Dragonrider

“That’s one I can’t forget, either. Which, I’ve always been told,” and she grimaced, remembering the hateful lessons with R’gul, “means it’s important. But why? It only asked questions.” Then she biinked, her eyes went wide with amazement.

” ‘Gone away, gone … ahead!’ ” she cried, on her feet. “That’s it! All five Weyrs went … ahead. But to when?”

F’lar turned to her, speechless.

“They came ahead to our time! Five Weyrs full of dragons,” she repeated in an awed voice.

“No, that’s impossible,” F’lar contradicted.

“Why?” Robinton demanded excitedly. “Doesn’t that solve the problem we’re facing? The need for fighting dragons? Doesn’t it explain why they left so suddenly with no explanation except that Question Song?”

F’lar brushed back the heavy lock of hair that overhung his eyes.

“It would explain their actions in leaving,” he admitted, “because they couldn’t leave any clues saying where they went, or it would cancel the whole thing. Just as I couldn’t tell F’nor I knew the southern venture would have problems. But how do they get hereif here is when they came? They aren’t here now. How would they have known they were neededor when they were needed? And this is the real problemhow can you conceivably give a dragon references to a when that has not yet occurred?”

“Someone here must go back to give them the proper references,” Lessa replied in a very quiet voice.

“You’re mad, Lessa,” F’lar shouted at her, alarm written on his face. “You know what happened to you today. How can you consider going back to a when you can’t remotely imagine? To a when four hundred Turns ago? Going back ten Turns left you fainting and half-ill.”

“Wouldn’t it be worth it?” she asked him, her eyes grave.

“Isn’t Pern worth it?”

F’lar grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her, his eyes wild with fear.

“Not even Pern is woyth losing you, or Ramoth. Lessa, Lessa, don’t you dare disobey me in this.” His voice dropped to an intense, icy whisper, shaking with anger.

“Ah, there may be a way of effecting that solution, momentarily beyond us, Weyrwoman,” Robinton put in adroitly.

“Who knows what tomorrow holds? It certainly is not something one does without considering every angle.”

Lessa did not shrug off F’lar’s viselike grip on her shoulders as she gazed at Robinton.

“Wine?” the Masterharper suggested, pouring a mug for her. His diversionary action broke the tableau of Lessa and F’lar.

“Ramoth is not afraid to try,” Lessa said, her mouth set in a determined line.

F’lar glared at the golden dragon who was regarding the humans, her neck curled around almost to the shoulder joint of her great wing.

“Ramoth is young,” F’lar snapped and then caught Mnementh’s wry thought even as Lessa did. She threw her head back, her peal of laughter echoing in the vaulting chamber.

“I’m badly in need of a good joke myself,” Robinton remarked pointedly.

“Mnementh told F’lar that he was neither young nor afraid to try, either. It was just a long step,” Lessa explained, wiping tears from her eyes.

F’lar glanced dourly at the passageway, at the end of which Mnementh lounged on his customary ledge. A laden dragon comes, the bronze warned those in the Weyr. it is Lytol behind young B’rant on brown Fanth.

“Now he brings his own bad news?” Lessa asked sourly.

“It is hard enough for Lytol to ride another’s dragon or come here at all, Lessa of Ruatha. Do not increase his torment one jot with your childishness,” F’lar said sternly.

Lessa dropped her eyes, furious with F’lar for speaking so to her in front of Robinton.

Lytol slumped into the queen’s weyr, carrying one end of a large rolled rug. Young B’rant, struggling to uphold the other end, was sweating with the effort. Lytol bowed respectfully toward Ramoth and gestured the young brown rider to help him unroll their burden. As the immense tapestry uncoiled, F’lar could understand why Masterweaver.Zurg had remembered it. The colors, ancient though they undoubtedly were, remained vibrant and undimmed. The subject matter was even more interesting.

“Mnementh, send for Fandarel. Here’s the model he needs for his flamethrower,” F’lar said.

“That tapestry is Ruatha’s,” Lessa cried indignantly. “I remember it from my childhood. It hung in the Great Hall and was the most cherished of my Blood Line’s possessions. Where has it been?” Her eyes were flashing.

“Lady, it is being returned to where it belongs,” Lytol said stolidly, avoiding her gaze. “A masterweaver’s work, this,” he went on, touching the heavy fabric with reverent fingers.

“Such colors, such patterning. It took a man’s life to set up the loom, a craft’s whole effort to complete, or I am no judge of true craftsmanship.”

F’lar walked along the edge of the immense arras, wishing it could be hung to afford the proper perspective of the heroic scene. A flying formation of three wings of dragons dominated the upper portion of half the hanging. They were breathing flame as they dove upon gray, falling clumps of Threads in the brilliant sky. A sky just that perfect autumnal blue, F’lar decided, that cannot occur in warmer weather.

Upon the lower slopes of the hills, foliage was depicted as turning yellow from chilly nights. The slatey rocks suggested Ruathan country. Was that why the tapestry had hung in Ruatha Hall? Below, men had left the protecting Hold, cut into the cliff itself. The men were burdened with the curious cylinders of which Zurg had spoken. The tubes in their hands belched brilliant tongues of flame in long streams, aimed at the writhing Threads that attempted to burrow in the ground.

Lessa gave a startled exclamation, walking right onto the tapestry, staring down at the woven outline of the Hold, its massive door ajar, the details of its bronze ornamentation painstakingly rendered in fine yarns.

“I believe that’s the design on the Ruatha Hold door,” F’lar remarked.

“It is … and it isn’t,” Lessa replied in a puzzled voice.

Lytol glowered at her and then at the woven door. “True. It isn’t and yet it is, and I went through that door a scant hour ago.” He scowled down at the door before his toes.

“Well, here are the designs Fandarel wants to study,” F’lar said with relief, as he peered at the flamethrowers.

Whether or not the smith could produce a working model from this woven one in time to help them three days hence F’lar couldn’t guess. But if Fandarel could not, no man could.

The Mastersmith was, for him, jubilant over the presence of the tapestry. He lay upon the rug, his nose tickled by the nap as he studied the details. He grumbled, moaned, and muttered as he sat cross-legged to sketch and peer.

