9

Benden Hold, Benden Weyr, PP 13

Though the trail was good, the weather was cold and the hilly going sometimes so treacherous in the early mornings that Jayge delayed starting until the sun was well up. He preferred to find or make his own overnight shelters, though several times he shared a midday meal with holders he met up with. He lent assistance to one farmer, changing a damaged wheel, and when Kesso’s shoes were noticed and admired, he made the man a new set for his barefoot runner. That time he agreed, when pressed, to stay the night, as it was too late to continue.

But despite the occasional encounter, Jayge spent far too much time on his own, thinking of the black-haired girl. He ought to have asked her name. That would not cost him anything, he thought. He would have liked to know her name. He ran through all the variations of women’s names he knew but could not find one that suited her. He found himself fretting over that indefinable sadness in her eyes and in the slight droop of her mouth. She was probably the same age as the other two girls in the hunting party, but she had exhibited an air of maturity that the others lacked. His dreams at night took on an erotic flavor, but they amused more than embarrassed him. On the dancing square all were equal, he reminded himself again. He would get back to that Gather. He would dance with her and clear that sadness from her eyes.

Benden Weyr’s peak grew to dominate the horizon, serene and invulnerable with its high steep sides. The bigger it got, the faster Jayge urged Kesso, and the longer he traveled each day. He was up at dawn on what he judged to be the last morning on the track, when he saw the unmistakable bloom of a fire being stoked up on a ledge across the river. He was instantly alert.

Studying his map again, Jayge saw that his campsite was not the only cave in the immediate vicinity. Could Thella have come over the mountains directly? Without bothering with her informants in Igen low caverns? And who had killed old Brare? He told himself that the fire could well have been made by a herdsman, checking on his flocks, but he felt compelled to take a look. Aramina was in Benden Weyr, and if Thella was outside it, the dragonriders should know.

He tied Kesso up again, gathered some dry grasses to keep the runner occupied, and after testing the edges of his daggers, he made his way in the dawn-dark down to the river. A bridge, somewhat rickety and probably dating from the time the Lord Holders had attempted to storm Benden Weyr, provided him with a quick, dry, and quiet crossing. He caught sight not of the fire itself but of its glow on the rock face that sheltered it from the northeast. There was light enough now in the sky for him to pick a careful route. He soon crossed a narrow, twisting path and nearly slipped on some herdbeast dung. Judging that the faint path was safer than a more direct line, he followed it, climbing to a point higher than the spot from which he had seen the fire. Then he left the trace, parting the scraggly bushes with a care to thorns and stiff branches, and crept ahead a step at a time.

He heard their voices—two men, and a voice he recognized as Thella’s. He could distinguish no words, nor could he get any closer, as the steep ridge before him was too smooth to be climbed and he could not see a way around it in the semidark.

Hunkered down, he waited—until suddenly he realized that the voices had stopped. He moved as quickly as he could in the growing light, but when he reached his objective, the only evidence that anyone had been there was the warmth of the stone where the fire had been, and a few fragments of charcoal. The interior of the small cave was clean—far too clean, Jayge realized. He could see the river below him, and not a sign of travelers. Could his quarry have gone west, up and over the hill, and down to another concealed spot?

Just as Jayge craned his neck to examine the slope above him, he caught sight of dragons emerging from the crater mouth of Benden Weyr, soaring majestically into the sky as if welcoming the sun’s rising with their own. His first encounter with a dragonrider had given him a warped opinion of them, but that had been tempered gradually as he met others when working ground crew. He had heard the high opinion in which Benden riders were held, and had actually ridden Heth to Thella’s hideout. The early morning flight before him was so beautiful that his whole perception of dragons and riders altered completely.

Absorbed in that beauty, Jayge gave no thought to the possibility of his being discovered there. He watched until they had either returned to the Weyr or winked out between, an ability that the young trader found frightening even after surviving a demonstration of it on Heth. Then it occurred to him to wonder why the dragons, known to be long-sighted, had not reacted to his presence, sprawled there as he was across the rock face. They had not seemed to be alert at all. True, he had not moved, but surely Thella and her companions were on the move! Were the dragons even watching out for her? Clearly not. Those dragonriders were so secure in their bloody Weyr, they did not bother to keep sentries, he thought in disgust. And what was to keep Thella from brazening her way right into the Weyr and making off with Aramina?

