McCaffrey, Anne – DragonQuest. Chapter 13, 14

And I’d’ve told you, Ramoth said, sounding a little hurt.

“Lessa,” the Harper’s low voice reached her, “are you in favor of that expedition?”

She looked up at him, his face lighted by the path glows. His expression was neutral and she wondered if he’d really meant what he’d said back at the Star Rocks. He dissembled so easily, and so often against his own inclination, that she sometimes wondered what his candid thoughts were.

“It scares me. It scares me because it seems so likely that someone must have tried. Sometime. It just doesn’t seem logical …”

“Is there any record that anyone, besides yourself, ever jumped so far between times?”

“No.” She had to admit it. “Not so far. But then, there hadn’t been such need.”

“And there’s no need now to take this other kind of a jump?”

“Don’t unsettle me more.” Lessa was unsure of what she felt or thought, or what anyone felt or thought, should or shouldn’t do. Then she saw the kind, worried expression of the Harper’s eyes and impulsively gripped his arm. “How can we know? How can we be sure?”

“How were you sure that the Question Song could be answered — by you?”

“And you’ve a new Question Song for me?”

“Questions, yes.” He gave her a smile as he covered her hand gently with his own. “Answer?” He shook his head and then stepped back as Ramoth alighted.

But his questions were as difficult to forget as the Question Song which had led her between times. When she returned to Benden, she found that F’lar’s skin was hot to the touch; he slept restlessly. So much so that, although Lessa willed herself to sleep beside him on the wide couch, she couldn’t succeed. Desperate for some surcease from her fears — for F’lar, of the intangible unknown ahead — she crept from their couch and into the weyr. Ramoth roused sleepily and arranged her front legs in a cradle. Lulled by the warm, musty comfort of her dragon, Lessa finally did sleep.

By the morning, F’lar was no better, querulous with his fever and worried about her report on the viewing.

“I can’t imagine what you expected me to see,” she said with some exasperation after she had patiently described for the fourth time what she had seen through the distance-viewer

“I expected,” and he paused significantly, “to find some — some characteristic for which the dragons could fly between.” He plucked at the bed fur, then pulled the recalcitrant forelock back from his eyes. “We have got to keep that promise to the Lord Holders.”

“Why? To prove Meron wrong?”

“No. To prove it is or is not possible to get rid of Thread permanently.” He scowled at her as if she should have known the answer.

“I think someone else must have tried to discover that before,” she said wearily. “And we still have Thread.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he countered in such a savage tone that he began to cough, an exercise which painfully contracted the injured muscles across his waist.

Instantly Lessa was at his side, offering him distilled wine, sweetened and laced with fellis fruit juice.

“I want F’nor,” he said petulantly.

Lessa looked down at him for the coughing spasm had left him limp.

“If we can pry him away from Brekke.”

F’lar’s lips set in a thin line.

“You mean, only you, F’lar, Benden Weyrleader, can flout tradition?” she asked.

“That isn’t …”

“If it’s your pet project you’re worrying about, I had N’ton secure Thread …”

“N’ton?” F’lar’s eyes flew open in surprise.

“Yes. He’s a good lad and, from what I heard at Fort Weyr last night, very deft in being exactly where he is needed, unobtrusively.”

“And … ?”

“And? Well, when the next queen at Fort Weyr rises, he’ll undoubtedly take the Leadership. Which is what you intended, isn’t it?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, the Thread.”

Lessa felt her guts turn over at the memory. “As you thought, the grubs rose to the surface the instant we put the Thread in. Very shortly there was no more Thread.”

F’lar’s eyes shone and he parted his lips in a triumphant smile.