The Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey [76]
She lowered the mug, cradling it in her hands carefully as if it had assumed some undefinable importance to her.
“Now. Tell me,” he ordered evenly.
She took a long deep breath and 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 backward 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 firepits 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 firepits, 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 that 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, 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.
Ramoth interjected a thought that, since the two of them had been there that previous