Jayge took the fastest way down, racing across the bridge and back to the cave, hoping that a dragon would appear to bar his way, his rider demanding to know who he was and the nature of his errand. But no one stopped him, and Jayge tightened Kesso’s girth with unusual violence. Vaulting to the saddle, he had the gelding galloping at full stretch up the valley to the tunnel that was the only surface entrance to Benden Weyr.

There he met with resistance. And while he was somewhat reassured by the evidence that not everyone could enter the tunnel, he was irritated at the way his concise statement of danger to Aramina by Thella’s covert presence in the valley was questioned by every member of the guard, none of them dragonriders and all of them taking far too long looking over his warranty. Then his sketch of Readis, which he accidentally dislodged from his chest pocket in his haste to show his warranty, was picked up by one of the guards.

“This guy was here yesterday. Kin of yours?”

Jayge was paralyzed for a moment with shock. “He’s in Benden?”

“Why should he be? He only wanted to deliver a packet of letters to Aramina, and she’s in Benden Hold.”

“And you told him that? You smokeless weyrling, you consummate dimwit.” Jayge was primed to elaborate on the antecedents of all six guards when the oldest man suddenly held his spearpoint right against Jayge’s throat.

“State your business.” The spearman pricked the sharp point encouragingly.

Jayge swallowed both ire and insolence and, raising his hand, moved the point away from his neck, all the while staring back at the hard-eyed guard. “I must see K’van, Heth’s rider, immediately,” he said more reasonably. He kept his tone urgent. “Thella was camped last night in the valley. I heard her this morning. And if she knows Aramina’s at Benden Hold, the girl is in grave danger.”

The spearman gave him a faint reassuring grin. “Someone who hears dragons has all the protection she needs. But if that raider female is in the vicinity, Lessa will wish to hear all about it. Ride through. I’ll inform them you’re coming.”

Kesso did not like the tunnel despite the glows that illuminated it at frequent intervals. He sidled, spooked, and twitched his ears constantly at the echoes of his own rattling hooves. When he stumbled on the ruts made in the floor by hundreds of Turns of cart wheels, Jayge kicked him smartly to make him pay attention. Finally they came to a second, inner gate, whose guards waved him on through into a vast, high-ceilinged area furnished with platforms of varying heights for the unloading of any sized wagon or cart. From there Jayge was directed to a second, longer tunnel, its far end a mere circle of brightness. He trotted Kesso, disliking the sensation of being enclosed in rock. He kept hearing noises that reminded him a shade too much of the avalanche in Telgar, and he resisted the urge to gallop Kesso out of the place.

Then he was out in the Bowl of Benden and gawking like the most ignorant back-of-the-hill hold apprentice. The immense crater was an imperfect oval—actually two coalescing craters, rather than a single one. The irregular sides loomed high and were dotted with the dark mouths of individual weyrs. Many of the protruding ledges already held dragons lolling in the sunlight. One whiff of the dragons’ scent, and Kesso threw his head up until Jayge could see the whites of his frantic eyes.

A youngster came trotting up to him. “If you’ll come with me, Trader Lilcamp, you can put your runner where the dragons won’t scare him.” The boy pointed to his right. “The blackrock bunker’s not too full right now, so there’s enough space. I’ll get him some water and hay.”

Jayge had his hands full with the beast’s terrified behavior, and by the time they got safely inside, Kesso was lathered with sweat. Fortunately the acrid dusty smell of the blackrock masked dragonspoor, and Kesso, his fright forgotten, was glad to slake his thirst in the water pail. After checking that the hay was of good quality, Jayge left him to it.

“Now, if you’ll come this way, Lessa’s waiting for you,” the boy said.

As Benden Weyr was an amazement to Jayge, Lessa was only slightly less of a surprise. He could feel the force of her personality as strongly as he had felt Thella’s, but there all resemblance ended. Despite her slight stature, Lessa carried herself with authority, gracious but firm. She was more courteous to a trader than he had expected, and she listened with such interest that he found himself telling her the whole story, from his first encounter with Thella and Giron, to that dawn’s surveillance, and his fears, assumptions, and anxieties—with one exception. He made no mention of Readis.

