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The Void Between
A Pern / Valdemar Crossover
Part One: Between
I. Wingleader Sariadne — Eastern Weyr, Pern
The morning they were supposed to leave for the southern continent, the sky over Eastern Weyr was the color of old bronze.
Sariadne had flown between ten thousand times. She knew it the way she knew her own heartbeat — the absolute cold, the absolute dark, the count of three that was supposed to be all there was. She had flown it in Thread, in storm, in the particular bone-deep exhaustion that followed thread when everything in you was wrung out and still the wing had to move. Between had never surprised her.
:I do not like this sky:, Avarith said.
"You've said." Sariadne finished the last strap check on her left buckle and looked up.
Eastern's bowl was organized chaos — eighty-three dragons, three hundred and twelve riders and weyrfolk, herdbeasts in belly-nets, crates of AIVAS-printed equipment, a full complement of Healers who had not expected to become dragonriders and still looked faintly startled about it. Two months of groundwork had gone into the southern site coordinates. Mastertech Orveth had personally signed off on the visualization data.
Nothing about this should go wrong.
:The sky is the wrong color:, Avarith said again, in the tone she used when she was not making conversation but stating a fact she expected to be recorded.
"Wrong how."
A pause that had weight in it. :Like between is closer than it should be. Like something has already opened.:
Sariadne looked up again. The bronze was not cloud-haze, not volcanic light off the water. It had a quality of depth that the sky shouldn't have, like looking at water that was deeper than the pool containing it.
She opened her mouth to call a halt.
Weyrleader Torveth's bronze Oranth bugled the departure signal.
Eighty-three dragons jumped between.
The count went wrong at one.
Sariadne had time to feel it — a sideways lurch that had nothing to do with direction, a pressure behind the eyes that wasn't sound but behaved like sound, and Avarith's sudden total stillness, the absolute focus of a creature that has encountered something outside every category it possesses and has decided that panic is not useful —
:Hold:, Avarith said, and her mindvoice was completely level, which was the most alarming thing that had ever happened to Sariadne in twenty years of riding. :Hold. I have us.:
The between lasted eleven seconds. Sariadne counted. She always counted.
They came out over green.
Not the scrubby pale green of the southern survey site. Not the volcanic grey-black of the coastline they'd overflown yesterday. Green like something had been genuinely serious about the project of green, like every tree in the forest below had made it a personal commitment. Rolling hills rising into ridgelines, and the air — the air hit her like warm water after between's cold, thick with humidity and something floral she couldn't name.
Around her, dragons were appearing in ragged clusters, disoriented, bugling to each other across the unfamiliar sky. She counted — thirty, forty — not all of them.
Not all of them had come through.
:Some are still between:, Avarith said, very quietly. :I cannot reach them. The reaching feels — different from not finding someone. I cannot explain it better than that.:
Sariadne's stomach dropped. "Where are we."
:I do not know.: The pause carried the dragon equivalent of turning something over very carefully. :That has never happened before.:
Below them, at the edge of the forest, something white moved. Four-legged, horse-shaped, moving with the easy confidence of a being who knew exactly what they were doing and had considered opinions about it.
It stopped, looked up, and Sariadne had the absolute certainty that it was looking specifically at her.
That, Avarith said, with the tone of a dragon who has encountered something that does not fit any existing category and finds this more interesting than alarming, :is not a runner.:
II. Herald Tessavan — The Pelagris Hills, Valdemar
Lyris had been on edge since before dawn, and she hadn't explained why, and Tessavan had learned over eleven years not to push when her Companion was still working something out.
They were three days into a Pelagris patrol circuit. The assignment fell to Tessavan more often than most because of her reputation — unfair, she maintained — for being difficult to rattle. The Pelagris tended to rattle people. The changed creatures, the way sound moved wrong in certain clearings, the ambient pressure of wild magic that had been accumulating here long enough to start doing things no one had planned. Tessavan was not unrattled by it. She filed the rattle somewhere organized and kept moving.
Lyris had stopped at the edge of a long meadow and was looking at the sky.
:There's a confluence, she said.: Precise, not alarmed. :A large one. I've been feeling it build since before dawn — two nodes at minimum, possibly three, all drawing from this valley. Something is moving through the deep lines.:
"Nodes don't usually do that on their own."
:No. A pause. They don't.:
Tessavan looked at the sky. Nothing yet — blue, early haze, morning light on the hills. Then the quality of the air changed in a way she felt in her back teeth before she saw anything. The sky developed a depth it shouldn't have, and a darkness opened in it and closed, and another opened —
Creatures came through.
