The Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey [74]
Ramoth caught the tenor of her insecurity and began to press for an explanation.
This is Ruatha, Lessa replied stoutly. It can be no other. Circle the heights. See, there are the firepit lines I gave you. . . .
Lessa gasped, the coldness in her stomach freezing her muscles.
Below her in the slowly lifting predawn gloom, she saw the figures of many men toiling over the breast of the cliff from the hills beyond Ruatha, men moving with quiet stealth like criminals.
She ordered Ramoth to keep as still as possible in the air so as not to direct their attention upward. The dragon was curious but obedient.
Who would be attacking Ruatha? It seemed incredible. Lytol was, after all, a former dragonman and had savagely repelled one attack already. Could there possibly be a thought of aggression among the Holds now that F’lar was Weyrleader? And what Hold Lord would be foolish enough to mount a territorial war in the winter?
No, not winter. The air was definitely springlike.
The men crept on, over the firepits to the edge of the heights. Suddenly Lessa realized they were lowering rope ladders over the face of the cliff, down toward the open shutters of the Inner Hold.
Wildly she clutched at Ramoth’s neck, certain of what she saw.
This was the invader Fax, now dead nearly three Turns—Fax and his men as they began their attack on Ruatha nearly thirteen Turns ago.
Yes, there was the Tower guard, his face a white blot turned toward the Cliff itself, watching. He had been paid his bribe to stand silent this morning.
But the watch-wher, trained to give alarm for any intrusion—why was it not trumpeting its warning? Why was it silent?
Because, Ramoth informed her rider with calm logic, it senses your presence as well as mine, so how could the Hold be in danger?
No, No! Lessa moaned. What can I do now? How can I wake them? Where is the girl I was? I was asleep, and then I woke. I remember. I dashed from my room. I was so scared. I went down the steps and nearly fell. I knew I had to get to the watch-wher’s kennel. . . . I knew. . . .
Lessa clutched at Ramoth’s neck for support as past acts and mysteries became devastatingly clear.
She herself had warned herself, just as it was her presence on the queen dragon that had kept the watch-wher from giving alarm. For as she watched, stunned and speechless, she saw the small, gray-robed figure that could only be herself as a youngster, burst from the Hold Hall door, race uncertainly down the cold stone steps into the Court, and disappear into the watch-wher’s stinking den. Faintly she heard it crying in piteous confusion.
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 to go and had not quite understood that going where she had been told to go 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, dogging firepit 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