“Please, Lady Lessa, bring Aramina back here before it’s too late,” Jayge said, stretching his hand across the table to Lessa’s and then pulling it back as he realized his forwardness.

“As soon as I learned of your errand, Jayge Lilcamp, I sent word to Lord Raid. They’ll keep her safe, I assure you.” She gave him a radiant smile, then explained her method. “Ramoth, my queen, told Benden’s watchdragon.”

“But the girl’d be safer here,” Jayge insisted, fretting. Anyone could walk into Benden Hold; anyone could find her out on a hunt.

Lessa frowned just slightly, then leaned toward Jayge, putting her small hand on his arm, strong fingers pressing in reassurance. “I do understand your concern. And I would prefer to have Aramina right here in Benden until she Impresses but … the girl does hear dragons.” She grimaced in frustration. “All the time, and every dragon.” She sighed extravagantly, then tilted her head slightly and smiled at him. Suddenly Jayge knew why so many people respected, even worshipped her, and he found himself smiling back at her, half-embarrassed by his reaction. “The conversations were driving her crazy.”

“Not as crazy as Thella could,” Jayge heard himself saying.

“Tubridy at the outer gate said you had a picture of a man who purportedly had letters from her family,” Lessa said.

Jayge pulled his warranty from his pocket, opening it as if expecting to find the sketch folded up in it. Then he fumbled in his chest pocket, feigning dismay and annoyance and checking the other pockets in his jacket. “I must have dropped it. My runnerbeast did not like the tunnel, or the dragons.” He attempted an ingratiating smile and an abashed shrug.

To his surprise, she spread out a sheet, much bigger than any of the ones Perschar had used, but which included all the sketches the craftsman had done, including a new pose of Readis, by no means as accurately drawn from memory as from life. The resemblance of uncle to nephew did not seem as pronounced—at least Jayge hoped that Lessa would notice none. Without hesitation, he pointed to Dushik.

“I’d know that one anywhere,” he said. He knew he was taking a chance but he was irrationally determined to save his uncle. How, he did not know—but he had to try.

Lessa was looking at him oddly, her eyes slightly narrowed. “How did you have come to have a sketch?”

“Well, as I told you, I thought they’d make for Igen low caverns. On my own like that, I might just be told something holders, and dragonmen”—his smile was respectfully apologetic—“might not get to hear. So I was given one of Perschar’s sketches to show. I’ve a score to settle with Thella and her friends.” Jayge had no need to counterfeit the hatred and determination that welled up in him. Then he was startled to hear a dragon rumble nearby.

“Private scores have a habit of getting out of hand, Jayge Lilcamp,” Lessa said with a strange smile.

Suddenly Jayge was reminded again of Thella. He shook the comparison out of his head and got to his feet as the Weyrwoman rose.

“And getting in the way of more honorable qualities,” Lessa continued. “You can leave this matter in Weyr hands. We’ll protect Aramina.” A dragon bugled, and the noise reverberated. Lessa smiled dotingly. “You have Ramoth’s word on it.”

“Does she hear everything?”

Lessa laughed. It was an astonishingly young laugh. She shook her head reassuringly. “Your secrets are safe with me.”

Jayge turned away to avoid her shrewd eyes and perceptive mind. He had never heard anything about dragons being able to hear everyone’s thoughts—just those of their riders.

“Go across to the kitchen on your way out, Jayge Lilcamp. You’ll need a good meal to start your way back home.”

Thanking her, he followed the boy out of the weyr but came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the golden dragon sitting on the ledge. She had not been there when he had entered. Her tail was wrapped around her front legs and her wings tucked flat to her dorsal ridge, but she was looking squarely at him as he came out.

“She likes it if you speak to her. ‘Good morning, Ramoth’ is appropriate,” the boy suggested when he realized that Jayge had not moved.

“Good morning, Ramoth,” Jayge repeated in a dry voice and edged carefully toward the first step. The dragon loomed above him, and he had never felt so insignificant in his life. Although he was of reasonable height, he came no higher than her short foreleg. He swallowed and took another step. “Give my greetings to Heth, would you? I liked meeting Heth.” Jayge knew he was babbling, but somehow or other his words seemed appropriate.

“Really,” the boy said, tugging his arm, “she won’t do anything.”

