Ruth was still only a winglength above the Weyr when they came out of between, a Turn in time ahead of Ruth’s sunrise plunge.
Ruth had just enough strength left in his forearms and wings to let the egg down carefully into the warm sands. Jaxom dropped from the dragon’s neck to check the egg for any cracks, but it looked all right. Certainly it was hard enough and still warm. With his gloved hands, he shoveled sun-hot sand over the egg and then, like Ruth, collapsed to catch his breath.
“We can’t stay long. They might just try it day by day. They’d know we can’t take the egg far at once.”
Ruth nodded, his breath still coming in ragged gasps. Then he stopped, taut until Jaxom started with alarm. Two fire-lizards, a gold and a bronze, were watching them from the edge of the Weyr. In the brief glimpse Jaxom had of them before they winked out, he saw no colored bands about their necks.
“Do we know them?”
No.
“Where’re those two queens?”
They showed me when. That’s all you wanted.
Jaxom felt bereft of their fragile guidance and stupid because he hadn’t insisted they stay.
There’s firestone, Ruth said. And flame scar. The bronzes did flame at the fire-lizards here! A long time ago. The scar is growing weed.
“Dragon against dragon!” Apprehension nagged at Jaxom. He didn’t feel safe here. He wouldn’t feel safe until they actually had that egg back in Benden where it belonged.
“We’ve got to make another jump, Ruth. We don’t dare wait here.”
Resolutely he unlooped the rope from about his waist and started making a rough sling with the fur rug. There’d be less strain on Ruth if the egg were strapped between his forelegs. Jaxom had completed the corners when he heard a loud crunching.
“Ruth! You’re not going to flame dragons!”
No, of course I’m not. But will they dare approach me if I am flaming?
Jaxom was unsettled enough not to protest. When Ruth had a gulletful, he called him over and got the sling around the egg. He looped the rope comfortably over Ruth’s shoulders to take the weight. He started to check the knots again and then, some inner caution prompting him, he just mounted.
“We’ll go five Turns more into Keroon, to our place there. Do you know when?”
Ruth thought a moment and then said he knew when.
In between Jaxom had time to worry if he was making the jumps too long to keep the egg warm. It hadn’t actually Hatched before he’d left. Maybe he should have waited, to find out if the egg had Hatched properly: then they’d’ve known how to judge the forward jumps. Maybe he’d even killed the little queen trying to save her. No, his mind reeled with between and paradoxes; the most important act, returning the queen egg, was in process. And dragon had not fought dragon—not yet.
The shimmering heat of Keroon desert warmed his failing spirit as well as his body. Ruth looked a ghastly shade under the caking black mud. Jaxom released the rope and lowered the egg to the sand. Ruth helped him cover it. It was midmorning, and not far from the hour when the egg must be back but at least six Turns in time-distance.
Ruth asked if he couldn’t wash off the mud in the sea but Jaxom told him they’d have to wait until they’d got the egg safely back. No one had known who’d done it then: no one should know, and the safest way was not to have a white hide showing.
The fire-lizards?
That had worried Jaxom but he thought he had the answer. “They didn’t know who brought the egg back that day. There weren’t any in the Hatching Ground, so they don’t know what they haven’t seen.” Jaxom decided not to think further on that subject.
He was very tired as he leaned back against Ruth’s warm flank. They’d rest a little while and let the egg warm up well in the midmorning sun before they’d make that last and trickiest jump. They had to position themselves to land just inside the Hatching Ground, where the arch of the entrance sloped abruptly down and obscured the view of anyone looking from the Bowl into the Ground. In fact, directly opposite the peephole and slit that F’lessan and Jaxom had used so many Turns ago. It was just luck that Ruth was small enough to risk going between inside the Ground but it’d been his own Hatching place so his feeling was innate. Thus far he’d lived up to his boast that he always knew when he was going . . .
Even in the hot desert plains of Keroon there was some noise: infinitesimal rustlings of insect life, hot breezes riffling through dead grasses, snakes burrowing in the sand, the distant rush of water on the beach. The cessation of such sounds can be as remarkable as a thunderclap, and so it was the utter stillness and a minute change of air pressure that roused Jaxom and Ruth from somnolence to alarm.
