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By Root 2524 0

the pot in the kitchen press and trotted back. He was conscious of a weariness, in mind and body. Mirrim was the most awkward person! If he’d let her and Path come . . . Well, he’d have learned the verdict on Ruth sooner or later. Why wasn’t Ruth upset? Maybe if he had been completely willing for his dragon to experience that part of his personality, Ruth would have matured. Jaxom railed at the fact that they had always been kept from being full dragon and rider: brought up as they were in the Hold, instead of the Weyr where the mating of dragons was an understood and accepted fact of the Weyr life. It wasn’t as if Ruth were immune to sexual experience. He was always present when Jaxom had sex.

I love with you and I love you. But my back itches fiercely.

That was clear enough, Jaxom thought as he hurried through the forest to his dragon.

Someone was with Ruth, scratching his back for him. If it was Mirrim . . . Jaxom strode forward angrily.

Sharra is with me, Ruth told him calmly.

“Sharra?” Swallowing an irrational surge of anger, he acknowledged her presence. “I’ve got the oil. Ruth’s got a bad flaky patch. I’ve been neglecting him.”

“You’ve never neglected Ruth,” she said so emphatically that Jaxom had to smile in surprise.

“Did Mirrim . . .” he began, holding the oil pot out so she could dip her hand in.

“Yes, and no sympathy from any of us, let me assure you.” Her anger translated itself to an overly hard rub on Ruth’s back that made him complain. “Sorry, Ruth. They sent Mirrim back to Benden!”

Jaxom glanced up the beach to where Path had landed and, indeed, the green dragon was gone.

“And you were sent to me?” He found he didn’t mind Sharra: her presence was, in fact, a boon.

“Not sent . . .” Sharra faltered. “I was . . . I was called!” She finished her sentence in a rush.

“Called?” Jaxom left off rubbing oil into Ruth’s back and looked at her. Her face was a pale blur with dark spots for her eyes and mouth.

“Yes, called. Ruth called me. He said Mirrim . . .”

“He said?” Jaxom interrupted her as her words finally sank in. “You can hear Ruth?”

She needed to hear me when you were sick, Jaxom, Ruth said at the same moment Sharra was saying out loud, “I’ve been able to hear him ever since you were so ill.”

“Ruth, why did you call Sharra?”

She is good for you. You need her. What Mirrim said, even what N’ton said but he was kinder, has made you close up. I do not like it when I cannot hear your mind. Sharra will open it for us.

“Will you do that for us, Sharra?”

This time Jaxom didn’t hesitate. He took Sharra’s hands, oily as they were, and drew her to him, inordinately pleased that she was so nearly his height and her mouth so close to his. All he had to do was tilt his head slightly.

“I would do anything for you, Jaxom, anything for you and Ruth!” Her lips moved delightfully against his until he made more speech impossible.

A warmth began in his belly, dispelling the cold closeness that distressed his dragon and himself—a warmth that had to do with Sharra’s lithe body against his, the scent of her long heavy hair in his nostrils as he kissed her, the pressure of her arms on the skin of his back. And her hands, flat against his waist, were not the hands of a healer, but the hands of a lover.

They made love in the soft warm darkness, delighting in each other and fully responsive to the moment of ecstasy that came, totally aware that Ruth loved with them.

CHAPTER XX

At the Mountain and at Ruatha Hold,

15.10.18–15.10.20

Jaxom could not feel easy looking at the eastern face of the mountain. He arranged himself, Sharra and Ruth so that they did not have to see it. The other five made themselves comfortable in a loose semicircle about Ruth.

The seventeen banded fire-lizards—for at the last moment, Sebell and Brekke asked to be included in the group—settled on Ruth’s back. The more trained fire-lizards, the better, reasoned Master Robinton, which, he went on to say, gave him the chance to include Zair.

Word of the ancients’ settlement at the high Plateau had spread throughout Pern with a swiftness