127Disclaimer: Yes, strangely enough, Anne McCaffrey still owns Pern. Not me. Only the characters and plot here are mine.
AN: Another short one, I'm afraid – er, make that really short – but important. I apologise, because it's not even very good, but it's what I've got, so… Watch for the gap in between this and the previous chapter.
Sit down, said Caliath. You are making me dizzy.
Don't watch, then! Lystar snapped, without ceasing her pacing around the cave. No, I'm sorry, Cal, I didn't mean that. But where's Jarrin?
Caliath disdained even to answer that. They both knew that he had no idea. Instead he fixed Lystar with his whirling eyes. Will it help him for you to drive all three of us crazy?
Lystar looked round. K'beth and Rosith were watching her – the dragon with what looked like amusement, the man with some anxiety.
'Sorry,' she said, and sighed. She sat down on the rough stone, folding up long legs, and Caliath lazily shifted his head so that she could reach to scratch his eyebrow ridge.
From her position on the floor she could see out of the wide cave entrance. The sky was clear again, and the stars were hard, bright points against its blackness. She couldn't see the moons. Both had set early in the night. But Lystar had been watching them creep across the sky for days, and she knew that they had again reached the positions she and K'beth had carefully memorised the night after Jarrin left.
'It's all right,' said K'beth, giving her a weak smile. 'I'm on the point of charging out myself to look for him.'
'I'll come with you,' Lystar told him. 'It'd be a relief to do something… anything…'
'Well, I'm certainly not leaving you behind by yourself,' retorted K'beth, and Lystar imagined she could see the corner of his mouth twitching through the shadows of the cave. 'Not after the fright you gave me last time. I thought I'd lost you, Lystar.'
He means that, Lystar thought, astonished, and for a moment the wonder covered up her anxiety and restlessness. It mattered to him, when he thought I'd gone. She remembered what she'd said to Caliath, a long time ago now, and repeated it silently to herself, suddenly tasting every word. He sounds like he cares…
She opened her mouth, with no very clear idea what she was going to say. 'K'beth –'
Someone is out there, said Caliath.
As Lystar had prowled restlessly around the cave, K'beth was reminded irresistably of her father. R'lan was a good man and a good Weyrleader. He was strong and brave, clever, well-liked. But everyone knew that it was Reia's calm, steady presence that kept him that way.
Who did Lystar have? K'beth thought. Caliath? Maybe. But…
He knew what he wanted the answer to be. Him. He wanted to be the one who was there for Lystar, the one who protected her. No, more than that – he wanted… a… a… a right to protect her.
The truth is, he said bitterly to Rosith, I've gone completely soft over her.
He knew why. It was because of her vulnerability and her hidden strength, her long legs and those soft brown eyes, the worried look he wanted to smooth away, her indomitable spirit and the caring heart behind it.
This is a bad thing?
Er… no. Not exactly. Not normally. But…
K'beth wanted to speak to Lystar, to let her know what he felt, to tell her he would always look after her. He wanted to reach out and hold her slim, warm body, to kiss away the creases in her forehead, to love her and make her his own. But…
It wouldn't be fair. He knew it with an instinctive understanding beyond thought. If she didn't, if she couldn't, feel the same way, Lystar had nowhere to go. She was trapped in the middle of a hostile world, her emotions and resources drained from living across herself. She had – she'd have – no real choice.
And she trusted him. They'd been strange days, these past months, dreamlike, like a slice of time lifted out of real life. And Lystar had talked – shards, he knew there was nothing else to do, but she'd talked with the candour of a naïve child, unconsciously presenting him with her trust like a gift, delicate, shining, beautiful. It terrified him, and exhilarated him also, because surely it meant she felt safe with him… But to act now would be a betrayal of that fragile, bright trust, and so K'beth knew he was chained.
He would speak to her when they got back to the Weyr, he promised himself that. The minute that this was all over, that they were back where they belonged. And he would show her with more than mere words…
Rosith's dragonish sigh was very loud in his head. Just so long as you do not neglect me, she said, firmly. It is all very complicated. It is simpler for dragons. Then she lifted her head and looked towards the cave entrance, distracted. There is someone coming.
Is it Jarrin, Cal? Lystar scrambled to her feet again and found that K'beth had also risen in response to Rosith's prompting.
Yes.
Lystar sighed with relief, and turned to K'beth, her face lighting up. 'He's here!' She couldn't hear anything from outside, but she trusted the dragons' acute senses.
