Fandarel finally decided that he had enough sketches and disappeared, to be flown back to his crafthold.
“No point in asking him when he’ll be back. He’s too deep in thought to hear,” F’lar remarked, amused.
“If you don’t mind, I shall excuse myself as well,” Lessa said, smiling graciously to the four remaining around the table. “Good Warder Lytol, young B’rant should soon be excused, too. He’s half asleep.”
“I most certainly am not, Weyrlady,” B’rant assured .her hastily, widening his eyes with simulated alertness.
Lessa merely laughed as she retreated into the sleeping chamber. F’lar stared thoughtfully after her.
“I mistrust the Weyrwoman when she uses that particularly docile tone of voice,” he said slowly.
“Well, we must all depart,” Robinton suggested, rising.
“Ramoth is young but not that foolish,” F’lar murmured after the others had left. Ramoth slept, oblivious of his scrutiny. He reached for the consolation Mnementh could give him, without response. The big bronze was dozing on his ledge.
Black, blacker, blackest,
And cold beyond frozen things.
Where is between when there is naught
To Life but fragile dragon wings?
“I JUST want to see that tapestry back on the wall at Ruatha,” Lessa insisted to F’lar the next day. “I want it where it belongs.”
They had gone to check on the injured and had had one argument already over F’lar’s having sent N’ton along with the southern venture. Lessa had wanted him to try riding another’s dragon. F’lar had preferred for him to learn to lead a wing of his own in the south, given the Turns to mature in. He had reminded Lessa, in the hope that it might prove inhibiting to any ideas she had about going four hundred Turns back, about F’nor’s return trips, and he had borne down hard on the difficulties she had already experienced.
She had become very thoughtful, although she had said nothing.
Therefore, when Fandarel sent word that he would like to show F’lar a new mechanism, the weyrleader felt reasonably safe in allowing Lessa the triumph of returning the pur-loined tapestry to Ruatha. She went to have the arras rolled and strapped to Ramoth’s back. He watched Ramoth rise with great sweeps of her wide wings, up to the Star Stone before going between to Ruatha. R’gul appeared on the ledge just then, reporting that a huge train of firestone was entering the Tunnel. Consequently, busy with such details, it was midmoming before he could get to see Fandarel’s crude and not yet effective flamethrower … the fire did not “throw” from the nozzle of the tube with any force at all. It was late afternoon before he reached the Weyr again. R’gul announced sourly that F’nor had been looking for himtwice, in fact.
“Twice?”
“Twice, as I said. He would not leave a message with me for you.” R’gul was clearly insulted by F’nor’s refusal.
By the evening meal, when there was still no sign of Lessa, F’lar sent to Ruatha to learn that she had indeed brought the tapestry. She had badgered and bothered the entire Hold until the thing was properly hung. For upward of several hours she had sat and looked at it, pacing its length occasionally. She and Ramoth had then taken to the sky above the Great Tower and disappeared. Lytol had assumed, as had everyone at Ruatha, that she had returned to Benden Weyr.
“Mnementh,” F’lar bellowed when the messenger had finished. “Mnementh, where are they?”
Mnementh’s answer was a long time in coming.
I cannot hear them, he said finally, his mental voice soft and as full of worry as a dragon’s could be.
F’lar gripped the table with both hands, staring at the queen’s empty weyr. He knew, in the anguished privacy of his mind, where Lessa had tried to go.
Cold as death, death-bearing,
Stay and die, unguided.
Brave and braving, linger.
This way was twice decided.
BELOW THEM was Ruatha’s Great Tower. Lessa coaxed Ramoth slightly to the left, ignoring the dragon’s acid comments, knowing that she was excited, too.
Thafs right, dear, this is exactly the angle at which the tapestry illustrates the Hold door. Only when that tapestry was designed, no one had carved the lintels or capped the door. And there was no Tower, no inner Court, no gate. She stroked the surprisingly soft skin of the curving neck, laughing to hide her own tense nervousness and apprehension at what she was about to attempt.