The Skies of Pern (49 page)

TIME IT
! cried Golanth.

That shriek seemed to course along her bones, in her blood until her body trembled violently, and her head seemed ready to burst. Certainly her heart did. A huge blur of gold again rippled across bronze. She had one second to see its claws hooking briefly into Golanth’s withers, tearing strips away. Then the feline burst into pieces, gore, entrails, shards of bone and pieces of hide splattering as far away as she stood, across F’lessan’s inert, bloodied
body. She saw Golanth staggering. Golanth dying? F’lessan would surely wish to die, too!

She dropped to her knees, bereft with the realization, staring at the green ichor staining Golanth’s body. He was still swaying with the impact, his left eye oozing a green mixed with red beast blood. Yet he wasn’t falling. Did a dragon fall down dead? Too shocked in that moment to go
between
? Somehow the predator had missed the vital spot. Golanth’s head was hanging, canting to the left to favor the damaged eye. Could she cushion his fall? She couldn’t even get her knees to work.

Then there were only dragons hovering! Bewildered she gazed up at the wrathful semicircle hovering, wing tip to tip, just above the uppermost terrace: huge golden Ramoth, Arwith, Mnementh, Monarth, Gadareth, Heth, Path, Ruth, and other dragons she did not recognize. She stared at Zaranth, stretched high on her hindquarters, wings spread glistening with smears of ichor—Tai felt the pain in her green’s mind. As one, the dragons stretched their heads and bugled in fierce triumph at something she did not understand.

They live!
A chorus assured her with such conviction that the devastated Tai collapsed, wondering and grieving at that response, crawling toward F’lessan before she lost consciousness.

She drifted in and out, aware of men and women, conversing in urgent whispers, of the coolness of numbweed easing the pain in her legs and other parts of her that had just started to be sore.

“No, leave
him
here until he’s been seen by Oldive as well as Wyzall.”

“Then the green won’t leave. But we should move her rider.”

“It’s not far to a proper bed in Honshu after all.”

“How many dragons will we need to shift him? He cannot be dumped on bare rock, you know!”

“Do we need all these people here?” Tai recognized the Benden Weyrwoman’s caustic tones. “At least the dragons have the good sense to stay out of the way until they’re needed.”

When they lifted her, to bandage her clawed legs, pain roused her.

“No, no, Tai, don’t thrash about. An artery must be repaired.”

She thought it was Sharra who spoke.

“Golanth’s dead! F’lessan?”

“No, no, they live.”

“HOW?”

“They do live. Zaranth, tell her!”

They live
, said her green in a whispery voice.
They live! You live! We live
!

She felt a prick in her arm and lost consciousness again.

When she woke, the chant—
they live! they live!
—was still in her head and she wanted so to believe it. And yes, there was Zaranth’s mind, as close to hers as skin.

They live
. The green sounded so very tired.

Rest, Zaranth. You can rest now, too
.

Yes, Zaranth
, another voice said.
You may rest now, too
.

A cool cloth gently bathed Tai’s face and someone was holding her hand.

“Now, listen to me, Tai.” The green rider was astonished to see it was Benden’s Weyrwoman who sat beside her bed, holding her hand. “F’lessan has been badly wounded. Oldive, Crivellan, Keita, and two of his best surgeons have put him rather neatly back together. Golanth is actually …” Lessa’s hands tightened briefly on Tai’s fingers and she gave a sort of hiccup before she continued, “worse off. He’ll need more repair work when he’s stronger. He
will
live! Oldive and our best Healers have promised that much.”

A memory of the bronze dragon, scored and oozing with thick green ichor, hunks torn out of tail and leg, his faceted eye blanked, weeping ichor, and that final leap to his most vulnerable spot flashed through Tai’s mind.

“But he will never be the same,” Tai said, her voice breaking.

Lessa tightened her hold. “Who could be the same after that mauling? But he’ll fly again. With F’lessan.”

Tai struggled up on one elbow to look directly into the gray eyes that were so like F’lessan’s. “You wouldn’t lie to me?” She was startled to see the fullness of tears in Lessa’s eyes; the Weyrwoman irritably blinked them away. “No, green rider, I would not lie to you. Nor would that incredible dragon of yours. Nor will Ramoth or any other dragon on Pern. F’lessan and Golanth will require a great deal of care but Master Oldive is confident
that they are physically strong enough to overcome their injuries.”

