Author's note: I've been working on this for so long now, that it's a bit of a shock to finally reach this point in the story after dreaming about it for so long. Though, to be honest, I didn't plan for it to turn out this way originally. Something else was going to happen instead and I had one of those AHA! moments and this is the result. I hope you are enjoying it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

~AS

When Lysith came out of between, the fact that it was still night surprised Kayta. She panicked for a moment, thinking that they were still at the Island, but then the trees with their needle like leaves came into view and she sighed in relief; in their rush to escape the Weyr she had forgotten that Bitra was nearly half a world away from them, and that even though the sun had just set on the Island, it was still about a candlemark before dawn here. Just to the right was the clearing that M'taren had dropped the holders off at. It was barely big enough for his brown to fit in, let alone a queen dragon, so Kayta wasn't sure how Lysith was going to land. But her dragon managed to set down rather gently with a minimum of scratches. Thank Faranth for small things.

Since the Weyr and the dragons that had been chasing them were out of sight, Lysith was much calmer now, but there was still a tinge of anger to her thoughts. How dare he! You should have let me hurt him! He wouldn't have dared to take our Weyr then!

Shhh pet, Kayta leaned against the golden head, rubbing at her dragon's eye ridges. It's over...

No it isn't over! He has our Weyr! He must die!

He's a dragonrider, and we can't kill him even if he was going to kill us. We are better than that.. Kayta sighed, But let's not worry about him right now. For now we're safe, and that's all that matters.

Lysith merely grumbled in response. However she settled down, lying so that her forearms formed a bit of a cradle for Kayta to sleep in. The queenrider sat down in the hollow, grateful that the dragon's neck and wings blocked the slight breeze. It was cold here, colder than the islands could ever get, and her clothing was too light and loosely woven to protect her from the elements. She found herself wishing that there had been an opportunity to grab her wherhide jacket and pants or at least some sort of supplies before her hasty departure. Maybe in the morning they could fly to a small hold where some unsuspecting auntie might be doing the laundry. As for food... well there were a few tubers that grew wild around here that were edible, if she remembered her runner training correctly. Fire wouldn't be too hard to come by, but it would be a pain to start one without a flint of some sort.

Was it even safe for them to stay here? What if Z'char had been following M'taren long enough to know about this place? So far Calaranth and the other bronzes hadn't appeared in the sky - however that didn't mean that they were out of danger just yet.

The queenrider shoved her hands in her pockets as she tried to think about what to do next. Her fingers brushed against a bit of paper... right! The message scroll Malena's firelizard had brought. She pulled it out, squinting to read it in the fading moonlight.

"Kai, I know about the weyr..."

She sucked in a sharp breath. The only person who knew her on the mainland as Kai was that lousy brownrider, N'kar, who kept bothering her whenever she came to visit the Mainland... and had also snuck in to a few of her dreams lately. How had he known about the Weyr? Could it have been the wherhide pants she was wearing the last time they met? But she had thought she had done an adequate job of explaining those away...

She found herself reevaluating her opinion of him, while he had been an annoyance, he obviously wasn't the idiot she had assumed he was. Either that or he was incredibly lucky to have stumbled across information of the Weyr somehow.

"A dragon has passed away and I know it's not one of ours. I want to help."

Help was exactly what she needed right now. A lot of it. An idea came to her, so absurdly simple that she was surprised she hadn't thought of it before. N'bel would be angry at her for it, but it would be worth it if her plan saved his life.

Kayta reached out to Dolp with her thoughts, and smiled when he responded by appearing in front of her almost instantly. She didn't have any treats to give him, so she rewarded him by scratching his head and cooing over him. He was such a loyal friend to stick around her for so long, she told him, and such a brave firelizard to defend her from Z'char when Lysith couldn't. When he was mollified and his chest was puffed out with pride, she pulled Dolp closer so that they were eye to eye. In her mind she imagined N'kar talking with her, and then pictured the clearing where she was currently only with the sun much higher in the sky.

When she let Dolp go the firelizard chirped in understanding and then disappeared between. Kayta leaned back and let out a sigh, hoping that her decision was the right one.

The little one did not keep our secret very well. Elanth spoke, stirring N'kar from his sleep.

"Huh? Whaddyame..." The brownrider's semi coherent question was cut off as a pail of cold water was dumped over his head. He escaped the onslaught by jumping out of bed, and turned to find Malena glaring at him with her arms crossed over her chest, a wooden bucket dangling from one of her finger tips. "Shards and shells! What is wrong with you?"

"I could ask the same of you! How dare you use a firelizard to contact a friend of mine without telling me! Didn't it occur to you that I might want to know that Kayta was still alive? That I might want to see her?"

"We don't know if Kai is Kayta..." N'kar started at the same time he spoke to Elanth. A little warning before you let a crazy wherry into my weyr would be nice next time.

You told me to wake you up if the little ones arrived. She is not a little one.

"It's Kayta! Gwen showed me the image you gave her..."

"Who?"

"My firelizard you deadglow! The picture of the girl you told her to go to - that's Kayta! So don't try to tell me that you don't know if it's her or not, because it is!"

"Alright. I'm sorry." N'kar knew that when she and R'nahl had fights, it would go on for days because they were both stubborn people who refused to admit defeat. He hoped that his apology would distract her enough that he could at least pull on some pants.