Jaxom glanced up, expecting bronze dragons to appear and reclaim their prize. The sky above was clear and hot. Jaxom glanced around and saw the danger, the silver mist of descending Thread raining down across the desert. He slithered and scrambled to the egg. Ruth right beside him, both digging it free, pushing it into the sling, frantically trying to judge the leading edge of Fall, wondering and worrying that the skies weren’t full of fighting dragons.
As fast as they worked to secure the precious burden to Ruth for flight, they were not quite quick enough. The leading edge of Threadfall fell hissing to the sand around them as Jaxom got to Ruth’s neck and directed him upward. Ruth, giving a belch of flame, vaulted skyward, trying to sear a path far enough above the ground to go between.
A ribbon of fire sliced Jaxom’s cheek, his right shoulder through the wherhide tunic, his forearm, his thigh. He felt, rather than heard, Ruth’s bellow of pain, lost in the black of between.
Somehow Jaxom kept his mind on where and when they should be. They were finally in the Hatching Ground, Ramoth bellowing outside. Ruth could not quite suppress his cry as the hot sand rubbed the raw Threadscore on his hind foot. Jaxom bit his lips against his pain as he struggled with the rope. There was so little time and it seemed to take ages to release the sling. Ruth lowered the egg to the sand but it rolled down the slight incline from their shadowy corner of the Ground. They couldn’t wait. Ruth sprang up toward the high ceiling and went between.
Dragon would not now fight dragon!
It was no surprise to Jaxom that Ruth came out of between above the little mountain lake. In what relative when, Jaxom was too concerned for his dragon to care at that moment. Ruth was whimpering with the pain in his foot and leg; all he wanted was to cool that Threadfire. Jaxom leaped from his neck to the shallows and splashed water on the sweaty gray hide, cursing himself that the nearest numbweed was at Ruatha Hold. He was so clever, he was, that he never thought one of them might get hurt.
The cool lake water was taking the sting from the Threadscores but Jaxom worried now about the mud causing an infection. Surely he could have used something less dangerous for camouflage than river mud. He didn’t dare scour the wounds with sand: it would be too painful for Ruth and might just rub the cursed mud deeper into the wounds. For the first time in many days, Jaxom regretted the total absence of fire-lizards who could have helped him scrub his very dirty dragon. Once again he briefly wondered when, besides high noon of the day, they were.
It is the day after the evening we left, Ruth announced. I always know when I am, he added with justifiable pride in his ability. Along the left dorsal, a terrible itch. You’ve left some mud.
Jaxom could and did use sand on the rest of Ruth’s hide and managed to ignore the way it smarted in his own scores. He was dead weary and aching by the time Ruth allowed that he was clean enough for a last plunge in the deeper part of the lake.
The ripples lapping around his soaked ankles brought Jaxom’s memory back to that not so distant day of his rebellion.
“Well,” he said with a self-deprecatory chuckle, “among other things, we did get to fight Thread.” And what a dismal showing they’d made of it with proof patent on their hides.
We weren’t exactly giving our complete attention to Thread, Ruth reminded him with a note of reproach. I kn
ow how now. We’ll be much better at it next time. I’m faster than any of the big dragons. I can turn on my tail and go between in a single length from the ground.
Jaxom told Ruth fervently and gratefully that he was without doubt the best, fastest, cleverest beast in all Pern, North and South. Ruth’s eyes whirled greenly with pleasure and he paddled to the shore, wings extended to dry.
You are cold and hungry and sore. My leg hurts. Let’s go home.
Jaxom knew that was the wisest course; he had to get numbweed on Ruth’s leg and on his own injuries. But scores they were and undeniably caused by Thread. How in the name of the First Shell was he ever going to explain all of this to Lytol?
Why explain anything? Ruth asked logically. We only did what we had to do.
“Think logically, huh?” Jaxom replied with a laugh, and patted Ruth’s neck before he wearily pulled himself up. With understandable reluctance and apprehension, he told Ruth to take them home.
The watchdragon caroled a greeting and a mere half-dozen fire-lizards, all banded in Hold colors, swarmed up to escort Ruth down to his weyr courtyard.
