“I’m badly in need of a good joke myself,” Robinton remarked pointedly.
“Mnementh told F’lar that he was neither young nor afraid to try, either. It was just a long step,” Lessa explained, wiping tears from her eyes.
F’lar glanced dourly at the passageway, at the end of which Mnementh lounged on his customary ledge. A laden dragon comes, the bronze warned those in the Weyr. it is Lytol behind young B’rant on brown Fanth.
“Now he brings his own bad news?” Lessa asked sourly.
“It is hard enough for Lytol to ride another’s dragon or come here at all, Lessa of Ruatha. Do not increase his torment one jot with your childishness,” F’lar said sternly.
Lessa dropped her eyes, furious with F’lar for speaking so to her in front of Robinton.
Lytol slumped into the queen’s weyr, carrying one end of a large rolled rug. Young B’rant, struggling to uphold the other end, was sweating with the effort. Lytol bowed respectfully toward Ramoth and gestured the young brown rider to help him unroll their burden. As the immense tapestry uncoiled, F’lar could understand why Masterweaver.Zurg had remembered it. The colors, ancient though they undoubtedly were, remained vibrant and undimmed. The subject matter was even more interesting.
“Mnementh, send for Fandarel. Here’s the model he needs for his flamethrower,” F’lar said.
“That tapestry is Ruatha’s,” Lessa cried indignantly. “I remember it from my childhood. It hung in the Great Hall and was the most cherished of my Blood Line’s possessions. Where has it been?” Her eyes were flashing.
“Lady, it is being returned to where it belongs,” Lytol said stolidly, avoiding her gaze. “A masterweaver’s work, this,” he went on, touching the heavy fabric with reverent fingers.
“Such colors, such patterning. It took a man’s life to set up the loom, a craft’s whole effort to complete, or I am no judge of true craftsmanship.”
F’lar walked along the edge of the immense arras, wishing it could be hung to afford the proper perspective of the heroic scene. A flying formation of three wings of dragons dominated the upper portion of half the hanging. They were breathing flame as they dove upon gray, falling clumps of Threads in the brilliant sky. A sky just that perfect autumnal blue, F’lar decided, that cannot occur in warmer weather.
Upon the lower slopes of the hills, foliage was depicted as turning yellow from chilly nights. The slatey rocks suggested Ruathan country. Was that why the tapestry had hung in Ruatha Hall? Below, men had left the protecting Hold, cut into the cliff itself. The men were burdened with the curious cylinders of which Zurg had spoken. The tubes in their hands belched brilliant tongues of flame in long streams, aimed at the writhing Threads that attempted to burrow in the ground.
Lessa gave a startled exclamation, walking right onto the tapestry, staring down at the woven outline of the Hold, its massive door ajar, the details of its bronze ornamentation painstakingly rendered in fine yarns.
“I believe that’s the design on the Ruatha Hold door,” F’lar remarked.
“It is … and it isn’t,” Lessa replied in a puzzled voice.
Lytol glowered at her and then at the woven door. “True. It isn’t and yet it is, and I went through that door a scant hour ago.” He scowled down at the door before his toes.
“Well, here are the designs Fandarel wants to study,” F’lar said with relief, as he peered at the flamethrowers.
Whether or not the smith could produce a working model from this woven one in time to help them three days hence F’lar couldn’t guess. But if Fandarel could not, no man could.
The Mastersmith was, for him, jubilant over the presence of the tapestry. He lay upon the rug, his nose tickled by the nap as he studied the details. He grumbled, moaned, and muttered as he sat cross-legged to sketch and peer.
“Has been done. Can be done. Must be done,” he was heard to rumble.
Lessa called for klah, bread, and meat when she learned from young B’rant that neither he nor Lytol had eaten yet.
She served all the men, her manner gay and teasing. F’lar was relieved for Lytol’s sake. Lessa even pressed food and klah on Fandarel, a tiny figure beside the mammoth man, insisting that he come away from the tapestry and eat and drink before he could return to his mumbling and drawing.