127Disclaimer: Pern and the dragons of Pern belong to Anne McCaffrey
The sunlight flooded around Lystar as Caliath came out of between into the air above the Weyr. She was still tired, but it wasn't the terrible, sapping, painful exhaustion that they'd struggled with across all the skies of Pern. This was a golden, lazy tiredness, and Lystar smiled to herself as Caliath circled slowly down towards the Weyr bowl in the tropical afternoon sun. Summer had come to Ista Weyr, and Lystar was glad that she was back in time to see it.
We made it, she said, tiredly, and then corrected herself. You made it, Cal. No one else could have done that. No dragon's as tough as you.
No rider's as brave as you. Caliath's voice was as lazy as her own, but it was filled with love and she felt her mouth stretching as she gave a wobbly grin, restraining an irrational impulse to burst into tears. She caressed Caliath's neck.
I love you, Cal. But there's plenty of people braver than me.
No. Caliath was stubborn. You are the bravest. You can do anything.
She smiled again, swallowing. That's what K'beth said. A long time ago. She paused, and then abruptly began to laugh. A long time ago – this morning! Cal – we're home!
And Caliath folded his wings and dropped in a long spiral to alight on their weyr ledge.
Lystar slid from his back, and stood for a couple of moments in the shade of the great cliff face, trying to sort her thoughts into coherency, as Caliath slunk inside and curled up in his great bowl-like depression.
Then she heard footsteps behind her.
Unlike the oldest Weyrs, Fort and Benden, Ista had been hacked out of the rock by human labour. The workmen had needed a way to access the rock surface on which they were working, so – also unlike Fort and Benden – the weyrs were arranged in regular rows, with a ledge running along the front of each and rough-hewn, rocky staircases at the end of each layer of weyrs.
Now someone was walking along their ledge – the second level – towards her. Lystar turned, smiling warmly.
She'd expected K'beth, and the smile was for him. But instead, standing behind her was a tall, blonde young woman. 'Oh – good morning, Bessa,' Lystar said.
The junior weyrwoman didn't answer her. She met Lystar's eyes with her own limpid blue ones, and Lystar gasped at the haunting fear she saw in the other girl's face, and the ghost of sorrow in her eyes. 'What is it?' she asked, instinctively, reaching out towards Bessa. 'Can I help?'
Bessa gave a small, ragged sob, and pushed past her, running along the ledge to disappear into her own large, luxurious weyr. Lystar looked after her, frowning anxiously. What could be wrong with Bessa? Gilda might know. But she couldn't ask Gilda. She knew the Headwoman despised the young queenrider.
There was no one else, Lystar realised. She set off down the ledge towards Bessa's weyr. She couldn't leave the weyrwoman alone in that state.
Before she had gone three paces, her knees crumpled, and she had to throw out a hasty hand to catch herself on the rock face. Inside their weyr, Caliath stirred and rumbled anxiously.
Lystar bit her lip, still looking after Bessa. But there was no real choice. She wasn't in any state to go after the girl now. I'm coming, Cal, she said, and slowly, leaning on the wall, began to retrace her steps into her own weyr. Disdaining the couch in the main chamber, she curled up between Caliath's forelegs, feeling the dragon's heat warm her back in the cool, shady weyr.
She'd go and see Bessa the minute she woke up, Lystar thought. The weyrwoman would be all right until then. She had her dragon to comfort her.
Caliath crooned gently in his doze. Lystar closed her eyes, and slid gently into dreamless sleep.
She swallowed nervously, biting her fingernails, her blonde hair straggling across her face. She knew she must look a fright, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She felt trapped, even in her spacious, airy weyr. What could she do? What could she do? Could she tell them what she knew? Not now. She couldn't come out with something like that now. It was too late. She'd missed her chance.
What could she do now? What could she do? Was there an answer to her problem? If they found out… And they'd find out. No question but they'd find out. Halith had got the whole story out of Rosith. She shivered. And if they didn't find out, then that would mean… that would mean another death – the harper's death, whatever his name was. And she didn't want that. She'd never wanted that. She'd never wanted anyone to be hurt!
She'd been trying to do the right thing, for Faranth's sake! Her face scrunched up into a crumpled ball as she tried to see a way through her desperation. What could she do? There was no answer.
Halith crooned, a long, anxious note as she sensed her rider's frantic worry. She pushed her triangular golden head through the doorway into her rider's quarter, her eyes whirling yellow with worry and fright. Don't be distressed, she begged. You are wonderful. You are beautiful and clever and brave. Do not be sad.
