Free Dragongirl by Todd McCaffrey Page B

abating only slightly. Fiona stiffened, feeling some of the pain and worry that was troubling Talenth.
    Something bad was about to happen.
    Something terrible.
    Alarmed, Fiona shook Talenth. Wake up!
    The gold dragon startled awake, turning her head to gaze at Fiona in surprise.
    What is it? she asked worriedly.
    Do you feel anything? Fiona asked, sending a tendril of memory toward her, reminding her of how she’d slept.
    Something is coming, something soon , Talenth responded, trembling. Fiona moved beside her, her hand raised to an eye ridge in an attempt to soothe the great queen, but Talenth turned away, her head craning toward the weyr’s entrance, her nostrils flaring.
    Fiona moved up beside her, onto the queens’ ledge. The Weyr Bowl was silent and still.
    Suddenly fear gripped Fiona as Talenth bugled loudly in the dawn, her cry alerting the watch dragon, who echoed it and—
    Fiona was lost, stricken.
    “D’gan, no!” The words that tore out of her mouth were not hers. In that moment she felt a wave of horror and wrenching loss. The Weyrs! They must be warned!
    The voice wasn’t hers; it came to her from elsewhere, like a horrified echo that raked her mind.
    “Fiona! Fiona!” Someone was shaking her. She opened her eyes and looked up, only barely recognizing Cisca. “What is it? What happened?”
    “The Weyrs,” Fiona said aloud, tears streaming down her cheeks as panic, fear, and an unbearable sorrow tore through her, “they must be warned.” Her eyes went wide. “D’gan’s Kaloth is too confused by the sickness. D’gan—Telgar—they went to fight Thread but they’re lost. Lost between.”
    “Rouse the Weyr!” K’lior’s voice shouted. “Rineth!”
    In moments all of Fort Weyr was awake, dragons soaring from their weyrs down to the foggy Weyr Bowl, their cries deafening, wave after wave of sound that beat through Fiona’s chest and reverberated with her heartbeat. Talenth was beside her, reaching for her protectively, grabbing her with her talons, jostling Cisca and K’lior aside as she placed her rider firmly on her back and launched herself into the sky with one blaring scream.
    Fiona had only an instant to marvel at Talenth’s behavior before she was struck again from the inside out as though she were being blown open by a force not her own—and then, suddenly, she knew. She felt Rineth and Melirth beside her, T’mar’s Zirenth, felt all the bronzes, all the browns, all the blues, all the greens of Fort Weyr.
    Felt them as though they were inside her and she screamed. She screamed with pain, she screamed with awe, and she screamed with power. In desperation, she spread the power to Cisca and then K’lior, and the two stood below her on the queens’ ledge transfixed. The power grew even more and she felt it—thankfully—shift from her.
    No longer the sole focus, Fiona found that she could still breathe, that her chest was heaving, her ears were smarting from all the sounds, her eyes were cried out, and her panic was still overwhelming.
    The power had gone to Benden. To one person. How could one person hold such power? She felt an echo, the slightest of contacts—was this the person who had brought her back in time to Igen? The sensation felt similar … but not quite the same.
    The power was searching, searching, seeking frantically—and not finding. Its desperation grew, and Fiona found herself gasping again as more power surged up through her from the dragons and riders of Fort Weyr to join with Cisca before flowing to Benden … and still failing to find what it sought.
    Finally, a lone dragon was found, clasped, recovered. And even as the power triumphed, it felt something that caused it to pause.
    And then Fiona was herself once more, gasping and crying out in relief as Talenth stopped bugling, as the dragons settled, as the power faded, and she felt only like someone who had been burned from the inside out.
    The pain and suffering, the loss of all those Telgar dragons,