“She’s bigger than I thought,” Jayge said, speaking rapidly and in an undertone.

“Well, she is the Benden queen. And,” the boy added proudly, “the biggest dragon on all Pern.”

Ramoth canted her head upward suddenly, rumbling at three dragons circling to land on ledges above her. Two of them answered her. Jayge took advantage of that distraction to go down the weyr steps as fast as he could, passing the boy on his way out. When he reached the Bowl floor safely, he took a deep breath and wiped his sweating forehead with one hand.

“C’mon, you’re to have a meal. Weyr food’s good,” the boy said encouragingly, catching up.

“I think I’d rather—”

“You can’t leave the Weyr without a decent meal,” the boy insisted. “Look, Ramoth’s curling up for a snooze in the sun.”

Lessa’s reassurances lasted only until Jayge’s first overnight camp. He had been heartened to see sweep riders quartering in the distance, farther down the roadway. Then the overlapping branches obscured his sight of them. He fretted until almost dawn, sleepless, remembering each word of his interview, trying to allay his doubts about dissembling to the Weyrwoman herself, and trying to puzzle out her warning about settling private scores.

He wished he could see some way of getting Readis free of his association with Thella. And who was the third man he had heard? Dushik? Or Giron? He rather doubted it was Giron, not that close to a Weyr. Dushik was reputed to be the more formidable opponent.

Jayge drove himself and Kesso hard down the trail, eschewing more comfortable lodging in the interest of pressing on. Someone at the Weyr had kindly tied a sack of grain to his saddle so that he could feed the hard-working Kesso properly. He stopped only to buy travel meal and more grain before moving on. He kept looking for any signs of other recent travelers, although it would have been too foolish of Thella and the others to move on the well-used road.

Then he knew what he would do when he reached Benden Hold. He would ask to see the black-haired girl. She had seemed sensible enough to take him seriously. He would show her the sketch of Readis and warn her about him. Dushik was ferocious enough so that people would automatically be wary of him. But Readis looked respectable and he had a clever tongue in his head. Too clever by half. Still, Blood loyalty had compelled Readis to draw Thella’s raiders off the train, and Jayge had to do as much for his uncle.

He was tired, still wet from the previous day’s rain, and hungry on an exhausted, foot-dragging mount when he arrived at Benden Hold. To his immense relief, activity around the Hold seemed to be normal. He asked for Master Conwy, who was surprised to see him but who welcomed him cordially.

“Have there been any strangers asking for … the girl who hears dragon?” Jayge asked immediately.

“Aramina?” Master Conwy’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “So, you’re the one who rode all the way to Benden Weyr to warn them. Lad, you’d only to tell me that was your worry. We’d’ve sent the watchdragon up and spared you a long journey.”

“Then I wouldn’t have seen Thella’s band camped near the Weyr.”

Master Conwy nodded as one did to a nervous person, deftly took Kesso’s reins from Jayge’s hand, and began shooing him into the beasthold, helping Jayge unsaddle and stable the tired beast. “That’s true enough, but you did see them and, I hear, spoke to the Weyrwoman at length.”

Jayge’s hopes flared briefly. “Then the dragonriders found Thella?”

“No, but not for want of trying. And we’ve guards out in plenty and every holder on the lookout, as well.”

Jayge paused in the act of placing his saddle on the partition between the two stalls. “The mare I brought to you was in the next stable. Where is she?”

“Out. Aramina went—with two guards—to help with a staked burden beast. She’s very good with animals and they sense that—”

“You let her leave the Hold? Shards, man, you’re as mad as they are up at the Weyr! You don’t know what Thella and Dushik are like! You’ve no idea what they’re like! They mean to kill the girl!”

“Now, see here, lad, leave go of me. And I don’t take that kind of language from anyone.” Master Conwy pulled Jayge’s hands from his shirt. “You’re tired, lad; you’re not thinking straight. She’s safe. Now you come with me, have a bath and something to eat. She’ll be back shortly. Won’t take more than a few hours.”

