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?
“They’re both gone,” T’bor was saying as he stumbled into the sleeping room and sagged down on the clothes chest, trembling violently.
“Where’s Kylara? Where is she?”
“Don’t know. I left this morning to fly patrols.” T’bor scrubbed at his face, shock bleaching the ruddy color from his skin. “The lake was polluted . . .”
F’nor piled furs around Brekke’s motionless body. He held his hand against her chest, feeling its barely perceptible rise and fall.
F’nor?
It was Canth, his call so faint, so piteous that the man closed his eyes against the pain in his dragon’s tone.
He felt someone grip his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see the pity, the understanding in T’bor’s. “There’s nothing more you can do for her right now, F’nor.”
“She’ll want to die. Don’t let her!” he said. “Don’t let Brekke die!”
Canth was on the ledge, his eyes glowing dully. He was swaying with exhaustion. F’nor encircled the bowed head with his arms, their mutual grief so intense they seemed afire with pain.
It was too late. Prideth had risen. Too close to Wirenth. Not even the queens could help. I tried F’nor I tried. She—she fell so fast. And she turned on me. Then went between. I could not find her between.
They stood together, immobile.
Lessa and Manora saw them as Ramoth circled into High Reaches Weyr. At Canth’s bellow, Ramoth had come out of the Hatching Ground, loudly calling for her rider, demanding an explanation of such behavior.
But F’lar, believing he knew Canth’s errand, had reassured her, until Ramoth had informed them that Wirenth was rising. And Ramoth knew instantly when Prideth rose, too, and had gone between to Nabol to stop the mortal combat if she could.
Once Wirenth had dragged Prideth between, Ramoth had returned to Benden Weyr for Lessa. The Benden dragons set up their keen so that the entire Weyr soon knew of the disaster. But Lessa waited only long enough for Manora to gather her medicines.
As she and the headwoman reached the ledge of Brekke’s weyr and the motionless mourners, Lessa looked anxiously to Manora. There was something dangerous in such stillness.
“They will work this out together. They are together, more now than ever before,” Manora said in a voice that was no more than a rough whisper. She passed them quietly, her head bent and her shoulders drooping as she hurried down the corridor to Brekke.
“Ramoth?” asked Lessa, looking down to where her queen had settled on the sands. It was not that she doubted Manora’s wisdom, but to see F’nor so—so reduced—upset her. He was much like F’lar . . .
Ramoth gave a soft croon and folded her wings. On the ledges around the Bowl, the other dragons began to settle in uneasy vigil.
As Lessa entered the Cavern of the Weyr, she glanced away from the empty dragon couch and then halted midstep. The tragedy was only minutes past so the nine bronze riders were still in severe shock.
As well they might be, Lessa realized with deep sympathy. To be roused to performance intensity and then be, not only disappointed, but disastrously deprived of two queens at once! Whether a bronze won the queen or not, there was a subtle, deep attachment between a queen and the bronzes of her Weyr . . .
However, Lessa concluded briskly, someone in this benighted Weyr ought to have sense enough to be constructive. Lessa broke this train of thought off abruptly. Brekke had been the responsible member.
She turned, about to go in search of some stimulant for the dazed riders when she heard the uneven steps and stertorous breathing of someone in a hurry. Two green fire lizards darted into the weyr, hovering, chirping excitedly as a young girl came in at a half-run. She could barely manage the heavy tray she carried and she was weeping, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Oh!” she cried, seeing Lessa. She stifled her sobs, tried to bob a curtsey and blot her nose on her shoulder at one and the same time.
“Well, you’re a child with wits about you,” Lessa said briskly, but not without sympathy. She took one end of the tray and helped the girl deposit it on the table. “You brought strong spirits?” she asked, gesturing to the anonymous earthenware bottles.
“All I could find.” And the consonant ended in a sob.
