Going to the Red Star? On the coordinates of a cloud? She staggered against the table, her legs trembling. She managed to sit but her hands shook so, she couldnt pour the wine. Using both hands, she got the bottle to her lips and swallowed some that way. It helped.
Shed somehow not believed theyd see a way to go. Was that what had frightened Grall so?
Ramoth kept up her alarm and Brekke now heard the other dragons bellowing with worry.
She fumbled with the last closing of her tunic and forced herself to her feet, to walk to the ledge. The fire lizards kept darting and diving around her, keening wildly; a steady, nerve-jangling double trill of pure terror.
She halted at the top of the stairs, stunned by the confusion in the crepuscular gloom of the Weyr Bowl. There were dragons on ledges, fanning their wings with agitation. Other beasts were circling around at dangerous speeds. Some had riders, most were flying free. Ramoth and Mnementh were on the Stones, their wings outstretched, their tongues flicking angrily, their eyes bright orange as they bugled to their Weyrmates. Riders and weyrfolk were running back and forth yelling, calling to their beasts, questioning each other for the source of this inexplicable demonstration.
Brekke futilely clapped her hands to her ears, searching the confusion for a sight of Lessa or Flar. Suddenly they both appeared at the steps and came running up to her. Flar reached Brekke first, for Lessa hung back, one hand steadying herself against the wall.
Do you know what Canth and Fnor are doing? the Weyrleader cried. Every beast in the Weyr is shrieking at the top of voice and mind! He covered his own ears, glaring furiously at her, expecting an answer.
Brekke looked toward Lessa, saw the fear and the guilt in the Weyrwomans eyes.
Canth and Fnor are on their way to the Red Star.
Flar stiffened and his eyes turned as orange as Mnemenths. He stared at her with a compound of fear and loathing that sent Brekke reeling back. As if her movement released him, Flar looked toward the bronze dragon roaring stentoriously on the heights.
His shoulders jerked back and his hands clenched into fists so tight the bones showed yellow through the skin.
At that instant, every noise ceased in the Weyr as every mind felt the impact of the warning the fire lizards had been trying inchoately to project.
Turbulence, savage, ruthless, destructive; a pressure inexorable and deadly. Churning masses of slick, sickly gray surfaces that heaved and dipped. Heat as massive as a tidal wave. Fear! Terror! An inarticulate longing!
A scream was torn from a single throat, a scream like a knife upon raw nerves!
Dont leave me alone! The cry came from cords lacerated by the extreme of anguish; a command, an entreaty that seemed echoed by the black mouths of the weyrs, by dragon minds and human hearts.
Ramoth sprang aloft. Mnementh was instantly beside her. Then every dragon in the Weyr was a-wing, the fire lizards, too; the air groaned with the effort to support the migration.
Brekke could not see. Her eyes were filled with blood from vessels burst by the force of her cry. But she knew there was a speck in the sky, tumbling downward with a speed that increased with every length; a plunge as fatal as the one which Canth had tried to stop over the stony heights of the High Reaches range.
And there was no consciousness in that plummeting speck, no echo, however faint, to her despairing inquiry. The arrow of dragons ascended, great wings pumping. The arrow thickened, once, twice, three times as other dragons arrived, making a broad path in the sky, steadily striving for that falling mote.
It was as if the dragons became a ramp that received the unconscious body of their Weyrmate, received and braked its fatal momentum with their own bodies, until the last segment of overlapping wings eased the broken-winged ball of the bloody brown dragon to the floor of the Weyr.
Half-blinded as she was, Brekke was the first person to reach Canths bleeding body, Fnor still strapped to his burned neck. Her hands found Fnors throat, her fingers the tendon where his pulse should beat. His flesh was cold and sticky to the touch and ice would be less hard.