“That is the most beautiful sight,” Sharra said on a long sigh.
“Must be the other side that blew out,” Jaxom said, more to himself than to the others.
“The other side?” Sharra and Menolly spoke at once. And Jaxom could feel Piemur stiffening behind him.
“Did you dream, too, last night?” Jaxom asked.
“What on earth did you think had awakened us in time to hear you creeping out?” Menolly asked, a bit sharply.
“Well, let’s go see the other,” Piemur said as if he were merely suggesting a swim.
“Why not?” Sharra replied with the same carelessness.
I would like to see the place of my dreaming, Ruth said and, without any warning, he dropped from the ridge height.
Jaxom heard Menolly and Sharra exclaim in surprise and he was glad that he’d rigged flying straps for them. Ruth expressed apologies which Jaxom had no time to relay as the white dragon swooped into a current of warm air that bore them up and over the broad inlet. When his flying had leveled, Jaxom used the viewer and found a distinctive rock formation on the northern shoulder. He gave Ruth the visualization.
They were between: they were hovering above the rock formation and the mountain seemed to bend frighteningly toward them for the space of several breaths. Ruth recovered his flying speed and veered further north, beating strongly in a wide arc toward the eastern face of the mountain.
Momentarily they were all blinded by the full brilliance of the rising sun which had been occluded by the mountain’s bulk. Ruth shifted to a southerly heading. Before them lay the most incredible sweep of land that Jaxom had ever seen-far broader, and deeper than Telgar’s flatlands, or the desert of Igen. His eyes were drawn quickly from that spectacular vista to the mountain.
The view was suddenly all too familiar to Jaxom, the product of so many uneasy nights and unfocused dreams. The eastern lip of the mountain was gone! The gaping mouth seemed to snarl, its left-hand comer pulled down. Jaxom’s eyes followed that line and he saw, crouching on the southeastern flank, three more volcano mouths, like malevolent offspring of the larger. The lava flowed down, south, toward the rolling plains.
Ruth continued to glide instinctively away from the mountain, toward the kinder valley.
As much as Jaxom had admired and feasted his eyes on the northern aspect of that volcano, now he turned from the malevolent teeth of the blown side, the side of his nightmares.
Jaxom all but anticipated Ruth’s words: This place I know. They say this is where their men were!
Out of the sun, fairs of firelizards dove and veered out of Ruth’s flightline. Beauty, Meer, Talla and Farli, who had ridden their friends’ shoulders to this incredible place, took off to join the newcomers.
“Look, Jaxom! Look down!” Piemur yelled in his ear while tugging at his shoulder and pointing frantically to a spot below Ruth’s left foreleg. The early sun threw the outlines in bold relief. Regular outlines, mounds, and then straight lines dissecting, forming curious squares where no such regular formations should be.
“That’s what Master Robinton is looking for!” He grinned back over his shoulder at Piemur, who had turned to attract the girls’ attention to the ground.
Then Jaxom gasped, pressuring Ruth with his legs to turn northeast. He felt Piemur clutch at his shoulders as the Harper, too, saw what he’d seen. Where the haze from the distant smoking volcanoes in the sea was joined by a gray haze from the skies-Thread!
“Thread!”
Thread! Before Jaxom could direct him, Ruth had taken them smartly between. In the next instant they were hovering above the Cove, its beaches accommodating the bulks of five dragons. Master Idarolan’s fishermen were scurrying from shore to ship, placing slates on a frame rigged to protect the wooden decks from Threadfall!
Canth asks where have we been? I must chew firestone immediately. The firelizards are to help protect the ship. Everyone is annoyed with us. Why?
Jaxom asked Ruth to land them near the firestone pile on the beach and to start chewing.
“I’ve got to find Stupid!” Piemur dropped to the sand and was off in a run toward the forest.