“Are you all right, lad? Does your chest hurt?” Manora was bending over him.
“You found us? Is Felessan all right?”
“Right as rain, and eating his dinner. Now, does your chest hurt?”
“My chest?” His heart seemed to stop when he remembered how he got that injury. But Manora was watching him. He felt cautiously. “No, thank-you-for-inquiring.”
His stomach further embarrassed him with its grinding noises.
“I think you need some dinner, too.”
“Then Lytol’s not angry with me? Or the Weyrleader?” he dared to ask.
Manora gave him a fond smile, smoothing down his tousled hair.
“Not to worry, Lord Jaxom,” she said kindly. “A stern word or two perhaps. Lord Lytol was beside himself with worry.”
Jaxom had the most incredible vision of two Lytols side by side, cheeks a-twitch in unison.
“However, I wouldn’t advise any more unauthorized expeditions anywhere.” She gave a little laugh. “That is now the special pastime of the adults.”
Jaxom was too busy worrying if she knew about the slit, if she knew the weyrboys had been peeking through. If she knew he had. He endured a little death, waiting to hear her say Felessan had confessed to their crime, then realized she had said they weren’t to be more than scolded. You could always trust Manora. And if she knew and wasn’t angry . . . But if she didn’t know and he asked, she might be angry . . .
“You found those rooms, Lord Jaxom. I’d rest on my honors, now, were I you.”
“Rooms?”
She smiled at him and held out her hand. “I thought you were hungry.”
Her hand was cool and soft as she led him onto the balcony which circled the sleeping level. It must be late, Jaxom thought, as they passed the tightly drawn curtains of the sleeping rooms. The central fire was banked. A few women were grouped by one of the worktables, sewing. They glanced up as Manora and Jaxom passed, and smiled.
“You said ‘rooms’?” Jaxom asked with polite insistence.
“Beyond the room you opened were two others and the ruins of a stairway leading up.”
Jaxom whistled. “What was in the rooms?”
Manora laughed softly. “I never saw the Mastersmith so excited. They found some odd-shaped instruments and bits and pieces of glass I can’t make out at all.”
“An Oldtimer room?” Jaxom was awed at the scope of his discovery. And he’d had only the shortest look.
“Oldtimers?” Manora’s frown was so slight that Jaxom decided he’d imagined it. Manora never frowned. “Ancient timers, I’d say.”
As they entered the Main Cavern, Jaxom realized that their passage interrupted the lively conversations of the dragonmen and women seated around the big dining area. Accustomed as he was to such scrutiny, Jaxom straightened his shoulders and walked with measured stride. He turned his head slowly, giving a grave nod and smile to the riders he knew and those of the women he recognized. He ignored a sprinkle of laughter, being used to that, too, but a Lord of the Hold must act with the dignity appropriate to his rank, even if he were not quite Turned twelve and in the presence of his superiors.
It was full dark, but around the great inner face of the Bowl, he could see the lambent circles of dragon eyes on the weyr ledges. He could hear the muted rush of air as several stirred and stretched their enormous pinions. He looked up toward the Star Rocks, black knobs against the lighter sky, and saw the giant silhouette of the watch dragon. Far down the Bowl, he could even hear the restless tramping of the penned herdbeasts. In the lake in the center, the stars were mirrored.
Quickening his step now, he urged Manora faster. Dignity could be forgotten in the darkness and he was desperately hungry.
Mnementh gave a welcoming rumble on the queen’s weyr ledge, and Jaxom, greatly daring, glanced up at the near eye which closed one lid at him slightly in startling imitation of a human wink.
Do dragons have a sense of humor? he wondered. The watch-wher certainly didn’t and he was the same breed.
The relationship is very distant.
“I beg your pardon?” Jaxom said, startled, glancing up at Manora.
“For what, young Lord?”
“Didn’t you say something?”
“No”
Jaxom glanced back at the bulky shadow of the dragon, but Mnementh’s head was turned. Then he could smell roasted meats and walked faster.
