In her mind, out of nowhere, Menolly received an indelible impression of turbulence: savage, ruthless, destructive; a pressure inexorable and deadly; churning masses of slick, sickly gray surfaces that heaved and dipped. Heat as massive as a tidal wave. Fear! Terror! An inarticulate longing!
A scream, heard in her mind, a scream like a knife upon raw nerves!
Menolly didn’t think she had cried out. She was, as far as she could think sanely, certain that she hadn’t heard the cry, but she knew that the words had been spoken at the extreme of someone’s anguish.
Simultaneously the door to her room burst open, and the watch dragon on the Hold fire heights let out a shriek so like the one in her mind that she wondered if the dragon had called before. But dragons don’t speak.
“Menolly! What’s wrong?” Master Robinton was striding across the floor to her. The fire lizards took wing, darting out one window and back in the next, maniacal with fear.
“The dragon!” Menolly pointed, diverting Robinton’s eyes to the window, to prove that she wasn’t alone in alarm.
They both saw the watch dragon launching himself, riderless, into the sky, bulging his distress. Robinton and Menolly heard, on the night air, the faint echo of answering bugles, a moment of silence and then the eerie screech of an hysterical watchwher from the Fort Hold court.
“Is every winged thing in the Hold out of its mind?” asked Robinton. “What made you scream, Menolly? ‘Don’t’ what?”
“I don’t know,” Menolly cried, tears streaming down her face. She experienced a profound grief now and hugged herself against the chill of an awe-filled panic she couldn’t explain and yet had experienced so profoundly. “I just don’t know.”
Robinton ducked as Beauty, leading the others, swooped past him and out the window. The queen was screaming at the others to follow. Menolly saw them outlined briefly by the light of the Masterharper’s window and then the entire fair disappeared. Before Menolly, frightened for fear the fire lizards had gone completely from her, could tell Master Robinton, Domick came charging into the room.
“Robinton, what’s going on—”
“Quiet, Domick!” The Masterharper’s stern voice interrupted. “Whatever has frightened Menolly has also alarmed the watch dragon, and even the dead could hear that watchwher’s howling. Furthermore, the dragon went between, without his rider!”
“What?” Domick was startled, no longer angry.
said Robinton, his hands warm and firm on her shoulder, his voice kindly calm, “take a deep breath. Now, take another…”
“I can’t. I can’t. Something terrible is happening,” and Menolly was appalled at the sobs that tore at her, the cold terror that made her tremble so violently in the grip of this unknown disaster. “It’s something terrible…”
Others were crowding into her room now, roused by her involuntary cries, Someone said loudly that there wasn’t anything stirring in the court or on any of the roads. Another remarked that it was ridiculous to be startled out of a sound sleep by an hysterical child, trying to attract attention.
“Hold your silly tongue, Morshal,” said Silvina, pushing through the crowd to Menolly’s bed. “Better still, get off to your beds. All of you. You’re no help here.”
“Yes, if you’d please leave,” said in a voice as close to anger as anyone had ever heard in him. “It isn’t the eggs hatching, is it?” Sebell asked anxiously.
Menolly shook her head, struggling to control herself and to stop the spasmodic shudders of fear that were depriving her of voice and wit enough to explain what was so inexplicable.
Silvina was soothing her. “Her hands are ice cold, Robinton,” she said, and Menolly clung to the woman, as Robinton slipped to the other side of the double cot to support her shuddering body. “And these aren’t hysterical tremors…”
Abruptly the spasms eased, then ceased completely. Menolly went limp against Silvina, gasping for breath, forcing herself to breathe as deeply as Robinton again urged her to do.
“Whatever was wrong has stopped,” she said, spent.
Silvina and the Harper eased her against the bed rushes, Silvina drawing the fur up to her neck.
“Did the fire lizards take a fit?’ the headwoman asked, glancing about the now-bright room. “They’re not here…”
“I saw them go between. I don’t know where. They were so afraid. It was incredible. There was nothing I could do.” “Take your time and tell us,” said the Masterharper. “I don’t know all of it. I woke because they were so restless. They usually sleep quietly. And they got more and more frightened. And there wasn’t anything…nothing…I could see that…”
“Yes, yes, but something caused them to react.” Robinton had captured her hand and was stroking it reassuringly. “Tell us the sequence.”
“They were frightened out of their wits. And it got to me, too. Then,” and Menolly swallowed quickly against that flash of vivid impression, “then, in my mind, I was aware of something so dangerous, so terrible. something heaving, and gray and deadly…Masses of it…all gray and…and…terrible! Hot, too. Yes, the heat was part of the terror. Then a longing. I don’t know which was the worst…”
She clutched at the comforting hands and could not keep back the sobs of fright that rose from her guts. “I wasn’t asleep either. It wasn’t just a bad dream!”
“Don’t talk anymore, Menolly. We can hope the terror has passed completely.”
“No, I have to tell you. That’s part of it. I’m supposed to tell. Then…I heard, only I didn’t hear…except that it was as clear as if someone had shouted it right in this room…right inside my head…I heard something scream ‘Don’t leave me alone!’ ”
The muscles in her body relaxed all at once now that she had spoken of the weight of terror.
“ ‘Don’t leave me alone’?” The Harper repeated the words half to himself, puzzling over the significance of the phrase.
“It’s all gone now. Being afraid, I mean…and…”
The fire lizards swooped back into the room, aiming for the bed, but some of them dipped and darted for the window ledges, away from Master Robinton and Silvina, twittering, but only with surprise, not fear. Beauty and the two bronzes landed on the foot of the double cot, chirping at Menolly with little calls that sounded so normally inquisitive that Menolly let out an exasperated exclamation.
“Don’t scold them, Menolly,” said the Masterharper. “See if you can determine where they’ve just been.”
Menolly beckoned to Beauty, who obediently crawled up to her arm and permitted Menolly to stroke her head and body.
“She’s certainly not bothered by anything now.”
“Yes, but where did she go?”
Menolly raised Beauty to her face, looking into the idly whirling eyes, laying the back of her hand against Beauty’s cheek. “Where’d you go, pet? Where have you just been?”
Beauty stroked Menolly’s hand, gave a smug chirrup, cocking her dainty head to one side. But an impression reached Menolly’s mind, of a Weyr Bowl, and many dragons and excited people.
“I think they’ve been back to Benden Weyr. It must be Benden! They don’t know Fort Weyr well enough to be that vivid. And whatever happened involved many dragons and lots of excited people.”
“Ask Beauty what frightened her.”
Menolly stroked the little queen’s head for a moment longer, to reassure her, because the question was sure to upset the little fire lizard. It did. Beauty launched herself from Menolly’s arm so violently that her talons scratched deep enough to draw blood.
“A dragon falling in the sky!” Menolly gasped out the picture. “Dragons don’t fall in the sky.”