“Has been done. Can be done. Must be done,” he was heard to rumble.

Lessa called for klah, bread, and meat when she learned from young B’rant that neither he nor Lytol had eaten yet.

She served all the men, her manner gay and teasing. F’lar was relieved for Lytol’s sake. Lessa even pressed food and klah on Fandarel, a tiny figure beside the mammoth man, insisting that he come away from the tapestry and eat and drink before he could return to his mumbling and drawing.

Fandarel finally decided that he had enough sketches and disappeared, to be flown back to his crafthold.

“No point in asking him when he’ll be back. He’s too deep in thought to hear,” F’lar remarked, amused.

“If you don’t mind, I shall excuse myself as well,” Lessa said, smiling graciously to the four remaining around the table. “Good Warder Lytol, young B’rant should soon be excused, too. He’s half asleep.”

“I most certainly am not, Weyrlady,” B’rant assured .her hastily, widening his eyes with simulated alertness.

Lessa merely laughed as she retreated into the sleeping chamber. F’lar stared thoughtfully after her.

“I mistrust the Weyrwoman when she uses that particularly docile tone of voice,” he said slowly.

“Well, we must all depart,” Robinton suggested, rising.

“Ramoth is young but not that foolish,” F’lar murmured after the others had left. Ramoth slept, oblivious of his scrutiny. He reached for the consolation Mnementh could give him, without response. The big bronze was dozing on his ledge.

“I JUST want to see that tapestry back on the wall at Ruatha,” Lessa insisted to F’lar the next day. “I want it where it belongs.”

They had gone to check on the injured and had had one argument already over F’lar’s having sent N’ton along with the southern venture. Lessa had wanted him to try riding another’s dragon. F’lar had preferred for him to learn to lead a wing of his own in the south, given the Turns to mature in. He had reminded Lessa, in the hope that it might prove inhibiting to any ideas she had about going four hundred Turns back, about F’nor’s return trips, and he had borne down hard on the difficulties she had already experienced.

She had become very thoughtful, although she had said nothing.

Therefore, when Fandarel sent word that he would like to show F’lar a new mechanism, the weyrleader felt reasonably safe in allowing Lessa the triumph of returning the pur-loined tapestry to Ruatha. She went to have the arras rolled and strapped to Ramoth’s back. He watched Ramoth rise with great sweeps of her wide wings, up to the Star Stone before going between to Ruatha. R’gul appeared on the ledge just then, reporting that a huge train of firestone was entering the Tunnel. Consequently, busy with such details, it was midmoming before he could get to see Fandarel’s crude and not yet effective flamethrower … the fire did not “throw” from the nozzle of the tube with any force at all. It was late afternoon before he reached the Weyr again. R’gul announced sourly that F’nor had been looking for himtwice, in fact.

“Twice?”

“Twice, as I said. He would not leave a message with me for you.” R’gul was clearly insulted by F’nor’s refusal.

By the evening meal, when there was still no sign of Lessa, F’lar sent to Ruatha to learn that she had indeed brought the tapestry. She had badgered and bothered the entire Hold until the thing was properly hung. For upward of several hours she had sat and looked at it, pacing its length occasionally. She and Ramoth had then taken to the sky above the Great Tower and disappeared. Lytol had assumed, as had everyone at Ruatha, that she had returned to Benden Weyr.

“Mnementh,” F’lar bellowed when the messenger had finished. “Mnementh, where are they?”

Mnementh’s answer was a long time in coming.

I cannot hear them, he said finally, his mental voice soft and as full of worry as a dragon’s could be.

F’lar gripped the table with both hands, staring at the queen’s empty weyr. He knew, in the anguished privacy of his mind, where Lessa had tried to go.

BELOW THEM was Ruatha’s Great Tower. Lessa coaxed Ramoth slightly to the left, ignoring the dragon’s acid comments, knowing that she was excited, too.

Thafs right, dear, this is exactly the angle at which the tapestry illustrates the Hold door. Only when that tapestry was designed, no one had carved the lintels or capped the door. And there was no Tower, no inner Court, no gate. She stroked the surprisingly soft skin of the curving neck, laughing to hide her own tense nervousness and apprehension at what she was about to attempt.

She told herself there were good reasons prompting her action in this matter. The ballad’s opening phrase, “Gone away, gone ahead,” was clearly a reference to between times.

And the tapestry gave the required reference points for the jump between whens. Oh, how she thanked the Masterweaver who had woven that doorway. She must remember to tell him how well he had wrought. She hoped she’d be able to. Enough of that. Of course, she’d be able to. For hadn’t the Weyrs disappeared? Knowing they had gone ahead, knowing how to go back to bring them ahead, it was she, obviously, who must go back and lead them. It was very simple, and only she and Ramoth could do it. Because they already had. She laughed again, nervously, and took several deep, shuddering breaths.

“All right, my golden love,” she murmured. “You have the reference. You know when I want to go. Take me between, Ramoth, between four hundred Turns.”

The cold was intense, even more penetrating than she had imagined. Yet it was not a physical cold. It was the awareness of the absence of everything. No light. No sound. No touch. As they hovered, longer, and longer, in this nothingness, Lessa recognized full-blown panic of a kind that threatened to overwhelm her reason. She knew she sat on Ramoth’s neck, yet she could not feel the great beast under her thighs, under her hands. She tried to cry out inadvertently and opened her mouth to … nothing … no sound in her own ears. She could not even feel the hands that she knew she had raised to her own cheeks.

I am here, she heard Ramoth say in her mind. We are together, and this reassurance was all that kept her from losing her grasp on sanity in that terrifying aeon of unpassing, timeless nothingness.

Someone had sense enough to call for Robinton. The Masterharper found F’lar sitting at the table, his face deathly pale, his eyes staring at the empty weyr. The craftmaster’s entrance, his calm voice, reached F’lar in his shocked numbness. He sent others out with a peremptory wave.

“She’s gone. She tried to go back four hundred Turns,” F’lar said in a tight, hard voice.

The Masterharper sank into the chair opposite the Weyrleader.