She stared at her incredible, beautiful, golden darling, and felt her heart swelling with pain and love. Halith would have to suffer too. She didn't know what they'd do to her when they found out, but it would hurt her and her dragon. She couldn't bear that – to see Halith suffer through what she had done. Perhaps they would try to separate them…
And Lystar had smiled at her, concern in her eyes, and asked her if there was anything she could do. For her! And she'd looked so white and tired all the time, as if she'd been through hardships and sorrows that she would never forget.
Brave. Halith thought she was brave. She knew she'd never be able to convince her dragon otherwise. But perhaps she could be brave enough – for Halith's sake. There was a way out. There was one way that she and Halith could stay together. If she was brave enough…
Lystar woke up curled comfortably against Caliath, and stretched out luxuriously. Her muscles were stiff and painful, but loosened up as she worked them. She climbed to her feet and hobbled into her main room, her gait becoming smoother as the muscles in her legs responded to her gentle motion.
It was dark, but Lystar could find the glowbasket on the ledge by the door without even thinking about it. She removed the shield covering the glows and surveyed her little weyr with pride and love. It was neat and tidy currently – Gilda's doing, that, while Lystar had been sleeping in the guest bedroom downstairs – but nothing could change its atmosphere to her eyes.
You awake, Cal?
Yes.
I really need to wash, and I bet you do too. Fancy a swim?
It's night.
A moonlight swim?
Yes. That would be nice.
C'mon, then. Just give me a second. Lystar hastily swept a bag of soapsand off a ledge, and gathered up a pile of clean clothes and a rough cloth she could use to dry herself. She ditched her wherhide riding gear in a pile on the floor – she'd pick it up and wash it in the morning – and went out to join Caliath on the ledge wearing the muddied, sweat-stained and torn clothing that she'd had on when she'd first left the weyr for a short flight to clear her head on a warm afternoon.
It wasn't cold outside, and the lake water was refreshing and enjoyable. Lystar swum around a bit for the pure pleasure of feeling the water buoy her up before getting down to the serious business of scrubbing Caliath's hide clear of the dirt it had acquired during their stay in the cave. Sometimes she wished that she was high-ranking enough to merit a private bathing pool in her weyr, but the truth was that she enjoyed this time with her dragon. After all, by the time he was clean she was always sopping wet, so she might as well scrub herself clean before she changed her clothing.
Caliath wriggled as she rubbed the sand across his soft hide, crooning with pleasure, and she grinned at him even while keeping his mental voice stern. How can I scrub you properly if you don't keep still?
Caliath turned his great head in her direction, the moonlight glinting slyly in one great eye. Then he swept his tail underwater so that it connected hard with her legs and she was ducked into the lake.
Lystar came up coughing and spluttering. Shaking back her soaked, clinging hair, she splashed a wave of water over Caliath's head. The dragon splashed back, even more vigorously, and sheets of water sailed through the air, gleaming silver in the moonlight, until they vanished back into the black lake waters, making ripples of silver and black shadows race outwards from the point where the girl and her dragon played. Lystar giggled, and gave up. She would never win a splashing fight with her dragon.
After she'd washed and scrubbed Caliath's hide and got all the dirt she could out of her skin and hair, Lystar floated on her back in the lake next to her dragon, while the water stilled to a black mirror reflecting the stars. Up in the sky, Lystar could see the twin moons, still in roughly the positions Jarrin had indicated for her – so long ago, it seemed now, though it was only a few months. She smiled up at Timor and Belior. Now she knew that Jarrin would be all right, she could remember that alignment as a happy one.
Come on, Cal, she said, eventually. Let's go back to the weyr and sleep again until morning. She flipped over and swum the short distance to the shore, leaving Caliath to follow in his own time. By the time she had dried herself off, wringing out her hair – it was beginning to be a nuisance, she really must get it cut – the dragon had followed her, water streaming off his back as he emerged from the lake like some awful creature of the deep. He extended a foreleg and Lystar climbed on for the short journey up to their weyr, the warm night breeze flapping into her face.
Caliath alighted gently on their ledge. Slipping to the ground, Lystar walked through into her living quarters, and dumped the rest of her soaking, dirty clothes with her weyrhide. She turned towards her couch – and then hesitated.
Eventually, she turned and walked softly back out of the weyr onto the rough-hewn ledge. I'll be back in a minute, she said to Caliath, who was settling into sleep again. Then she stepped out along the ledge, and paused outside Bessa's weyr.
She could hear no sound from within. Bessa and Halith must be asleep, then. Relieved, she turned to walk back towards her own bed, and then stopped, frowning. She knew her hearing was good, better than most people's since the accident to her eye. And she could hear nothing from inside the junior weyrwoman's weyr. Nothing. Surely it wasn't natural for a dragon to sleep quite that quietly?
