AFTER HIS DEATH, C’gan’s instrument had been hung on the Council Room wall till a new Weyrsinger could be chosen. The guitar was very old, its wood thin. Old C’gan had kept it well-tuned and covered. The Masterharper handled it now with reverence, lightly stroking the strings to hear the tone, raising his eyebrows at the fine voice of the instrument.
He plucked a chord, a dissonance. F’lar wondered if the instrument were out of tune or if the Harper had, by some chance, struck the wrong string. But Robinton repeated the odd dischord, then modulated into a weird minor that was somehow more disturbing than the first notes.
“I told you it was an uneasy song. And I wonder if you know the answers to the questions it asks. For I’ve turned the puzzle over in my mind many times of late.”
Then abruptly he shifted from the spoken to the sung tone.
“Gone away, gone ahead,
Echoes roll unanswered.
Empty, open, dusty, dead,
Why have all the weyrfolk fled?
Where have dragons gone together?
Leaving weyrs to wind and weather?
Setting herdbeasts free of tether?
Gone, our safeguards, gone, but whither?
Have they flown to some new weyr
Where cruel Threads some others fear?
Are they worlds away from here?
Why, oh why, the empty Weyr?”
The last plaintive chord reverberated.
“Of course, you realize that that song was first recorded in the Craft-annals some four hundred Turns ago,” Robinton said lightly, cradling the guitar in both arms. “The Red Star had just passed beyond attack-proximity. The people had ample reason to be stunned and worried over the sudden loss of the populations of five Weyrs. Oh, I imagine at the time they had any one of a number of explanations but none…not one explanation…is recorded.” Robinton paused significantly.
“I have found none recorded either,” F’lar replied. “As a matter of fact, I had all the Records brought here from the other Weyrs—in order to compile accurate attack timetables. And those other Weyr Records simply end.” F’lar made a chopping gesture with one hand. “In Benden’s records, there is no mention of sickness, death, fire, disaster; not one word of explanation for the sudden lapse of the usual intercourse between the Weyrs. Benden’s records continue blithely, but only for Benden. There is one entry that pertains to the mass disappearance…the initiation of a Pern-wide patrol routing, not just Benden’s immediate responsibility. And that is all.”
“Strange,” Robinton mused. “Once the danger from the Red Star was past, the dragons and riders may have gone between to ease the drain on the Holds. But I simply cannot believe that. Our Craft-records do mention that harvests were bad and that there had been several natural catastrophes…other than the Threads. Men may be gallant and your breed the most gallant of all, but mass suicide? I simply do not accept that explanation…not for dragonmen.”
“My thanks,” F’lar said with mild irony.
“Don’t mention it,” Robinton replied graciously.
F’lar chuckled appreciatively. “I see we have been too weyrbound as well as too hidebound.”
ROBINTON DRAINED HIS cup, and looked at it mournfully until F’lar refilled it.
“Well, your isolation served some purpose, you know, and you handled that uprising of the Lords magnificently. I nearly choked to death laughing,” Robinton remarked, grinning broadly. “Stealing their women in the flash of a dragon’s breath!” He chuckled again and suddenly sobered, looking F’lar straight in the eye. “Accustomed as I am to hearing what a man does not say aloud, I suspect there is much you glossed over in that Council Meeting. You may be sure of my discretion…and…you may be sure of my wholehearted support and that of my not ineffectual Craft. To be blunt, how may my Harpers aid you?” and he strummed a vigorous marching air. “Stir men’s pulses with ballads of past glories and success?” The tune, under his flashing fingers, changed abruptly to a stern but determined rhythm. “Strengthen their mental and physical sinews for hardship?”
“If all your harpers could stir men as you yourself do, I should have no worries that five hundred or so additional dragons would not immediately end.”
“Oho, then despite your brave words and marked charts, the situation is”—a dissonant twang on the guitar accented his final words—“more desperate than you carefully did not say.”
“It may be.”
“The flamethrowers old Zurg remembered and Fandarel must reconstruct? Will they tip the scales?”
F’lar regarded this clever man thoughtfully, and made a quick decision.
“Even Igen’s sandworms will help, but as the world turns and the Red Star nears, the interval between daily attacks shortens and we have only seventy-two new dragons to add to those we had yesterday. One is now dead and several will not fly for several weeks.”
“Seventy-two?” Robinton caught him up sharply. “Ramoth hatched but forty and they are still too young to eat firestone.”
F’lar outlined F’nor and Lessa’s expedition, taking place at that moment. He went on to F’nor’s reappearance and warning, as well as the fact that the experiment had been successful in part with the hatching of thirty-two new dragons for Pridith’s first clutch.
Robinton caught him up. “How can F’nor already have returned when you haven’t heard from Lessa and him that there is a breeding place on the southern continent?”
“Dragons can go between times as well as places. They go easily from a when to a where.”
Robinton’s eyes widened as he digested this astonishing news.
“That is how we forestalled the attack on Nerat yesterday morning. We jumped back two hours between times to meet the Threads as they fell.”
“You can actually jump backwards? How far back?”
“I don’t know. Lessa, when I was teaching her to fly Ramoth, inadvertently returned to Ruath Hold, to the dawn twelve Turns ago when Fax’s men invaded from the heights. When she returned to the present, I attempted a between times jump of some ten Turns. To the dragons it is a simple matter to go between times or spaces, but there appears to be a terrific drain on the rider. Yesterday, by the time we returned from Nerat and had to go on to Keroon, I felt as though I had been pounded flat and left to dry for a summer on Igen plain.” F’lar shook his head. “We have obviously succeeded in sending Kylara, Pridith and the others ten Turns between, because F’nor has already reported to me that he has been there several Turns. The drain on humans, however, is becoming more and more marked. However, even seventy-two more mature dragons will be a help.”
“Send a rider ahead in time and see if it is sufficient,” Robinton suggested helpfully. “Save you a few days’ worrying.”
“I don’t know how to get some-when which has not yet happened. You must give your dragon reference points, you know. How can you refer him to times which have not yet occurred?”
“You’ve got an imagination. Project it.”
“And perhaps lose a dragon when I have none to spare? No, I must continue…because obviously I have, judging by F’nor’s returns…as I decided to start. Which reminds me, I must give orders to start packing. Then I shall go over the time charts with you.”