“That’s the way I saw it,” Brekke agreed. “Those mounds there!”
“So do we start with these?” F’lar asked, the next morning, sighing at the task of unearthing a small hill. Lessa stood beside him, surveying the silent mounds, with the Master Smith, Masterminer Nicat, F’nor and N’ton. Jaxom, Piemur, Sharra and Menolly remained discreetly to one side. “This large one?” he asked, but his eyes swept down the parallel ranks, squinting with resignation.
“We could be digging until the Pass is done,” Lessa said, slapping her riding gloves against her thigh as she, too, did a slow thoughtful survey of the sprawl of anonymous earthen lumps.
“A vast area,” Fandarel said, “vast! A larger settlement than the combined Holds at Fort and Telgar.” He glanced up in the direction of the Dawn Sisters. “They all came from those?” He shook his head, staggered by the concept. “Where to start to best effect?”
“Is everyone on Pern coming here today?” Lessa asked as a bronze dragon burst into the air over their heads. “D’ram’s Tiroth! With Toric?”
“I doubt we could exclude him if we wished, and it would be unwise to try,” F’lar remarked in a droll tone.
“True,” she replied and then smiled at her weyrmate. “I rather like him,” she added, surprised at her own verdict.
“My brother makes himself likable,” Sharra said quietly to Jaxom, a curious smile on her lips. “But to trust him?” She shook her head slowly, watching Jaxom’s face. “He is a very ambitious man!”
“He’s taking a good look, isn’t he?” N’ton remarked, watching the circling dragon’s lazy downward glide.
“It’s worth looking at,” F’nor replied, scanning the broad, mounded expanse.
“Is that Toric aloft?” Master Nicat asked, digging his boot toe into the large mound. “Glad he’s here. He sent for me when he found those mine shafts in the Western Range.”
“I’d forgot he’s already had some experience with the ancients’ handiwork,” F’lar said.
“He’s also got experienced men to help us without having to go back to the Lord Holders,” N’ton said with a knowing grin.
“Whom I don’t want too interested in these eastern lands,” Lessa said firmly.
When D’ram and Toric had dismounted, Tiroth glided down the grassy plain to where the other dragons were lounging on an outcropping of sun-warmed rock. As Toric and the bronze rider walked toward them, Jaxom regarded the Southerner with Sharra’s remarks in his mind. Toric was a big man, as big as Master Fandarel in build and height. His hair was sun-streaked, his skin a deep brown and, while his smile was broad, there was a certain arrogant self-possession in the very way he strode that suggested he felt himself the equal of any awaiting him. Jaxom wondered just how that attitude would strike the Benden Weyrleaders.
“You certainly have discovered the Southern Continent, haven’t you, Benden?” he said, gripping F’lar’s arm in greeting and bowing as he smiled at Lessa. He nodded and murmured the name of the other leaders and masters present, glancing beyond them with a raking look at the younger people. When Toric’s eyes came back to his face, just briefly, Jaxom knew he’d been identified. Resenting the way Toric’s glance slid from him, as if he were negligible, he stiffened. Then he felt Sharra’s hand lightly on his arm.
“He does that to irritate,” she said in a very soft voice, with a ripple of her rich laughter in it. “Most of the time it’s effective.”
“It puts me in mind of the way my milk-brother used to tease me in front of Lytol, when he knew I couldn’t retaliate,” Jaxom said, surprising himself with such an unexpected comparison. He saw her approval in her dancing eyes.
“Trouble is,” Toric was saying, his voice carrying to them, “that the ancients didn’t leave much behind. Not if they could move it elsewhere and use it. Saving people they were!”
“Oh?” F’lar’s exclamation invited Toric to explain.
The Southerner shrugged. “We’ve been through the mine shafts they left. They’d even pulled up the rails for their ore carts, and’ the brackets where they must have hung lights. One place had a largish shelter at the mouth,” he gestured toward the smallest nearby mound, “about that size, carefully shut against the weather and totally bare inside. Again, you could see where things had been bolted to the floor. They’d prized the bolts out, too.”