Jayge was trembling with stress, and since Master Conwy sounded so certain of Aramina’s safety, he allowed himself to be persuaded into the hold and the bath. It was only when Master Conwy’s eldest boy brought him hot klah and fresh bread smeared with sweetsauce to eat while he soaked off the travel dirt that he realized that Aramina was the black-haired girl he had so admired. Fortunately the food distracted his thoughts from the girl, thoughts that had been taking a decidedly erotic turn. He concentrated instead on the disquieting fact that the dragonriders had not flushed out the fugitives. They were hiding, biding their time until the alertness of the Hold and guard relaxed. Thella was good at waiting—witness the way she had built those deadfalls, spaced to catch every wagon. But she could make mistakes. She had made another in building a fire that could be seen, and had been.

“Jayge Lilcamp!” Master Conwy charged into the bath, throwing a towel at Jayge, then dragging him out of the water when he did not move fast enough. “You were right, and we were shamefully slack. Gardilfon just now came up the Hold road, driving his tithe beasts. He had sent no word to the Hold about a burden beast, certainly not to Aramina, and he’s seen no one on this road since dawn.”

Hurriedly drying himself and fumbling with the clothes the Beastmaster flung at him, Jayge heard the rumble of the Hold drums, his blood pounding as much to their beat as to the heat of the bath he had just left. His boots were clammy and mud-caked, but he crammed his feet in.

“Lord Raid wants a word with you. He’s mustering everyone, and yes—” Master Conwy glanced skyward as dragons appeared in the sky, “We’ve all the help we need. Aramina will tell the dragons where she is.”

“If she knows,” Jayge murmured, suddenly seeing the flaw in their thinking. “And if she can talk.”

At first Lord Raid discounted Jayge’s remarks, repeated to him first by an angry Master Conwy and again by Jayge, who was then told to sit down and be quiet. Of medium height and somewhat plump, with a discontented droop to his mouth, long lines from nose to mouth, and puffy bags under his eyes, Lord Raid had a habit of posing himself; as he turned from one advisor to another he was almost a caricature of himself. Meanwhile someone gave Jayge a bowl of porridge, which he ate quickly, despite the fact that his stomach was tense with worry.

When the hours passed with no word from the search parties, Benden Hold’s many fire-lizards, or the dragons, Lord Raid strode over to where Jayge was half-dozing by the hearth. The young trader had tried to stay awake, but the warmth and his fatigue had overcome his anxieties.

“What exactly did you mean by your remarks, young man?”

Jayge blinked to clear his eyes and tried to remember what he had last said. “I meant that if Aramina isn’t conscious, she can’t hear dragons. And if she can’t see where she is, how can she be rescued by them?”

“And just how do you arrive at those conclusions?”

“Thella knows she hears dragons.” Jayge shrugged. “It stands to reason a clever woman like Thella would make certain Aramina had nothing to tell the dragons.”

“Exactly,” a cold voice said. Lessa was pushing through the knot of men around Jayge. “I apologize, Jayge Lilcamp. I didn’t heed your warning closely enough.”

“Isn’t it possible this young man is in league with them?” Raid said in an audible aside to Lessa.

She raised her eyebrows in a slightly contemptuous quirk, and her lips thinned. “Heth and Monarth both vouched for him to Ramoth at Benden. Lords Larad and Asgenar confirm his description.”

“But—but—” Raid stuttered impotently.

Lessa sat down beside Jayge. “Now, what do you think has happened to Aramina?”

“None of the dragons have heard her?”

“No, and Heth is nearly hysterical.”

Jayge exhaled, sick with worry, but he made himself say what he feared most. “I don’t put it past Thella to have killed her.”

“No, the dragons say not,” Lessa said positively and looked at him for his next suggestion.

“What about the guards with her?”

“They are dead,” Lessa said, her voice full of regret. “Stuffed out of sight, which is why it took so long to locate them.”

“Then she’s been knocked unconscious.” Jayge shut his eyes against the image of Aramina’s limp body, blood staining the blue scarf on her head, hanging across Dushik’s powerful back.

“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 shoulder-blade, 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.”

“Help me, Jayge,” Readis said. Jayge gripped the rope along with Readis, and it writhed in their hands as she secured it under her arms. Then they began to pull.