'Yes,' K'beth agreed. He went to the cave mouth and peered out, but the faint grey starlight defeated his eyes. He turned back to Lystar, frustrated. 'I can't see anything.'
'Ssh!' Lystar froze, her eyes widening. A second later K'beth's ears also caught the sound – rocks falling, clattering as they bounced against the mountainside on their way down. The notes as the rocks landed were very sharp and clear in the night air.
'Jarrin,' said K'beth. 'He must have knocked something as he climbed in…'
Then they heard the shouting.
The harper is being followed, remarked Caliath.
Lystar swung round. 'K'beth, did you –'
'I heard.' K'beth glanced round the cave. 'Lystar, Caliath, go and pick him up and get out of here. Rosith and I will meet you.' He snatched up his belongings and began bundling them up inside a blanket in quick but unpanicked movements. 'Go on, Lystar. Get Jarrin and get up high, out of range of a flamethrower. I've got a few minutes yet. Rosith doesn't need very much space to go between.'
'Right,' Lystar managed. Turning away from K'beth's calm, comforting presence, she headed towards the mouth of the cave in a stumbling run. Cal –
I'm here. Caliath had heaved his huge bulk up and was galloping alongside her. Girl and dragon shot out into the starlight together, and Lystar turned and hauled herself up onto Caliath's back with an energetic scramble that grazed hands and knees. Ignoring the sting, she clung onto her dragon's back as he bunched his muscles and leapt into the air.
She had no saddle and no riding straps, she realised. She'd left them lying somewhere in the cave. K'beth wouldn't have forgotten, she thought, blinking. I'll just have to manage. Can you see Jarrin, Cal?
Yes. Look.
Hanging on to her dragon's neck ridge, Lystar leant sideways to see round Caliath's head. The blue dragon was right. Faintly illuminated silver by the starlight, a tall dark figure was leaping down the steep, rocky slope at the head of the valley with what seemed like reckless speed. Rocks and stones clattered down around him, and Lystar realised with a surge of anxiety that the whole mountainside could begin to slip, throwing Jarrin down into the valley under a heap of stone.
Go on, Cal. You're gonna have to land, we've got to pick him up. Lystar leant over again. 'Jarrin!'
He looked up and saw her, checking his pace. 'Lystar! Watch out, they're –'
'I can see them,' she called, grimly. Behind Jarrin, two more figures had crested the ridge and began a precipitous descent. But the harper had a couple of minutes lead on his pursuers, and Lystar planned to use it. Ready, Cal?
Ready, Caliath agreed.
Go on, then.
Caliath folded his wings and dropped swiftly towards the harper.
Lystar hung on tightly as they swooped towards the ground. They were coming down right beside Jarrin, who tensed himself, and almost before Caliath landed flung himself up towards Lystar, landing sprawled on his front across the blue dragon's neck.
Without giving the harper time to pick himself up Caliath lifted off again, frantic wingbeats drowning the shouting of Jarrin's pursuers. Lystar thought that the dragon must be picking up on her anxious images of flamethrowers and burning dragons, because he rocketed upwards and leveled out at a height which Lystar knew no flamethrower would ever reach.
'Have they got bows?' Jarrin asked.
'Can't see any.'
'Good.' The harper loosened his grip and drew his elbows under his chest to haul himself up properly onto Caliath's back. 'You don't know what a relief it is to see you, Lystar.'
Caliath swerved violently to the right. Instinctively Lystar ducked and snatched hold of her dragon's neck ridge to keep herself on, hearing the swish of the arrow soaring over her head as it narrowly missed burying itself in Caliath's left wing.
Jarrin, lying across the dragon's back, had nothing to hold on to. Lystar caught one glimpse of his pale face as he was jerked off Caliath's back and fell towards the mountains below.
Cal! she screamed, and the dragon dived after the falling man.
Afterwards, Lystar would be grateful for three things.
The first was that Caliath had passed over a ridge while they flew so that as they headed towards the ground they passed out of sight of the bandits, and that accurate – or lucky – archer wasn't able to get off another shot at her or Caliath.
The second was that the bandits had apparently not found it worthwhile to bring with them their flamethrowers as they chased Jarrin. Or if they had, they never managed to get them into position to use them.
The third, and the best, was that they were not half as far from the ground as Lystar had thought.
So she was able to tumble off Caliath's back and run to Jarrin, crying with relief as she felt his pulse beating weakly but rhythmically, and to drag him up onto Caliath's back.
Fly east, Cal, she said, swallowing hard. We have to get to the Healer Hall. Quickly!