathing and did the same until his lungs threatened to burst. Finally a nudge told him that he could move and he inhaled gratefully, taking great, deep breaths. Then Readis signalled to move forward again.
It took a long time to negotiate the slope to the spot that Readis was aiming for. Jayge’s muscles were cramped with strain by the time they reached an overhang, and the sky was beginning to darken. Jayge was not comforted by the thought that it would be darker where Aramina was. Readis crawled under the ledge and disappeared. Jayge followed, inching along on his belly and elbows and pushing forward on his knees and toes. He felt the slime that coated the ground, and he wondered how anyone had managed to push an unconscious girl down the hole.
At the touch of a slimy hand on his face, he pulled away, banging his head on the roof of the low tunnel and just barely managing to bite his tongue on his curse.
“Touchy, aren’t we?” Readis commented in a low voice. “We can walk from here, and it’s not far this way. Dushik must be guarding the more accessible entrance.”
As Jayge got to his feet, he was surprised to see a dim light coming from a thin fissure far above their heads.
“Don’t speak loud when we do get to the pit,” Readis instructed, “but you do the talking. We’re going to have to haul her up. The faster the better.”
The dim light from the ceiling crack faded, and then they were in a very dark tunnel. Readis laid an arm across him, signalling for silence. For a long while they listened and heard nothing but the dripping of the water down damp walls—until the silence was abruptly broken by a soft moan that reverberated hollowly, as if from a long way down.
Suddenly a light blazed and Jayge crouched in alarm, but as his eyes adjusted, he realized that Readis had lit a dim, almost spent glowbasket. And in the faint light he could see the yawning open pit before them.
“Talk to her, Jayge,” Readis murmured. “I’m rigging a loop at the end. She’s to put it under her arms and hang on tight.”
“Aramina,” Jayge said tentatively, cupping his mouth with both hands to focus the sound as he bent over the awesome edge of the pit. “Aramina, it’s Jayge.”
“Jayge?” His name began as a scream and ended in a gasp.
“Tell her not to let everyone know,” Readis said acidly.
“Quietly, Mina,” he called, the nickname he had misunderstood that day near Benden Hold coming easily to his lips. “You’re found. A rope is being lowered.” He turned to Readis. “Can’t we send the glow down? She can bring it back up with her.”
“Good thinking.” Readis slipped the noose around the glowbasket and lowered it quickly hand over hand down the pit.
They could see the light descending deeper and deeper. Just when Jayge was beginning to think that the pit was bottomless, the glow stopped.
“Put the loop under your arms,” he told Aramina. “We’re going to pull you up fast, so hang tight.”