“Have there been any strangers asking for…the girl who hears dragon? “Jayge asked immediately.

“Aramina?” Master Conwy’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “So, you’re the one who rode all the way to Benden Weyr to warn them. Lad, you’d only to tell me that was your worry. We’d’ve sent the watchdragon up and spared you a long journey.”

“Then I wouldn’t have seen Thella’s band camped near the Weyr.”

Master Conwy nodded as one did to a nervous person, deftly took Kesso’s reins from Jayge’s hand, and began shooing him into the beasthold, helping Jayge unsaddle and stable the tired beast. “That’s true enough, but you did see them and, I hear, spoke to the Weyrwoman at length.”

Jayge’s hopes flared briefly. “Then the dragonriders found Thella?”

“No, but not for want of trying. And we’ve guards out in plenty and every holder on the lookout, as well.”

Jayge paused in the act of placing his saddle on the partition between the two stalls. “The mare I brought to you was in the next stable. Where is she?”

“Out. Aramina went—with two guards—to help with a staked burden beast. She’s very good with animals and they sense that—”

“You let her leave the Hold? Shards, man, you’re as mad as they are up at the Weyr! You don’t know what Thella and Dushik are like! You’ve no idea what they’re like! They mean to kill the girl!”

“Now, see here, lad, leave go of me. And I don’t take that kind of language from anyone. “ Master Conwy pulled Jayge’s hands from his shirt. “You’re tired, lad; you’re not thinking straight. She’s safe. Now you come with me, have a bath and something to eat. She’ll be back shortly. Won’t take more than a few hours.”

Jayge was trembling with stress, and since Master Conwy sounded so certain of Aramina’s safety, he allowed himself to be persuaded into the hold and the bath. It was only when Master Conwy’s eldest boy brought him hot klah and fresh bread smeared with sweetsauce to eat while he soaked off the travel dirt that he realized that Aramina was the black-haired girl he had so admired. Fortunately the food distracted his thoughts from the girl, thoughts that had been taking a decidedly erotic turn. He concentrated instead on the disquieting fact that the dragonriders had not flushed out the fugitives. They were hiding, biding their time until the alertness of the Hold and guard relaxed. Thella was good at waiting—witness the way she had built those deadfalls, spaced to catch every wagon. But she could make mistakes. She had made another in building a fire that could be seen, and had been.

“Jayge Lilcamp!” Master Conwy charged into the bath, throwing a towel at Jayge, then dragging him out of the water when he did not move fast enough. “You were right, and we were shamefully slack. Griffon just now came up the Hold road, driving his tithe beasts. He had sent no word to the Hold about a burden beast, certainly not to Aramina, and he’s seen no one on this road since dawn.”

Hurriedly drying himself and fumbling with the clothes the Beastmaster flung at him, Jayge heard the rumble of the Hold drums, his blood pounding as much to their beat as to the heat of the bath he had just left. His boots were clammy and mud-caked, but he crammed his feet in.

“Lord Raid wants a word with you. He’s mustering everyone, and yes—” Master Conwy glanced skyward as dragons appeared in the sky, “We’ve all the help we need. Aramina will tell the dragons where she is.”

“If she knows,” Jayge murmured, suddenly seeing the flaw in their thinking. “And if she can talk.”

At first Lord Raid discounted Jayge’s remarks, repeated to him first by an angry Master Conwy and again by Jayge, who was then told to sit down and be quiet. Of medium height and somewhat plump, with a discontented droop to his mouth, long lines from nose to mouth, and puffy bags under his eyes, Lord Raid had a habit of posing himself; as he turned from one advisor to another he was almost a caricature of himself. Meanwhile someone gave Jayge a bowl of porridge, which he ate quickly, despite the fact that his stomach was tense with worry.

When the hours passed with no word from the search parties, Benden Hold’s many fire-lizards, or the dragons, Lord Raid strode over to where Jayge was half-dozing by the hearth. The young trader had tried to stay awake, but the warmth and his fatigue had overcome his anxieties.

“What exactly did you mean by your remarks, young man?”

Jayge blinked to clear his eyes and tried to remember what he had last said. “I meant that if Aramina isn’t conscious, she can’t hear dragons. And if she can’t see where she is, how can she be rescued by them?”

“And just how do you arrive at those conclusions?”

“Thella knows she hears dragons.” Jayge shrugged. “It stands to reason a clever woman like Thella would make certain Aramina had nothing to tell the dragons.”

“Exactly,” a cold voice said. Lessa was pushing through the knot of men around Jayge. “I apologize, Jayge Lilcamp. I didn’t heed your warning closely enough.”

“Isn’t it possible this young man is in league with them?” Raid said in an audible aside to Lessa.

She raised her eyebrows in a slightly contemptuous quirk, and her lips thinned. “Heth and Monarth both vouched for him to Ramoth at Benden. Lords Larad and Asgenar confirm his description.”

“But—but—” Raid stuttered impotently.

Lessa sat down beside Jayge. “Now, what do you think has happened to Aramina?”

“None of the dragons have heard her?”

“No, and Heth is nearly hysterical.”

Jayge exhaled, sick with worry, but he made himself say what he feared most. “I don’t put it past Thella to have killed her.”

“No, the dragons say not,” Lessa said positively and looked at him for his next suggestion.

“What about the guards with her?”

“They are dead,” Lessa said, her voice full of regret. “Stuffed out of sight, which is why it took so long to locate them.”

“Then she’s been knocked unconscious.” Jayge shut his eyes against the image of Aramina’s limp body, blood staining the blue scarf on her head, hanging across Dushik’s powerful back.

“Then waiting until she recovers consciousness is unlikely to be useful?” Lessa asked somewhat sardonically.

Depressed, Jayge nodded. “Thella will have found a dark cave. Or a deep pit. If Aramina can’t tell the dragons where she is, it doesn’t matter if she can hear them or they her.”

“Exactly my thinking. Raid—” Lessa got to her feet. “You surely must have Hold maps that indicate where the deeper cave systems are. They’ve had a head start of roughly six hours. We can’t tell when they reached their destination, so even nearby caves must be searched. We must bear in mind how far they could have marched over this terrain; we know they weren’t seen on the roads, haven’t been spotted since the dragons started looking three hours ago. Let us not waste more time.”

Haunted by memories of the black pit of Kimmage Hold, Jayge volunteered to go with one of the search teams. There were fire-lizards beholding to three members of the ten-man team, so they were in constant communication with Weyr and Hold. That night as they wearily exited the seventh cave they had thoroughly searched, word reached them that Aramina was still alive, and had spoken to Heth. She could not see anything in the pitch black, and she could take only six steps before reaching the other side of her prison. It was damp and smelled foul—more like snake than wherry.

“That’s a brave girl,” the team leader said. “Let’s eat, roll in, and start looking as soon as we can count our fingers.”

Bloodkin be damned, Jayge thought to himself as he tried to sleep—he was going to kill Readis, as well as Thella and Dushik, with his bare hands.

They searched for two more days, until a rockfall tumbled down on top of them. Two men were injured badly—one with a broken leg and the other with a smashed chest—and had to be dug out. Instantly suspicious about such a convenient rockfall, Jayge told the team leader that he wanted to check it out while the others took the injured men down to a nearby hold for treatment.