“Yes, it is,” Tton remarked with deceptive mildness. But he did call down the service shaft for klah. And he did drag a chair over to her bedside, settling himself to listen to her.
“Of course you’re not mad,” Mardra soothed her, glaring at her weyrmate. “Or she wouldn’t ride a queen.”
Tton had to agree to that. Lessa waited for the klah to come; when it did, she sipped gratefully at its stimulating warmth.
Then she took a deep breath and began, telling them of the Long Interval between the dangerous passes of the Red Star: how the sole Weyr had fallen into disfavor and contempt, how Jora had deteriorated and lost control over her queen, Nemorth, so that, as the Red Star neared, there was no sud-den increase in the size of clutches. How she had Impressed Ramoth to become Benden’s Weyrwoman. How Flar had outwitted the dissenting Hold Lords the day after Ramoth’s first mating flight and taken firm command of Weyr and Pern, preparing for the Threads he knew were coming. She told her by now rapt audience of her own first attempts to fly Ramoth and how she had inadvertently gone back between time to the day Fax had invaded Ruath Hold.
“Invade … my family’s Hold?” Mardra cried, aghast.
“Ruatha has given the Weyrs many famous Weyrwomen,” Lessa said with a sly smile at which T’ton burst out’ laughing.
“She’s Ruathan, no question,” he assured Mardra.
She told them of the situation in which dragonmen now found themselves, with an insufficient force to meet the Thread attacks. Of the Question Song and the great tapestry.
“A tapestry?” Mardra cried, her hand going to her cheek in alarm. “Describe it to me!”
And when Lessa did, she saw at last belief in both their faces.
“My father has just commissioned a tapestry with such a scene. He told me of it the other day because the last battle with the Threads was held over Ruatha.” Incredulous, Mardra turned to T’ton, who no longed looked amused. “She must have done what she has said she’d done. How could she possibly know about the tapestry?”
“You might also ask your queen dragon, and mine,” Lessa suggested.
“My dear, we do not doubt you now,” Mardra said sincerely, “but it is a most incredible feat.”
“I don’t think,” Lessa said, “that I would ever try it again, knowing what I do know.”
“Yes, this shock makes a forward jump between times quite a problem if your F’lar must have an effective fighting force,” T’ton remarked.
“You will come? You will?’ “There is a distinct possibility we will,” T’ton said gravely, and his face broke into a lopsided grin. “You said we left the Weyrs … abandoned them, in fact, and left no explanation. We went somewhere … somewhen, that is, for we are still here now… .”
They were all silent, for the same alternative occurred to them simultaneously. The Weyrs had been vacant, but Lessa had no way of proving that the five Weyrs reappeared in her time.
“There must be a way. There must be a way,” Lessa cried distractedly. “And there’s no time to waste. No time at all!”
T’ton gave a bark of laughter. “There’s plenty of time at this end of history, my dear.”
They made her rest then, more concerned than she was that she had been ill some weeks, deliriously screaming that she was falling and could not see, could not hear, could not touch. Ramoth, too, they told her, had suffered from the appalling nothingness of a protracted stay between, emerging above ancient Ruatha a pale yellow wraith of her former robust self. The Lord of Ruatha Hold, Mardra’s father, had been. surprised out of his wits by the appearance of a staggering rider and a pallid queen on his stone verge. Naturally and luckily he had sent to his daughter at Fort Weyr for help.
Lessa and Ramoth had been transported to the Weyr, and the Ruathan Lord kept silence on the matter. When Lessa was strong enough, T’ton called a Council of Weyrleaders. Curiously, there was no opposition to going … provided they could solve the problem of time-shock and find reference points along the way. It did not take Lessa long to comprehend why the dragonriders were so eager to attempt the journey. Most of them had been born during the present Thread incursions. They had now had close to four months of unexciting routine patrols and were bored with monotony. Training Games were pallid substitutes for the real battles they had all fought. The Holds, which once could not do dragonmen favors enough, were beginning to be indifferent.