Authors: Anne McCaffrey
Lytol regarded him kindly. “I would hazard the opinion that some internal circuitry was never turned off. A system as sophisticated as Aivas’s would have recognized this man as a previous intruder. Computers, as you should know, Master Stinar, have long as well as accurate memory files.”
T
he Harper Hall was informed by fire-lizard message, and Pinch, who was the only person who had ever seen the Abominator leader, was conveyed to Landing to confirm the identification.
“No idea who he was, Master Mekelroy?” Lytol asked.
Pinch shook his head slowly. “Fifth” was only a convenient designation. He’d been called “Glass” at Crom Minehold 23, but that was no more the man’s rightful name than Fifth. Pinch hoped it took a long while before Lord Toric realized that Fifth, too, was no longer available. Now, if he could just find Fourth and neutralize her, they might forget about Abominators.
Esselin did not recover from the shock he had received and died a few days later of a hemorrhage in the brain. Or so the Healer at Landing said. The incident was forgotten as quickly as possible and Tunge soon resumed his duty of keeping the Aivas Chamber neat and tidy.
Once he started swimming daily, F’lessan improved in vigor, was able to concentrate, and asked for astronomy texts so he and Tai could study. He even sent someone up to the observatory office to examine the prints they had taken to show at the Dragonriders’ meeting; that now seemed another lifetime ago. Perhaps it was—the notion passed F’lessan’s mind briefly—but Tai saw a streak and they had to check that. Then a blur caught their attention and, although that print was marked as a time exposure and it took them all morning to update the orbit, it turned out to be an asteroid among the minor planets; nothing significant. The studying passed a morning and gave both of them practice in configuring orbits. Tai suggested that they could help Erragon by asking for more of the latest prints from Cove Hold. The Star Master might not have time to review prints with all he had to do supervising three new observatories—no name had been chosen yet for the Western Continent installation—and classes that Cove Hold had undertaken.
Golanth walked, limping at first but gradually with more confidence until he was pacing briskly up and down the length of the terrace. He kept trying to extend the damaged wing but it moved awkwardly, despite all the massage and smelly unguents. Sagassy’s holdermate, arriving with fresh food, watched him for a long moment.
“Think we can do something about that. Not too far to the ground on the step side.”
“Golanth couldn’t manage the hold steps,” F’lessan said. “He’s too long.”
“Ramp’d work. Double it, make it wide,” Jubb said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Got the wood. Make it strong. How much does your dragon weigh?”
F’lessan and Tai exchanged glances, and F’lessan burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“He weighs as much as he thinks he does,” F’lessan managed to say and that set Tai laughing.
Jubb looked from him to Sagassy to Keita and the others and shrugged.
“No one ever weighed a dragon before? We weigh herdbeasts’n’everything all the time.” He threw his hands up in the air. “Well, thought it might help.”
“It does, it does, it does.” F’lessan caught Jubb by the arm, reassuring him and controlling his amusement. “I’m not laughing at the idea, Jubb. It’s an excellent one. Golanth is tired of being stuck up here on the terrace.” F’lessan’s face lost all merriment. “He can’t just take off.”
“You are good to suggest it, Jubb,” Tai said, coming to his rescue. “How long would it take?”
Jubb gave them a long speculative look. “About as long as you got folk handy enough to build it.” Then he grinned.
I
t took three days, with dragons flying in timber, their riders, and folk who just “heard” that carpentry was needed, including the three dragons who flew in from Telgar Weyr with casks of nails, screws, new hammers, and saws, and brought whatever other equipment might be needed from the SmithCraftHall. Jubb; his workmates, Sparling and Riller; two Smithcrafters, and three of Lord Asgenar’s best timber men designed a switchback ramp, with much discussion about the angle of incline, the size and bracing of the structure, the width and depth of the flooring,
while men and women sawed and cut, and others hunted or flew in enough food to feed the volunteers. One thing F’lessan made clear: even for his dragon he would not mar the superb façade of Honshu Hold.