“Here” and Lessa held out a half-filled cup, nodding toward the nearest rider. But the child was motionless, staring at the curtain, her face twisted with grief, the tears flowing unnoticed down her cheeks. She was washing her hands together with such violent motions that the skin stretched white across her knuckles.
“You’re Mirrim?”
The child nodded, her eyes not leaving the closed entrance. Above her the greens whirred, echoing her distress.
“Manora is with Brekke, Mirrim.”
“But—but she’ll die. She’ll die. They say the rider dies, too, when the dragon is killed. They say . . .”
“They say entirely too much,” Lessa began and then Manora stood in the doorway.
“She lives. Sleep is the kindest blessing now.” She flipped the curtain shut and glanced at the men. “These could do with sleep. Have their dragons returned? Who’s this?” Manora touched Mirrim’s cheek, gently. “Mirrim? I’d heard you had green lizards.”
“Mirrim had the sense to bring the tray,” Lessa said, catching Manora’s eye.
“Brekke—Brekke would expect—” and the girl could go no further.
“Brekke is a sensible person,” Manora said briskly and folded Mirrim’s fingers around a cup, giving her a shove toward a rider. “Help us now. These men need our help.”
In a daze, Mirrim moved, rousing herself to help actively when the bronze rider could not seem to get his fingers to the cup.
“My lady,” murmured Manora, “we need the Weyrleader. Ista and Telgar Weyrs would be fighting Thread by now and . . .”
“I’m here,” F’lar said from the weyr entrance. “And I’ll take a shot of that, too. Cold between is in my bones.”
“We’ve more fools than we need right now,” Lessa exclaimed, but her face brightened to see him there.
“Where’s T’bor?”
Manora indicated Brekke’s room.
“All right. Then where’s Kylara?”
And the cold of between was in his voice.
By evening some order had been restored to the badly demoralized High Reaches Weyr. The bronze dragons had all returned, been fed, and the bronze riders weyred with their beasts, sufficiently drugged to sleep.
Kylara had been found. Or, rather, returned, by the green rider assigned to Nabol Hold.
“Someone’s got to be quartered there,” the man said, his face grim, “but not me or my green.”
“Please report, S’goral.” F’lar nodded his appreciation of the rider’s feelings.
“She arrived at the Hold this morning, with some tale about the lake here being fouled and no kegs to hold any supply of water. I remember thinking that Prideth looked too gold to be out. She’s been off cycle, you know. But she settled down all right on the ridge with my green so I went about teaching those Holders how to manage their fire lizards.” S’goral evidently did not have much use for his pupils. “She went in with the Nabolese Holder. Later I saw their lizards sunning on the ledge outside the Lord’s sleeping room.” He paused, glancing at his audience and looking grimmer still. “We were taking a breather when my green cried out. Sure enough there were dragons, high up. I knew it was a mating fight. You can’t mistake it. Then Prideth started to bugle. Next thing I knew, she was down among Nabol’s pri
ze breeding stock. I waited a bit, sure that she’d be aware of what was happening, but when there wasn’t a sign of her, I went looking. Nabol’s bodyguards were at the door. The Lord didn’t want to be disturbed. Well, I disturbed him. I stopped him doing what he was doing. And that’s what was doing it! Setting Prideth off. That and being so close to rising herself, and seeing a mating flight right over her, so to speak. You don’t abuse your dragon that way.” He shook his head then. “There wasn’t anything me and my green could do there. So we took off for Fort Weyr, for their queens. But—” and he held out his hands, indicating his helplessness.
“You did as you should, S’goral,” F’lar told him.
“There wasn’t anything else I could do,” the man insisted, as if he could not rid himself of some lingering feeling of guilt.
“We were lucky you were there at all,” Lessa said. “We might never have known where Kylara was.”
“What I want to know is what’s going to happen to her—now?” A hard vindictiveness replaced the half-shame, half-guilt in the rider’s face.
“Isn’t loss of a dragon enough?” T’bor roused himself to ask.
