She told herself there were good reasons prompting her action in this matter. The ballad’s opening phrase, “Gone away, gone ahead,” was clearly a reference to between times.
And the tapestry gave the required reference points for the jump between whens. Oh, how she thanked the Masterweaver who had woven that doorway. She must remember to tell him how well he had wrought. She hoped she’d be able to. Enough of that. Of course, she’d be able to. For hadn’t the Weyrs disappeared? Knowing they had gone ahead, knowing how to go back to bring them ahead, it was she, obviously, who must go back and lead them. It was very simple, and only she and Ramoth could do it. Because they already had. She laughed again, nervously, and took several deep, shuddering breaths.
“All right, my golden love,” she murmured. “You have the reference. You know when I want to go. Take me between, Ramoth, between four hundred Turns.”
The cold was intense, even more penetrating than she had imagined. Yet it was not a physical cold. It was the awareness of the absence of everything. No light. No sound. No touch. As they hovered, longer, and longer, in this nothingness, Lessa recognized full-blown panic of a kind that threatened to overwhelm her reason. She knew she sat on Ramoth’s neck, yet she could not feel the great beast under her thighs, under her hands. She tried to cry out inadvertently and opened her mouth to … nothing … no sound in her own ears. She could not even feel the hands that she knew she had raised to her own cheeks.
I am here, she heard Ramoth say in her mind. We are together, and this reassurance was all that kept her from losing her grasp on sanity in that terrifying aeon of unpassing, timeless nothingness.
Someone had sense enough to call for Robinton. The Masterharper found F’lar sitting at the table, his face deathly pale, his eyes staring at the empty weyr. The craftmaster’s entrance, his calm voice, reached F’lar in his shocked numbness. He sent others out with a peremptory wave.
“She’s gone. She tried to go back four hundred Turns,” F’lar said in a tight, hard voice.
The Masterharper sank into the chair opposite the Weyrleader.
“She took the tapestry back to Ruatha,” F’lar continued in that same choked voice. “I’d told her about F’nor’s returns. I told her how dangerous this was. She didn’t argue very much, and I know going between times had frightened her, if anything could frighten Lessa.” He banged the table with an impotent fist. “I should have suspected her. When she thinks she’s right, she doesn’t stop to analyze, to consider. She just does it!”
“But she’s not a foolish woman,” Robinton reminded him slowly. “Not even she would jump between times without a reference point. Would, she?”
” ‘Gone away, gone ahead’that’s the only clue we have!”
“Now wait a moment,” Robinton cautioned him, then snapped his fingers. “Last night, when she walked upon the tapestry, she was uncommonly interested in the Hall door. Remember, she discussed it with Lytol.”
F’lar was on his feet and halfway down the passageway.
“Come on, man, we’ve got to get to Ruatha.”
Lytol lit every glow in the Hold for F’lar and Robrnton to examine the tapestry clearly.
“She spent the afternoon just looking at it,” the Warder said, shaking his head. “You’re sure she has tried this incredible jump?”
“She must have. Mnementh can’t hear either her or Ramoth anywhere. Yet he says he can get an echo from Canth many Turns away and in the Southern Continent.” F’lar stalked past the tapestry. “What is it about the door, Lytol? Think, man! It is much as it is now, save that there are no carved lintels, there is no outer Court or Tower …”
“That’s it. Oh, by the first Egg, it is so simple. Zurg said this tapestry is old. Lessa must have decided it was four hundred Turns, and she has used it as the reference point to go back between times.”
“Why, then, she’s there and safe,” Robinton cried, sinking with relief in a chair.
“Oh, no, harper. It is not as easy as that,” F’lar murmured, and Robinton caught his stricken look and the despair echoed in Lytol’s face.