Enormous. Scaled. Wings moving with the efficiency of something that had been flying a long time. They came in clusters, disoriented, calling to each other in sounds that carried even from this far below. Tessavan counted — stopped counting around thirty and simply watched.
:They're frightened:, Lyris said. :Not panicking, just frightened and holding together.:
A pause, and Tessavan felt the quality of her Companion's attention shift outward — active, deliberate, directed. :The riders are human. Standard mind-presence. But the bond between rider and creature is unlike anything I've encountered. It isn't what we are to each other. The shape is different. More total. Less room between them.:
"More total than us?"
:Different:, Lyris said, with the precision she used when she wanted to be accurate rather than reassuring. :Not better or lesser. Ours has room for disagreement, for separate thought. Theirs feels more like a single thing that happens to have two parts.: A pause. :I'm going to try the large gold one. She feels like the senior mind in the group. I'll be careful — I don't want to push too hard and startle something that size.:
Tessavan waited. Lyris went still in the inward way, and above them the gold creature — massive, unhurried in her circling despite everything, the calm of something that had decided calm was necessary and had implemented it — checked mid-wingbeat. Looked down.
Directly at them.
:Contact:, Lyris said. :She didn't flinch. She felt me reach and she waited to see what I would do next.: Something that was almost respect in it. :I told her we weren't a threat. She's telling her rider.:
"What is she feeling?"
:Grief.: Lyris's own voice was quieter for it. :Some of them didn't come through whatever brought them here. She can't reach them and she says the not-reaching feels different from not finding someone who is simply gone. She doesn't know what that means yet.: A beat. :Fear for her people — all those riders up there are her responsibility and she knows it. And underneath all of it, something very steady. She has decided that what happened has happened, and now there are problems, and she intends to solve them.:
Tessavan breathed out slowly. "I can work with that."
:I thought you'd say that.: Not quite dry, not quite fond, the particular tone that managed to be both at once.
They moved out into the open meadow together — both of them reading the same situation and arriving at the same conclusion in the same moment, the way they usually did after eleven years.
Tessavan raised her arm, open palm, no weapon. The oldest available opening for I mean you no harm, which worked roughly half the time and was always worth attempting.
The gold creature banked and began to descend.
:I've already sent to Roshan:, Lyris said. :He's relaying to the Collegium.:
"Good."
:Tessavan- The wild magic — the confluence did something. Whatever transit method they use, it interacted with the node draw and redirected them. The energy signature is residual now, dispersed. I think it happened once and closed behind them.: She paused again. :I want to be careful about what I claim before a mage looks at this properly. But I don't think they can go back the way they came.:
"You think that or you know that?"
:I think it:, Lyris said precisely. :I'm not a mage. I know what I can read and I know the edges of that... We need a Tayledras mage. There's a k'Sheyna presence in this sector.:
The gold creature landed at the far end of the meadow with a groundshake Tessavan felt through her feet. The rider dismounted before the wings had fully settled, efficiently — and walked out alone into the open ground between her people and the strangers.
The distance was perhaps thirty feet. The rider crossed half of it and stopped.
Tessavan moved them forward to match, closing to a midpoint that felt right without either of them deciding it consciously.They looked at each other.
The rider was older than Tessavan by perhaps ten years, with the kind of face that had been weathered into itself rather than into age — someone who had spent a long time at altitude, squinting into wind, making decisions that didn't allow for hesitation. She spoke. The language had no foothold Tessavan could find, but the cadence was legible: name, rank, the name of the gold creature behind her. The shape of an introduction.
Tessavan gave hers in return. She added Lyris's name without thinking about it, because it would have been strange not to.
The rider looked at Lyris with an expression that shifted — something she was recalibrating, some category that didn't quite fit.
:She's asking about me:, Lyris said. :Through the gold one. She wants to know what I am.:
"What did you answer?"
:That I'm a Companion. That the word won't mean anything to her yet.: A pause. :She's asking if we're bonded. I told her yes. She wants to know how it works — who chose whom.:
"What did you tell her?"
:The truth. I told her I Chose you. That I searched for you, and read you — who you were, who you could become — and shared the same of myself, and then spoke the Choice.:
Tessavan waited.