One of the drudges came hurrying out of the kitchen entrance, eyes wide with excitement.
“Lord Jaxom, there’s been a Hatching. The queen egg Hatched, it did. You were sent to come but no one could find you.”
“I had other business. Fetch me some numbweed!”
“Numbweed?” The drudge’s eyes widened farther with concern.
“Numbweed! I’m sunburned.”
Rather pleased with his resourcefulness considering he was shivering in wet clothes, Jaxom saw Ruth comfortably situated in his weyr, his injured leg propped up.
It hurt Jaxom to get the tunic over his shoulder because Thread had scored right down the muscle, caught him at the wrist and continued to cut a long furrow down his thigh.
A timid scratching on the door to the main Hold announced the incredibly speedy return of the drudge. Jaxom opened the door wide enough to get the jug of numbweed, and still keep his Threadscores from the curious eyes.
“Thanks, and I’ll want something hot to eat, too. Soup, klah, whatever’s on the fire.”
Jaxom closed the door, scooped up a bathing sheet which he knotted about his middle as he made his way to Ruth. He slathered a fistful of the numbweed on his dragon’s leg and grinned at the sigh of intense relief that Ruth gave as the salve took immediate effect.
Jaxom gratefully echoed the sentiments as he smeared his own wounds. Blessed, blessed numbweed. Never again would he begrudge his labor in gathering the plaquey, thorny greenery from which this incredible balm was stewed. He peered into his looking glass as he daubed his face cut. It’d leave a finger-long scar. No getting around that. Now if he could get around Lytol’s wrath . . .
“Jaxom!”
Lytol strode into the room after the most perfunctory knock at the door. “You’ve missed the Hatching at Benden Weyr and—” At the sight of Jaxom, Lytol stopped so quickly in midstride that he rocked back on his heels. Clad only in a bathing sheet, the marks on Jaxom’s shoulder and face were quite visible.
“The egg Hatched all right then? Good,” Jaxom responded, picking up his tunic with a nonchalance he wasn’t feeling. “I . . .” then he stopped, as much because his voice would be muffled in the fabric of his tunic as because he had been about to explain with his customary candor his bizarre night’s work. He balked at the task. Ruth perhaps was right—they had only done what they had to. It was sort of his and Ruth’s private affair. You might even say his actions reflected his unconscious wish to atone for violating Ramoth’s Hatching Ground as a boy. He pulled the shirt over his head, wincing as it caught the numbweed on his cheek. “I heard at Benden,” he said then, “that they were worried whether it would Hatch after all the coming and going between.”
Lytol approached Jaxom slowly, his eyes on the young man’s face, begging the question.
Jaxom settled his tunic, belted it, then smoothed the numbweed into the cut again. He didn’t know what to say.
“Oh, Lytol, would you mind taking a look at Ruth’s leg? See if I doctored it right?” Jaxom waited then, facing Lytol calmly. He noticed, with a sadness for the inevitability of this moment of reserve, that Lytol’s eyes were dark with emotion. He owed the man so much, never more than at this moment. He wondered that he had ever considered Lytol cold or hard and unfeeling.
“There’s a trick of ducking Thread,” Lytol said quietly, “that you’d better teach Ruth, Lord Jaxom.”
“If you’d be kind enough to tell me how, Lord Lytol . . .”
CHAPTER VII
Morning at Ruatha Hold, 15.6.2
“I CAME TO tell you that we have guests, Lord Jaxom; Master Robinton, N’ton and Menolly are above, just back from the Hatching. First, let’s see to Ruth.”
“Didn’t you go to Benden for the Hatching?” Jaxom asked.
Lytol shook his head as he walked toward Ruth’s weyr. The white dragon was settling in for a well-deserved nap. Lytol bowed courteously to him before peering closely at the thickly smeared scorings.
“You washed first in the lake, I presume.” Lytol’s glance took in Jaxom’s damp hair. “That water’s pure enough, and the numbweed’s been applied in good time. We’ll check again in a few hours. But I think he’s all right.” Lytol’s gaze went then to Jaxom’s all-too-obvious scoring.
“I had no reason to excuse you to our guests.” He sighed. “Be grateful it’s N’ton above and not F’lar. I suppose Menolly knew what you were about?”