She stepped inside Bessa's weyr, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Sure enough, Halith wasn't there.
Alarmed, Lystar pushed through the hanging that led to the blonde girl's sleeping quarters. 'Bessa?' She unshielded the glow basket, but she already knew what she'd see.
Neither Bessa nor her dragon were where they should be.
Cal! she said, sharply. Where's Halith? Can you ask –
Somewhere in the Weyr, a dragon wailed.
It wasn't the screaming of an angry or injured dragon; that was an awful sound, but one that Lystar'd heard often enough, one that was part of the ordinary life of the Weyr. This was a keening moan that rose in pitch and intensity as it continued, piercing Lystar's ears and shivering down her spine. Her skin creeped; suddenly, she was afraid. Cal! What's that?
The noise was growing, a huge wail that washed over the Weyr a message of misery and grief. Other dragons were taking up the cry, Lystar realised – and as she thought it she became aware of Caliath snaking out of their weyr and pulling himself up on his haunches, inflating his lungs to join the great lament. What's happened, Cal? she demanded, hearing shouts of confusion and fear all over the weyr as other riders were woken by the dragon's wail.
All over Pern, the great golden queens felt and responded to Ista's distress. In Benden Weyr, basking in midday sunlight, the senior queen raised her wedge-shaped head and let out a trembling, grief filled note that was taken up by the all the dragons of the Weyr.
Katriel, the Weyrwoman, raised her head, her eyes widening. What's going on, dear heart?
A queen has died, said her dragon, sorrowfully. Halith, of Ista, has gone between.
K'beth jolted out of sleep when the first dragon wailed, stuffing his feet into his boots before he even finished waking up.
His first reaction was purely instinctive and completely irrational. He was out of his weyr and charging along the ledge that would lead him to Lystar's before Rosith had finished shaking off sleep. Where are you going? she asked sleepily.
Lystar is mixed up in this somehow. I just know. He paused, slowing down to cross a narrower section of the ledge, then added, Rosith, love –
He broke off. The green dragon was no longer listening to him. Her thoughts were full of sorrow and misery. Even as he raced around the Weyr, high above the bowl that was full of milling dragonriders and women from the Lower Caverns, frightened, unable to sleep, and unable to persuade grieving dragons to explain their sorrow, Rosith took up the wailing lament behind him.
Caliath was standing half out of his weyr, a darker shadow against the starlit sky, his head thrown up as he wailed his grief to the sky.
'Move over, Caliath!' K'beth yelled through the noise; but the blue dragon didn't even seem to hear him. K'beth thumped the dragon's hide, trying to persuade him to move over so that the greenrider could use the ledge, but it had no effect.
What if something's happened to Lystar? K'beth thought, suddenly. What if that's why Caliath is so frantic? Worried, he dived to his knees and wriggled underneath Caliath's body to get past the impervious dragon.
Lystar's weyr was dark. K'beth stood on the ledge and peered inside. 'Lystar?' he asked, loudly, but he knew she wasn't there. No one would be sitting there in the dark with their dragon crying outside.
That made him think of his own dragon. Rosith?
No response. The green was still caught up in the wild misery that gripped the Weyr. He reached out to her with his mind, surrounding her with soothing, calming thoughts and trying to offer comfort and reassurance. He should go back to her. As a dragonrider, his first duty was to his dragon. He should be with her until she calmed down and could explain what had upset her so.
But… K'beth hesitated. Rosith was in no real danger. And Lystar… who knew what she might have got herself into this time?
But he couldn't find her. It made him realise suddenly how dependent he was on being able to link up to Rosith to have questions answered across the length and breadth of Pern. How could the harpers – how could Jarrin – ever manage without the constant mental links that stretched between all dragons everywhere to supply information?
It was while K'beth was hesitating, uncertain of his next move, that he noticed a glimmer of light from one of the weyrs a little further down the ledge. Thinking perhaps that its owner might know something, if Lystar was indeed at the heart of this trouble, he walked down towards it.
There was no dragon in the spacious outer room of the queen's weyr, but it didn't bother K'beth. Many dragons and riders in the dark and the confusion had moved down to join the shouting, confused crowd that were milling around, lighting torches and trying to establish the cause of the dragons' outburst. K'beth looked down at the mass of humanity and dragonkind below him, feeling oddly detached, and then stepped into Bessa's weyr and drew aside the heavy hide curtain which had bright glowlight leaking around the edges.