:She's very quiet about that.: Lyris paused. :She's asking the gold one something. The gold one is telling her that dragons choose at Hatching — fast, instinctive, no deep reading beforehand. The hatchling knows what it knows and chooses from that. A beat. Sariadne finds the idea of being read that thoroughly before the bond — she doesn't have a word for it yet.:
"Does she find it troubling?"
:No.: Lyris considered. :I think she finds it heavier than she expected. More deliberate.: A pause. :She's asking whether you could have refused.:
Tessavan thought about that moment — the formal words, the warmth of it, the sense of something enormous and attentive waiting with a patience that had nothing anxious in it. "Yes," she said. "I could have."
:I'm telling her.: :She wants to know if anyone ever does.:
"Rarely. But yes."
:The gold one says that a dragon has never been refused at Hatching.: Lyris's tone was thoughtful, working through something. :She says she doesn't know what that would mean. Whether it's even possible. I think that distinction is going to matter later. A bond that could be refused implies something different about the nature of the one doing the Choosing.:
"Tell her we'll help search for the ones who didn't come through," Tessavan said. "And tell her she did the right thing, coming out alone to meet us. That it was well-judged."
Lyris relayed it.
Sariadne looked at Tessavan for a moment with an expression that said she had received the assessment, filed it, and was not going to show what it cost her to hear it just then. Then she turned back to the gold dragon and spoke, and the dragon rumbled low.
:She says:, Lyris told Tessavan, :thank you for coming out to meet her alone as well. She noticed.:
III. Sariadne — The Meadow, Day One
Landing in formation was habit. Even here, even now, the wing sorted itself out with the muscle memory of a thousand drills — Avarith at center, browns and bronzes fanning out, blues and greens tighter in, cargo and herdbeasts settled last. People were shaken but moving. Rider instinct: secure the wing first, come apart later if necessary.
Thirty-one of her people hadn't come through.
Sariadne put that somewhere it would keep and turned to the immediate problems.
The white creatures — Companions, the word had come through whatever channel the gold one was using to reach Avarith, Companions — had arranged themselves at the meadow's edge. The Herald called Tessavan was conferring quietly with her Companion, which meant she was conferring with her Companion in a way that looked like standing still but clearly wasn't.
:She is asking her Companion what I am feeling:, Avarith said. :Her Companion is being careful about what she reports. She does not want to intrude.:
"Can you tell?"
:Yes. She is worried for us. She is thinking about what we need and how to provide it. Another pause. I find her Companion very interesting, Sariadne.:
"I noticed."
:She Chose her:, Avarith said, with the weight of someone turning a new concept over carefully. :She read her first. Everything she was and could become. Then shared the same. Then Chose.: The pause that followed was longer than usual. :I chose you in the first moment I saw you. I knew everything I needed to know.:
"Did you."
:Yes.: Certain, unhesitating, and then — :It is not that one way is better. It is that they are very different ways to arrive at the same thing. I am thinking about what that means.: Sariadne let her think. She had learned years ago that when Avarith said she was thinking about something, the thinking was worth waiting for.
The immediate inventory: eighty-three dragons present, all physically sound, some shaken. Weyrleader Torveth had come down hard on his landing and was walking carefully in a way that meant he wasn't going to admit to an injury until someone made him.
Three hundred and twelve people. Herdbeasts alive and terrified in their nets. Equipment intact. No Thread, which was not surprising given they were apparently not on Pern, but worth confirming. No immediate threats visible.
Thirty-one people somewhere she couldn't reach them.
:Do not:, Avarith said, very quietly. :Not yet. There is too much to do.:
"I know."
:When there is time, I will tell you what I can about what I felt when I reached for them. I want to be careful about what I say before I understand it better.:
Sariadne looked at the Herald across the meadow, who was looking back with the focused attention of someone doing the same inventory she was doing, cataloguing the same unfamiliar variables, arriving at the same conclusions about immediate priorities.
A practical worry. Not sentimental.
She could work with that.
IV. Tessavan — Eight Days
The thirty-one missing riders had been found. Not all of them.
Seven were gone — confirmed lost in whatever transit had brought the wing here, in a way that had no clean Valdemaran word and for which the Pernese words, filtered through approximation and the gold dragon's relay, didn't seem to fit either. Not dead, exactly, or not in the way Tessavan understood death.
Avarith's description, relayed through Lyris with careful precision, was that the reaching felt different from reaching for someone who was simply gone. Something had happened in the Between — in the Void, Tessavan thought, because Between was clearly the Void, that much she'd worked out from the first day — that was more complicated than absence. She hadn't said that to Sariadne yet. She was waiting for the Tayledras mage.