“Brekke lost her dragon, too,” S’goral retorted angrily, “and she was doing what she should!”
“Nothing can be decided in heat or hatred, S’goral,” F’lar said, rising to his feet. “We’ve no precedents—” He broke off, turning to D’ram and G’narish. “Not in our time, at least.”
“Nothing should be decided in heat or hatred,” D’ram echoed, “but there were such incidents in our time.” Unaccountably he flushed “We’d better assign some bronzes here, F’lar. The High Reaches men and beasts may not be fit tomorrow. And with Thread falling every day, no Weyr can be allowed to relax its vigilance. For anything.”
CHAPTER XIII
Night at Fort Weyr:
Six Days Later
ROBINTON was weary, with fatigue of the heart and mind that did not lift to the thrill the Masterharper usually experienced on dragonback. In fact, he almost wished he’d not had to come to Fort Weyr tonight These past six days, with everyone reacting in varying ways to the tragedy at High Reaches, had been very difficult. (Must the High Reaches always push the knottiest problems on Pern?) In a way, Robinton wished that they could have put off this Red Star viewing until minds and eyes had cleared and were ready for this challenge. And yet, perhaps the best solution was to press this proposed expedition to the Red Star as far and as fast as possible—as an anodyne to the depression that had followed the deaths of the two queens. Robinton knew that F’lar wanted to prove to the Lord Holders that the dragonmen were in earnest in their desire to clear the air of Thread, but for once, the Masterharper found himself without a private opinion. He did not know if F’lar was wise in pushing the issue, particularly now. Particularly when the Benden Weyrleader wasn’t recovered from T’ron’s slash. When no one was sure how T’kul was managing in Southern Weyr or if the man intended to stay there. When all Pern was staggered by the battle and deaths of the two queens. The people had enough to rationalize, had enough to do with the vagaries of Threadfall complicating the seasonal mechanics of plowing and seeding. Leave the attack of the Red Star until another time.
Other dragons were arriving at Fort Weyr and the brown on which Robinton rode took his place in the circling pattern. They’d be landing on the Star Stones where Wansor, Fandarel’s glassman, had set up the distance-viewer.
“Have you had a chance to look through this device?” Robinton asked the brown’s rider.
“Me? Hardly, Masterharper. Everyone else wants to. It’ll stay there until I’ve had my turn, I daresay.”
“Has Wansor mounted it permanently at Fort Weyr?”
“It was discovered at Fort Weyr,” the rider replied, a little defensively. “Fort’s the oldest Weyr, you know. P’zar feels it should stay at Fort. And the Mastersmith, he agrees. His man Wansor keeps saying that there may be good reason. Something to do with elevation and angles and the altitude of Fort Weyr mountains. I didn’t understand.”
No more do I, Robinton thought. But he intended to. He was in agreement with Fandarel and Terry that there should be an interchange of knowledge between Crafts. Indisputably, Pern had lost many of the bemoaned techniques due to Craft jealousy. Lose a Craftmaster early, before he had transmitted all the Craft secrets, and a vital piece of information was lost forever. Not that Robinton, nor his predecessor, had ever espoused that ridiculous prerogative. There were five senior harpers who knew everything that Robinton did and three promising journeymen studying diligently to increase the safety factor.
It was one matter to keep dangerous secrets privy, quite another to guard Craft skills to extinction.
The brown dragon landed on the ridge height of Fort Weyr and Robinton slid down the soft shoulder. He thanked the beast. The brown rose a half-length from the landing and then seemed to drop off the side of the cliff, down into the Bowl, making room for someone else to land.
Glows had been set on the narrow crown of the height, leading toward the massive Star Stones, their black bulk silhouetted against the lighter night sky. Among those gathered there, Robinton could distinguish the Mastersmith’s huge figure, Wansor’s pear-shaped and Lessa’s slender one.