“I told no one what I intended, Lord Lytol,” Jaxom said with some formality.
“At least you’ve learned discretion.” The Lord Warder hesitated, his eyes sweeping the figure of his ward. “Ah well, I’d best ask N’ton to take you for weyrling practice—safer that way and you’d be with others. Robinton will guess what you’ve been about, but he’d learn in due course no matter how we evaded. Come then, they’ll not give you too hard a time for your clumsiness. Not that you don’t deserve more than a ribbing, taking such a chance with yourself and Ruth. And right now, when order is all in pieces anyhow . . .”
“I apologize for distressing you, Lord Lytol . . .”
The man subjected his charge to another shrewd scrutiny.
“No distress, Lord Jaxom. Any apologies are on my head. I ought to have realized your need to prove Ruth’s abilities. I wish that you were a few Turns older and that matters were in such order that I could let you take Hold—”
“I don’t want to take Hold from you, Lord Lytol—”
“I don’t think I’d be permitted to step down right now anyway, Jaxom. As you’ll hear for yourself. Come, we’ve kept our guests waiting long enough as it is.”
N’ton was facing the door of the smaller hall used at Ruatha when guests required privacy for their discussions. The bronze rider took one look at Jaxom’s face and groaned. At his reaction, Master Robinton slewed round in his chair, his tired eyes registering surprise and, Jaxom hoped, a certain measure of approval.
“You’re Threadscored, Jaxom,” Menolly cried, and her expression was one of shocked dismay. “How could you take such a risk right now?” She, who had taunted him about thinking, not doing, was now furious with him.
“I should have known you’d try it, young Jaxom,” N’ton said with a weary sigh, a rueful smile on his face. “You were bound to break out soon, but your timing is atrocious.”
Jaxom would have liked to say that, in point of fact, his timing had been faultless, but N’ton went on: “Ruth wasn’t hurt, was he?”
“A single score on thigh and foot,” Lytol replied. “Well doctored.”
“I do sympathize with your ambition, Jaxom,” Robinton said, unusually solemn, “to fly Ruth with other dragons, but I must counsel you to patience.”
“I’d rather he learned how to fly properly now, Robinton. With my other weyrlings,” N’ton interrupted unexpectedly, winning Jaxom’s gratitude. “Particularly if he’s mad enough, brave enough,
to try it on his own without any guidance.”
“I doubt we could get Benden to approve,” Robinton said, shaking his head.
“I approve,” Lytol said in a firm voice, his face set. “I am Lord Jaxom’s guardian, not F’lar or Lessa. Let her manage her own concerns. Lord Jaxom is my charge. He can come to little harm with the Fort Weyrlings.” Lytol stared fiercely at Jaxom. “And he will agree not to put his teaching to the test without consulting us. Will you abide by that, Lord Jaxom?”
Jaxom was relieved enough to know that the Benden Weyrleaders would not be queried so that he agreed to more stringent conditions than he might have. He nodded and was immediately beset by conflicting emotions— amusement because everyone had assumed the obvious and annoyance because, having achieved so much more that day, he was now reduced to apprentice level. Yet, his experience at Keroon had demonstrated too sharply how much he still had to learn about fighting Thread if he wished to keep whole his and his dragon’s hides.
N’ton had been peering intently at Jaxom and his frown deepened so that, for one moment, Jaxom wondered if N’ton had somehow guessed what he and Ruth had actually been doing when they were Threadscored. If they ever found out, Jaxom would be twice bound with added restrictions.
“I think I’ll require a further promise from you, Jaxom,” the bronze rider said. “No more timing it. You’ve been doing far too much of that lately. I can tell from your eyes.”
Startled, Lytol examined his ward’s face more closely.
“I’m in no danger on Ruth, N’ton,” Jaxom said, relieved at being accused of a lesser transgression. “He always knows when he is.”
N’ton dismissed that talent impatiently. “Possibly, but the danger lies in the rider’s mind—an inadvertent time clue that could set both in jeopardy. Coming too close to yourself in subjective time is dangerous. Besides it’s draining for both dragon and rider. You don’t need to time it, young Jaxom. You’ll have time enough for all you need to do.”