Dragonquest

“And how long must we wait until this expedition takes place?” Meron asked, as if the Harper’s words had never been spoken.

“Come now, man, how can you expect any one to give a date – a time?” asked Groghe.

“Ah, but Benden Weyr is so adept at giving times and dates and patterns, is it not?” Meron replied so unctuously that Lessa wanted to scratch his face.

“And they saved your profit, Nabol,” Oterel put in.

“Have you any idea, Weyrwoman?” Sangel asked Lessa in an anxious tone.

“I must complete the observations,” Wansor put in, nervously dithering. “It would be folly – madness – until we have seen the entire Red Star, and plot in the distinctive features of the various color masses. See how often the clouds cover it. Oh, there is much preliminary investigation to be done.

And then, some kind of protective . . .”

“I see,” Meron broke in.

Would the man never cease smiling? And yet, Lessa thought, his irony might work in their favor.

“It could be a lifelong project,” he went on.

“Not if I know F’lar,” the Harper said dryly. “I’ve recently entertained the notion that Benden’s Weyrleader takes these latest vagaries of our ancient scourge as a personal insult since we had rather thought we’d got them neatly slotted in time and place.”

There was such good-humored raillery in the Harper’s tone that Oterel of Tillek gave a snort. Lord Groghe looked more thoughtful, probably not quite recovered from F’lar’s rebuttal the other day.

“An insult to Benden?” asked Sangel, baffled. “But his time tables were accurate for Turns. Used them myself and never found them wrong until just recently.”

Meron stamped his foot, his affected pose gone.

“You’re all fools. Letting the Harper sweet-talk you into complacency. We’ll never see the end of Thread. Not in his lifetime or ours. And we’ll be paying tithes to shiftless Weyrs deferring to Dragonriders and their women as long as this planet circles the sun. And there’s not one of you great Lords, not one, with the courage to force this issue. We don’t need Dragonriders. We don’t need ‘em. We’ve fire lizards which eat Thread . . .”

“Then shall I inform T’bor of the High Reaches Weyr that his wings need no longer patrol Nabol? I’m certain he would be relieved,” Lessa asked in her lightest, sweetest voice.

The Nabolese Lord gave her a look of pure hatred. The fire lizard gathered itself into a hissing launch position. A single clear note from Ramoth all but deafened those on the heights. The fire lizard disappeared with a shriek. Strangling on his curses, Meron stamped down the lighted path to the landing, calling harshly for his dragon. The green appeared with such alacrity that Lessa was certain Ramoth had summoned him, even as she had warned the little lizard against attacking Lessa.

“You wouldn’t order T’bor to stop patrolling Nabol, would you, Weyrwoman?” asked Nessel, Lord of Crom. “After all, my lands march with his . . .”

“Lord Nessel,” Lessa began, intending to reassure him that she had no such authority in the first place and in the second . . . “Lord Nessel,” she repeated instead, smiling at him, “you notice that the Lord of Nabol did not request it, after all. Though,” and she sighed with dramatic dedication, “we have been sorely tempted to penalize him for his part in the death of the two dragon queens.” She gave Nessel a wan, brave smile. “But there are hundreds of i

“Which leads me to ask,” Groghe said, hastily clearing his throat, “what is being done with that – that Kylara woman?”

“Nothing,” Lessa said in a flat hard voice, trusting that would end the matter.

“Nothing?” Groghe was incensed. “She caused the deaths of two queens and you’re doing nothing . . .”

“Are the Lord Holders doing anything about Meron?” she asked, glancing sternly at the four present. There was a long silence. “I must return to Benden Weyr. The dawn and another day’s watch come all too soon there. We’re keeping Wansor and Fandarel from the observations that will make it possible for us to go to that Star.”

“Before they monopolize the thing, I’d like another look,” Oterel of Tillek said loudly. “My eyes are keen . . .”

Lessa was tired as she called Ramoth to her. She wanted to go back to Benden Weyr, not so much to sleep as to reassure herself about F’lar. Mnementh was with him, true, and he’d have reported any change in his rider’s condition . . .

And I’d’ve told you, Ramoth said, sounding a little hurt.

“Lessa,” the Harper’s low voice reached her, “are you in favor of that expedition?”

She looked up at him, his face lighted by the path glows. His expression was neutral and she wondered if he’d really meant what he’d said back at the Star Rocks. He dissembled so easily, and so often against his own inclination, that she sometimes wondered what his candid thoughts were.

“It scares me. It scares me because it seems so likely that someone must have tried. Sometime. It just doesn’t seem logical . . .”

“Is there any record that anyone, besides yourself, ever jumped so far between times?”

“No.” She had to admit it. “Not so far. But then, there hadn’t been such need.”

“And there’s no need now to take this other kind of a jump?”

“Don’t unsettle me more.” Lessa was unsure of what she felt or thought, or what anyone felt or thought, should or shouldn’t do. Then she saw the kind, worried expression of the Harper’s eyes and impulsively gripped his arm. “How can we know? How can we be sure?”

“How were you sure that the Question Song could be answered – by you?”

“And you’ve a new Question Song for me?”

“Questions, yes.” He gave her a smile as he covered her hand gently with his own. “Answer?” He shook his head and then stepped back as Ramoth alighted.

But his questions were as difficult to forget as the Question Song which had led her between times. When she returned to Benden, she found that F’lar’s skin was hot to the touch; he slept restlessly. So much so that, although Lessa willed herself to sleep beside him on the wide couch, she couldn’t succeed. Desperate for some surcease from her fears – for F’lar, of the intangible unknown ahead – she crept from their couch and into the weyr. Ramoth roused sleepily and arranged her front legs in a cradle. Lulled by the warm, musty comfort of her dragon, Lessa finally did sleep.

By the morning, F’lar was no better, querulous with his fever and worried about her report on the viewing.

“I can’t imagine what you expected me to see,” she said with some exasperation after she had patiently described for the fourth time what she had seen through the distance-viewer

“I expected,” and he paused significantly, “to find some – some characteristic for which the dragons could fly between.” He plucked at the bed fur, then pulled the recalcitrant forelock back from his eyes. “We have got to keep that promise to the Lord Holders.”

“Why? To prove Meron wrong?”

“No. To prove it is or is not possible to get rid of Thread permanently.” He scowled at her as if she should have known the answer.

“I think someone else must have tried to discover that before,” she said wearily. “And we still have Thread.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he countered in such a savage tone that he began to cough, an exercise which painfully contracted the injured muscles across his waist.

Instantly Lessa was at his side, offering him distilled wine, sweetened and laced with fellis fruit juice.

“I want F’nor,” he said petulantly.

Lessa looked down at him for the coughing spasm had left him limp.

“If we can pry him away from Brekke.”

F’lar’s lips set in a thin line.

“You mean, only you, F’lar, Benden Weyrleader, can flout tradition?” she asked.