His idea worked; whatever Malena was about to yell at him next died on her lips. However, instead of letting him escape she started to bawl instead. The brownrider awkwardly patted her on the back. "Everything's going to be okay."

"No... it's... not..." She managed to say in between sniffles. "She was my best friend. We were closer than sisters! I thought she felt the same way, but obviously she's not the person I thought she was. I mean, if she was alive why didn't she try to find us?"

"Maybe she couldn't?" N'kar offered, not really wanting to bring how Kai was involved with a renegade group of dragonriders. That would not help her calm down at all. "Maybe she didn't know you were alive?"

"Why didn't you tell me that you had seen her? Or why didn't you tell her about me?"

"Malena..." He sighed. "I didn't even know that the runner I had met was your friend until today."

"R'nahl said you had had suspicions."

"I didn't want to get your hopes up." Her expression started to turn from concerned crying woman to furious wherry again, so he quickly cut her off before she could fling the bucket at him. "You forget, I know what it's like to lose someone."

"Oh, don't try to compare Llydwen walking out on you to me thinking a friend was dead!"

"Watch it Malena; regardless of what you thought of her, I did love her and I looked for her whenever I had a chance. With every lead I'd get my hopes up, only to have them smashed when the lead would turn out to be nothing."

"I'm sorry." It was the queenrider's turn to apologize. She dropped the bucket and sank down to sit on the edge of his bed. N'kar took the opportunity to snag his pants off of the floor and pull them on, and grabbed a cloth from the bathing room to dry his head with. "I didn't think..."

The brownrider snorted and she gave him a dirty look. He shrugged. "Your own words, not mine. When did... Gwen return?"

"Not even a candlemark ago. Her mind... the images she was showing me.. it was chaos. Kayta was being escorted somewhere by dragonriders, and then there were flashes of a crowd, and dragons fighting dragons. She's in danger, N'kar, but nothing Gwen was showing me was clear enough to go between on and then I just got so mad that you had obviously known all along that she was alive and had done nothing to help her."

Shards and shells. He hoped that R'nahl's wish wasn't coming true. And there was no way to help unless she sent Dolp. "Your friend hasn't exactly made it easy."

"She never does when she's in trouble." Malena laughed bitterly, wiping the tear stains off her cheeks. "She'll always try to fix it herself - and usually end up making things worse. She's caught up in this renegade rider mess isn't she?"

"How did you know about that?"

She gave him a patronizing look. "I am a Weyrwoman..."

"Junior Weyrwoman." N'kar corrected.

"...I help run the Weyr, so of course I'm going to hear about things. That, and, after the dragons stopped keening over that mystery dragon yesterday, there were rumors going around about how he wasn't one of ours and then Gwen showed me those images, so I just put two and two together. What is the weyr doing about the riders?"

"It's none of your business."

"I have every right to know!"

"No, you don't; you're just a Junior Weyrwoman - you aren't the Queen of Benden yet." He reminded her again. The Weyrleaders had not expressly forbidden anyone at yesterday's meeting from discussing the situation, but if Lessa had wanted Malena to know she would have told her. Not that there was to know; she had already figured out the majority of it.

"But we have to help Kayta!"

So they were back to that again. He sighed, trying to resist the urge to yell at her. His head was beginning pounding from being so rudely awoken, and the wine he had indulged in last night probably wasn't helping either; yelling would only make things worse. "I know. I'm trying. But like I said before, your friend hasn't exactly made it easy. If she will let me, if I can, then I promise you I will do my best to help her."

"Thank you." The queenrider nodded. Her eyes were doing that shimmery thing again, like she was going to start crying at any moment, but she lifted her head high and left the room quickly - but not so quickly that it appeared that she was running away. N'kar sighed in relief.

Her Queen is proddy.

That explains her behavior. You'd think after six years of being a queenrider that she would be able to control herself better when it's close to that time though. Lessa didn't act that way when Ramoth was getting ready to rise - but then N'kar didn't share a bed with her. The brownrider turned back to his bed; it was thoroughly soaked from Malena's administrations so he would have to drag it out onto the weyrledge to dry. Maybe he could convince one of the lower caverns women to take pity on him and loan him some dry sleeping rugs until his sodden ones dried. He went to work folding them up and carried them outside. There was enough of a chill in the air to make him shiver. Winter was on its way.

Once the sleeping rugs were spread out he went back in for the mattress. He struggled with getting it off of the bed by himself and into an upright position without damaging anything - especially his back.

We have a visitor.

Cursing in frustration, he called out. "If that's you again, Malena, you better come and help me with this since you made this mess in the first place."

There was no reply, and he didn't hear any footsteps echoing through Elanth's weyr. "Hello?"

A blue firelizard popped out of between in front of him. It chirped frantically, trying to land on his shoulders and press its head against his face.

He's trying to show you something.

N'kar tried to soothe the firelizard by rubbing at his eyeridges like he often did with Elanth, but it didn't work; the blue only tried to burrow against him tighter, as if somehow contact would help. Try and calm him down please - try to find out what he wants.

Elanth rumbled from where he lay on his sleeping couch, and, just as he had done before, the firelizard fell silent and went stiff. He says Kai is waiting for us at a clearing in Bitra. It looks like the one the holdless were camped in.

Let's go then!