The Dragonriders of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

Lord Asgenar chuckled. “Who trusts Meron? My man had heard tales of how that Lord treats his people.” He seemed about to add another thought but cleared his throat instead, glancing nervously away as if catching a glimpse of something in the woods.

  “What all Pern needs is an efficient means of communication,” remarked the dragonman, his eyes on the gasping runner.

  “Efficient?” and Asgenar laughed aloud. “Is all Pern infected with Fandarel’s disease?”

  “Pern benefits by such an illness.” F’lar must contact the Mastersmith the moment he got back to the Weyr. Pern needed the genius of the giant Fandarel now more than ever.

  “Yes, but will we recover from the feverish urge for perfection?” Asgenar’s smile faded as he added, in a deceptively casual fashion. “Have you heard whether a decision has been reached about Bendarek’s guild?”

  “None yet.”

  “I do not insist that a Craftmaster’s Hall be sited in Lemos—” Asgenar began, urgent and serious.

  F’lar held up his hand. “Nor I, though I have trouble convincing others of my sincerity. Lemos Hold has the biggest stands of wood, Bendarek needs to be near his best source of supply, and he comes of Lemos!”

  “Every single objection raised has been ridiculous,” Asgenar replied, his gray eyes sparkling with anger. “You know as well as I that a Craftmaster owes no allegiance to a Lord Holder. Bendarek’s as unprejudiced as Fandarel as far as loyalty to anything but his craft is concerned. All the man thinks of is wood and pulp and those new leaves or sheets or what-you-ma-callums he’s mucking about with.”

  “I know. I know, Asgenar. Larad of Telgar Hold and Corman of Keroon Hold side with you or so they’ve assured me.”

  “When the Lord Holders meet in Conclave at Telgar Hold, I’m going to speak out. Lord Raid and Sifer will back me, if only because we’re weyrbound.”

  “It isn’t the Lords or Weyrleaders who must make this decision,” F’lar reminded the resolute young Lord. “It’s the other Craftmasters. That’s been my thought since Fandarel first proposed a new craft designation.”

  “Then what’s holding matters up? All the Mastercraftsmen will be at the wedding at Telgar Hold. Let’s settle it once and for all and let Bendarek alone.” Asgenar threw his arms wide with frustration. “We need Bendarek settled, we need what he’s been producing and he can’t keep his mind on important work with all this shifting and shouting.”

  “Any proposal that smacks of change right now,” (especially now, F’lar added to himself, thinking of this Threadfall,) “is going to alarm certain Weyrleaders and Lord Holders. Sometimes I think that only the Crafts constantly look for change, are interested and flexible enough to judge what is improvement or progressive. The Lord Holders and the—” F’lar broke off.

  Fortunately another runner was approaching from the north, his legs pumping strongly. He came straight past the green dragon, right up to his Lord.

  “Sir, the northern section is clear. Three burrows have been burned out. All is secure.”

  “Good man. Well run.”

  The man, flushed with praise and effort, saluted the Weyrleader and his Lord. Then, breathing deeply but without labor, he strode over to the prone messenger and began massaging his legs.

  Asgenar smiled at F’lar. “There’s no point in our rehearsing arguments. We are basically in agreement. If we could just make those others see!”

  Mnementh rumbled that the wings were reporting an all-clear. He so pointedly extended his foreleg that Asgenar laughed.

  “That does it,” he said. “Any idea how soon before we have another Fall?”

  F’lar shook his head. “F’rad is here. You ought to have seven days free. You’ll hear from me as soon as we’ve definite news.”

  “You’ll be at Telgar in six days, won’t you?”

  “Or Lessa will have my ears!”

  “My regards to your lady.”

  Mnementh bore him upward in an elliptical course that allowed them to make one final check of the forest lands. Wisps of smoke curled to the north and farther to the east, but Mnementh seemed unconcerned. F’lar told him to go between. The utter cold of that dimension painfully irritated the Thread-scores on his face. Then they were above Benden Weyr. Mnementh trumpeted his return and hung, all but motionless, until he heard the booming response of Ramoth. At that instant, Lessa appeared on the ledge of the weyr, her slight stature diminished still further by distance. As Mnementh glided in, she descended the long flight of stairs in much the same headlong fashion for which they criticized their weyrling son, Felessan.

