four were impatient with the delay.
“Had to find the charts, my dear Moreta. I am not jumping without a more positive coordinate than ‘a green face with a thousand
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257
dark-rimmed eyes.’ We’ll have to arrive at dawn to be perfectly certain, for the moons will both be visible then.” He brandished his fist to signal success and readiness.
As they began to mount the stalwart Nabeth, Moreta turned to Alessan.
“Tuero’s watching us. Has he any idea?”
Alessan moved his hands about her waist more than was strictly required to heave her toward B’lerion, who was already seated on Nabeth’s neck.
“One can’t keep a harper from having ideas, but he should be under the impression that we are going to see Master Balfor at the Beasthold about the animal vaccine. Moving everything up to the main Hall presently will occupy even his active mind.”
Then all were aboard. B’lerion had insisted that Oklina ride before him, where he could secure her with his fighting straps. Moreta he positioned behind him to help direct Nabeth. Alessan rode behind Moreta, then Desdra and, finally, Capiam as the most experienced of the other passengers.
Orlith. I shan’t be long but I must go, Moreta said. So Nabeth has told me. Orlith sounded unconcerned. “Moreta!” B’lerion’s voice and a hard nudge of his right elbow interrupted her private communication. “I’ve got the moons and the Red Star visualized. Facing northwest, the Red Star is horizon, Be-lior half full ascending, and the quarter horn of Timor mid-heaven. You will please concentrate on how Ista looks with those ging trees in bloom. Think of them as now and in Ista, and the heat of autumn and the smell of those rotting rainforests.”
Nabeth was excited but his launch had the smooth precision of the experienced dragon and did not even sway his passengers as he took off.
Moreta had become accustomed to two dragon presences in her mind; now a third one, a lighter one but by no means weaker, added itself. She conjured the image of Ista’s southern palisades in their autumnal finery, the Red Star balefully glowering above the western sea, Belior half full and rising, and the quarter horn of the smaller Timor demurely above. She held that vision locked in her mind as she felt Nabeth take them between. She wanted to make use of her isual litany, but the blossom eyes of the ging tree and the heaven-held guides were sufficient comfort. Then, tearfulness mounting to an
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incredible pressure in heart and lungs, they were suddenly in the warm air, high over Ista’s rocky coast, the creamy eyes of the ging tree blossoms seeking the eariy-moming sun just rising in the east. B’lerion let out a whoop and Oklina a tiny scream. This time it was Alessan who clung to Moreta for reassurance. ,
Nabeth immediately noticed the rocky ledge where Moreta had often landed Oriith to harvest needlethom. It was high above the incoming tide that battered diligently at the rock palisade. Nabeth landed as competently as he had taken off, his wing strokes flattening the thick brush that clung to the very edge of the cliff.
“Needlethom will be down that slope,” Moreta called as they
prepared to dismount.
B’lerion made an ostentatious descent from Nabeth, causing the dragon to turn his head with a startled exclamation.
“You could have broken your other arm, B’lerion,” Moreta said, but she had to laugh because he’d succeeded. She explained to Ok-lina the proper and safer way of dismounting a tall dragon, and Nabeth obediently lifted his foreleg.
“Are we really in the future?” Capiam asked as Alessan handed out the cargo nets. He looked about him with an expression of awe.
“We’d better be,” B’lerion said, glowering with mock ferocity at Moreta before taking another speculative glance at the three guides
in the lightening sky.
“We are,” she replied as calmly as she could, for she was becoming increasingly aware of a curious sense of disorientation within hera sensation of weightlessness and a growing euphoria, neither of which she had ever experienced before. Action would dispel such contradic-tory agitations. She pointed down the slope. “We’ll go this way and we’ll know soon enough if we find needlethom. I harvested here myself last year, with Ista’s permission since they gather on more accessible slopes.” And she led the way.