More important, F’lessan was immediately involved in the activity, taking time off only to swim, toning the muscles of his bad leg and his shoulder, regaining his tan. He also insisted on taking over as much of Golanth’s treatment as possible and trusted no one else, not even Tai, with lubricating the eyelids. He seemed to ignore his own injuries: using a slower, more deliberate step to disguise his limp as he moved around with the cane. He was more his old self, though he didn’t smile or laugh quite as easily. If she caught a darkness in his eye now and then, she knew it was all for his dragon, not himself. Several times, she saw F’lessan eyeing the drop from the ledge, measuring it, wondering if perhaps Golanth could indeed fall off its edge and manage a strong enough downward stroke with one wing to become airborne.
O
nce news of the project spread, Lessa and F’lar came to visit. While F’lar was looking over the plans with Jubb, the Smiths, and the Woodsmen, Lessa told them what was happening at Western—for lack of a better name that had stuck—and Master Erragon’s resurrection of the telescopes from the Catherine Caves.
“Before he gets too involved with that,” F’lessan said firmly, “we need him to rig a remote control console for the scope here on the main level. There’s a room on the north face that would suit.” He paused briefly, his eyes flickering. “There must be a way to trigger the dome mechanism, too. That spiral stair is ridiculous. Why did Kenjo hide everything away?”
“Who knows why the Ancients did what they did?” Lessa said, shrugging. “Have you asked Jancis and Piemur to help you? Didn’t you persuade them to do the initial restoration of the observatory? Erragon’s already grateful you’re reducing his backlog of prints. I don’t know how he fits everything in.”
“He swears he needs only four hours of sleep a night,” Tai remarked, incredulous.
“Neither of you can match him yet,” Lessa said at her driest, “at your stage of convalescence, but as I understand it, there’s more to sky-watching than lying on your back and looking at ’em. He says he needs references from Honshu.” Pausing, she looked out over the valley. “It is very pleasant here, you know, but we can’t stay long today.”
She and F’lar left shortly afterward, saying they’d be back when the ramp was finished.
They were. It was wide enough for Ramoth, the largest dragon on Pern, who demonstrated by walking down and up it without brushing folded wings against the cliff face. Bravely, Golanth set all four feet on it, F’lessan beside him.
“Now, put your weight down, Golly,” F’lessan said, grinning broadly and cocking his head at the slight sound as the timbers gave a little under him. “Don’t knock me off.”
The spectators cheered dragon and rider as they proceeded down. Ramoth’s eyes whirled as she watched from the upper terrace, Zaranth and Mnementh to one side on the cliff face, all three dragons alert. Gradually Golanth moved with assurance, able to lift his tail slightly, which was another improvement in his mobility. The first landing was more than wide enough for him to make the turn. When he and F’lessan reached ground level, he extended his head upward to bugle his pleasure and began to stamp round on the soft dirt. That was when the bronze dragon saw the door to the beasthold, the landing above and to one side of it.
I could weyr in this place
, he told his rider.
It is wide and high enough for me to enter
.
F’lessan, who knew every plane and dimension of Honshu, now saw that the doorway was wider than it had been. Over the general hammering, sawing, and planing, he would not have heard the noise of masons making the enlargement. He knew—because he had mucked out the dirt that had accumulated over the centuries—that the interior of the beasthold was larger than Golanth’s weyr at Benden. The ramp now gave him access to it and would certainly protect him from the winter rains.
“Rain,” F’lessan thought and had to reach for one of the supports until the dizziness that had abruptly overcome him passed.
“What’s wrong, F’lessan?” Tai asked, coming to see what had attracted Golanth’s interest. Her expression altered when she realized that he had had some kind of shock.
Rain! The silver fall of Thread was like rain! Golanth would never be able to fly Thread again. In fact, when Thread next fell over Honshu, Golanth would have to be shut into the beasthold, to keep him from
trying
to fly: the most powerful instinct of dragons was to fly when Thread was in the sky. Was that why the ramp had been completed so quickly? F’lessan tried to remember the sequence of Fall in this part of the south. He couldn’t think. The realization that his days as Wingleader were over was too much to assimilate. He must have known it at some level. And denied it as he denied that Golanth was blind in one eye and too joint-stiff to work the left wing. As he had diverted such thoughts by plunging into Erragon’s backlog of images. And Tai had encouraged him. Encouraged him to swim. To do
other things
! He wanted to think that she had been deceiving him but deceit was not a facet of Tai’s personality.