There was something in Lessa’s voice that fueled the fear in Tai. She tried to swing her legs to the side of the bed—she had to
see
F’lessan—but her legs wouldn’t work and she relived that hideous moment when she couldn’t get free of the blanket to help F’lessan.

She was pushed back, flat against the pillows. “You’ve wounds of your own that must heal before you go bouncing out of bed.”

That was Sharra’s voice.

What were they all doing here? Where was she?

You are in Honshu
, and this time it was Ruth speaking to her.
Where else would you be?

“And you said she was a biddable girl,” Lessa said with characteristic testiness. She gripped Tai’s face in both hands and forced her to meet her eyes. “F’lessan’s in a fellis sleep. Zaranth, by the way, won’t leave Golanth’s side. It’s as well. She wouldn’t fit in this room or she might be tempted to leave her weyrmate.”

“Where are they then?” Tai demanded. Honshu’s main Hall would not be big enough for two dragons.

“The terrace,” Lessa replied calmly. “There’s no rain in this season, you know.” She turned to one side for a glass. “Sharra will lift you so you can drink this.”

“What is it?” Tai asked, suspicious. She didn’t want to be put back to sleep. She wanted to check her brave Zaranth, to see F’lessan and Golanth no matter how badly wounded they were.

“Tell me, my dear green rider, how will you be able to care for F’lessan and Golanth if you jeopardize your own recovery?”

It was the phrase “my dear green rider” and the very kind tone in which Lessa spoke that so stunned Tai that she drank down the potion without further struggle.

“I think she did believe me,” Tai heard Lessa murmuring as she felt the fellis juice easing the rawness of her throat, radiating through her body and mind.

“I knew she’d believe
you
,” Sharra answered and that was all she heard before she fell into a deep sleep that was therapeutic.

L
essa had told Tai the truth about the other three injured in the felines’ attack, but not the whole truth. F’lessan and Golanth were critically injured: the survival of one depended on the other. The experienced Weyrhealer Wyzall had been entirely honest about Golanth’s ghastly wounds: the eye, with so many facets pierced by claws, might never function. He’d had fair results with a gel, which healed thread-char in dragon eyes, and he had used this heavily on Golanth’s eye, more to provide surface relief than with any real hope of tissue repair or regeneration. He had repaired the wing joint as well as he could and, of course, the sail membrane would, in time, regenerate most, if not all, the torn tissue. There was the possibility that the joint, with judicious exercise and manipulation, might regain partial flexion but “normal” flight was unlikely.

Oldive and Crivellan could be more sanguine about F’lessan. Physically he would recover from his wounds; the intestinal puncture had been repaired although the loss of flesh in the left calf, the tearing of the tendon and cartilage would almost certainly impair the full use of the leg. Right now, suffering from shock and loss of blood, they doubted he would survive the death of his dragon.

“Neither would I,” Lessa thought, grieving within the calm and confidence she projected publicly.

Both F’lessan and Golanth must be encouraged that the other, though wounded, would survive. Before F’lessan had lost consciousness, he—as Tai briefly had—may well have thought that Golanth was dying of his wounds and, had he taken that morbid thought with him into his fevered state, it was possible that he would slip away from them! They must also reassure Golanth, drifting in and out of consciousness from shock and weakness, that his rider was not mortally injured. Despite her own distress (numbweed deadened any pain), Zaranth kept assuring Golanth that F’lessan was alive, that his rider was only deeply asleep from pain and the exhaustion of their fight. Ramoth had given the bronze dragon the same reassurances and been a trifle testy when
it seemed that Golanth put more reliance on what green Zaranth told him—when he was conscious enough to hear anything.

“So long as he understands that F’lessan lives,” Wyzall told Lessa, “it doesn’t matter who he believes so long as he
does
.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she agreed, but it took a little rearrangement in her mind that
her
Ramoth should take second place to a green.

“Why not? They’re weyrmates,” F’lar told her, finding brief amusement in what Lessa had apparently not understood. “Each dragon speaks to the other’s rider.”

