The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century (75 page)

“And why that one Weyr of the six to choose from?” Robinton demanded. “Nerat, in the tropics, or island Ista would be better choices if only one Weyr was to be left. Benden so far north is not a likely place to pass four hundred Turns.”

“Benden is high and isolated. A disease that struck the others and was prevented from reaching Benden?”

“And no explanation of it? They can’t all, dragons, riders, weyrfolk, have dropped dead on the same instant and left no carcasses rotting in the sun.”

“Then let us ask ourselves, why was the Harper called? Was he told to construct a Teaching Ballad covering this disappearance?”

“Well,” Robinton snorted, “it certainly wasn’t meant to reassure us, not with that tune—if one cares to call it a tune at all, and I don’t—nor does it answer any questions! It poses them.”

“For us to answer?” suggested F’lar softly.

“Aye,” and Robinton’s eyes shone. “For us to answer, indeed, for it is a difficult song to forget. Which means it was meant to be remembered. Those questions are important, F’lar!”

“W
HICH QUESTIONS ARE
important?” demanded Lessa who had entered quietly.

Both men were on their feet. F’lar, with unusual attentiveness, held a chair for Lessa and poured her wine.

“I’m not going to break apart,” she said tartly, almost annoyed at the excess of courtesy. Then she smiled up at F’lar to take the sting out of her words. “I slept and I feel much better. What were you two getting so intense about?”

F’lar quickly outlined what he and the Masterharper had been discussing. When he mentioned the Question Song, Lessa shuddered.

“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 blinked, 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 here—if here is
when
they came. They aren’t here now. And how would they have known they were needed—or
when
they were needed? And this is the real problem, how 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 worth 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 vice-like 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 round 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 vaulted 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 beyond 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 stumped 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 towards Ramoth and gestured the young brownrider 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 Bloodline’s possessions. Where has it been?” Her eyes were flashing.

“Lady, it is being returned 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 get 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 depicted, foliage was turning yellow from chilly nights. The slaty 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 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. After taking nourishment he could return to his mumbling and drawing.

Fandarel finally decided 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.

Black, blacker, blackest

And cold beyond frozen things.

Where is
between
when there is naught

To Life but fragile dragon wings?

“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 been 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 years 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 bore down hard on the difficulties she had already experienced.

She had become very thoughtful although she had said nothing.

Therefore, when Fandarel sent word he would like to show F’lar a new mechanism, the Weyrleader felt reasonably safe in allowing Lessa the triumph of returning the purloined 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 at the ledge, just then, reporting that a huge train of firestone was entering the tunnel. Consequently, busy with such details, it was mid-morning 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 him, twice, in fact.

“Twice?”

“Twice, as I said. He would not leave a message with me for you,” and 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 upwards 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.

Cold as death, death-bearing,

Stay and die, unguided.

Brave and braving, linger.

This way was twice decided.

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.

“That’s 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.