Aramina was not heavy, but the coarse rope was slimy, and Jayge was afraid of losing his grip. He dug his fingers into the hemp. When the rough upward movement slammed her into the pit wall, she grunted, and Jayge winced. But steadily the light came closer. Finally Jayge leaned down and grabbed her arm, nearly wrenching it from the socket as he heaved her up over the edge. She clung to him, shuddering and panting. He was lifting her farther away from her ghastly prison when they heard Readis’s gasp of warning. A black shape launched itself on Readis, and before Jayge could put out a hand, two bodies went hurtling into the pit, the screams reverberating in horrifying echoes that made Jayge clasp the girl tightly to him, trying to blot the sound from her ears.

“Come. If Thella’s near …” He tugged the shaking girl to her feet, grabbed the dying glow, and started back the way they had come.

Aramina stumbled but refused to fall. Jayge could feel the tremors shaking her. She was sobbing, and her fingers dug into the flesh of his hand. He hated to ask her to crawl up the cramped dark burrow.

He turned to her to tell her to take the glow and go first. It was only then that he realized that she was not just slimy—she was naked. Her shivering was more from the cold than from reaction or stress, and she would tear the skin from her bones crawling up that tunnel. He stripped off his jacket and thrust her arms into it. It covered her to the hips. Then he pulled off his shirt and tore it into strips to wrap around her knees and feet.

“That’ll help,” he said. “Push the glow in front of you. It’s not far to the surface. Watch your head. Go!”

An eerie moan resounded down the tunnels and corridors of the ghastly cavern system. The weird sound was enough to send her to her hands and knees to crawl, sobbing with fright, into the burrow. Jayge fervently hoped that it had been Thella who had fallen down the pit with Readis.

Somehow they made it out into the twilight. Enough of the glow remained to light their way down the slope to easier ground. He managed to locate the pack he had left behind when he had set out to investigate the rockslide and unstrapped the blanket to put around her before fumbling for his numbweed jar.

“Can you call the dragons now and get them to come take us away from here?” he asked, slathering numbweed on her legs and feet.

“No.”

He looked up at her face, confused. “Say again?”

“No, I will not call dragons. If I didn’t hear them, this never would have happened to me. Jayge,” she said, putting her cut and bruised hands on his arm, “you can’t know what it’s like. I can hear them now. Particularly Heth, who’s crying inside. I’m crying, too, but I won’t answer him. I can’t! They’d make me stay at Benden Weyr, and I’ll hear, and hear, and hear!” She was weeping, her fingers flexing on his arms. “It was better for a while at Benden Hold. There was only the watchdragon, and he was asleep so much of the time. If I heard the sweepriders talking, I could get very busy and pretend not to hear them.”

“But—you hear dragons! You belong in the Weyr.”

“No, Jayge, I don’t think I do,” she said, daubing numbweed on a bleeding knee. “Not the way I am. Oh, I stood on the Hatching Ground, and the little queen made a straight-line dash for Adrea. A very nice girl and welcome to Wenreth. And I’m very fond of K’van and Heth. They saved me from Thella once already. You saved me this time. You went all that long way to Benden Weyr, and they didn’t believe how serious it all was. Yes, I heard them talking about you. But I had two strong fine men with me when I went to Gardilfon’s.” She took a long shuddering breath. “I saw Dushik break Brindel’s neck and Thella slit Hedelman’s throat. They liked doing it. The third man had the grace to look sick. Was he helping you get me out of there? Was it Thella or Dushik that dropped?” Her voice was low and urgent, but she sounded rational.

“I don’t know who took Readis down, and I’m not going back to look. We’d better get out of this vicinity. If you won’t call the dragon …” Looking down at her he saw that she had set her jaw resolutely, so he shrugged. He slung the pack over his shoulder and picked her up.

At first, she seemed to weigh nothing in his arms, but gradually he tired. He had to rest several times.

“I’m trying to think light,” she said once, and he patted her shoulder reassuringly.

The glow died just as they reached the cave he had been looking for. He stumbled in, nearly dropping her. It was little more than a hollow where a large boulder had once lodged, but it was free of snakes and would do for shelter for the night. When he had shared his rations with her and made her take several long pulls at his spirit bottle, he got her to wrap up in the blanket.

“You get a good sleep and it’ll all seem better in the morning,” he said, echoing his long-dead mother’s advice.

“At least there’ll be light,” she said in a composed voice. Then she yawned, and very shortly he heard her breathing slow to a sleeping rhythm.