  Reprimands were not likely to break Lessa of that habit either, thought F’lar. Then he noticed what Lessa had in her hands and rounded angrily on Mnementh. “I’m barely touched and you babble on me like a weyrling!”

  Mnementh was not the least bit abashed as he backwinged to land lightly by the Feeding Ground. Thread hurts.

  “I don’t want Lessa upset over nothing!”

  I don’t want Ramoth angry over anything!

  F’lar slid from the bronze’s neck, concealing the twinges he felt as the gritty wind from the Feeding Grounds aggravated the cold-seared lacerations. This was one of those times when the double bond between riders and dragons became a serious disadvantage. Particularly when Mnementh took the initiative, not generally a draconic characteristic.

  Mnementh gave an awkward half-jump upward, clearing the way for Lessa. She hadn’t changed from wherhide riding clothes and looked younger than any Weyrwoman ought as she ran towards them, her plaited hair bouncing behind her. Although neither motherhood nor seven Turns of security had added flesh to her small-boned body, there was a subtle roundness to breast and hip, and that certain look in her great gray eyes that F’lar knew was for him alone.

  “And you complain about the timing of other riders,” she said, gasping, as she came to an abrupt stop at his side. Before he could protest the insignificance of his injuries, she was smearing numbweed on the burns. “I’ll have to wash them once the feeling’s gone. Can’t you duck ash yet? Virianth will be all right but Sorenth and Relth took awful lacings. I do wish that glass craftsman of Fandarel’s—Wansor’s his name, isn’t it?—would complete those eyeguards he’s been blathering about. Manora thinks she can save P’ratan’s good looks but we’ll have to wait and see about his eye.” She paused to take a deep breath. “Which is just as well because if he doesn’t stop raiding Holds for new lovers, we won’t be able to foster all the babies. Those holdbred girls are convinced it’s evil to abort.” She stopped short, set her lips in the thin line which F’lar had finally catalogued as Lessa veering away from a painful subject.

  “Lessa! No, don’t look away.” He forced her head up so she had to meet his eyes. She who couldn’t conceive must find it hard, too, to help terminate unwanted pregnancies. Would she never stop yearning for another child? How could she forget she had nearly died with Felessan? He’d been relieved that she had never quickened again. The thought of losing Lessa was not even to be considered. “Riding between so much makes it impossible for a Weyrwoman to carry to term.”

  “It doesn’t seem to affect Kylara,” Lessa said with bitter resentment. She had turned away, watching Mnementh rend a fat buck with such an intense expression in her eyes that F’lar had no difficulty guessing that she’d prefer Kylara thus rendered.

  “That one!” F’lar said with a sharp laugh. “Dear heart, if you must model yourself after Kylara to bear children as Weyrwoman, I prefer you barren!”

  “We’ve more important things to discuss than her,” Lessa said, turning to him in a complete change of mood. “What did Lord Asgenar say about the Threadfall? I’d have joined you in the meadow, but Ramoth’s got the notion she can’t leave her clutch without someone spying on them. Oh, I sent messengers out to the other Weyrs to tell them what’s happened here. They ought to know and be on their guard.”

  “It would’ve been courteous of them to have apprised us first,” F’lar said so angrily that Lessa glanced
up at him, startled. He told her then what Lemos Lord Holder had said on the mountain meadow.

  “And Asgenar assumed that we all knew? That it was simply a matter of changing the timetables?” Shock faded from her face and her eyes narrowed, flashing with indignation. “I would I had never gone back to get those Oldtimers. You’d have figured out a way for us to cope.”

  “You give me entirely too much credit, love.” He hugged her for her loyalty. “However, the Oldtimers are here and we’ve got to deal with them.”

  “Indeed we will. We’ll bring them up to date if . . .”

  “Lessa,” and F’lar gave her a little shake, his pessimism dispersed by the vehemence of her response and the transparency of her rapid calculations on how to bring about such changes. “You can’t change a watch-wher into a dragon, my love . . .”

  Who’d want to? demanded Mnementh from the Feeding Ground, his appetite sated.