The other twenty-four had come through at scattered points across the Pelagris Hills, disoriented, their dragons shaken, two riders with minor injuries from bad landings. The Companions had found them — Lyris coordinating with the other Heralds on circuit, using the web's distributed reach to route searchers toward the warmth of dragon-bonds moving through the hills like slow lights. The dragons themselves had helped, once they understood what was being attempted, reaching toward each other across the distances in ways that gave the Companions better targeting.
That collaboration had been interesting to watch. No shared language. No established framework. Just two kinds of networked minds working the same problem from different angles and finding, pragmatically, that their approaches were complementary.
Lyris had been thinking about it since.
:The dragon network:, she said one evening, while the camp settled into its eighth-night routine around them, :operates on mindmagic. The same fundamental type as Herald Gifts. Metabolized individually, not node-fed.:
"You're certain."
:As certain as I can be without a mage's read. The bond between Sariadne and Avarith is mindmagic — Mindspeech and Empathy, intensely bilateral, sustained at a level I've never encountered in a human pairing. And the Between — the Void transit — that's something else layered on top. Fetching combined with true magic, the way Firecat Jumping works, but at a scale that makes the Void transit last long enough to be a place rather than a moment.:
Tessavan considered this. "So the dragons are doing what Firecats do."
:A larger, slower version of it, yes. With the targeting requirement that makes visualization so critical. And they're doing something else that I noticed on the second day and haven't been able to fully characterize. Every time a dragon goes between and arrives, there's a flicker in the local energy. Very brief. Resolves almost immediately, too cleanly to be natural.:
"Weather suppression?"
"I think so. Gate construction disrupts weather — it's why mage teams suppress the effect during major workings. The dragons seem to be doing it instinctively on arrival. They don't know they're doing it. I want Winddance to look at it before I say more.:
"Winddance."
:The k'Varis mage in this sector. She's been in the hills since before the dragons arrived. She felt the confluence build. She's been watching the valley. I've been aware of her for three days and I think she's been aware of me for longer.:
"You didn't mention her."
:I wasn't sure of her intentions.: Not quite an apology. :I'm sure now. She's curious, not hostile. And she knows things about this valley that we need to know.:
Across the camp, Sariadne was doing her evening round — checking riders, dragons, the herdbeasts, equipment; and doing it all with the systematic thoroughness of someone who had decided that routine was the thing holding the situation together and intended to maintain it indefinitely. Torveth was with her, walking more easily now on the leg that he had finally admitted was injured on day three when a Healer had simply declined to take no for an answer.
The dynamic between them had been interesting to observe. Torveth was Weyrleader by virtue of his bronze Oranth's victory in Avarith's last mating flight. He was intelligent, proud, and had spent eight days returning to mobility to find that Sariadne had built something functional with the Valdemarans in his absence. He hadn't said anything about it. He didn't need to.
:He's not wrong to be uncomfortable:, Lyris said. :She did make decisions that were his to make, technically. She made them because she had to and she made them well. Both things are true.:
"Is that going to be a problem?"
:Probably:, Lyris said. :But not today.:
V. Sariadne — Eight Days
On the eighth evening Avarith said, :The white one has been talking to a mage in the forest.:
Sariadne looked up from the equipment manifest she'd been working through. "A mage?"
:She lives in the hills. She has been here since before we arrived. She felt something happen when we came through. She has been watching.:
"Avarith. Why didn't you tell me?"
:I was not certain of her intentions. I am certain now. She is coming tomorrow. Lyris asked me this evening if the timing was acceptable.:
Sariadne set down the manifest. "Lyris asked you."
:Yes. Lyris and I have been speaking daily. I thought it was useful for you to know some things before you knew others. I have been — preparing the ground.:
Twenty years of riding Avarith and she could still be surprised. "Have you."
:You do it too:, Avarith said. :You arranged the supply situation before Torveth was mobile enough to have opinions about it. I learned from watching you. The mage's name is Winddance. She knows this valley better than anyone. And she knows something about what happened to us when we came through — what the transit was, what it means.:
Sariadne was quiet for a moment. "Does she know about the thirty-one?"
:Yes. I am — I want to tell you what I can about what I felt, when I reached for them. I said I would when there was time. There is time now, I think. Before Winddance comes.:
Sariadne put the manifest away and sat down properly. Around them the camp was settling into evening — cook fires, the low murmur of riders talking, the occasional rumble of a dragon. Normal sounds in an abnormal place.