Jayge was accustomed to night vigils, but he wished that a dragonrider would land nearby whom he could shout to, or that he dared risk a fire without being sure if Thella had died down in that pit. And most earnestly he wished that Heth or Ramoth would hear him shouting at them with his mind.

Aramina’s cries roused him. She was thrashing about, sobbing, and she fought at first when he tried to quiet her. He had to wake her up with a rough shake, and then she collapsed against him, panting.

“See, there’s the moon,” he said, slewing about so she could see Belior setting. Her face was ghastly in the pale light, but he was relieved to see her taking deep breaths to calm herself. “You’re not in the pit, you’re not in the pit!”

“Giron! He was there! Chasing me. Only he suddenly turned into another man, much bigger, who turned into Thella. And then I woke up in the pit again. And the other voice I keep hearing, that had turned into a roar. It had been such a comfort to me, much more than just hearing dragons, even if I couldn’t understand what it was saying to me. But it was there, just as lonely as I was and wanting so much to be with someone. Only it wasn’t comforting in my dream. It was screaming at me.”

He comforted her, murmuring soothing nothings and not arguing with her irrational words. He rocked her in his arms, and eventually she fell asleep again, twitching and moaning occasionally. Her movements served to wake him up when he dozed off, but eventually both slept quietly.

In the morning he found her sitting cross-legged, gazing out at the rain that cascaded down like a waterfall over the cave mouth. She had built a little dam of earth and stones to keep the water from running into their shelter.

“Jayge, you must help me,” she said when he hunkered down beside her. “I cannot go back to either Hold or Weyr.”

“Where will you go? To Ruatha? I heard Lord Jaxom gave your father back his old place.”

She was shaking her head before he finished his sentence. “They would be appalled.” She gave a weary smile. “Me hearing dragons embarrassed them enough. To think I would leave the Weyr would crush them.”

Jayge nodded, since she seemed to expect some response of him.

“I shall go to the Southern Continent. I hear that there’s lots of it no one’s ever seen.”

“And that the Oldtimers don’t take their dragons out often,” Jayge said with a sly grin.

“Exactly,” she said, with a gracious nod. Then her expression altered. “Oh, please Jayge, help me. The dragons say that they’ve found no one.” Seeing his unspoken query she explained, “I can hear them whether I want to answer them or not.” She laid another pebble carefully where water threatened to spill over her little dam. She seemed so absorbed in her occupation that for a minute Jayge did not realize that she was adding slow tears of despair to the rainwater.

“What do you want me to do?”

Closing her eyes, she let out a relieved sigh and looked up at him, eyes still brimming with tears but a wan smile on her mouth. “Would that lean, wicked-looking-runner of yours carry two?”

“He could, but there’re plenty of others to buy around here. I’m a trader, after all. And?”

She pulled at the edge of his jacket, a rueful expression on her face. “I’ll need something to wear. Dushik slit mine off me …” An involuntary convulsion shook her, and he put a comforting arm about her shoulders until it passed.

“I’m a trader, remember,” he said again.

“On rainy days, they often hang clothes to air in the bathing rooms.” She bit her lip, realizing that she had just suggested he steal for her.

“Leave it to me.” He dragged the pack over and sorted out the rest of the food; she refused to keep the spirits bottle, though he made her take a drink for its warmth.

“You have to take back your jacket,” she said. “I’ll have the blanket to keep me warm. No one will question your losing a blanket, but shirt and jacket … and as soon as you leave here, I’m going to go out in that rain and get clean.”

“Then you’ll need the sweetsand.” He found the little bag in his pack and gave it to her. “Don’t stay out long. Thella could still be hanging around.”

Aramina had swathed herself in the blanket and was wriggling out of his jacket as he spoke. “I don’t think so. It had to have been Dushik who charged Readis. Thella would have thrown a knife.”

Jayge grimaced at the acuteness of Aramina’s observation. She was thinking clearly. So he would do exactly as she asked and get them out of Benden Hold. Back to … then he remembered the shipment of breeding pairs, slated to go to the Southern Continent. Well now, he might just do a bit of real trading and see if it solved Aramina’s problem. So long as he went, too. He had found her! He loved her! He would help her. The Weyrs and the Holds be damned. Hold and Weyr could not provide her with safety. He could and would!