She gave him a long startled look. “But he’s—” she began and stopped to reconsider. “Well, I suppose it’s about time his
human
emotions were involved. I mean, he’s very good with his sons, even if S’lan’s the only one who ever lived in Benden. I just thought—”

F’lar put an arm around her shoulders. “Ramoth approves,” he murmured in her ear. “Mnementh does. When you consider what that green did today …”

“What she did today—” Lessa broke off. “Well, we won’t bother her about how she did what she did today. She did it and—and I’m more grateful than I can ever express.”

“Me, too,” and he rolled Lessa more firmly into his arms, holding her against him, comforting them both. It would be a long sleepless night.

Once Oldive and Crivellan had left the unconscious F’lessan with Keita to watch him, the two Masters had insisted that the Weyrleaders get some rest. Sharra showed them to a small room, just down the hall from F’lessan and Tai.

Propping pillows behind them, since both knew they wouldn’t be able to sleep, they kept trying to figure out the sequence of the astonishing events of the attack and how to explain the extraordinary actions of Ramoth.

“I don’t know as I can explain,” Lessa told F’lar, “and she’s my dragon. I linked with her mind the moment I realized she had gone in answer to Golanth’s alarm. I saw what she saw, and that was too many of those wretched predators latched on to him and the green. The green was—somehow—picking them up and flinging them off. It was a—motion—that Ramoth imitated. So
did the other dragons. Grabbing the felines and tossing them off the two dragons.” She rubbed her forehead as if that would clear the confused images Ramoth had projected to her rider. “F’lessan was on the ground, being viciously attacked; he’d no more than his belt knife, you know. And—Tai—was jumping from the ledge with something flaring out behind her.

“Then,” and Lessa paused, frowning, “I think Golanth shouted ‘time it’ and Ramoth saw the one feline Zaranth hadn’t deflected with her body.” Her frown deepened and she spoke slowly, measuring the words with the fleeting moment that had made all the difference. “If its jump had connected, the beast could easily have severed Golanth’s spinal cord.” A shudder ran down Lessa’s body and F’lar pulled her head against him in a tight embrace as if he could press the horror of that moment out of her mind—and his. “It had to have been Golanth. Greens don’t know the mechanics of timing it without guidance, and Golanth had done so much at Monaco and Sunrise Cliff,” Lessa said softly. “The others had just come. Even Ramoth didn’t grasp the danger immediately. So it had to have been Golanth who said ‘time it.’ He must have seen his peril through Zaranth’s eyes. Or Tai’s. And Ramoth perceived what action was imperative. To deflect the feline’s spring. I lost touch with her—and you know that sense of blankness that is
between
?” she asked, looking up at him, her eyes swimming with tears. “I felt that. It’s unmistakable. Ramoth timed it back to push the feline just far enough off balance so it missed its target. And didn’t kill Golanth. Oh, F’lar, if it had, F’lessan wouldn’t have been able to survive Golanth’s death. Wouldn’t have wanted to. We’d have lost them both!”

She crumpled then, having been calm, steadfast, and efficient for the past few hours. She burrowed into F’lar, struggling to hold him closer, closer, to drive away the appalling words she had just uttered.

“It’s reaction,” she sobbed. “I’m just reacting!” Tears streamed down her face; Lessa of Ruatha and Benden Weyr, she who had rarely cried, not even when Fax had slaughtered her family and everyone else in Ruatha Hold: now she wept!

She felt other tears drop onto her forehead, as she clung to her
weyrmate and realized that he, too, cried even as he stroked her body and tried to soothe her, and let her weep. She couldn’t stop, even if everyone or anyone else in Honshu heard her.

No one hears
, Ramoth said, and her mental voice sounded very deep and echoing,
but us
.

It took time for both Weyrleaders to release pent-up emotions and regain composure. In the dark F’lar found the room’s water basin and tap, discovered a towel, left behind when Monaco riders had been at Honshu, and they washed faces and hands. Still trembling, Lessa made an attempt to braid her hair and F’lar found a cup.

“Amazing!” he said, sitting beside her again, close enough that their thighs touched, as if he could no more bear separation in the aftermath of their emotional storm than she could.

“The theory has always been that, if we knew the time, we could forestall a—a fatal—accident,” he said in a low, shaky voice, reaching for her hand. “Like Moreta’s death.”

“Theory,” she said with a derisive shrug. She sipped slowly from the cup of water, willing her body to stop shaking. F’lessan hadn’t died because Golanth hadn’t died. Golanth hadn’t died because Ramoth had prevented it.