“Get yourself some dinner, boy, before you start back. I’ll go shortly.”
As he passed through to the sleeping quarters, he heard Ramoth rumbling in her throat. She had settled herself down for the night.
Lessa still slept, one hand curled under her cheek, her dark hair trailing over the edge of the bed. She looked fragile, childlike and very precious to him. F’lar smiled to himself. So she was jealous of Kylara’s attentions yesterday. He was pleased and flattered. Never would Lessa learn from him that Kylara, for all her bold beauty and sensuous nature, did not have one tenth the attraction for him that the unpredictable, dark and delicate Lessa held. Even her stubborn intractableness, her keen and malicious humor, added zest to their relationship. With a tenderness he would never show her awake, F’lar bent and kissed her lips. She stirred and smiled, sighing lightly in her sleep.
Reluctantly returning to what must be done, F’lar left her so. As he paused by the queen, Ramoth raised her great, wedge-shaped head; her many-faceted eyes gleamed with bright luminescence as she regarded the Weyrleader.
“Mnementh, please ask Ramoth to get in touch with the dragonet at Fandarel’s Crafthall. I’d like the Mastersmith to come with me to Nerat. I want to see what his agenothree does to Threads.”
Ramoth nodded her head as the bronze dragon relayed the message to her.
She has done so and the green dragon will come as soon as he can, Mnementh reported to his rider. It is easier to do, this talking about, when Lessa is awake, he grumbled.
F’lar agreed, heartily thankful that Lessa could talk to any dragon in the Weyr. It had been quite an advantage yesterday in the Battle and would be more and more of an asset.
Maybe it would be better if she tried to speak, across time, to F’nor…but no, F’nor had come back.
F’lar strode into the Council Room, still hopeful that somewhere within the illegible portions of the old Records was the one clue he so desperately needed. There must be a way out of this impasse. If not the southern venture, then something else. Something!
FANDAREL SHOWED HIMSELF a man of iron will as well as sinew; he looked calmly at the exposed tangle of perceptibly growing Threads that writhed and intertwined obscenely.
“Hundreds and thousands in this one burrow,” Lord Vincet of Nerat was exclaiming in a frantic tone of voice. He waved his hands distractedly around the plantation of young trees in which the burrow had been discovered. “These stalks are already withering even as you hesitate. Do something! How many more young trees will die in this one field alone? How many more burrows escaped dragon’s breath yesterday? Where is a dragon to sear them? Why are you just standing there?”
F’lar and Fandarel paid no attention to the man’s raving, both fascinated as well as revolted by their first sight of the burrowing stage of their ancient foe. Despite Vincet’s panicky accusations, it was the only burrow on this particular slope. F’lar did not like to contemplate how many more might have slipped through the dragons’ efforts to reach Nerat’s warm and fertile soil. If they had only had time enough to set out watchmen to track the fall of stray clumps…they could, at least, remedy that error in Telgar, Crom and Ruatha in three days. But it was not enough. Not enough.
Fandarel motioned forward the two craftsmen who had accompanied him. They were burdened with an odd contraption: a large cylinder of metal to which was attached a wand with a wide nozzle. At the other end of the cylinder was another short pipe length and then a short cylinder with an inner plunger. One craftsman worked the plunger vigorously, while the second, barely keeping his hands steady, pointed the nozzle end towards the Thread burrow. At a nod from his pumper, the man released a small knob on the nozzle, extending it carefully away from him and over the burrow. A thin spray danced from the nozzle and drifted down into the burrow. No sooner had the spray motes contacted the Thread tangles than steam hissed out of the burrow. Before long, all that remained of the pallid writhing tendrils was a smoking mass of blackened strands. Long after Fandarel had waved the craftsmen back, he stared at the grave. Finally he grunted and found himself a long stick with which he poked and prodded the remains. Not one Thread wriggled.
“Humph,” he grunted with evident satisfaction. “However, we can scarcely go around digging up every burrow. I need another.”
With Lord Vincet a hand-wringing moaner in their wake, they were escorted by the junglemen to another undisturbed burrow on the seaside of the rainforest. The Threads had entered the earth by the side of a huge tree which was already drooping.
With his prodding stick, Fandarel made a tiny hole at the top of the burrow and then waved his craftsmen forward. The pumper made vigorous motions at his end while the nozzle-holder adjusted his pipe before inserting it in the hole. Fandarel gave the sign to start and counted slowly before he waved a cutoff. Smoke oozed out of the tiny hole.
After a suitable lapse of time, Fandarel ordered the junglemen to dig, reminding them to be careful not to come in contact with the agenothree liquid. When the burrow was uncovered, the acid had done its work, leaving nothing but a thoroughly charred mass of tangles.
Fandarel grimaced but this time scratched his head in dissatisfaction.
“Takes too much time, either way. Best to get them still at the surface,” the Mastersmith grumbled.
“Best to get them in the air,” Lord Vincet chattered. “And what will that stuff do to my young orchards? What will it do?”
Fandarel swung round, apparently noticing the distressed Holder for the first time.
“Little man, agenothree in diluted form is what you use to fertilize your plants in the spring. True, this field has been burned out for a few years, but it is not Thread-full. It would be better if we could get the spray up high in the air. Then it would float down and dissipate harmlessly—fertilizing very evenly, too.” He paused, scratched his head gratingly. “Young dragons could carry a team aloft…Hm-m-m. A possibility but the apparatus is bulky yet.” He turned his back on the surprised Hold Lord then and asked F’lar if the tapestry had been returned. “I cannot yet discover how to make a tube throw flame. I got this mechanism from what we make for the orchard farmers.”
“I’m still waiting for word,” F’lar replied, “but this spray of yours is effective. The Thread burrow is dead.”
“The sandworms are effective too, but not really efficient.” Fandarel grunted in dissatisfaction. He beckoned abruptly to his assistants and stalked off into the increasing twilight to the dragons.
Robinton awaited their return at the Weyr, his outward calm barely masking his inner excitement. He inquired politely, however, of Fandarel’s efforts. The Mastersmith grunted and shrugged.
“I have all my Craft at work.”
“The Mastersmith is entirely too modest,” F’lar put in. “He has already put together an ingenious device that sprays agenothree into Thread burrows and sears them into a black pulp.”
“Not efficient. I like the idea of flamethrowers,” the Smith said, his eyes gleaming in his expressionless face. “A thrower of flame,” he repeated, his eyes unfocusing. He shook his heavy head with a bone-popping crack. “I go,” and with a curt nod to the Harper and the Weyrleader, he left.
“I LIKE THAT man’s dedication to an idea,” Robinton observed. Despite his amusement with the man’s eccentric behavior, there was a strong undercurrent of respect for the Smith. “I must set my apprentices a task for an appropriate Saga on the Mastersmith. I understand,” he said turning to F’lar, “that the southern venture has been inaugurated.”
F’lar nodded unhappily.
“Your doubts increase?”
“This between times travel takes its own toll,” he admitted, glancing anxiously towards the sleeping room.