Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey
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 id
“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, directly 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.
Then they burst out of between into a heat that was suffocating. They dropped through the closing tunnel of cloud fingers toward the gray mass which suddenly was as close to them as Nerat’s tip on a high-level Thread pass.
Canth started to open his wings and screamed in agony as they were wrenched back. The snapping of his strong fore-limbs went unheard in the incredible roar of the furnace-hot tornadic winds that seized them from the relative calm of the downdraft. There was air enveloping the Red Star—a burning hot air, whipped to flame-heat by brutal turbulences. The helpless dragon and rider were like a feather, dropped hundreds of lengths only to be slammed upward, end over end, with hideous force. As they tumbled, their minds paralyzed by the holocaust they had entered, F’nor had a nightmare glimpse of the gray surfaces toward and away from which they were alternately thrown and removed: the Neratian tip was a wet, slick gray that writhed and bubbled and oozed. Then they were thrown into the reddish clouds that were shot with nauseating grays and whites, here and there torn by massive orange rivers of lightning. A thousand hot points burned the unprotected skin of F’nor’s face, pitted Canth’s hide, penetrating each lid over the dragon’s eyes. The overwhelming, multileveled sound of the cyclonic atmosphere battered their minds ruthlessly to unconsciousness.
Then they were hurled into the awesome calm of a funnel of burning, sand-filled heat and fell toward the surface—crippled and impotent
Painridden, F’nor had only one thought as his senses failed him. The Weyr! The Weyr must be warned!
Grall returned to Brekke, crying piteously, burrowing into Brekke’s arm. She was trembling with fear but her thoughts made such chaotic nonsense that Brekke was unable to isolate the cause of her terror.
She stroked and soothed the little queen, tempting her with morsels of meat to no effect. The little lizard refused to be quieted. Then Berd caught Grall’s anxiety and when Brekke scolded him, Grall’s excitement and anguish intensified.
Suddenly Mirrim’s two greens came swooping into the weyr, twittering and fluttering, also affected by the irrational behavior of the little queen. Mirrim came running in then, escorted by her bronze, bugling and fanning his gossamer wings into a blur.
“Whatever is the matter? Are you all right, Brekke?”
“I’m perfectly all right,” Brekke assured her, pushing away the hand Mirrim extended to her forehead. “They’re just excited, that’s all. It’s the middle of the night. Go back to bed.”
“Just excited?” Mirrim pursed her lips the way Lessa did when she knew someone was evading her. “Where’s Canth? Why ever did they leave you alone?”
“Mirrim!” Brekke’s tone brought the girl up sharp. She flushed, looking down at her feet, hunching her shoulders in the self-effacing way Brekke deplored. Brekke closed her eyes, fighting to be calm although the distress of the five fire lizards was insidious. “Please get me some strong Klah.”
Brekke rose and began to dress in riding clothes. The five lizards started to keen now, flitting around the room, swooping in wild dives as if they wanted to escape some unseen danger.
“Get me some klah,” she repeated, because Mirrim stood watching her like a numbwit.
Her trio of fire lizards had followed her out before Brekke realized her error. They’d probably rouse the lower Caverns with their distress. She called but Mirrim didn’t hear her. Cold chills made her fingers awkward.
Canth wouldn’t go if he felt it would endanger F’nor. Canth has sense, Brekke told herself trying to convince herself. He knows what he can and can’t do. Canth is the biggest, fastest, strongest brown dragon on Pern. He’s almost as large as Mnementh and nearly as smart.
Brekke heard Ramoth’s brassy bugle of alarm just as she received the incredible message from Canth.
Going to the Red Star? On the coordinates of a cloud? She staggered against the table, her legs trembling. She managed to sit but her hands shook so, she couldn’t pour the wine. Using both hands, she got the bottle to her lips and swallowed some that way. It helped.
She’d somehow not believed they’d see a way to go. Was that what had frightened Grall so?
Ramoth kept up her alarm and Brekke now heard the other dragons bellowing with worry.
She fumbled with the last closing of her tunic and forced herself to her feet, to walk to the ledge. The fire lizards kept darting and diving around her, keenly wildly; a steady, nerve-jangling double trill of pure terror.
She halted at the top of the stairs, stunned by the confusion in the crepuscular gloom of the Weyr Bowl. There were dragons on ledges, fanning their wings with agitation. Other beasts were circling around at dangerous speeds. Some had riders, most were flying free. Ramoth and Mnementh were on the Stones, their wings outstretched, their tongues flicking angrily, their eyes bright orange as they bugled to their weyrmates. Riders and weyrfolk were running back and forth, yelling, calling to their beasts, questioning each other for the source of this inexplicable demonstration.
Brekke futilely clapped her hands to her ears, searching the confusion for a sight of Lessa or F’lar. Suddenly they both appeared at the steps and came running up to her. F’lar reached Brekke first, for Lessa hung back, one hand steadying herself against the wall.
“Do you know what Canth and F’nor are doing?” the Weyrleader cried. “Every beast in the Weyr is shrieking at the top of voice and mind!” He covered his own ears, glaring furiously at her, expecting an answer.
Brekke looked toward Lessa, saw the fear and the guilt in the Weyrwoman’s eyes.
“Canth and F’nor are on their way to the Red Star.”
F’lar stiffened and his eyes turned as orange as Mnementh’s. He stared at her with a compound of fear and loathing that sent Brekke reeling back. As if her movement released him, F’lar looked toward the bronze dragon roaring stentoriously on the heights.
His shoulders jerked back and his hands clenched into fists so tight the bones showed yellow through the skin.
At that instant, every noise ceased in the Weyr as every mind felt the impact of the warning the fire lizards had been trying inchoately to project.