The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century (65 page)

Just as Lessa-the-girl reached that doubtful sanctuary, Fax’s invaders swooped into the open window embrasures and began the slaughter of her sleeping family.

Back—back to the Star Stone!
Lessa cried. In her wide and staring eyes she held the image of the guiding rocks like a rudder for her sanity as well as Ramoth’s direction.

The intense cold acted as a restorative. And then they were above the quiet, peaceful wintry Weyr as if they had never paradoxically visited Ruatha.

F’lar and Mnementh were nowhere to be seen.

Ramoth, however, was unshaken by the experience. She had only gone where she had been told and had not quite understood that going
when
she had been told had shocked Lessa. She suggested to her rider that Mnementh had probably followed them to Ruatha so if Lessa would give her the
proper
references, she’d take her there. Ramoth’s sensible attitude was comforting.

Lessa carefully drew for Ramoth, not the child’s memory of a long-vanished, idyllic Ruatha, but her more recent recollection of the Hold, gray, sullen, at dawning, with a Red Star pulsing on the horizon.

And there they were again, hovering over the Valley, the Hold below them on the right. The grasses grew untended on the heights, clogging fire pit and brickwork; the scene showed all the deterioration she had encouraged in her effort to thwart Fax of any profit from conquering Ruath Hold.

But, as she watched, vaguely disturbed, she saw a figure emerge from the kitchen, saw the watch-wher creep from its lair and follow the raggedly dressed figure as far across the Court as the chain permitted. She saw the figure ascend the Tower, gaze first eastward, then northeastward. This was still not Ruatha of today and now! Lessa’s mind reeled, disoriented. This time she had come back to visit herself of three Turns ago, to see the filthy drudge plotting revenge on Fax.

She felt the absolute cold of
between
as Ramoth snatched them back, emerging once more above the Star Stone. Lessa was shuddering, her eyes frantically raking the reassuring sight of the Weyr Bowl, hoping she had not somehow shifted backwards in time yet again. Mnementh suddenly erupted into the air a few lengths below and beyond Ramoth. Lessa greeted him with a cry of intense relief.

Back to your weyr!
There was no disguising the white fury in Mnementh’s tone. Lessa was too unnerved to respond in any way other than instant compliance. Ramoth glided swiftly to their ledge, quickly clearing the perch for Mnementh to land.

The rage on F’lar’s face as he leaped from Mnementh and advanced on Lessa brought her wits back abruptly. She made no move to evade him as he grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently.

“How dare you risk yourself and Ramoth? Why must you defy me at every opportunity? Do you realize what would happen to all Pern if we lost Ramoth? Where did you go?” He was spitting with anger, punctuating each question that tumbled from his lips by shaking her.

“Ruatha,” she managed to say, trying to keep herself erect. She reached out to catch at his arms but he shook her again.

“Ruatha? We were there. You weren’t. Where did you go?”

“Ruatha!” Lessa cried louder, clutching at him distractedly because he kept jerking her off balance. She couldn’t organize her thoughts with him jolting her.

She was at Ruatha,
Mnementh said firmly.

We were there twice,
Ramoth added.

As the dragons’ calmer words penetrated F’lar’s fury, he stopped shaking Lessa. She hung limply in his grasp, her hands weakly plucking at his arms, her eyes closed, her face gray. He picked her up and strode rapidly into the queen’s weyr, the dragons following. He placed her upon the couch, wrapping her tightly in the fur cover. He called down the service shaft for the duty cook to send up hot
klah
.

“All right, what happened?” he demanded.

She didn’t look at him but he got a glimpse of her haunted eyes. She blinked constantly as if she longed to erase something she had recently seen.

Finally she got herself somewhat under control and said in a low tired voice, “I did go to Ruatha. Only…I went
back
to Ruatha.”

“Back to Ruatha?” F’lar repeated the words stupidly. The significance momentarily eluded him.

Certainly,
Mnementh agreed, and flashed to F’lar the two scenes he had picked out of Ramoth’s mind.

Staggered by the import of the visualization, F’lar found himself slowly sinking to the edge of the bed.

“You…you went
between
times?”

Lessa nodded slowly. The terror was beginning to leave her eyes.

“
Between
times,” F’lar murmured. “I wonder…”

His mind raced through the possibilities. It might well tip the scales of survival in the Weyr’s favor. He couldn’t think exactly how to use this extraordinary ability but there
must
be an advantage in it for dragonfolk.

T
HE SERVICE SHAFT
tumbled. He took the pitcher from the platform and poured two cups.

Lessa’s hands were shaking so much she couldn’t get hers to her lips. He steadied it for her, wondering if going
between
times would cause this kind of shock regularly. If so, it wouldn’t be any advantage at all. He wondered if she’d had enough of a scare this day so she might not be so contemptuous of his orders the next time.

Outside in the weyr, Mnementh snorted his opinion on that. F’lar ignored him.

Lessa was trembling violently now. He put an arm around her, pressing the fur against her slender body. He held the mug to her lips, forcing her to drink. He could feel the tremors ease off. She finally held the cup and took long, slow, deep breaths between swallows, equally determined to get herself under control. The moment he felt her stiffen under his arm, he released her. He wondered if Lessa had ever had someone to turn to. Certainly not after Fax invaded her family Hold. She had been only eleven; a child. Had hate and revenge been the only emotions the growing girl had practiced?

She lowered the cup, cradling it in her hands carefully as if it had assumed some undefinable importance to her.

“Now. Tell me,” he ordered.

After a long deep breath she began to speak, her hands tightening around the mug. Her inner turmoil had not lessened; it was merely under control now.

“Ramoth and I were bored with the weyrling exercises,” she admitted candidly.

Grimly F’lar recognized that, while the adventure might have taught her to be more circumspect, it had not scared her into obedience. He doubted that anything would.