Lystar was there, slim and upright in the centre of the bright, bare room. She didn't turn as he entered, her head bent over something in her hands. K'beth frowned as he looked around, then stepped over to a chest by the wall, lifting the lid to see clothes neatly folded and stacked inside. He'd never been one of the men who frequented Bessa's rooms, but it was known all over the Weyr that the junior queenrider was an extragant, chaotic person. Her weyr was never tidy.
'I think she thought she'd leave it neat,' Lystar said, without turning round. 'Is that you, Weyrwoman?'
'It's me,' said K'beth, quietly. He could be quiet and still be heard, he realised. The dragons' wailing was beginning to die away into a soft keening moan that was tossed on the night breeze.
Lystar spun round. 'K'beth! How did you know –?'
'I'm beginning to have a sixth sense for when you're getting yourself into trouble. But I don't know what's happened. Rosith's ignoring me.' Lystar was holding a piece of parchment, he noticed, a single side covered with closely written, sprawling handwriting. All he could read was the name written on the outside: Lystar.
Surprised, he looked up at the girl. She was white and pale, her eyes gleaming, suspiciously as though she might begin to cry. 'Lystar, what's wrong? What's that?' He swallowed. 'You know why the dragons are upset, don't you? Is it –' he glanced round the lifeless, empty room. 'Is it something to do with Bessa and Halith?'
Slowly, reluctantly, Lystar nodded. 'They're dead,' she whispered.
'So that's what upset the dragons so much!' K'beth shook his head. 'How – what happened?'
'She… was unhappy.'
'Yes, but what –' He frowned. 'Lystar, are you telling me that – it was on purpose? That Bessa deliberately took her dragon between?'
Lystar nodded, miserably. 'She couldn't think of anything else to do.'
'Anything else to do about what? Lystar, you're not making any sense.' He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her down to sit beside him on the edge of Bessa's bed. 'Begin at the beginning. What was Bessa so upset about?'
'She… was scared,' said Lystar, hesitantly. He could feel her trembling, and tightened his arm around her. 'She – oh, K'beth, it was her that gave the flamethrowers to those bandits! But she never meant to do any harm. They – or one of them, anyway – spun her a sob story about needing flamethrowers to protect their land from thread, but being refused them by their Lord.'
'Then she was stupid,' said K'beth. 'No Lord, not even a blind and uncaring one, stints on flamethrowers to his Holders.'
'I know. But, you know, she wasn't clever, Bessa. And I think she – Gilda wasn't very kind to her, you know, and I think she enjoyed doing it without Gilda knowing. And she never – nobody ever told her anything. She didn't know about Z'kas, she thought he was threadscored, same as we all did. By the time she realised how serious it all was, it was too late to tell anyone. And she was too scared. She was terrified of Gilda.'
'And so she…' K'beth felt a lump rising in his throat at the thought of what Bessa had done. The thought of causing harm to come to any dragon was almost inconceivable to the dragonrider, but the idea of killing a queen was close to sacrilege. 'She must have been desperate.'
'She was. She… she met me, today, when I arrived back. She knew about you and me and Jarrin, Rosith told Halith, and meeting me was just – the last straw. K'beth, she was so afraid!' Lystar swallowed, and added softly, 'I know about being afraid.'
'Did she – tell you this?' K'beth asked, nodding at the parchment in Lystar's hands.
Lystar nodded. 'She left me a letter. She – I – when I met her today, she looked awful. I asked her if I could help. She – she had plenty of men willing to share her bed, but no one to rely on. I don't think – she said – I think no one had ever offered to help her before.' She swallowed again. 'Gilda wouldn't, you know. She isn't that kind of person. She never had any time for Bessa. I don't think anyone did. She had nobody except Halith to rely on, and Halith couldn't help her. So she really had nobody at all…'
Lystar began to cry, silently, tears rolling down her cheeks, and K'beth put his other arm around her, holding her close. Now there was no awkwardness. He gathered Lystar into his chest and rocked her gently.
'She didn't have to die,' he whispered.
'No.' Lystar's voice was muffled in his tunic. 'But perhaps… perhaps it's better this way. We couldn't have – forgotten Z'kas, and Jarrin, and everyone who suffered. But we couldn't have done anything to her – not with Halith… So perhaps she was right. Maybe this was the only way out. For everyone.'
K'beth gazed over Lystar's bent head and thought of the blonde girl who had been so beautiful and unhappy – and in the end so very brave. Perhaps Lystar was right – that Bessa's wrongdoing was too great to forget about. But the young queenrider had been alone, and confused, and scared, and had proved her courage – so her death was no less a tragedy for what her life had been.
K'beth felt his own eyes prick with tears.