The Weyrleader acknowledged S’lel’s salute and indicated the bronze rider should be seated. F’lar had given thought to the seating arrangements in the Council Room, carefully interspersing brown and bronze dragonriders with Holders and Craftsmen. There was now barely room to move in the generously proportioned cavern, but there was also no room in which to draw daggers if tempers got hot.
A hush fell on the gathering, and F’lar looked up to see that the stocky, glowering ex-dragonman from Ruatha had stopped on the threshold of the Council. He slowly brought his hand up in a respectful salute to the weyrleader. As F’lar returned the salute, he noticed that the tic in Lytol’s left cheek jumped almost continuously. Lytol’s eyes, dark with pain and inner unquiet, ranged the room. He nodded to the members of his former wing, to Larad and Zurg, head of his own weavers’ craft. Stiff-legged, he walked to the remaining seat, murmuring a greeting to T’sum on his left.F’lar rose.
“I appreciate your coming, good Lords and Craftmasters.The Threads spin once again. The first attack has been met and seared from the sky. Lord Vincet,” and the worried Holder of Nerat looked up in alarm, “we have dispatched a patrol to the rainforest to do a low-flight sweep to make certain there are no burrows.”
Vincet swallowed nervously, his face paling at the thought of what Threads could do to his fertile, lush holdings.
“We shall need your best junglemen to help” “Help? But you said … the Threads were seared in the sky?”
“There is no point in taking the slightest chance,” F’lar replied, implying that the patrol was only a precaution instead of the necessity he knew it would be.
Vincet gulped, glancing anxiously around the room for sympathy, and found none. Everyone would soon be in his position.
“There is a patrol due at Keroon and at lgen.” F’lar looked first at Lord Corman, then at Lord Banger, who gravely nodded. “Let me say by way of reassurance that there will be no further attacks for three days and four hours.” F’lar tapped the appropriate chart. “The Threads will begin approximately here on Telgar, drift westward through the southernmost portion of Crom, which is mountainous, and on, through Ruatha and the southern end of Nabol.”
“How can you be so certain of that?”
F’lar recognized the contemptuous voice of Meron of Nabol.
“The Threads do not fall like a child’s jackstraws. Lord Meron,” F’lar replied. “They fall in a definitely predictable pattern; the attacks last exactly six hours. The intervals between attacks will gradually shorten over the next few Turns as the Red Star draws closer. Then, for about forty full Turns, as the Red Star swings past and around us, the attacks occur every fourteen hours, marching across our world in a time-able fashion.”
“So you say,” Meron sneered, and there was a low mumble of support.
“So the Teaching Ballads say,” Larad put in firmly.
Meron glanced at Telgar’s Lord and went on, “I recall another of your predictions about how the Threads were supposed to begin falling right after Solstice.”
“Which they did,” F’lar interrupted him. “As black dust in the Northern Holds. For the reprieve we’ve had, we can thank our lucky stars that we have had an unusually hard and long Cold Turn.”
“Dust?” demanded Nessel of Crom. “That dust was Threads?” The man was one of Fax’s blood connections and under Meron’s influence: an older man who had learned lessons from his conquering relative’s bloody ways and had not the wit to improve or alter the original. “My Hold is still blowing with them. They’re dangerous?”
F’lar shook his head emphatically. “How long has the black dust been blowing in your Hold? Weeks? Done any harm yet?”
Nessel frowned.
“I’m interested in your charts, Weyrleader,” Larad of Telgar said smoothly. “Will they give us an accurate idea of how often we may expect Threads to fall in our own Holds?”
“Yes. You may also anticipate that the dragonmen will arrive shortly before the invasion is due,” F’lar went on.“However, additional measures of your own are necessary, and it is for this that I called the Council.”
“Wait a minute,” Corman of Keroon growled. “I want a copy of those fancy charts of yours for my own. I want to know what those bands and wavy lines really mean. I want…”