“She took the tapestry back to Ruatha,” F’lar continued in that same choked voice. “I’d told her about F’nor’s returns. I told her how dangerous this was. She didn’t argue very much, and I know going between times had frightened her, if anything could frighten Lessa.” He banged the table with an impotent fist. “I should have suspected her. When she thinks she’s right, she doesn’t stop to analyze, to consider. She just does it!”

“But she’s not a foolish woman,” Robinton reminded him slowly. “Not even she would jump between times without a reference point. Would, she?”

” ‘Gone away, gone ahead’that’s the only clue we have!”

“Now wait a moment,” Robinton cautioned him, then snapped his fingers. “Last night, when she walked upon the tapestry, she was uncommonly interested in the Hall door. Remember, she discussed it with Lytol.”

F’lar was on his feet and halfway down the passageway.

“Come on, man, we’ve got to get to Ruatha.”

Lytol lit every glow in the Hold for F’lar and Robrnton to examine the tapestry clearly.

“She spent the afternoon just looking at it,” the Warder said, shaking his head. “You’re sure she has tried this incredible jump?”

“She must have. Mnementh can’t hear either her or Ramoth anywhere. Yet he says he can get an echo from Canth many Turns away and in the Southern Continent.” F’lar stalked past the tapestry. “What is it about the door, Lytol? Think, man! It is much as it is now, save that there are no carved lintels, there is no outer Court or Tower …”

“That’s it. Oh, by the first Egg, it is so simple. Zurg said this tapestry is old. Lessa must have decided it was four hundred Turns, and she has used it as the reference point to go back between times.”

“Why, then, she’s there and safe,” Robinton cried, sinking with relief in a chair.

“Oh, no, harper. It is not as easy as that,” F’lar murmured, and Robinton caught his stricken look and the despair echoed in Lytol’s face.

“What’s the matter?”

“There is nothing between,” F’lar said in a dead voice. “To go between places takes only as much time as for a man to cough three times. Between four hundred Turns… .” His voice trailed off.

THERE WERE voices that first were roars in her aching ears and then hushed beyond the threshold of sound. She gasped as the whirling, nauseating sensation apparently spun her, and the bed which she felt beneath her, around and around. She clung to the sides of the bed as pain jabbed through her head, from somewhere directly in the middle of her skull. She screamed, as much in protest at the pain as from the terrifying, rolling, whirling, dropping lack of a solid ground.

Yet some frightening necessity kept her trying to gabble out the message she had come to give. Sometimes she felt Ramoth trying to reach her in that vast swooping darkness that enveloped her. She would try to cling to Ramoth’s mind, hoping the golden queen could lead her out of this torturing nowhere. Exhausted, she would sink down, down, only to be torn from oblivion by the desperate need to communicate.

She was finally aware of a soft, smooth hand upon her arm, of a liquid, warm and savory, in her mouth. She rolled it around her tongue, and it trickled down her sore throat. A fit of coughing left her gasping and weak. Then she experi-mentally opened her eyes, and the images before her did not lurch and spin.

“Who … are … you?” she managed to croak.

“Oh, my dear Lessa …”

“Is that who I am?” she asked, confused.

“So your Ramoth tells us,” she was assured. “I am Mardra of Port Weyr.”

“Oh, F’lar will be so angry with me,” Lessa moaned as her memory came rushing back. “He will shake me and shake me. He always shakes me when I disobey him. But I was right. I was right. Mardra? … Oh, that … awful … nothingness,” and she felt herself drifting off into sleep, unable to resist that overwhelming urge. Comfortably, her bed no longer rocked beneath her. The room, dimly lit by wallglows, was both like her own at Benden Weyr and subtly different. Lessa lay still, trying to isolate that difference. Ah, the weyr-walls were very smooth here. The room was larger, too, the ceiling higher and curving. The furnishings, now that her eyes were used to the dim light and she could distinguish details, were more finely crafted. She stirred resUessly.

“Ah, you’re awake again, mystery lady,” a man said. Light beyond the parted curtain flooded in from the outer weyr. Lessa sensed rather than saw the presence of others in the room beyond. A woman passed under the man’s arm, moving swiftly to .the bedside.

“I remember you. You’re Mardra,” Lessa said with surprise.

“Indeed I am, and here is T’ton, Weyrleader at Fort.” T’ton was tossing more glows into the wallbasket, peering over his shoulder at Lessa to see if the light bothered her.

“Ramoth!” Lessa exclaimed, sitting upright, aware for the first time that it was not Ramoth’s mind she touched in the outer weyr.

“Oh, that one,” Mardra laughed with amused dismay. “She’ll eat us out of the Weyr, and even my Loranth has had to call the other queens to restrain her.”

“She perches on the Star Stones as if she owned them and keens constantly,” T’ton added, less charitably. He cocked an ear. “Ha. She’s stopped.”

“You can come, can’t you?” Lessa blurted out.

“Come? Come where, my dear?” Mardra asked, confused.

“You’ve been going on and on about our ‘coming,’ and Threads approaching, and the Red Star bracketed in the Eye Rock, and … my dear, don’t you realize the Red Star has been past Pern these two months?”

“No, no, they’ve started. That’s why I came back between times…”

“Back? Between times?” T’ton exclaimed, striding over to the bed, eyeing Lessa intently.

“Could I have some klah? I know I’m not making much sense, and I’m not really awake yet. But I’m not mad or still sick, and this is rather complicated.”

“Yes, it is,” Tton remarked with deceptive mildness. But he did call down the service shaft for klah. And he did drag a chair over to her bedside, settling himself to listen to her.

“Of course you’re not mad,” Mardra soothed her, glaring at her weyrmate. “Or she wouldn’t ride a queen.”

Tton had to agree to that. Lessa waited for the klah to come; when it did, she sipped gratefully at its stimulating warmth.