"Tell me," she said.
:When we came through:, Avarith said slowly, :the Between felt different. Not wrong at first — just longer. You counted. I counted. At eleven we came out here. The ones who came out at scattered points across the hills — they were in between longer. The confluence caught them differently, pushed them to different resolutions. I could feel them come out, each one, like a knot untangling. Twenty-four knots.:
"And the seven?"
:The seven" — Avarith stopped. When she continued her mindvoice had the quality of someone choosing words with great care. :They did not come out. But the reaching does not feel like reaching for someone who is gone. When a rider loses a dragon, or a dragon loses a rider, there is an — ending. A silence where something was. I know what that feels like.: Another pause. :This does not feel like that. It feels like reaching into a place where the sound is still traveling but has not arrived yet.:
Sariadne sat with that for a long moment. "You think they're still in between."
I think they are in the Void, Avarith said carefully. I think what happened when the confluence hit us in transit — I think it disrupted the between for those seven the way — Lyris used a comparison I did not fully understand, about mages and Gates. She said she would explain it better with Winddance present.
"All right." Sariadne's voice was even. She was very practiced at even. "Tomorrow, then."
:Yes. Sariadne, I am sorry I did not tell you sooner. I needed to understand it better before I —:
"I know." She did know. Avarith didn't speak until she was certain. It was one of the things Sariadne had relied on for twenty years. "You were right to wait."
Above them, the unfamiliar stars were coming out over the unfamiliar hills. Somewhere in those hills a mage had been watching them for eight days and had things to say that Sariadne was not going to enjoy hearing. Somewhere in the Void — if Avarith was right, if the reaching meant what Avarith thought it meant — seven of her people were suspended in the cold and dark between a world they'd left and one they hadn't reached.
She breathed out slowly.
Not yet, Avarith said, very gently. There is too much to do.
"I know," Sariadne said. "But soon."
Soon, Avarith agreed. I will be here.
VI. Tessavan — Winddance
The k'Varis mage came out of the treeline at dawn, unhurried, with a hawk on her shoulder and the particular quality of movement that meant mage, trained, powerful, and aware of everything in a considerable radius. Behind her in the shadow of the trees several dyheli stood watching with their large dark eyes.
Tessavan had known she was coming. Lyris had told her the evening before, after Eshrel had confirmed the timing with Avarith. The chain of communication that had developed over eight days without anyone formally establishing it — Avarith to Lyris, Lyris to Tessavan, Eshrel to Winddance, occasionally a dyheli moving information along channels Tessavan didn't fully follow — had become the actual nervous system of the situation, more functional than anything the formal diplomatic process had produced.
Winddance was perhaps sixty, white-haired in the Tayledras fashion, with the kind of face that had been doing difficult things for a long time and had settled into an expression of alert, considered calm. She looked at the dragon camp, but seemed to find this more interesting than alarming.
She looked at Avarith for a long moment before she looked at anyone else.
:She's greeting her:, Lyris said quietly. :Old formal. The kind you'd use for: — a pause. :She used the form for a node-spirit or a very old changed creature. Something ancient and significant.:
"Is Avarith offended?"
:No.: Something like amusement in it.: Avarith is correcting her gently. She is not a spirit. She is a dragon. Winddance finds this even better:
From across the meadow, clearly audible, Winddance said something in Tayledras that had the unmistakable cadence of relief.
Sariadne, standing beside Avarith, glanced at Tessavan with an expression that said: your people are strange and also I find this acceptable.
Tessavan made the introductions — Windance's Valdemaran was fluent, and Herald Solenne had arrived two days prior with enough Rethwellan-Pernese bridging to make three-way communication workable if slow. They settled in the meadow, the gold dragon a warm presence at Sariadne's back, the dyheli drifting closer in ones and twos with the casual purposefulness of beings who had decided to be interested and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
One of them — a young female with alert dark eye — walked directly up to the brown dragon Sariadne had brought to the meeting and stood looking at him with an expression Tessavan could only describe as considering. The brown dragon lowered his head slightly. Not threatening. Curious. The dyheli took one step closer.
:Avarith says:, Lyris reported, :that he finds her mind-presence very open. He says it is — he uses a Pernese word I don't have an equivalent for. The closest I can get is unlatched. Like a door that is simply standing open because it never occurred to anyone to close it.:
"That's a good description of dyheli."