“I gave her the picture of Ruatha so we could go
between
there.” She did not look at him but her profile was outlined against the dark fur of the rug. “The Ruatha I knew so well: I accidentally sent myself backwards in time to the day Fax invaded.”

Her shock was now comprehensible to him.

“And…” he prompted her, his voice carefully neutral.

“And I saw myself…” her voice broke off. With an effort she continued. “I had visualized for Ramoth the designs of the fire pits and the angle of the Hold if one looked down from the pits into the Inner Court. That was where we emerged. It was just dawn”—she lifted her chin with a nervous jerk—“and there was no Red Star in the sky.” She gave him a quick defensive look as if she expected him to contest this detail. “And I saw men creeping over the fire pits, lowering rope ladders to the top windows of the Hold. I saw the Tower guard watching. Just watching.” She clenched her teeth at such treachery and her eyes gleamed malevolently. “And I saw myself run from the Hall into the watch-wher’s lair. And do you know why,” her voice lowered to a bitter whisper, “the watch-wher did not alarm the Hold?”

“Why?”

“Because there was a dragon in the sky and
I
, Lessa of Ruatha, was on her.” She flung the mug from her as if she wished she could reject the knowledge, too. “Because
I
was there, the watch-wher did not alarm the Hold, thinking the intrusion legitimate, with one of the Blood on a dragon in the sky. So I,” her body grew rigid, her hands clasped so tightly the knuckles were white, “
I
was the cause of my family’s massacre. Not Fax! If I had not acted the captious fool today, I would not have been there with Ramoth and the watch-wher would…”

Her voice had risen to an hysterical pitch of recrimination. He slapped her sharply across the cheeks, grabbing her, robe and all, to shake her.

The stunned look in her eyes and the tragedy in her face alarmed him. His indignation over her willfulness disappeared. Her unruly independence of mind and spirit attracted him as much as her curious dark beauty. Infuriating as her fractious ways might be, they were too vital a part of her integrity to be exorcised. Her indomitable will had taken a grievous shock today and her self-confidence had better be restored quickly.

“On the contrary, Lessa,” he said sternly, “Fax would still have murdered your family. He had planned it very carefully, even to scheduling his attack on the morning when the Tower guard was one who could be bribed. Remember, too, it was dawn and the watch-wher, being a nocturnal beast, blind by daylight, is relieved of responsibility at dawn and knows it. Your presence, damnable as it may appear to you, was not the deciding factor by any means. It did, and I draw your attention to this very important fact, it did cause you to save yourself, by warning Lessa-the-child. Don’t you see that?”

“I could have called out,” she murmured but the frantic look had left her eyes and there was a faint hint of normal color in her lips.

“If you wish to flail around in guilt, go right ahead,” he said with deliberate callousness.

R
AMOTH INTERJECTED A
thought that, since they, too, had been there that previous time as Fax’s men had prepared to invade, it had already happened, so how could it be changed? The act was inevitable both that day and today. For how else could Lessa have lived to come to the Weyr and impress Ramoth at the hatching?

Mnementh relayed Ramoth’s message scrupulously, even to imitating Ramoth’s egocentric nuances. F’lar looked sharply at Lessa to see the effect of Ramoth’s astringent observation.

“Just like Ramoth to have the final word,” she said with a hint of her former droll humor.

F’lar felt the muscles along his neck and shoulders begin to relax. She’d be all right, he decided, but it might be wiser to make her talk it all out now, to put the whole experience into proper perspective.

“You said you were there twice?” He leaned back on the couch, watching her closely. “When was the second time?”

“Can’t you guess?” she asked sarcastically.

“No,” he lied.

“When else but the dawn I wakened, feeling the Red Star was a menace to me. Three days before you and Fax came out of the northeast.”

“It would seem,” he remarked drily, “that you were your own premonition both times.”

She nodded.

“Have you had any more of these presentiments…or should I say, reinforced warnings?”

She shuddered but answered him with more of her old spirit.

“No, but if I should,
you
go. I don’t want to.” F’lar grinned maliciously.

“I would, however,” she added, “like to know why and how it could happen.”

“I’ve never run across a mention of it anywhere,” he told her candidly. “Of course, if you have done it, and you undeniably have,” he assured her hastily at her indignant protest, “it obviously can be done. You say you thought of Ruatha, but you thought of it as it was on that particular day. Certainly a day to be remembered. You thought of spring, before dawn, no Red Star…yes I remember you mentioning that…so one would have to remember references peculiar to a significant day to return
between
times to the past.”

She nodded slowly, thoughtfully.

“You used the same method the second time, to get to the Ruatha of three Turns ago. Again, of course, it was spring.”

He rubbed his palms together, then brought his hands down on his knees with an emphatic slap and rose to his feet.

“I’ll be back,” he said and strode from the room, ignoring her half-articulated cry of warning.

Ramoth was curling up in the weyr as he passed her. He noticed that her color remained good in spite of the drain of her energies by the morning’s exercises. She glanced at him, her many-faceted eye already covered by the inner, protective lid.

M
NEMENTH AWAITED HIS
rider on the ledge, and the moment F’lar leaped to his neck, took off. He circled upwards, hovering above the Star Stone.

You wish to try Lessa’s trick,
Mnementh said, unperturbed by the prospective experiment.

F’lar stroked the great curved neck affectionately.
You understand how it worked for Ramoth and Lessa?

As well as anyone can,
Mnementh replied with the approximation of a shrug.
When did you have in mind?

At that moment, F’lar had had no idea. Now, unerringly, his thoughts drew him backwards to the summer day R’gul’s bronze Hath had flown to mate the grotesque Nemorth, and R’gul had become Weyrleader in place of his dead father, F’lon.