Nevertheless, Meron would be watched closely. It was just possible that he could dominate his fire lizard. His mind, as Brekke said, was warped.
As F’nor entered the passageway to his weyr that evening, he heard a spirited conversation going on although he couldn’t distinguish the words.
Lessa is worried, Canth told him, shaking his wings flat against his back as he followed his rider.
“When you’ve lived with a man for seven Turns, you know what’s on his mind,” Lessa was saying urgently as F’nor entered. She turned, an almost guilty expression on her face, replaced by relief when she recognized F’nor.
He looked past her to Brekke whose expression was suspiciously blank. She didn’t summon even a welcoming smile for him.
“Know what’s on whose mind, Lessa?” F’nor asked, unbelting his riding tunic. He tossed his gloves to the table and accepted the wine which Brekke poured him.
Lessa sank awkwardly into the chair beside her, her eyes darting everywhere but toward him.
“Lessa is afraid that F’lar may attempt to go to the Red Star himself,” Brekke said, watching him.
F’nor considered that as he drank his wine. “F’lar’s not a fool, my dear girls. A dragon has to know where he’s going. And we don’t know what to tell them. Mnementh’s no fool either.” But as F’nor passed his cup to Brekke to be refilled, he had a sudden flash of N’ton’s hair-braiding cloud lady.
“He can’t go,” Lessa said, her voice harsh. “He’s what holds Pern together. He’s the only one who can consolidate the Lord Holders, the Craftmasters and the dragonriders. Even the Oldtimers trust him now. Him. No one else!”
Lessa was unusually upset, F’nor realized. Grall and Berd came gliding in to perch on the posts of Brekke’s chair, chirping softly and preening their wings.
Lessa ignored their antics, leaning across the table, one hand on F’nor’s to hold his attention. “I heard what the Harper said about miracles. Salvation in three days!” Her eyes were bitter.
“Going to the Red Star is salvation for no one, Lessa!”
“Yes, but we don’t know that for certain. We’ve only assumed that we can’t because the ancients didn’t. And until we prove to the Lords what the actual conditions there are, they will not accept the alternative!”
“More trouble from Larad?” F’nor asked sympathetically, rubbing the back of his neck. His muscles felt unaccountably tight.
“Larad is bad enough,” she said bitterly, “but I’d rather him than Raid and Sifer. They’ve somehow got hold of rumors and they’re demanding instant action.”
“Show ’em the grubs!”
Lessa abruptly released F’nor’s hand, pursing her lips with exasperation. “If grubs didn’t reassure Larad of Telgar, they’ll have less effect on those old blow-hards! No, they,” and in emphasizing the pronoun she underscored her contempt for the old Lord Holders, “are of the opinion that Meron of Nabol has found coordinates after nights of watching and is maliciously withholding them from the rest of Pern.”
F’nor grinned and shook his head. “N’ton is watching Meron of Nabol. The man has found nothing. He couldn’t do anything without our knowledge. And he certainly isn’t having any luck with his fire lizard.”
Lessa blinked, looking at him without comprehension.
“With his fire lizard?”
“Brekke thinks Meron might attempt to send his fire lizard to the Red Star.”
As if a string in her back had been pulled, Lessa jerked up in her chair, her eyes huge and black as she stared first at him, then at Brekke.
“Yes, that would be like him. He wouldn’t mind sacrificing his fire lizard for that, would he? And it’s as old as yours.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “If he . . .”
F’nor laughed with an assurance he suddenly didn’t honestly feel. Lessa had reacted far too positively to a notion he privately considered unlikely. Of course, she didn’t have a fire lizard and might not appreciate their limitations. “He may be trying,” he felt obliged to say. “N’ton’s been watching him. But he’s not succeeding. I don’t think Meron can. He doesn’t have the temperament to handle fire lizards. You simply can’t order them about the way you do drudges.”
Lessa clenched her fists in an excess of frustration.
“There’s got to be something we can do. I tell you, F’nor, I know what F’lar has on his mind. I know he’s trying to find some way to get to the Red Star if only to prove to the Lord Holders that there is no other alternative but the grubs!”
