McCaffrey, Anne – DragonQuest. Chapter 3, 4

By the time Thread had ceased to fall and the dragons began to spiral down to aid the Lemos Hold ground crews, F’lar almost resented Mnementh’s summary.

Nine minor brushes, four just wingtips; two bad lacings, Sorenth and Relth, and two face-burned riders.

Wingtip injuries were just plain bad judgment. Riders cutting it too fine. They weren’t riding competitions, they were fighting! F’lar ground his teeth …

Sorenth says they came out of between into a patch that should not have been there. The Threads are not falling right, the bronze said. That is what happened to Relth and T’gor.

That didn’t assuage F’lar’s frustration for he knew T’gor and R’mel as good riders.

How could Thread fall northeast in the morning when it wasn’t supposed to drop until evening and in the southwest? he wondered, savage with frustrated worry.

Automatically, F’lar started to ask Mnementh to have Canth fly close in. But then he remembered that F’nor was wounded and half a planet away in Southern Weyr. F’lar swore long and imaginatively, wishing T’reb of Fort Weyr immured between with Weyrleader T’ron fast beside him. Why did F’nor have to be absent at a time like this? It still rankled F’lar deeply that Fort’s Weyrleader had tried to shift the blame of the fight from his very guilty rider to Terry. Of all the specious, contrived, ridiculous contentions for T’ron to stand by!

Lamanth is flying well, the bronze dragon remarked, cutting into his rider’s thoughts.

F’lar was so surprised at the unexpected diversion that he glanced down to see the young queen.

“We’re lucky to have so many to fly today,” F’lar said, amused despite his other concerns by the bronze’s fatuous tone. Lamanth was the queen from Mnementh’s second mating with Ramoth.

Ramoth flies well too, for one so soon from the Hatching Ground. Thirty-eight eggs and another queen, Mnementh added with no modesty.

“We’re going to have to do something about that third queen.”

Mnementh rumbled about that. Ramoth disliked sharing the bronze dragons of her Weyr with too many queens, in spite of the fact that she would mate only with Mnementh. Many queens were the mark of virility in a bronze and it was natural for Mnementh to want to flaunt his prowess. Benden Weyr had to maintain more than one golden queen to placate the rest of the bronzes and to improve the breed in general, but three?

After the meeting the other night at Fort Weyr, F’lar hesitated to suggest to any of the other Weyrleaders that he’d be glad of a home for the new queen: They’d probably contrive it to be bad management of Ramoth or coddling of Lessa. Still, Benden queens were bigger than Oldtimer queens, just as modern bronzes were bigger, too. Maybe R’mart at Telgar Weyr wouldn’t take offense. Or G’narish? F’lar couldn’t think how many queens G’narish had at Igen Weyr. He grinned to himself, thinking of the expression of T’ron’s face when he heard Benden was giving away a queen dragon.

“Benden’s known for its generosity, but what’s behind such a maneuver?” T’ron would say. “It’s not traditional.”

But it was. There were precedents. F’lar would far rather cope with T’ron’s snide remarks than Ramoth’s temper. He glanced down, sighting the gleaming triangle of the queens’ wing, with Ramoth easily sweeping along, the younger beasts working hard to keep up with her.

Threads dropping out of pattern! F’lar gritted his teeth. Worse, out of a pattern which he’d so painstakingly researched from hundreds of disintegrating Record skins in his efforts seven Turns ago to prepare his ill-protected planet.

Patterns, F’lar thought bitterly, which the Oldtimers had enthusiastically acclaimed and used — though that was scarcely traditional. Just useful

Now how could Thread, which had no mind, no intelligence at all, deviate from patterns it had followed to the split second for over seven Turns? How could it change time and place overnight? The last Fall in Benden’s Weyr jurisdiction had been on time and over upper Benden Hold as expected.

Could he possibly have misread the timetables? F’lar thought back, but the carefully drawn maps were clear in his mind and, if he had made an error, Lessa would have caught it.