Then she took a deep breath and began, telling them of the Long Interval between the dangerous passes of the Red Star: how the sole Weyr had fallen into disfavor and contempt, how Jora had deteriorated and lost control over her queen, Nemorth, so that, as the Red Star neared, there was no sud-den increase in the size of clutches. How she had Impressed Ramoth to become Benden’s Weyrwoman. How Flar had outwitted the dissenting Hold Lords the day after Ramoth’s first mating flight and taken firm command of Weyr and Pern, preparing for the Threads he knew were coming. She told her by now rapt audience of her own first attempts to fly Ramoth and how she had inadvertently gone back between time to the day Fax had invaded Ruath Hold.

“Invade … my family’s Hold?” Mardra cried, aghast.

“Ruatha has given the Weyrs many famous Weyrwomen,” Lessa said with a sly smile at which T’ton burst out’ laughing.

“She’s Ruathan, no question,” he assured Mardra.

She told them of the situation in which dragonmen now found themselves, with an insufficient force to meet the Thread attacks. Of the Question Song and the great tapestry.

“A tapestry?” Mardra cried, her hand going to her cheek in alarm. “Describe it to me!”

And when Lessa did, she saw at last belief in both their faces.

“My father has just commissioned a tapestry with such a scene. He told me of it the other day because the last battle with the Threads was held over Ruatha.” Incredulous, Mardra turned to T’ton, who no longed looked amused. “She must have done what she has said she’d done. How could she possibly know about the tapestry?”

“You might also ask your queen dragon, and mine,” Lessa suggested.

“My dear, we do not doubt you now,” Mardra said sincerely, “but it is a most incredible feat.”

“I don’t think,” Lessa said, “that I would ever try it again, knowing what I do know.”

“Yes, this shock makes a forward jump between times quite a problem if your F’lar must have an effective fighting force,” T’ton remarked.

“You will come? You will?’ “There is a distinct possibility we will,” T’ton said gravely, and his face broke into a lopsided grin. “You said we left the Weyrs … abandoned them, in fact, and left no explanation. We went somewhere … somewhen, that is, for we are still here now… .”

They were all silent, for the same alternative occurred to them simultaneously. The Weyrs had been vacant, but Lessa had no way of proving that the five Weyrs reappeared in her time.

“There must be a way. There must be a way,” Lessa cried distractedly. “And there’s no time to waste. No time at all!”

T’ton gave a bark of laughter. “There’s plenty of time at this end of history, my dear.”

They made her rest then, more concerned than she was that she had been ill some weeks, deliriously screaming that she was falling and could not see, could not hear, could not touch. Ramoth, too, they told her, had suffered from the appalling nothingness of a protracted stay between, emerging above ancient Ruatha a pale yellow wraith of her former robust self. The Lord of Ruatha Hold, Mardra’s father, had been. surprised out of his wits by the appearance of a staggering rider and a pallid queen on his stone verge. Naturally and luckily he had sent to his daughter at Fort Weyr for help.

Lessa and Ramoth had been transported to the Weyr, and the Ruathan Lord kept silence on the matter. When Lessa was strong enough, T’ton called a Council of Weyrleaders. Curiously, there was no opposition to going … provided they could solve the problem of time-shock and find reference points along the way. It did not take Lessa long to comprehend why the dragonriders were so eager to attempt the journey. Most of them had been born during the present Thread incursions. They had now had close to four months of unexciting routine patrols and were bored with monotony. Training Games were pallid substitutes for the real battles they had all fought. The Holds, which once could not do dragonmen favors enough, were beginning to be indifferent.

The weyrleaders could see these incidents increasing as Thread-generated fears receded. It was a morale decay as insidious as a wasting disease in Weyr and Hold. The alternative which Lessa’s appeal offered was. better than a slow decline in their own time. Of Benden, only the Weyrleader himself was privy to these meetings. Because Beaden was the only Weyr in Lessa’s time, it must remain ignorant, and intact, until her time. Nor could any mention be made of Lessa’s presence, for that, too, was unknown in her Turn.

She insisted that they call in the Masterharper because her Records said he had been called. But when he asked her to tell him the Question Song, she smiled and demurred.

“You’ll write it, or your successor will, when the Weyrs are found to be abandoned,” she told him. “But it must be your doing, not my repeating.”

“A difficult assignment to know one must write a song that four hundred Turns later gives a valuable clue.”

“Only be sure,” she cautioned him, “that it is a Teaching tune. It must not be forgotten, for it poses questions that I have to answer.”

As he started to chuckle, she realized she had already given him a pointer.

The discussions how to go so far safely with no sustained sense deprivations grew heated. There were more constructive notions, however impractical, on how to find reference points along the way. The five Weyrs had not been ahead in time, and Lessa, in her one gigantic backward leap, had not stopped for intermediate time marks.

“You did say that a between times jump of ten years caused no hardship?” T’ton asked of Lessa as all the weyrleaders and the Masterharper met to discuss this impasse.

“None. It takes … oh, twice as long as a between places jump.”

“It is the four hundred Turn leap that left you imbalanced. Hmmm. Maybe twenty or twenty-five Turn segments would be safe enough.”

That suggestion found merit until Ista’s cautious leader, D’ram, spoke up.

“I don’t mean to be a Hold-hider, but there is one possibility we haven’t mentioned. How do we know we made the jump between to Lessa’s time? Going between is a chancy business. Men go missing often. And Lessa barely made it here alive.”

“A good point, D’ram,” Tton concurred briskly, “but I feel there is more to prove that we do-did-will-go forward. The clues, for one thingthey were aimed at Lessa.

The very emergency that left five Weyrs empty sent her back to appeal for our help” “Agreed, agreed,” D’ram interrupted earnestly, “but what I mean is can you be sure we reached Lessa’s time? It hadn’t happened yet. Do we know it can?”

T’ton was not the only one who searched his mind for an answer to that. All of a sudden he slammed both hands, palms down, on the table.

“By the Egg, it’s die slow, doing nothing, or die quick, trying. I’ve had a surfeit of the quiet life we dragonmen must lead after the Red Star passes till we go between in old age. I confess I’m almost sorry to see the Red Star dwindle farther from us in the evening sky. I say, grab the risk with both hands and shake it till it’s gone. We’re dragonmen, aren’t we, bred to figh’ the Threads? Let’s go hunting … four hundred Turns ahead!”

