Rhiannon - Dragonrider

Chapter Twenty Two - A Tricky Operation

Jenko was flat out in bed when I went up to him.

I didn't really know what to say. I mean... what do you say when you've just dislocated somebody's shoulder... and you've not even done anything wrong.

"I'm sorry I hit you so hard," I managed at last. "You might have spotted, I'm not really fully in control yet."

"You looked pretty much in control from where I was standing," he answered with a feeble sort of a grin.

"Anyway," I went on, "I've brought you some lunch but after that you need to get up. I promised Carodoc that I'd give you a hand with tidying up the Mews but you're going to have to be seen to be helping."

"Thanks," he said. "I really wasn't looking forward to doing it on my own."

I sat on the bed next to him but he covered his face with his hands and looked away. He didn't want me to see that he was crying.

'What's the point?' he said and it took me a while to work out that he wasn't saying it out loud. His thoughts were just leaking out into the cloud world... and they were so loud I couldn't help but overhear. 'What is the point? Zalibar's bound to chuck me out now... and then I'll be no use to Janenas whatsoever... and I don't know what he'll do with me then.'

He lay there for a few more moments with his face covered, silently sobbing. Then, with an enormous effort of will, he pulled himself together. "I'm sorry," he said to me. "You have enough problems of your own. You certainly don't need mine."

"Come on, eat something," I told him gently. I suddenly realised that I really didn't want him to get chucked out... and it wasn't just because he took a load of stuff from Zalibar that would otherwise come in my direction. I mean... I wasn't complaining about that... but that wasn't the whole thing. I was sort of starting to enjoy his company too.

"Let me have a think," I told him. "I owe you that much, at least, for the mess I made of your shoulder."

"If you can think of anything, I'd love to hear it because I, quite frankly, am completely out of ideas," he answered with another one of his grin type things before making a start on his lunch.

I went round to the girls' side of the curtain and threw myself down on my bed. It was obvious that Jenko needed help... but it was just as obvious that the help he needed was way beyond anything I could do. I needed to talk to Psion.

So I flipped into the cloud world and, making sure my attention didn't wander towards the dazzling lights in the Edifice, I swept my mind along the rocky shoreline at the bottom of the cliffs where I knew Psion would be lurking. I couldn't immediately spot him, but I definitely got the feeling that there was something up. I swept back again and found something at the other end, up by the village.

I felt out in the direction of whatever it was. I couldn't really work it out at first but, as I investigated, I started to see, for the first time, that there was a sort of background to the cloud world... as if the clouds were stuck onto a sheet of paper or something... and, in this one particular spot, there was a hole in the paper.

I probed a bit deeper and suddenly, with this funny 'click' type thing, the missing stuff jumped back into place and I could see Psion dozing amongst some rocks in a quiet little cove.

"Wake up, sleepy head!" I called, not trying particularly hard to keep the smugness out of my voice.

"Good afternoon, Young Mistress!" he responded with a yawn and a stretch. "People aren't supposed to be able to find me like that. I'm going to have to build up my defences."

"I wouldn't bother," I answered. "Let's face it, I know you pretty well and I had a fair idea about where you'd be lurking."

"Avoiding drawing undue attention to myself, if you please!"