  The bronze dragon’s tart observation elicited a giggle from Lessa. F’lar hugged her gratefully.

  “Well, it’s nothing we can’t cope with,” she said firmly, allowing him to tuck her under his shoulder as they walked back to the weyr. “And it’s nothing I don’t expect from that T’kul of the ever-so-superior High Reaches. But R’mart of Telgar Weyr?”

  “How long have the messengers been gone?”

  Lessa frowned up at the bright midmorning sky. “Only just. I wanted to get any last details from the sweepriders.”

  “I’m as hungry as Mnementh. Feed me, woman.”

  The bronze dragon had glided up to the ledge to settle in his accustomed spot just as a commotion started in the tunnel. He extended his wings to flight position, neck craned toward the one land entrance to the dragonweyr.

  “It’s the wine train from Benden, silly,” Lessa told him, chuckling as Mnementh gave voice to a loud brassy grumble and began to arrange himself again, completely disinterested in wine trains. “Now don’t tell Robinton the new wine’s in, F’lar. It has to settle first, you know.”

  “And why would I be telling Robinton anything?” F’lar demanded, wondering how Lessa knew that he had only just started to think of the Masterharper himself.

  “There has never been a crisis before us when you haven’t sent for the Masterharper and the Mastersmith.” She sighed deeply. “If we only had such cooperation from our own kind.” Her body went rigid under his arm. “Here comes Fidranth and he says that T’ron’s very agitated.”

  “T’ron’s agitated?” F’lar’s anger welled up instantly.

  “That’s what I said,” Lessa replied, freeing herself and taking the steps two at a time. “I’ll order you food.” She halted abruptly, turning to say over her shoulder, “Keep your temper. I suspect T’kul never told anyone. He’s never forgiven T’ron for talking him into coming forward you know.”

  F’lar waited beside Mnementh as Fidranth circled smartly into the weyr. From the Hatching Cavern came Ramoth’s crotchety challenge. Mnementh answered her soothingly that the intruder was only Fidranth and no threat. At least not to her clutch. Then the bronze rolled one scintillating eye toward his rider. The exchange, so like one between himself and Lessa, drained anger from F’lar. Which was as well, for T’ron’s opening remarks were scarcely diplomatic.

  “I found it! I found what you forgot to incorporate in those so-called infallible timetables of yours!”

  “You’ve found what, T’ron?” F’lar asked, tightly controlling his temper. If T’ron had found anything that would be of help, he could not antagonize the man.

  Mnementh had courteously stepped aside to permit Fidranth landing room, but with two huge bronze bodies there was so little space that T’ron slid in front of the Benden Weyrleader, waving a portion of a Record hide right under his nose.

  “Here’s proof your timetables didn’t include every scrap of information from our Records!”

  “You’ve never questioned them before, T’ron,” F’lar reminded the exercised man, speaking evenly.

  “Don’t hedge with me, F’lar. You just sent a messenger with word that Thread was falling out of pattern.”

  “And I’d have appreciated knowing that Thread had fallen out of pattern over Tillek and High Crom in the past few days!”

  The look of shock and horror on T’ron’s face was too genuine to be faked.

  “You’d do better to listen to what commoners say, T’ron, instead of immuring yourself in the Weyr,” F’lar told him. “Asgenar knew of it yet neither T’kul nor R’mart thought to tell the other Weyrs, so we could prepare and keep watch. Just luck I had F’rad . . .”

  “You’ve not been housing dragonmen in the Holds again?”

  “I always send a messenger on ahead the day of a Fall. If I didn’t follow the practice, Asgenar’s forest lands would be gone by now.”

  F’lar regretted that heated reference. It would give T’ron the wedge he needed for another of his diatribes about overforestation. To divert him, F’lar reached for the piece of Record, but T’ron twitched it out of his grasp.

  “You’ll have to take my word for it . . .”

  “Have I ever questioned your word, T’ron?” Those words, too, were out before F’lar could censor them. He could and did keep his face expressionless, hoping T’ron would not read in it an additional allusion to that meeting. “I can see that the Record’s badly eroded, but if you’ve deciphered it and it bears on this morning’s unpredicted shift, we’ll all be in your debt.”