:He doesn't find it alarming:, Lyris said. :He finds it restful. Winddance is watching this very carefully.:
The Tayledras mage had indeed gone still in the way mages went still when they were reading something — outward attention fully extended, inner focus absolute. Her hawk shifted on her shoulder and settled.
After a moment she said, in Valdemaran, to no one in particular: "The substrate. Yes. I thought so."
"What did you think?", Tessavan said.
Winddance looked at her, then at Avarith, then at the dyheli and the brown dragon, still regarding each other across two feet of meadow grass.
"The mindmagic. The dragons' network — the way it operates underneath conscious direction, shaping outcomes rather than routing information. The dyheli work similarly at that level. Different architecture. The dyheli are open and lateral; the dragons are closed and vertical. But the mechanism underneath —" She paused. "I want to be careful. But I think they are running on the same kind of thing."
Sariadne had been following this through Solenne's relay. When the translation reached her she said something short and precise.
"She asks," Solenne said, "what that means practically."
"Practically," Winddance said, "it means the dyheli may understand the dragons better than anyone else here, and may have information about the dragons' network that the dragons themselves cannot articulate." She looked at the young dyheli, who had now closed the distance to the brown dragon entirely and was standing close enough to breathe on him. "And it means I was wrong about what I read in the valley's energy when your wing arrived." She looked at Sariadne directly. "I thought the transit residual was something foreign. Something I had no category for. I've been reconsidering."
Sariadne waited.
"The bond is mindmagic," Aelindra said. "Intensely bilateral, sustained at a level I've never seen in a human pairing, but the same fundamental type. That part I understand." She paused. "The transit — the between — that is something else. It is Fetching combined with true magic, the way Firecats Jump. But the scale of it means the transit goes through the Void rather than across normal space." She looked at Sariadne steadily. "You know the Void as Between. We know it as the plane that Gate travel passes through. It is the same place."
Solenne translated. Sariadne's expression didn't change but something around her eyes did.
"She asks," Solenne said, after a moment, "what that means for the ones who didn't come through."
Winddance was quiet for a moment. Tessavan watched her choose her words with the care of someone who understood that what she said next was going to matter for a long time.
"When a Gate is disrupted during construction," Winddance said, "the disruption is catastrophic for the mage building it. The confluence of nodes that redirected your wing acted like a disruption to a forming Gate — it hit the Between transit while it was open, while the Void was being traversed." She paused. "The dragons that had already completed their transit were unaffected. The ones redirected to different points in the hills — the confluence pushed them to alternate resolutions. But the seven —" She stopped. "A disrupted Gate does not simply fail. The transit is already in the Void. It cannot go back. And if the disruption prevents it from resolving to a destination —"
"They're still in the Void," Tessavan said.
"I believe so." Winddance's voice was careful. "The Void is a plane of reality. It has properties. It has been used deliberately by mages — as an energy sink, as a refuge for prepared spirits. It is not nothing." She looked at Sariadne. "I do not know what being in the Void without preparation means for a dragon and rider. I do not know if they are alive in any meaningful sense. I know that the Void is not simply absence. I wanted to be certain before I said this. I am as certain as I can be."
The translation took longer than usual. Solenne's voice was steady throughout.
Sariadne listened. Her face did the thing Tessavan had seen it do before — the thing where a great deal was happening that was not going to be visible, filed somewhere internal, held there by the same force of will that had walked her out into the meadow alone on the first day.
Then she said something to Avarith that Tessavan didn't need translated.
Avarith's answer was low, ruminative, a sound that had no human equivalent. She lowered her head until it was level with Sariadne's shoulder.
:She told her she was right:, Lyris said quietly. :That the reaching is different from reaching for someone who is gone. Avarith says: yes. I have been trying to tell you.:
Tessavan looked at the valley — the morning light on the river, the natural terrace along the eastern wall, the dyheli and the brown dragon still standing together in the grass, the Pelagris Hills rolling north into ridgelines that caught the light and held it.
"There's more, isn't there?" Tessavan prompted the mage.
Winddance looked at her. Then at Sariadne. Then she said: "The confluence that redirected your wing is gone. Dispersed when you came through. It cannot be recreated deliberately — it was a specific intersection of node draws at a specific moment." She paused. "And the Void transit that brought you here — the distance involved was far greater than a planetary between. Even if the confluence could be recreated, a return transit through the Void over that distance —" She stopped. "I don't believe it's possible. I'm sorry."
Solenne translated.
