She didn’t look at him, but he got a glimpse of her haunted eyes. She biinked constantly as if she longed to erase what she had just seen.
Finally she got herself somewhat under control and said in a low, tired voice. “I did go to Ruatha. Only … I went back to Ruatha.”
“Back to Ruatha?” F’lar repeated the words stupidly; the significance momentarily eluded him.
It certainly does, Mnementh agreed and flashed to F’lar’s mind the two scenes he had picked out of Ramoth’s memory. Staggered by the import of the visualization, F’lar found himself slowly sinking to the edge of the bed. “You went between times?”
She nodded slowly. The terror was beginning to leave her eyes.
“Between times,” F’lar murmured. “I wonder …” His mind raced through the possibilities. It might well tip the scales .of survival in the Weyr’s favor. He couldn’t think exactly how to use this extraordinary ability, but there must be an advantage in it for dragonfolk.
The service shaft rumbled. He took the pitcher from the platform and poured two mugs.
Lessa’s hands were shaking so much that she couldn’t get hers to her lips. He steadied it for her, wondering if going between times would regularly cause this kind of shock. If so, it wouldn’t be any advantage at all. If she’d had enough of a scare this day, she might not be so contemptuous of bis orders the next time; which would be to his benefit.
Outside in the weyr, Mnementh snorted his opinion on that. F’lar ignored him.
Lessa was trembling violently now. He put an arm around her, pressing the fur against her slender body. He held the mug to her lips, forcing her to drink. He could feel the tremors ease off. She took long, slow, deep breaths between swallows, equally determined to get herself under control. The moment he felt her stiffen under his arm, he released her. He wondered if Lessa had ever had someone to turn to.
Certainly not after Fax invaded her family Hold. She had been only eleven, a child. Had hate and revenge been the only emotions the growing girl had practiced?
She lowered the mug, cradling it in her hands carefully as if it had assumed some undefinable importance to her.
“Now. Tell me,” he ordered evenly.
She took a long deep breath, and began to speak, her hands tightening around the mug. Her inner turmoil had not lessened; it was merely under control now.
“Ramoth and I were bored with the weyriing exercises,” she admitted candidly.
Grimly F’lar recognized that, while the adventure might have taught her to be more circumspect, it had not scared her into obedience. He doubted that anything would.
“I gave her the picture of Ruatha so we could go between there.” She did not look at him, but her profile was outlined against the dark fur of the rug. “The Ruatha I knew so well 1 accidentally sent myself backward in time to the day Fax invaded.”
Her shock was now comprehensible to him.
“And …” he prompted her, his voice carefully neutral.
“And I saw myself” Her voice broke off. With an effort she continued. “I had visualized for Ramoth the designs of the firepits and the angle of the Hold if one looked down from the pits into the Inner Court. That was where we emerged. It was just dawn” she lifted her chin with a nervous jerk “and there was no Red Star in the sky.” She gave him a quick, defensive look as if she expected him to contest this detail. “And I saw men creeping over the firepits, lowering rope ladders to the top windows of the Hold. I saw the Tower guard watching. Just watching.” She clenched her teeth at such treachery, and her eyes gleamed malevolently.
“And I saw myself run from the Hall into the watchwher’s lair. And do you know why”her voice lowered to a bitter whisper”the watchwher did not alarm the Hold?”
“Why?”
“Because there was a dragon in the sky, and I, Lessa of Ruatha, was on her.” She flung the mug from her as if she wished she could reject the knowledge, too. “Because I was there, the watchwher did not alarm the Hold, thinking the intrusion legitimate, with one of the Blood on a dragon in the sky. So I” her body grew rigid, her hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles were white”I was the cause of my family’s massacre. Not Fax! If I had not acted the captious fool today, I would not have been there with Ramoth and the watchwher would” Her voice had risen to an hysterical pitch of recrimination.
He slapped her sharply across the cheeks, grabbing her, robe and all, to shake her. The stunned look in her eyes and the tragedy in her face alarmed him. His indignation over her willfulness disappeared. Her unruly independence of mind and spirit attracted him as much as her curious dark beauty. Infuriating as her fractious ways might be, they were too vital a part of her integrity to be exorcised. Her indomitable will had taken a grievous shock today, and her self-confidence had better be restored quickly.
“On the contrary, Lessa,” he said sternly, “Fax would still have murdered your family. He had planned it very carefully, even to scheduling his attack on the morning when the Tower guard was one who could be bribed. Remember, too, it was dawn and the watchwher, being a nocturnal beast, blind by daylight, is relieved of responsibility at dawn and knows it. Your presence, damnable as it may appear to you, was not the deciding factor by any means. It did, and I draw your attention to this very important fact, cause you to save yourself, by warning Lessa-the-child. Don’t you see that?”
“I could have called out,” she murmured, but the frantic look had left her eyes and there was a faint hint of normal color in her lips.
“If you wish to flail around in guilt, go right ahead,” he said with deliberate callousness.
Ramoth interjected a thought that, since the two of them had been there that previous time as Fax’s men had prepared to invade, it had already happened, so how could it be changed? The act was inevitable both that day and today. For how else could Lessa have lived to come to the Weyr and impress Ramoth at the hatching?
Mnementh relayed Ramoth’s message scrupulously, even to imitating Ramoth’s egocentric nuances. F’lar looked sharply at Lessa to see the effect of Ramoth’s astringent observation.
“Just like Ramoth to have the final word,” she said with a hint of her former droll humor.
F’lar felt the muscles along his neck and shoulders begin to relax. She’d be all right, he decided, but it might be wiser to make her talk it all out now, to put the whole experience into proper perspective.
“You said you were there twice?” He leaned back on the couch, watching her closely. “When was the second time?”
“Can’t you guess?” she asked sarcastically.
“No,” he lied.
“When else but the dawn I was awakened, feeling the Red Star was a menace to me? … Three days before you and Fax came out of the northeast.”
“It would seem,” he remarked dryly, “that you were your own premonition both times.”
She nodded.
“Have you had any more of these presentiments … or should I say reinforced warnings?”
She shuddered but answered him with more of her old spirit.
“No, but if I should, you go. I don’t want to.”
F’lar grinned maliciously.
“I would, however,” she added, “like to know why and how it could happen.”
“I’ve never run across a mention of it anywhere,” he told her candidly. “Of course, if you have done it and you undeniably have,” he assured her hastily at her indignant protest, “it obviously can be done. You say you thought of Ruatha, but you thought of it as it was on that particular day. Certainly a day to be remembered. You thought of spring, before dawn, no Red Star yes, I remember your mentioning that so one would have to remember references peculiar to a significant day to return to between times to the past.”