“He may be willing to risk his neck, my dear Lessa, but is Mnementh willing?”
Lessa flashed F’nor a look of pure dislike. “And put the notion in the poor beast’s head that this is what F’lar wants? I could throttle Robinton. Him and his three-day salvation! F’lar can’t stop thinking about that. But F’lar is not the one to go” and she broke off, biting her lip, her eyes sliding toward Brekke.
“I understand, Lessa,” Brekke said very slowly, her eyes unwinking as she held Lessa’s. “Yes, I understand you.”
F’nor began to massage his right shoulder. He must have been between too much lately.
“Never mind,” Lessa said suddenly, with unusual force. “I’m just overwrought with all this uncertainty. Forget what I said. I’m only imagining things. I’m as tired as—as we all are.”
“You’re right there, Lessa,” F’nor agreed. “We’re all seeing problems which don’t exist. After all, no Lord Holder has come to Benden Weyr and thrown down any ultimatum. What could they do? F’lar certainly has been forthright, explained the project of grub protection so often I’ll be ill if I have to listen to it once more. Certainly he’s been open with the other Weyrleaders, the Craftmasters, being sure that everyone knows exactly what the over-all plan is. Nothing will go wrong this time. This is one Craft secret that won’t get lost because someone can’t read a Record skin!”
Lessa rose, her body taut She licked her lips. “I think,” she said in a low voice, “that’s what scares me most. He’s taking such precautions to be sure everyone knows. Just in case . . .”
She broke off and rushed out of the Weyr.
F’nor stared after her. That interpretation of F’lar’s overtness began to assume frightening significance. Disturbed, he turned to Brekke, surprised to see tears in the girl’s eyes. He took her in his arms.
“Look, I’ll get some rest, we’ll eat, and then I’ll go to Fort Weyr. See Meron myself. Better still,” and he hugged her reassuringly, “I’ll bring Grall along. She’s the oldest we’ve got. I’ll see if she’d take the trip. If any of the fire lizards would go, she’d be the one. There now! How’s that for a good idea?”
She clung to him, kissing him so urgently that he forgot Lessa’s disturbing idea, forgot he was hungry and tired, and responded with eager surprise to her ardent demands.
Grall hadn’t wanted to leave Berd where the bronze fire lizard was cuddled on the cushion by Brekke’s head. But then, F’nor didn’t much want to leave Brekke. She’d reminded him, after they’d loved each other deeply, that they had obligations. If Lessa had been worried enough about F’lar to confide in Brekke and F’nor, she was more deeply concerned than she’d admit. Brekke and F’nor must assume such responsibility as they could.
Brekke was a great one for assuming responsibility. F’nor thought with affectionate tolerance as he roused Canth. Well, it wouldn’t take long to check on Meron. Or to see if Grall would consider going to the Red Star. That certainly was a better alternative than F’lar making the trip. If the little queen lizard would consider it.
Canth was in high good humor as they wheeled first above Benden Weyr, then burst out of between above Fort Weyr’s Star Stones. There were glows along the crown of the Weyr rim and, beyond the Star Stones, the silhouettes of several dragons.
Canth and F’nor of Benden Weyr, the brown dragon announced in answer to the watchrider’s query. Lioth is here and the green dragon who must stay at Nabol, Canth added as he backwinged to
a light landing. Grall swooped above F’nor’s head, waiting until Canth had taken off to join the other beasts before she took her shoulder perch.
N’ton stepped out of the shadows, his welcoming grin distorted by the path glows. He jerked his head back, toward the distance-viewer.
“He’s here and his lizard’s in a fine state. Glad you came. I was about to ask Lioth to bespeak Canth.”
The bronze Nabol lizard began to screech with a distress which Grall echoed nervously. Her wings extended. F’nor stroked them down to her back, emitting the human version of a lizard croon which usually calmed her. She tightened her wings but started to hop from one foot to the other, her eyes whirling restlessly.
“Who’s that?” demanded Meron of Nabol peremptorily. Meron’s shadow detached itself from the larger one of the rock on which the distance-viewer was mounted.
“F’nor, Wing-second of Benden Weyr,” the brown rider answered coldly.