The camp was very quiet. The cook fires had burned down. Someone's dragon rumbled softly in the upper meadow, and another answered.
Sariadne stood with it for a long moment. Then she straightened — just the slight reordering of weight that meant a decision had been made — and said something to Avarith that Tessavan couldn't follow, short and flat, the tone of someone closing a door carefully rather than slamming it.
Then she turned to Tessavan and said, through Solenne: "The hills. You said the Queen has been thinking about the hills."
"Yes," Tessavan said.
"I want to see them today."
EPILOGUE -- Three Months Later
The Weyr -- it was called a Weyr now, officially, after two months of negotiation and one formal signing ceremony that had involved the Queen, three Council members, two Tayledras elders, a very patient dyheli matriarch, and Sariadne standing in Whites she'd been gifted for the occasion looking like she was tolerating it all with the same force of will she applied to everything else -- sat in the valley in the Pelagris Hills as though it had always been there.
It hadn't, of course. Three months ago the valley had been empty border territory. Now it had low stone walls that curved rather than squared, wide openings sized for wingspan, inner chambers too tall for human comfort that suited a people who spent half their time at altitude. The Valdemaran stonemason guild had arrived in week three, spent two days staring, and then pitched in with the methodical enthusiasm of professionals handed an interesting problem.
Tessavan stood at the edge of what would eventually be the main courtyard and watched two young blues practice their landing approaches. The Weyr wasn't complete -- wouldn't be complete for another year at least -- but it was functional. Livable. Home, or close enough to it.
:Winddance is coming,: Lyris said. :With results.:
Tessavan turned. The Tayledras mage was crossing the courtyard with the unhurried stride of someone who had been walking these hills for forty years and intended to continue. She had a scroll case under one arm and the particular expression that meant she had worked something out and wanted to explain it.
"The Void readings?" Tessavan asked.
"Yes." Windance stopped beside her. "I wanted to be certain before I said anything to Sariadne. I'm certain now."
Tessavan waited.
"The seven are still there," Aelindra said. "In the Void. I've been taking readings at the confluence point -- where they went in -- every week for three months. The resonance is still present. Faint, but present. They haven't dispersed. They haven't -- ended."
"Can you reach them."
"Not with anything I have." Aelindra's voice was careful. "The Void isn't empty, but it's also not accessible in the way normal space is accessible. A Gate could theoretically be built to that specific resonance point, but --" She stopped. "Building a Gate into the Void without a destination anchor on the other side is the kind of working that kills mages. And even if it could be built, even if someone survived building it, there's no guarantee the seven would be in a state to transit back. They've been in the Void for three months. I don't know what that does to a mind."
"Does Sariadne know?"
"She knows I've been taking readings. She doesn't know the results yet." Aelindra paused. "I wanted to talk to you first. Because you're going to need to help her decide what to do with this information."
"What do you mean, what to do with it."
"I mean," Aelindra said quietly, "that knowing they're there and not being able to reach them might be harder than not knowing. That's a decision she has to make -- whether she tells the families, whether she tells the Weyr. Whether she keeps trying. I can keep taking readings. I can keep looking for a way to build the Gate safely. But I can't promise it's possible. And I can't promise how long the resonance will hold."
Tessavan was quiet for a moment. Across the courtyard, Sariadne had emerged from the inner chambers and was walking toward them with the focused attention she brought to everything. She'd seen them talking. She'd worked out it was important.
"She's going to want to try," Tessavan said. "You know that."
"Yes." Aelindra looked at Sariadne approaching. "I know that. Which is why I needed to be absolutely certain before I told her. Because if there's a way to reach them, we'll find it. And if there isn't --" She stopped. "Then at least she'll know she tried everything."
Sariadne reached them. She looked at Aelindra, then at Tessavan, then back to Aelindra. She didn't ask. She just waited.
Aelindra told her.
The translation came through Solenne, who had taken up semi-permanent residence at the Weyr as chief linguist and who had gotten very good at translating difficult news in the past three months. Sariadne listened without interrupting. Her face did the thing it always did -- the careful filing away of information, the visible effort of holding something together that wanted to come apart.
When Solenne finished, Sariadne was quiet for a long moment. Then she said something short and flat.
"She says," Solenne translated, "that she wants you to keep looking. That she wants weekly reports. That she will tell the families herself."
Aelindra nodded. "I will."
Sariadne said something else, longer this time.
"She says," Solenne said, "thank you for being certain before you spoke. She says that mattered."