On the largest and flattest rock of the Star Stones, Robinton saw the tripod arrangement on which the long barrel of the distance-viewer had been mounted. At first glance he was disappointed by its simplicity, a fat, round cylinder, with a smaller pipe attached to its side. Then it amused him. The Smith must be tortured with the yearning to dismantle the instrument and examine the principles of its simple efficiency.
“Robinton, how are you this evening?” Lessa asked, coming toward him, one hand outstretched.
He gripped it, her soft skin smooth under the calluses of his fingers.
“Pondering the elements of efficiency,” he countered, keeping his voice light. But he couldn’t keep from asking after Brekke and he felt Lessa’s fingers tremble in his.
“She does as well as can be expected. F’nor insisted that we bring her to his weyr. The man’s emotionally attached to her—far more than gratitude for any nursing. Between him, Manora and Mirrim, she is never alone.”
“And—Kylara?”
Lessa pulled her hand from his. “She lives!”
Robinton said nothing and, after a moment, Lessa went on. “We don’t like losing Brekke as a Weyrwoman—” She paused and added, her voice a little harsher, “And since it is now obvious that a person can Impress more than once, and more than one dragonkind, Brekke will be presented as a candidate when the Benden eggs Hatch. Which should be soon.”
“I perceive,” Robinton said, cautiously choosing his words, “that not everyone favors this departure from custom.”
Although he couldn’t see her face in the darkness, he felt her eyes on him.
“This time it’s not the Oldtimers. I suppose they’re so sure she can’t re-Impress, they’re indifferent”
“Who then?”
“F’nor and Manora oppose it violently.”
“And Brekke?”
Lessa gave an impatient snort. “Brekke says nothing. She will not even open her eyes. She can’t be sleeping all the time. The lizards and the dragons tell us she’s awake. You see,” and Lessa’s exasperation showed through her tight control for she was more worried about Brekke than she’d admit even to herself, “Brekke can hear any dragon. Like me. She’s the only other Weyrwoman who can. And all the dragons listen to her.” Lessa moved restlessly and Robinton could see her slender white hands rubbing against her thighs in unconscious agitation.
“Surely that’s an advantage if she’s suicidal?”
“Brekke is not—not actively suicidal. She’s craftbred, you know,” Lessa said in a flat, disapproving tone of voice.
“No, I didn’t know,” Robinton murmured encouragingly after a pause. He was thinking that Lessa wouldn’t ever contemplate suicide in a similar circumstance and wondered what Brekke’s “br
eeding” had to do with a suicidal aptitude.
“That’s her trouble. She can’t actively seek death so she just lies there. I have this incredible urge,” and Lessa bunched her fists, “to beat or pinch or slap her—anything to get some response from the girl. It’s not the end of the world, after all. She can hear other dragons. She’s not bereft of all contact with dragonkind, like Lytol.”
“She must have time to recover from the shock . . .”
“I know, I know,” Lessa said irritably, “but we don’t have time. We can’t get her to realize that it’s better to do things . . .”
“Lessa . . .”
“Don’t you ‘Lessa’ me too, Robinton.” In the reflection of the glow lights, the Weyrwoman’s eyes gleamed angrily. “F’nor’s as daft as a weyrling, Manora’s beside herself with worry for them both, Mirrim spends more of her time weeping which upsets the trio of lizards she’s got and that sets off all the babes and the weyrlings. And, on top of everything else, F’lar . . .”
“F’lar?” Robinton had bent close to her so that no one else might hear her reply.
“He is feverish. He ought never to have come to High Reaches with that open wound. You know what cold between does to wounds!”
“I’d hoped he’d be here tonight”
Lessa’s laugh was sour. “I dosed his klah when he wasn’t looking.”
Robinton chuckled. “And stuffed him with mosstea, I’ll bet.”
“Packed the wound with it, too.”
“He’s a strong man, Lessa. He’ll be all right”
“He’d better be. If only F’nor—” and Lessa broke off. “I sound like a wherry, don’t I?” She gave a sigh and smiled up at Robinton.