Lessa’s drawn face relaxed. She had recognized the validity of D’ram’s alternate possibility, and it had touched off bitter fear in her heart. To risk herself was her own responsibility, but to risk these hundreds of men. and dragons, the Weyrfolk who would accompany their men … ?

T’ton’s ringing words for once and all dispensed with that consideration.

“And I believe,” the Masterharper’s exultant voice cut through the answering shouts of agreement, “I have your reference points.” A smile of surprised wonder illuminated his face. “Twenty Turns or twenty hundred, you have a guide!

And T’ton said it. As tha Red Star dwindles in the evening sky…”

Later, as they plotted the orbit of the Red Star, they found how easy that solution actually was and chuckled that their ancient foe should be their guide. Atop Fort Weyr, as on all the Weyrs, were great stones. They were so placed that at certain times of the year they marked the approach and retreat of the Red Star, as it orbited in its erratic two hundred Turn-long course around their sun.

By consulting the Records which, among other morsels of information, included the Red Star’s wanderings, it was not hard to plan jumps between of twenty-five Turns for each Weyr. It had been decided that the complement of each separate Weyr would jump between above its own base, for there would unquestionably be accidents if close to eighteen hundred laden beasts tried it at one point.

Each moment now was one too long away from her own time for Lessa. She had been. a month away from F’lar and missed him more than she had thought possible. Also, she was worried that Ramoth would mate away from Mnementh. There were, to be sure, bronze dragons and bronze riders eager to do that service, but Lessa had no interest in them.

T’ton and Mardra occupied her with the many details in organizing the exodus, so that no clues, past the tapestry and the Question Song that would be composed at a later date, remained in the Weyrs.

It was with a relief close to tears that Lessa urged Ramoth upward in the night sky to take her place near T’ton and Mardra above the Fort Weyr Star Stone. At five other Weyrs great wings were ranged in formation, ready to depart their own times. As each Weyrleader’s dragon reported to Lessa that all were ready, reference points determined by the Red Star’s travels in mind, it was this traveler from the future who gave the command to jump between.

THEY HAD made eleven jumps between, the Weyrleaders’ bronzes spe.”king to Lessa as they rested briefly between each jump. Of the eighteen hundred-odd travelers, only four failed to come ahe d. and they had been older beasts. All five sections agreed to pause for a quick meal and hot klah before the final jump, which would be but twelve Turns.

“It is easier,” T’ton commented as Mardra served the klah, “to go twcny-five Turns than twelve.” He glanced up at the Red Dawn Star, their winking and faithful guide. “It does not alter its position as much. I count on you, Lessa, to give us additional references.”

“I want to get us back to Ruatha before F’lar discovers I have gone ” Shs shivered as she looked up at the Red Star and sipped hast’ly at the hot klah. “I’ve seen the Star just like that, once … no, twice … before at Ruatha.” She stared at T’ton, her throat constricting as she remembered that morning: the fma she had decided that the Red Star was a menace to her, three days after which Fax and F’lar had appeared at Ruatha lo!d. Fax had died on F’lar’s dagger, and she had gone to Benden Weyr. She felt suddenly dizzy, weak, strangely unsettled. She had not felt this way as they paused between other jumps.

“Are you all right, Lessa?” Mardra asked with concern. “You’re so white. You’re shaking.” She put her arm around Lessa, glancing, concerned, at her Weyrmate.

“Twelve Turns ago I was at Ruatha,” Lessa murmured, grasping Mardra’s hand for support. “I was at Ruatha twice. Let’s go on quickly. I’m too many in this morning. I must get back. I must get back to F’lar. He’ll be so angry.”

The note of hysteria in her voice alarmed both Mardra and T’ton. Hastily the latter gave orders for the fires to be extinguished, for the Weyrfolk to mount and prepare for the final jump ahead.

Her mind in chaos, Lessa transmitted the references to the other Weyrleaders’ dragons: Ruatha in the evening light, the Great Tower, the inner Court, the land at springtime… .

BETWEEN THEM, Lytol and Robinton forced F’lar to eat, deliberately plying him with wine. At the back of his mind F’lar knew he would have to keep going, but the effort was immense, the spirit gone from him. It was no comfort that they still had Pridith and Kylara to continue dragonkind, yet he delayed sending someone back for F’nor, unable to face the reality of that admission: that in sending for Pridith and Kylara, he had acknowledged the fact that Lessa and Ramoth would not return.

Lessa, Lessa, his mind cried endlessly, damning her one moment for her reckless, thoughtless daring, loving her the next for attempting such an incredible feat.

“I said, F’lar, you need sleep now more than wine.”

Robinton’s voice penetrated his preoccupation. F’lar looked at him, frowning in perplexity. He realized that he was trying to lift the wine jug that Robinton was holding firmly down.

“What did you say?”

“Come. I’ll bear you company to Benden. Indeed, nothing could persuade me to leave your side. You have aged years, man, in the course of hours.”

“And isn’t it understandable?” F’lar shouted, rising to his feet, the impotent anger boiling out of him at the nearest target in the form of Robinton. Robinton’s eyes were full of compassion as he reached for F’lar’s arm, gripping it tightly.

“Man, not even this Masterharper has words enough to express the sympathy and honor he has for you. But you must sleep; you have tomorrow to endure, and the tomorrow after that you have to fight. The dragonmen must have a leader… .” His voice trailed off. “Tomorrow you must send for F’nor … and Pridith.”

F’lar pivoted on his heel and strode toward the fateful door of Ruatha’s great hall.

BEFORE THEM loomed Ruatha’s Great Tower, the high walls of the Outer Court clearly visible in the fading light. The claxon rang violent summons into the air, barely heard over the earsplitting thunder as hundreds of dragons appeared, ranging in full fighting array, wing upon wing, up and down. the valley.

A shaft of light stained the flagstones of the Court as the Hold door opened.

Lessa ordered Ramoth down, close to the Tower, and dismounted, running eagerly forward to greet the men who piled out of the door. She made out the stocky figure of Lytol, a handbasket of glows held high above his head. She was so relieved to see him that she forgot her previous antagonism to the Warder.

“You misjudged the last jump by two days, Lessa,” he cried as soon as he was near enough for her to hear him over the noise of settling dragons.