"I know," Aelindra said.
Sariadne turned and walked back toward the inner chambers. Not quickly. Not slowly. The same measured pace she used for everything. Behind her, Avarith lifted her head from where she'd been sunning on the upper terrace and rumbled low -- not loud enough to carry, but Tessavan saw it.
:*Avarith is telling her that she was right,*: Lyris said quietly. :*That the reaching has never stopped feeling like reaching toward something that is still traveling. She says: I will keep reaching. For as long as it takes.*:
"Will it help?" Tessavan asked.
:*I don't know,*: Lyris said. :*But it won't hurt. And sometimes that's all you can do.*:
---
Two weeks later, Davan arrived from Haven with a small party and a formal letter from the Queen. He found Tessavan in what passed for a Herald's quarters in the Weyr -- a room sized for humans, near the entrance, with a window that looked out over the valley and the Pelagris Hills beyond.
"The Council approved the final compact terms," he said, settling into the chair across from her. "All trade agreements, all boundary designations, all protocols for between-transit and weather suppression. The Tayledras signed off last week. The dyheli --" He paused. "The dyheli sent a representative who said something that Aelindra translated as 'we find this acceptable and will be watching with interest.' Which I'm told is enthusiastic approval by dyheli standards."
"It is," Tessavan said.
"The Queen wants you to stay," Davan said. "Permanently. As the Herald assigned to the Weyr. Official liaison between Valdemar and -- them." He gestured vaguely toward the courtyard, where two greens were circling and a blue was landing with the particular precision of a dragon who had practiced this approach two hundred times and intended to get it right.
Tessavan looked at him. "That's not a field posting. That's a permanent station."
"Yes."
"I've never held a permanent station."
"I know." Davan looked at her steadily. "The Queen thinks you're the right person. I agree with her. More importantly --" He paused. "Sariadne asked for you specifically. Through Avarith, through Lyris, through channels I'm not entirely sure I understand. She wants you here. And given that the entire compact is built on the relationship you two established in the first eight days, the Queen is inclined to honor that request."
Tessavan was quiet for a moment. Outside the window, a brown dragon was teaching a young green how to land properly on the terrace. The green was overshooting. The brown was patient.
:*She wants you to say yes,*: Lyris said. :*For the record.*:
"I wasn't going to say no."
:*I know. But I wanted to say it anyway.*:
Tessavan looked at Davan. "Yes," she said. "I'll stay."
Davan smiled -- a rare thing from a man who had spent forty years teaching at the Collegium and had long since settled into an expression of professional neutrality. "Good," he said. "Because I wasn't sure what I'd tell the Queen if you said no."
"You could have told her I'm difficult."
"She knows that already." Davan stood. "She's counting on it."
---
That evening, Tessavan found Sariadne on the upper terrace where Avarith preferred to sun. The gold dragon was there, eyes half-lidded, radiating warmth into the cooling air. Sariadne was sitting with her back against Avarith's foreleg, looking out at the valley.
Tessavan sat down beside her. They'd done this before -- sat together without talking, working through things that didn't need words. It had become a routine over three months. A thing they did.
After a while Sariadne said something. Tessavan had learned enough Pernese by now to catch the shape of it: a question about staying.
"Yes," Tessavan said. "I'm staying."
Sariadne nodded. Said something else that Tessavan didn't quite catch.
:She says,: Lyris translated, :that she is glad. She says it would have been harder without you.:
"Tell her it would have been harder without her too."
:I am telling her,: Lyris said. :Avarith is also telling her. She is feeling something complicated right now. Gratitude and grief together. She is holding both.:
Tessavan looked at the valley -- the river catching the last light, the Pelagris Hills darkening into evening, the scattered cook fires of the Weyr beginning to glow in the growing dusk. Somewhere in the Void, seven people were suspended between worlds. Somewhere in Haven, a Queen was signing papers that made this official. Somewhere in the hills, a Tayledras mage was taking readings and refusing to stop looking.
Here, in the valley, eighty-three dragons and three hundred and twelve people were building a home.
It wasn't the home they'd planned for. It wasn't the home they'd left. But it was a home. And sometimes, Tessavan thought, that was enough.
:Avarith says,: Lyris said quietly, :that she can still feel them. The seven. She says the reaching has not changed. She says: I will keep reaching. For as long as there is something to reach for.:
"Tell her we'll keep looking," Tessavan said.
:I am telling her,: Lyris said. :She says, I know. That is why we are still here.: