“What’s she doing here? How dare she?” Brekke was shrieking in a voice shrill with lust as well as fury. “These are my dragons! How dare she! I’ll kill her!” The litany broke into a piercing scream of agony as Brekke doubled up, right shoulder hunching as if to protect her head.

“My eye! My eye! My eye!” Brekke was covering her right eye, her body writhing in an uncontrollable, unconscious mimicry of the aerial battle to which she was tuned.

“Kill! I’ll kill her! No! No! She cannot escape. Go away!” Suddenly Brekke’s face turned crafty and her whole body writhed sensuously.

The bronze riders were changing now, no longer completely in the thrall of the strange mental rapport with their beasts. Fear, doubt, indecision, hopelessness registered on their faces. Some portion of the human awareness was returning, fighting with the dragon responsiveness and the interrupted mating flight. When T’bor reached for Brekke, human fear was reflected in his eyes.

But she was still totally committed to Wirenth, and the incredible triumph on her face registered Wirenth’s success in evading capture, in dragging Prideth from the encircling queens.

“Prideth has risen, T’bor! The queens are fighting,” F’nor shouted.

One rider began to scream and the sound broke the link of two others who stared, dazed, at Brekke’s contorting body.

“Don’t touch her!” F’nor cried, moving to fend off T’bor and another man. He moved as close to her as possible but her ranging eyes did not see him or anything in the weyr.

Then she seemed to spring, her left eye widening with an unholy joy, her lips bared as her teeth fastened on an imaginary target, her body arching with the empathic effort.

Suddenly she hissed, craning her head sideways, over her right shoulder, while her face reflected incredulity, horror, hatred. As suddenly, her body was seized with a massive convulsion. She screamed again, this time a mortal shriek of unbelievable terror and anguish. One hand went to her throat, the other batted at some unseen attacker. Her body, poised on her toes, strained in an agonized stretch. With a cry that was more gasp than scream, she whirled. In her eyes was Brekke’s soul again, tortured, terrified. Then her eyes closed, her body sagged in such an alarming collapse that F’nor barely caught her in time.

The stones of the weyr itself seemed to reverberate with the mourning dirge of the dragons.

“T’bor, send someone for Manora,” F’nor cried in a hoarse voice as he bore Brekke to her couch. Her body was so light in his arms—as if all substance had been drained from it. He held her tightly to his chest with one arm, fumbling to find the pulse in her neck with the free hand. It beat—faintly.

What had happened? How could Kylara have allowed Prideth near Wirenth?