“Misjudged? How could I?” she breathed.

T’ton and Mardra came up beside her.

“No need to worry,” Lytol reassured her, gripping her hands tightly in his, his eyes dancing. He was actually smiling at her. “You overshot the day. Go back between, return to Ruatha of two days ago. That’s all.” His grin widened at her confusion. “It is all right,” he repeated, patting her hands. “Take this same hour, the Great Court, everything, but visualize F’lar, Robinton, and myself here on the flagstones. Place Mnementh on the Great Tower and a blue dragon on the verge. Now go.”

Mnementh? Ramoth queried Lessa, eager to see her Weyrmate. She ducked her great head, and her huge eyes gleamed with scintillating fire.

“I don’t understand,” Lessa wailed. Mardra slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders.

“But I do, I do trust me,” Lytol pleaded, patting her shoulder awkwardly and glancing at T’ton for support. “It is as F’nor has said. You cannot be several places in time without experiencing great distress, and when you stopped twelve Turns back, it threw Lessa all to pieces.”

“You know that?” T’ton cried.

“Of course. Just go back two days. You see, I know you have. I shall, of course, be surprised then, hut now, tonight, I know you reappeared two days earlier. Oh, go. Don’t argue.

F’lar was half out of his mind with worry for you.”

“He’ll shake me,” Lessa cried, like a little girl.

“Lessa!” T’ton took her by the hand and led her back to Ramoth, who crouched so her rider could mount.

T’ton took complete charge and had his Fidranth pass the order to return to the references Lytol had given, adding by way of Ramoth, a description of the humans and Mnementh.

The cold of between restored Lessa to herself, although her error had badly jarred her confidence. But then there was Ruatha again. The dragons happily arranged themselves in tremendous display. And there, silhouetted against the light from the Hall, stood Lytol, Robinton’s tall figure, and … F’lar.

Mnementh’s voice gave a brassy welcome, and Ramoth could not land Lessa quickly enough to go and twine necks with her mate. Lessa stood where Ramoth had left her, unable to move. She was aware that Mardra and T’ton were beside her. She was conscious only of F’lar, racing across the Court toward her. Yet she could not move. He grabbed her in his arms, holding her so tightly to him that she could not doubt the joy of his welcome.

“Lessa, Lessa,” his voice raggedly chanted in her ear. He pressed her face against his, crushing her to breathlessness, all his careful detachment abandoned. He kissed her, bugged her, held her, and then kissed her with rough urgency again.

Then he suddenly set her on her feet and gripped her shoulders. “Lessa, if you ever …” he said, punctuating each word with a flexing of his fingers, then stopped, aware of a grinning circle of strangers surrounding them.

“I told you he’d shake me,” Lessa was saying, dashing tears from her face. “But, F’lar, I brought them all … all but Benden Weyr. And that is why the five Weyrs were abandoned. I brought them.”

F’lar looked around him, looked beyond the leaders to the masses of dragons settling in the valley, on the heights, everywhere he turned. There were dragons, blue, green, bronze, brown, and a whole wingful of golden queen dragons alone.

“You brought the Weyrs?” he echoed, stunned.

“Yes, this is Mardra and T’ton of Fort Weyr, D’ram and …”

He stopped her with a little shake, pulling her to his side so he could see and greet the newcomers.

“I am more grateful than you can know,” he said and could not go on with all the many words he wanted to add. T’ton stepped forward, holding out his hand, which F’lar seized and held firmly.

“We bring eighteen hundred dragons, seventeen queens, and all that is necessary to implement our Weyrs.”

“And they brought fiamethrowers, too,” Lessa put in excitedly.

“But to come … to attempt it …” F’lar murmured in admiring wonder.

T’ton and D’ram and the others laughed.

“Your Lessa showed the way …”

“… with the Red Star to guide us …” she said.

“We are dragonmen,” T’ton continued solemnly, “as you are yourself, F’lar of Benden. We were told there are Threads here to fight, and that’s work for dragonmen to do … in any time!”

EVEN AS the five Weyrs had been settling around Ruatha Valley, F’nor had been compelled to bring forward in time his southern Weyrfolk. They had all reached the end of endurance in double-time life, gratefully creeping back to quarters they had vacated two days and ten Turns ago.

R’gul, totally unaware of Lessa’s backward plunge, greeted F’lar and his Weyrwoman, on their return to the Weyr, with the news of F’nor’s appearance with seventy-two new dragons and the further word that he doubted any of the riders would be fit to fight.

“I’ve never seen such exhausted men in my life,” R’gul rattled on, “can’t imagine what could have gotten into them, with sun and plenty of food and all, and no responsibilities.”

F’lar and Lessa exchanged glances.

“Well, the southern Weyr ought to be maintained, R’gul. Think it over.”

“I’m a fighting dragonman, not a womanizer,” the old dragonrider grunted. “It’d take more than a trip between times to reduce me like those others.”

“Oh, they’ll be themselves again in next to no time,” Lessa said and, to R’gul’s intense disapproval, she giggled.

“They’ll have to be if we’re to keep the skies Thread-free,” R’gul snapped testily.

“No problem about that now,” F’lar assured him easily.

“No problem? With only a hundred and forty-four dragons?”

“Two hundred and sixteen,” Lessa corrected him firmly.

Ignoring her, R’gul asked, “Has that Mastersmith found a flamethrower that’ll work?”

“Indeed he has,” F’lar assured R’gul, grimmig broadly.

The five Weyrs had also brought forward their equipment.

Fandarel all but snatched examples from their backs and, undoubtedly, every hearth and smithy through the continent would be ready to duplicate the design by morning. T’ton had told F’lar that, in his time, each Hold had ample flamethrowers for every man on the ground. In the course of the Long Interval, however, the throwers must have been either smelted down or lost as incomprehensible devices. D’ram, particulariy, was very much interested in Fandarel’s agenothree sprayer, considering it better than thrown-flame, since it would also act as a fertilizer.

“Well,” R’gul admitted gloomily, “a flamethrower or two will be some help day after tomorrow.”

