Tton had to agree to that. Lessa waited for the klah to come; when it did, she sipped gratefully at its stimulating warmth.
Then she took a deep breath and began, telling them of the Long Interval between the dangerous passes of the Red Star: how the sole Weyr had fallen into disfavor and contempt, how Jora had deteriorated and lost control over her queen, Nemorth, so that, as the Red Star neared, there was no sud-den increase in the size of clutches. How she had Impressed Ramoth to become Benden’s Weyrwoman. How Flar had outwitted the dissenting Hold Lords the day after Ramoth’s first mating flight and taken firm command of Weyr and Pern, preparing for the Threads he knew were coming. She told her by now rapt audience of her own first attempts to fly Ramoth and how she had inadvertently gone back between time to the day Fax had invaded Ruath Hold.
“Invade … my family’s Hold?” Mardra cried, aghast.
“Ruatha has given the Weyrs many famous Weyrwomen,” Lessa said with a sly smile at which T’ton burst out’ laughing.
“She’s Ruathan, no question,” he assured Mardra.
She told them of the situation in which dragonmen now found themselves, with an insufficient force to meet the Thread attacks. Of the Question Song and the great tapestry.
“A tapestry?” Mardra cried, her hand going to her cheek in alarm. “Describe it to me!”
And when Lessa did, she saw at last belief in both their faces.
“My father has just commissioned a tapestry with such a scene. He told me of it the other day because the last battle with the Threads was held over Ruatha.” Incredulous, Mardra turned to T’ton, who no longed looked amused. “She must have done what she has said she’d done. How could she possibly know about the tapestry?”
“You might also ask your queen dragon, and mine,” Lessa suggested.
“My dear, we do not doubt you now,” Mardra said sincerely, “but it is a most incredible feat.”
“I don’t think,” Lessa said, “that I would ever try it again, knowing what I do know.”
“Yes, this shock makes a forward jump between times quite a problem if your F’lar must have an effective fighting force,” T’ton remarked.
“You will come? You will?’ “There is a distinct possibility we will,” T’ton said gravely, and his face broke into a lopsided grin. “You said we left the Weyrs … abandoned them, in fact, and left no explanation. We went somewhere … somewhen, that is, for we are still here now… .”
They were all silent, for the same alternative occurred to them simultaneously. The Weyrs had been vacant, but Lessa had no way of proving that the five Weyrs reappeared in her time.
“There must be a way. There must be a way,” Lessa cried distractedly. “And there’s no time to waste. No time at all!”
T’ton gave a bark of laughter. “There’s plenty of time at this end of history, my dear.”
They made her rest then, more concerned than she was that she had been ill some weeks, deliriously screaming that she was falling and could not see, could not hear, could not touch. Ramoth, too, they told her, had suffered from the appalling nothingness of a protracted stay between, emerging above ancient Ruatha a pale yellow wraith of her former robust self. The Lord of Ruatha Hold, Mardra’s father, had been. surprised out of his wits by the appearance of a staggering rider and a pallid queen on his stone verge. Naturally and luckily he had sent to his daughter at Fort Weyr for help.
Lessa and Ramoth had been transported to the Weyr, and the Ruathan Lord kept silence on the matter. When Lessa was strong enough, T’ton called a Council of Weyrleaders. Curiously, there was no opposition to going … provided they could solve the problem of time-shock and find reference points along the way. It did not take Lessa long to comprehend why the dragonriders were so eager to attempt the journey. Most of them had been born during the present Thread incursions. They had now had close to four months of unexciting routine patrols and were bored with monotony. Training Games were pallid substitutes for the real battles they had all fought. The Holds, which once could not do dragonmen favors enough, were beginning to be indifferent.
The weyrleaders could see these incidents increasing as Thread-generated fears receded. It was a morale decay as insidious as a wasting disease in Weyr and Hold. The alternative which Lessa’s appeal offered was. better than a slow decline in their own time. Of Benden, only the Weyrleader himself was privy to these meetings. Because Beaden was the only Weyr in Lessa’s time, it must remain ignorant, and intact, until her time. Nor could any mention be made of Lessa’s presence, for that, too, was unknown in her Turn.
She insisted that they call in the Masterharper because her Records said he had been called. But when he asked her to tell him the Question Song, she smiled and demurred.
“You’ll write it, or your successor will, when the Weyrs are found to be abandoned,” she told him. “But it must be your doing, not my repeating.”
“A difficult assignment to know one must write a song that four hundred Turns later gives a valuable clue.”
“Only be sure,” she cautioned him, “that it is a Teaching tune. It must not be forgotten, for it poses questions that I have to answer.”
As he started to chuckle, she realized she had already given him a pointer.
The discussions how to go so far safely with no sustained sense deprivations grew heated. There were more constructive notions, however impractical, on how to find reference points along the way. The five Weyrs had not been ahead in time, and Lessa, in her one gigantic backward leap, had not stopped for intermediate time marks.
“You did say that a between times jump of ten years caused no hardship?” T’ton asked of Lessa as all the weyrleaders and the Masterharper met to discuss this impasse.
“None. It takes … oh, twice as long as a between places jump.”
“It is the four hundred Turn leap that left you imbalanced. Hmmm. Maybe twenty or twenty-five Turn segments would be safe enough.”
That suggestion found merit until Ista’s cautious leader, D’ram, spoke up.
“I don’t mean to be a Hold-hider, but there is one possibility we haven’t mentioned. How do we know we made the jump between to Lessa’s time? Going between is a chancy business. Men go missing often. And Lessa barely made it here alive.”
“A good point, D’ram,” Tton concurred briskly, “but I feel there is more to prove that we do-did-will-go forward. The clues, for one thingthey were aimed at Lessa.
The very emergency that left five Weyrs empty sent her back to appeal for our help” “Agreed, agreed,” D’ram interrupted earnestly, “but what I mean is can you be sure we reached Lessa’s time? It hadn’t happened yet. Do we know it can?”
T’ton was not the only one who searched his mind for an answer to that. All of a sudden he slammed both hands, palms down, on the table.
“By the Egg, it’s die slow, doing nothing, or die quick, trying. I’ve had a surfeit of the quiet life we dragonmen must lead after the Red Star passes till we go between in old age. I confess I’m almost sorry to see the Red Star dwindle farther from us in the evening sky. I say, grab the risk with both hands and shake it till it’s gone. We’re dragonmen, aren’t we, bred to figh’ the Threads? Let’s go hunting … four hundred Turns ahead!”
Lessa’s drawn face relaxed. She had recognized the validity of D’ram’s alternate possibility, and it had touched off bitter fear in her heart. To risk herself was her own responsibility, but to risk these hundreds of men. and dragons, the Weyrfolk who would accompany their men … ?
T’ton’s ringing words for once and all dispensed with that consideration.
“And I believe,” the Masterharper’s exultant voice cut through the answering shouts of agreement, “I have your reference points.” A smile of surprised wonder illuminated his face. “Twenty Turns or twenty hundred, you have a guide!