“You’ve no business in Fort Weyr,” Meron said, his tone rasping. “Get out of here!”
“Lord Meron,” N’ton said, stepping in front of F’nor. “F’nor of Benden has as much right in Fort Weyr as you.”
“How dare you speak to a Lord Holder in that fashion?”
“Can he have found something?” F’nor asked N’ton in a low voice.
N’ton shrugged and moved toward the Nabolese. The little lizard began to shriek. Grall extended her wings again. Her thoughts were a combination of dislike and annoyance, tinged with fear.
“Lord Nabol, you have had the use of the distance-viewer since full dark.”
“I’ll have the use of the distance-viewer as long as I choose, dragonman. Go away. Leave me!”
Far too accustomed to instant compliance with his orders, Nabol turned back to the viewer. F’nor’s eyes were used to the darkness by now and he could see the Lord Holder bend to place his eye to the viewer. He also saw that the man held tight to his fire lizard though the creature was twisting and writhing to escape. Its agitated screeching rose to a nerve-twitting pitch.
The little one is terrified, Canth told his rider.
“Grall terrified?” F’nor asked the brown dragon, startled. He could see that Grall was upset but he didn’t read terror in her thoughts.
Not Grall. The little brother. He is terrified. The man is cruel.
F’nor had never heard such condemnation from his dragon.
Suddenly Canth let out an incredible bellow. It startled the riders, the other two dragons, and put Grall into flight. Before half the dragons of Fort Weyr roused to bugle a query, Canth’s tactic had achieved the effect he’d wanted. Meron had lost his hold on the fire lizard and it had sprung free and gone between.
With a cry of rage for such interference, Meron sprang toward the dragonriders, to find his way blocked by the menacing obstacle of Canth’s head.
“Your assigned rider will take you back to your Hold, Lord Meron,” N’ton informed the Lord Holder. “Do not return to Fort Weyr.”
“You’ve no right! You can’t deny me access to that distance-viewer. You’re not the Weyrleader. I’ll call a Conclave. I’ll tell them what you’re doing. You’ll be forced to act. You can’t fool me! You can’t deceive Nabol with your evasions and temporizing. Cowards! You’re cowards, the pack of you! Always knew it. Anyone can get to the Red Star. Anyone! I’ll call your bluff, you neutered perverts!”
The green dragon, her eyes redly malevolent, dipped her shoulder to Meron. Without a break in his ranting denunciation, the Lord of Nabol climbed the riding straps and took his place on her neck. She had not cleared the Star Stones before F’nor was at the distance-viewer, peering at the Red Star.
What could Meron have seen? Or was he merely bellowing baseless accusations to unsettle them?
As often as he had seen the Red Star with its boiling cover of reddish-gray clouds, F’nor still experienced a primitive stab of fear. Tonight the fear was like an extra-cold spine from his balls to his throat. The distance-viewer revealed the westward-pointing tail of the gray mass which resembled a featureless, backward Nerat. The jutting edge of the swirling clouds obscured it. Clouds that swirled to form a pattern—no lady braiding her hair tonight. Rather, a massive fist, thumb of darker gray curling slowly, menacingly over the clenched fingers as if the clouds themselves were grabbing the tip of the gray mass. The fist closed and lost its definition, resembling now a single facet of a dragon’s complex eye, half-lidded for sleep.
“What could he have seen?” N’ton demanded urgently, tapping F’nor’s shoulder to get his attention.
“Clouds,” F’nor said, stepping back to let N’ton in. “Like a fist. Which turned into a dragon’s eye. Clouds, that’s all he could have seen, over backward Nerat!”
N’ton looked up from the eyepiece, sighing with relief.
“Cloud formations won’t get us anywhere!”
F’nor held his hand up for Grall. She came down obediently and when she started to hop to his shoulder, he forestalled her, gently stroking her head, smoothing her wings flat. He held her level with his eyes and, without stopping the gentle caresses, began to project the image of that fist, lazily forming over Nerat. He outlined color, grayish-red, and whitish where the top of the imagined fingers might be sun-struck. He visualized the fingers closing above the Neratian peninsula. Then he projected the image of Grall taking the long step between to the Red Star, into that cloud fist.