As they rounded the bend, Jaxom saw the golden body of the recumbent queen and was suddenly guilt-struck and fearful. But she was fast asleep, smiling with an innocent serenity remarkably like his foster mother’s newest babe. He looked away lest his gaze rouse her, and saw the faces of all those adults at the table. It was almost too much for him. F’lar, Lessa, Lytol and Felessan he’d expected, but there was the Mastersmith and the Masterharper, too.
Only drill helped him respond courteously to the greetings of the celebrities. He wasn’t aware when Manora and Lessa came to his assistance.
“Not a word until the child has had something to eat, Lytol,” the Weyrwoman said firmly, her hands pressing him gently to the empty seat beside Felessan. The boy paused between spoonfuls to look up with a complex series of facial contortions supposed to convey a message that escaped Jaxom. “Jaxom missed lunch at the Hold and is several hours hungrier in consequence. He is well, Manora?”
“He took no more harm than Felessan.”
“He looked a little glassy-eyed as you crossed the weyr.” Lessa bent to peer at Jaxom who politely looked at her, chewing with sudden self-consciousness. “How do you feel?”
Jaxom emptied his mouth hurriedly, trying to swallow a half-chewed lump of vegetable. Felessan tendered a cup of water and Lessa deftly swatted him between the shoulder blades as he started to choke.
“I feel fine,” he managed to say. “I feel fine, thank you.” He waited, unable to resist looking at his plate and was relieved when the Weyrleader laughingly reminded Lessa that she was the one who said the boy should eat before anything else.
The Mastersmith tapped his stained, branchlike finger on the faded Record skin which draped the table, except where the boys were sitting. Fandarel had one arm wrapped possessively around something in his lap, but Jaxom couldn’t see what it was.
“If I judge this accurately, there should be several levels of rooms in this section, both beyond the one the boys found and above.”
Jaxom goggled at the map and caught Felessan’s eye. He was excited, too, but he kept on eating. Jaxom spooned up another huge mouthful—it tasted so good—but he did wish that the skin were not upside down to him.
“I’d swear there were no upper weyr entrances on that side of the Bowl,” F’lar muttered, shaking his head.
“There was access to the Bowl on the ground level,” Fandarel said, his forefinger covering what he ought to be showing. “We found it, sealed up. Possibly because of that rockfall.”
Jaxom looked anxiously at Felessan who became engrossed in his plate. When Felessan made those faces, had he meant he hadn’t told them? Or he had? Jaxom wished he knew.
“That seam was barely discernible,” the Masterharper said. “The sealing substance was more effective than any mortar I’ve ever seen; transparent, smooth and strong.”
“One could not chip it,” rumbled Fandarel, shaking his head.
“Why would they seal off an exit to the Bowl?” Lessa asked.
“Because they weren’t using that section of the Weyr,” F’lar suggested. “Certainly no one has used those corridors for the Egg knows how many Turns. There weren’t even footprints in the dust of most of them we searched.”
Waiting for the adult wrath that must surely descend on him now, Jaxom kept his eyes on his plate. He couldn’t bear Lessa’s recriminations. He dreaded the look in Lytol’s eyes when he learned of his ward’s blasphemous act. How could he have been so deaf to all Lytol’s patient teachings?
“We found enough of interest in the dusty, moldy old Records that had been i
gnored as useless,” F’lar’s voice went on.
Jaxom hazarded a glance and saw the Weyrleader tousle Felessan’s hair; watched as the man actually grinned at him, Jaxom. Jaxom was almost sick with relief. None of the adults knew what he and Felessan had done in the Hatching Grounds.
“These boys have already led us to exquisite treasures, eh, Fandarel?”
“Let us hope they are not the only legacies left in forgotten rooms,” the Mastersmith said in his deep rumble of a voice. Absently he stroked the smooth metal of the magnifying device cradled in the crook of his arm.