“We have found something else that will help a lot more,” Lessa remarked and then hastily excused herself, dashing into the sleeping quarters.

The sounds that drifted past the curtain were either laughter or sobs, and R’gul frowned on both. That girl was just too young to be Weyrwoman at such a time. No stability.

“Has she realized how critical our situation is? Even with Fnor’s additions? That is, if they can fly?” R’gul demanded testily. “You oughtn’t to let her leave the Weyr at all.”

F’lar ignored that and began pouring himself a cup of wine.

“You once pointed out to me that the five empty Weyrs of Pern supported your theory that there would be no more Threads.”

R’gul cleared his throat, thinking that apologieseven if they might be due from the Weyrleader were scarcely effective against the Threads.

“Now there was merit in that theory,” F’lar went on, filling a cup for R’gul. “Not, however, as you interpreted it. The five Weyrs were empty because they … they came here.”

R’gul, his cup halfway to his lips, stared at F’lar. This man also was too young to bear his responsibilities. But … he seemed actually to believe what he was saying.

“Believe it or not, R’guland in a bare day’s time you willthe five Weyrs are empty no longer. They’re here, in the Weyrs, in this time. And they shall join us, eighteen hundred strong, the day after tomorrow at Telgar, with flamethrowers and with plenty of battle experience.”

R’gul regarded the poor man stolidly for a long moment. Carefully he put his cup down and, turning on his heel, left the weyr. He refused to be an object of ridicule. He’d better plan to take over the leadership tomorrow if they were to fight Threads the day after.

The next morning, when he saw the clutch of great bronze dragons bearing the Weyrleaders and their wingleaders to the conference, R’gul got quietly drunk.

Lessa exchanged good mornings with her friends and then, smiling sweetly, left the weyr, saying she must feed Ramoth.

F’lar stared after her thoughtfully, then went to greet Robinton and Fandarel, who had been asked to attend the meeting, too. Neither Craftmaster said much, but neither missed a word spoken. Fandarel’s great head kept swiveling from speaker to speaker, his deep-set eyes blinking occasionally.

Robinton sat with a bemused smile on his face, utterly delighted by ancestral visitors. Flar was quickly talked out of resigning his titular position as Weyrlieader of Benden on the grounds that he was too inexperienced.

“You did well enough at Nerat and Keroon. Well indeed,” T’ton said.

“You call twenty-eight men or dragons out of action good leadership?”

“For a first battle, with every dragonman green as a hatchling? No, man, you were on time at Nerat, however you got there,” and T’ton grinned maliciously at F’lar, “which is what a dragonman must do. No, that was well flown, I say. Well flown.” The other four Weyrleaders muttered complete agreement with that compliment. “Your Weyr is understrength, though, so we’ll lend you enough odd-wing riders till you’ve gotten the Weyr up to full strength again. Oh, the queens love these times!” And his grin broadened to indicate that bronze riders did, too.

F’lar returned that smile, thinking that Ramoth was about ready for another mating flight, and this time, Lessa … oh, that girl was being too deceptively docile. He’d better watch her closely.

“Now,” T’ton was saying, “we left with Fandarel’s crafthold all the flamethrowers we brought up so that the ground-men will be armed tomorrow.”

“Aye, and my thanks,” Fandarel grunted. “We’ll turn out new ones in record time and return yours soon.”

“Don’t forget to adapt that agenothree for air spraying, too,” D’ram put in.

“It is agreed,” and T’ton glanced quickly around at the other riders, “that all the Weyrs will meet, full strength, three hours after dawn above Telgar, to follow the Threads’ attack across to Crom. By the way, F’lar, those charts of yours that Robinton showed me are superb. We never had them.”

“How did you know when the attacks would come?”

T’ton shrugged. “They were coming so regularly even when I was a weyriing, you kind of knew when one was due. But this way is much, much better.”

“More efficient,” Fandarel added approvingly.

“After tomorrow, when all the Weyrs show up at Telgar, we can request supplies we need to stock the empty Weyrs,” T’ton grinned. “Like old times, squeezing extra tithes from .the Holders.” He rubbed his hands in anticipation. “Like old times.”

“There’s the southern Weyr,” F’nor suggested. “We’ve been gone from there six Turns in this time, and the herdbeasts were left. They’ll have multiplied, and there’ll be all that fruit and grain.”

“It would please me to see that southern venture continued,” F’lar remarked, nodding encouragingly at F’nor.

“Yes, and continue Kylara down there, please, too,” F’nor added urgently, his eyes sparkling with irritation.

They discussed sending for some immediate supplies to help out the newly occupied Weyrs, and then adjourned the meeting.

“It is a trifle unsettling,” T’ton said as he shared wine with Robinton, “to find that the Weyr you left the day before .in good order has become a dusty hulk.” He chuckled. “The women of the Lower Caverns were a bit upset.”

“We cleaned up those kitchens,” F’nor replied indignantly. A good night’s rest in a fresh time had removed much of his fatigue.-T’ton cleared his throat. “According to Mardra, no man can clean anything.”

“Do you think you’ll be up to riding tomorrow, F’nor?” F’lar asked solicitously. He was keenly aware of the stress showing in his half brother’s face, despite his improvement overnight. Yet those strenuous Turns had been necessary, nor had they become futile even in hindsight with the arrival of eighteen hundred dragons from past time. When F’lar had ordered F’nor ten Turns backward to breed the desperately needed replacements, they had not yet brought to mind the Question Song or known of the tapestry.

“I wouldn’t miss that fight if I were dragonless,” F’nor declared stoutly.

“Which reminds me,” F’lar remarked, “we’ll need Lessa at Telgar tomorrow. She can speak to any dragon, you know,” he explained, almost apologetically, to T’ton and D’ram.

“Oh, we know,” T’ton assured him. “And Mardra doesn’t mind.” Seeing F’lar’s blank expression, he added, “As senior Weyrwoman, Mardra, of course, leads the queens’ wing.”

F’lar’s face grew blanker. “Queens’ wing?”

“Certainly,” and T’ton and D’ram exchanged questioning glances at F’lar’s surprise. “You don’t keep your queens from fighting, do you?”