  “F’lar?” Lessa’s voice rang down the corridor. “Where are your manners? The klah’s cooling and it is predawn T’ron’s time.”

  “I’d appreciate a cup,” T’ron admitted, as obviously relieved as F’lar by the interruption.

  “I apologize for rousing you . . .”

  “I need none, not with this news.”

  Unaccountably F’lar was relieved to realize that T’ron had obviously not known of Threadfall. He had come charging in here, delighted at an opportunity to put F’lar and Benden in the wrong. He’d not have been so quick—witness his evasiveness and contradictions over the belt-knife fight—if he’d known.

  When the two men entered the queen’s weyr, Lessa was gowned, her hair loosely held by an intricate net, and seated gracefully at the table. Just as if she hadn’t ridden hard all morning and been suited five minutes before.

  So Lessa was all set to charm T’ron again, huh? Despite the unsettling events, F’lar was amused. Still, he wasn’t certain that this ploy would lessen T’ron’s antagonism. He didn’t know what truth there was in a rumor that T’ron and Mardra were not on very good terms for a Weyrwoman and Weyrleader.

  “Where’s Ramoth?” T’ron asked, as he passed the queen’s empty weyr

  “On the Hatching Ground, of course, slobbering over her latest clutch.” Lessa replied with just the right amount of indifference.

  But T’ron frowned, undoubtedly reminded that there was another queen egg on Benden’s warm sands and that the Oldtimers’ queens laid few gold eggs.

  “I do apologize for starting your day so early,” she went on, deftly serving him a neatly sectioned fruit and fixing klah to his taste. “But we need your advice and help.”

  T’ron grunted his thanks, carefully placing the Record hide side down on the table.

  “Threadfall could come when it would if we didn’t have all those blasted forests to care for,” T’ron said, glaring at F’lar through the steam of the klah as he lifted his mug.

  “What? And do without wood?” Lessa complained, rubbing her hands on the carved chair which Bendarek had made with his consummate artistry. “Those stone chairs may fit you and Mardra,” she said in a sweet insinuating voice, “but I had a cold rear end all the time.”

  T’ron snorted with amusement, his eyes wandering over the dainty Weyrwoman in such a way that Lessa leaned forward abruptly and tapped the Record.

  “I ought not to take your valuable time with chatter. Have you discovered something here which we missed?”

  F’lar gr
ound his teeth. He hadn’t overlooked a single legible word in those moldy Records, so how could she imply negligence so casually?

  He forgave her when T’ron responded by flipping over the hide. “The skin is badly preserved, of course,” and he made it sound as if Benden’s wardship were at fault, not the depredations of four hundred Turns of abandonment, “but when you sent that weyrling with this news, I happened to remember seeing a reference to a Pass where all previous Records were no help. One reason we never bothered with timetable nonsense.”

  F’lar was about to demand why none of the Oldtimers had seen fit to mention that minor fact, when he caught Lessa’s stern look. He held his peace.

  “See, this phrase here is partly missing, but if you put ‘unpredictable shifts’ here, it makes sense.”

  Lessa, her gray eyes wide with an expression of unfeigned awe (her dissembling nearly choked F’lar), looked up from the Record at T’ron.

  “He’s right, F’lar. That would make sense. See—” and she deftly slipped the Record from T’ron’s reluctant fingers and passed it to F’lar. He took it from her.

  “You’re right, T’ron. Very right. This is one of the older skins which I had to abandon, unable to decipher them.”

  “Of course, it was much more readable when I first studied it four hundred Turns back, before it got so faded.” T’ron’s smug manner was hard to take, but he could be managed better so than when he was defensive and suspicious.

  “But that doesn’t tell us how the shift changes, or how long it lasted,” F’lar said.

  “There must be other clues, T’ron,” Lessa suggested, bending seductively toward the Fort Weyrleader when he began to bristle at F’lar’s words. “Why would Thread fall out of a pattern they’ve followed to the second for seven mortal Turns this Pass? You yourself told me that you followed a certain rhythm in your Time. Did it vary much then?”

  T’ron frowned down at the blurred lines. “No,” he admitted slowly, and then brought his fist down on the offending scrap. “Why have we lost so many techniques? Why have these Records failed us just when we need them most?”