Terror, horror, a whirling many-faceted impression of heat, violent wind, burning breathlessness, sent him staggering against N’ton as Grall, with a fearful shriek, launched herself from his hand and disappeared.
“What happened to her?” N’ton demanded, steadying the brown rider.
“I asked her,” and F’nor had to take a deep breath because her reaction had been rather shattering, “to go to the Red Star.”
“Well, that takes care of Brekke’s idea!”
“But why did she overreact that way? Canth?”
She was afraid, Canth replied didactically, although he sounded as surprised as F’nor. You gave vivid coordinates.
“I gave vivid coordinates?”
Yes.
“What terrified Grall? You aren’t reacting the way she did and you heard the coordinates.”
She is young and silly. Canth paused, considering something. She remembered something that scared her. The brown dragon sounded puzzled by that memory.
“What does Canth say?” N’ton asked, unable to pick up the quick exchange.
“He doesn’t know what frightened her. Something she remembers, he says.”
“Remembers? She’s only been hatched a few weeks.”
“A moment, N’ton.” F’nor put his hand on the bronze rider’s shoulder to silence him for a thought had suddenly struck him. “Canth,” he said taking a deep breath, “you said the coordinates I gave her were vivid. Vivid enough—for you to take me to that fist I saw in the clouds?”
Yes, I can see where you want me to go, Canth replied so confidently that F’nor was taken aback. But this wasn’t a time to think things out.
He buckled his tunic tightly and jammed the gloves up under the wristbands.
“You going back now?” N’ton asked.
“Fun’s over here for the night,” F’nor replied with a nonchalance that astonished him. “Want to make sure Grall got back safely to Brekke. Otherwise I’ll have to sneak in to Southern to the cove where she hatched.”
“Have a care then,” N’ton advised. “At least we’ve solved one problem tonight. Meron can’t make that fire lizard of his go to the Red Star ahead of us.”
F’nor had mourned Canth. He tightened the fighting straps until they threatened to cut off circulation. He waved to N’ton and the watchrider suppressing his rising level of excitement until Canth had taken him high above the Weyr. Then he stretched flat along Canth’s neck and looped the hand straps double around his wrists. Wouldn’t do to fall off during this jump between.
Canth beat steadily upward, dire
ctly toward the baleful Red Star, high in the dark heavens, almost as if the dragon proposed to fly there straight.
Clouds were formed by water vapors, F’nor knew. At least they were on Pern. But it took air to support clouds. Air of some kind. Air could contain various gases. Over the plains of Igen where the noxious vapors rose from the yellow mountains you could suffocate with the odor and the stuff in your lungs. Different gases issued from the young fire mountains that had risen in the shallow western seas to spout flame and boiling rock into the water. The miners told of other gases, trapped in tunnel hollows. But a dragon was fast. A second or two in the most deadily gas the Red Star possessed couldn’t hurt. Canth would jump them between to safety.
They had only to get to that fist, close enough for Canth’s long eyes to see to the surface, under the cloud cover. One look to settle the matter forever. One look that F’nor—not F’lar—would make.
He began to reconstruct that ethereal fist, its alien fingers closing over the westering tip of grayness on the Red Star’s enigmatic surface. “Tell Ramoth. She’ll broadcast what we see to everyone, dragon, rider, fire lizard. We’ll have to go slightly between time too to the moment on the Red Star when I saw that fist. Tell Brekke.” And he suddenly realized that Brekke already knew, had known when she’d seduced him so unexpectedly. For that was why Lessa had confided in them, in Brekke. He couldn’t be angry with Lessa. She’d had the courage to take just such a risk seven Turns ago, when she’d seen a way back through time to bring up the five missing Weyrs.
Fill your lungs, Canth advised him and F’nor felt the dragon sucking air down his throat.
He didn’t have time to consider Lessa’s tactics because the cold of between enveloped them. He felt nothing, not the soft hide of the dragon against his cheek, nor the straps scoring his flesh. Only the cold. Black between had never existed so long.
The Dragonriders of Pern Page 64