“Our queens? T’ton, we at Benden have had only one queen dragon at a time for so many generations that there are those who denounce the legends of queens in battle as black heresy!”

T’ton looked rueful. “I had not truly realized till this instant how small your numbers were.” But his enthusiasms overtook him. “Just the same, queens are very useful with flamethrowers. They get clumps other riders might miss.

They fly in low, under the main wings. That’s one reason D’ram’s so interested in the agenothree spray. Doesn’t singe the hair off the Holders’ heads, so to speak, and is far better over tilled fields.”

“Do you mean to say that you allow your queens to fly against Threads?” F’lar ignored the fact that F’nor was grinning, and T’ton, too.

“Allow?” D’ram bellowed. “You can’t stop them. Don’t you know your Ballads?”

” ‘Moreta’s Ride’?”

“Exactly.”

F'nor laughed aloud at the expression on F’lar’s face as he irritably pulled the hanging forelock from his eyes. Then, sheepishly, he began to grin.

“Thanks. That gives me an idea.”

He saw his fellow weyrleaders to their dragons, waved cheerfully to Robinton and Fandarel, more lighthearted than he would have thought he’d be the morning before the second battle. Then he asked Mnementh where Lessa might be.

Bathing, the bronze dragon replied.

F’lar glanced at the empty queen’s weyr. Oh, Ramoth is on the Peak, as usual. Mnementh sounded aggrieved.

F’lar heard the sound of splashing in the bathing room suddenly cease, so he called down for hot klah. He was going to enjoy this.

“Oh, did the meeting go well?” Lessa asked sweetly as she emerged from the bathing room, drying-cloth wrapped tightly around her slender figure.

“Extremely. You realize, of course, Lessa, that you’ll be needed at Telgar?”

She looked at him intently for a moment before she smiled again.

“I am the only Weyrwoman who can speak to any dragon,” she replied archly.

“True,” F’lar admitted blithely. “And no longer the only queen’s rider in Benden… .”

“I hate you!” Lessa snapped, unable to evade F’lar as he pinned her cloth-swathed body to his.

“Even when I tell you that Fandarel has a flamethrower for you so you can join the queens’ wing?”

She stopped squirming in his arms and stared at him, disconcerted that he had outguessed her.

“And that Kylara will be installed as Weyrwoman in the south … in this time? As Weyrleader, I need my peace and quiet between battles… .”

The cloth fell from her body to the floor as she responded to his kiss as ardently as if dragon-roused.

RANGED ABOVE the Peak of Benden Weyr, a scant three hours after dawn, two hundred and sixteen dragons held their formations as F’lar on bronze Mnementh inspected their ranks. Below in the Bowl were gathered all the Weyrfolk and some of those injured in the first battle. All the Weyrfolk, that is, except Lessa and Ramoth. They had gone on to Fort Weyr where the queens’ wing was assembling. F’lar could not quite suppress a twinge of concern that she and Ramoth would be fighting, too. A holdover, he knew, from the days when Pern had only one queen. If Lessa could jump four hundred Turns between and lead five Weyrs back, she could take care of herself and her dragon against Threads.

He checked to be sure that every man was well loaded with firestone sacks, that each dragon was in good color, especially those in from the southern Weyr. Of course, the dragons were fit, but the faces of the men still showed evidences of the temporal strains they had endured. He was procrastinating, and the Threads would be dropping in the skies of Telgar. He gave the order to go between. They reappeared above, and to the south of Telgar Hold itself, and were not the first arrivals. To the west, to the north, and yes, to the east now, wings arrived until the horizon was patterned with the great V’s of several thousand dragon wings. Faintly he heard the claxon bell on Telgar Hold Tower as the unexpected dragon strength was acclaimed from the ground.

“Where is she?” F’lar demanded of Mnementh. “We’ll need her presently to relay orders …”

She’s coming, Mnementh interrupted him.

Right above Telgar Hold another wing appeared. Even at .this distance, F’lar could see the difference: the golden dragons .shone in the bright morning sunlight. A hum of approval drifted down the dragon ranks, and despite his fleeting worry, F’lar grinned with proud indulgence at the glittering sight.

Just then the eastern wings soared straight upward in the sky as the dragons became instinctively aware of the presence of their ancient foe.

Mnementh raised his head, echoing back the brass thunder of the war cry. He turned his head, even as hundreds of other beasts turned to receive firestone from their riders.

Hundreds of great jaws masticated the stone, swallowed it, their digestive acids transforming dry stone into flame-producing gases, igniting on contact with oxygen.

Threads! F’lar could see them clearly now against the spring sky. His pulses began to quicken, not with apprehension, but with a savage joy. His heart pounded unevenly. Mnementh demanded more stone and began to speed up the strokes of his wings in the air, gathering himself to leap upward when commanded.

The leading Weyr already belched gouts of orange-red flame into the pale blue sky. Dragons winked in and out, flamed and dove. The great golden queens sped at cliff-skimming height to cover what might have been missed. Then F’lar gave the command to gain altitude to meet the Threads halfway in their abortive descent. As Mnementh surged upward, F’lar shook his fist defiantly at the winking Red Eye of the Star.

“One day,” he shouted, “we will not sit tamely here, awaiting your fall. We will fall on you, where you spin, and sear you on your own ground.”

By the Egg, he told himself, if we can travel four hundred Turns backward and across seas and lands in the blink of an eye, what is travel from one world to another but a different kind of step? F’lar grinned to himself. He’d better not mention that audacious notion in Lessa’s presence.

Clumps ahead, Mnementh warned him. As the bronze dragon charged, flaming, F’lar tightened his knees on the massive neck. Mother of us all, he was glad that now, of all times, he, F’lar, rider of bronze Mnementh, was a dragonman of Pern!travel from one world to another but a different kind of step?

F’lar grinned to himself. He’d better not mention that audacious notion in Lessa’s presence.

Clumps ahead, Mnementh warned him.

As the bronze dragon charged, flaming, F’lar tightened his knees on the massive neck. Mother of us all, he was glad that now, of all times conceivable, he, F’lar, rider of bronze Mnementh, was a dragonman of Pern.