Neither Lessa nor F’lar had said anything during their last visit. He should have noticed the avoidance, the talk about sky-watching and installing remote controls. Hadn’t he mentioned it casually? Had they thought he was making the adjustment from Wingleader to sky-watcher? How could he have been so dense? This ramp allowed Golanth more freedom of movement—on the ground. But
into
the air! Golanth might not have lost his ability to go
between
but to go
between
from ground level presented hazards that no sensible rider would ask his dragon to face. What about an un-sensible rider?
He could feel Tai beside him. He could hear the men and women who had made the ramp still cheering the accomplishment and encouraging Golanth to show how easily he could climb back up to the weyrhold. F’lessan took a deep breath and turned around: in Tai’s eyes he could see she knew what he’d been thinking. Then, the second shock hit him.
A dragon must be in the air to “fly” his mate. He could not suppress his anguish at that realization. Hard enough to lose his right to lead, but to lose the ecstasy, too?
It took him a moment to realize that Tai was shaking him, her green eyes intense with denial.
“Nonsense,” he heard Tai say in a whisper so furious it stung his ears. “There’ll be a way. There’s been a way for everything else! Come.”
He grabbed her, pushing her against one of the thick stanchions at the base of the ramp.
“
Did
you know? Do
they
?” He meant his Weyrleaders. He gave her a shake when she didn’t answer.
“I thought,” and her words came out slowly, “that you realized someone would have to take over your wing—for a while.”
“It’s not just the wing …” He pushed her away from him. “I thought Honshu was my refuge. Now I realize it’s Golly’s prison!” He pointed to the beasthold and its widened doors. “He’ll have to be put in there whenever there’s Thread above. Not being able to fly drives a dragon crazy. We
always
assist an injured dragon to get far away until Thread has passed. But Golanth can’t even do that!”
“You don’t know that yet!” she said, whirling to stand in front of him. “We haven’t even tried to get him to the sea.”
“How in the name of the first Egg can we get him to the beach when he can’t even get in the air?”
“Because,” Lessa replied, walking in under the ramp, F’lar beside her, “we
know
how he can get into the air. Once he’s in the air, he can go
between
. Did you think Ramoth and Mnementh—and other dragons—had forgotten what they learned that day at Honshu?”
F’lessan stared at her. She was almost reproachful. To his amazement, his father was more amused than critical. He couldn’t quite grasp what they meant. His mind was tormented by the crushing revelations he had been too cowardly to admit to himself.
“The ramp is a good idea,” F’lar said. “That—” and he waved toward the beasthold, “makes a fine weyr. Nothing else.” His amber eyes held F’lessan’s. “Certainly not a prison in time of Thread. By the time the Nine Fall is over Honshu, we’ll have mastered lifting that bronze dragon of yours.”
“But how?”
“It takes control, you know,” Lessa said, walking up to her son and slipping her arm in his. “Which, I believe, your dragon was practicing the other morning.”
“How did you know that?” F’lessan asked, startled out of his morbid thoughts.
“There’s not much Ramoth doesn’t know if she wants to find out,” Lessa said, looking up at him and giving him an encouraging little smile. “Now, there is a celebration going on around us. I think we’ve inspected Golanth’s weyr sufficiently to know it will suit and I think you’d better calm him down.”
Golanth was bugling and his happy voice did not mirror the anguish of F’lessan’s recent numbing thoughts. None had leaked to his dragon, for which he was intensely grateful. Now Golanth was happily prancing up the ramp. His mind was all about being free of the terrace. F’lessan concentrated on that positive thought, reinforced it by what F’lar had just said. Practice? Yes, practice. Zaranth and Golanth hadn’t done so badly in the two movings they’d attempted so far. They could practice. He could feel the thud of Golanth’s feet in the ground under his.
Lessa gave him a little shake. “Come, F’lessan, you’ve other things to do now,” she said softly and then pulled his arm.
In the few steps back into the sunlight, he quenched that black moment of anger and mind-numbing despair, forced himself through them to grasp what hope allowed. He joined the applause as Golanth came charging back to the foot of the ramp, limping only slight on his left hind leg. His right wing was fully extended and, if the left was canted downward, it was straighter than it had been now the dragon didn’t have to worry about banging into Honshu’s wall.