“Can you hear anything from the lizards?” he asked in a low voice.
“From hers, you mean? No, but I can easily see what they must be thinking from their reactions. Why?”
“Idle question. But she’s not from a Search, is she?”
“No, of course not. She’s Brekke’s fosterling.”
“Hmmm. Then she’s not exactly proof, is she?”
“Proof of what, F’lar? I’ve suffered no head injury but I can’t follow your thought.”
F’lar gave his brother an absent smile and then exhaled wearily.
“We’re going to have trouble with the Lord Holders; they’re disillusioned and dissatisfied with the Oldtime Weyrs and are going to balk at any more expeditious measures against Thread.”
“Raid and Sifer give you a hard time?”
“I wish it were only that, F’nor. They’d come round.” F’lar gave his half-brother a terse account of what he’d learned from Lytol, Robinton and Fandarel the day before.
“Brekke was right when she said something really important had come up,” F’nor said afterward. “But . . .”
“Yes, that news’s a hard roll to eat, all right, but our ever efficient Smith’s got what might be an answer, not only to the watch on Thread but to establishing decent communications with every Hold and Hall on Pern. Especially since we can’t get the Oldtimers to assign riders outside the Weyrs. I saw a demonstration of the device today and we’re going to rig one for the Lord Holders at Telgar’s wedding . . .”
“And the Threads will wait for that?”
F’lar snorted. “They may be the lesser evil, frankly. The Threads prove to be more flexible in their ways than the Oldtimers and less trouble than the Lord Holders.”
“One of the basic troubles between Lord Holders and Weyrmen are dragons, F’lar, and those fire lizards might just ease matters.”
“That’s what I was thinking earlier, considering that young Mirrim had Impressed three. That’s really astonishing, even if she is weyrbred.”
“Brekke would like to see her Impress a fighting dragon,” F’nor said in a casual way, watching his half-brother’s face closely.
F’lar gave him a startled stare and then threw back his head and laughed.
“Can you . . . imagine . . . T’ron’s reaction? . . .” he managed to say.
“Well enough to spare myself your version, but the fire lizards may do the trick! And, have the added talent of keeping Hold in contact with Weyr if these creatures prove amenable to training.”
“If—if! Just how similar to dragons are fire lizards?”
F’nor shrugged. “As I told you, they are Impressionable—if rather undiscriminating,” he pointed to Mirrim at the Hearth and then grinned maliciously, “although they detested Kylara on sight. They’re slaves to their stomachs, though after Hatching that’s very definitely draconic. They respond to affection and flattery. The dragons themselves admit the relationship, seem totally free of jealousy of the creatures. I can detect basic emotions in the thoughts of mine and they generally inspire affection in those who handle them.”
“And they can go between?”
“Grall—my little queen—did. About chewing firestone I couldn’t hazard a guess. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“And we don’t have time,” F’lar said, clenching his fists, his eyes restless with the current of his thoughts.
“If we could find a hardened clutch, all set to Hatch, in time for that wedding—that, combined with Fandarel’s gadget—” F’nor let his sentence trail off.
F’lar got up in a single decisive movement. “I’d like to see your queen. You named her Grall?”
“You’re solid dragonman, F’lar,” F’nor chuckled, remembering what Brekke had said. “You had no trouble remembering the lizard’s name but the girl’s—? Never mind, F’lar. Grall’s with Canth.”
“Any chance you could call her—here?”
F’nor considered the intriguing possibility but shook his head.
“She’s asleep, full up to the jawline.”
She was and daintily curled in the hollow by Canth’s left ear. Her belly was distended from the morning’s meal and F’nor dabbed it with sweet oil. She condescended to lift two lids but her eye was so dull she did not take notice of the additional visitor, nor Mnementh peering down at her. He thought her a very interesting creature.
“Charming. Lessa’ll want one, I’m sure,” F’lar murmured, a delighted half-smile on his face as he jumped down from Canth’s forearm on which he’d stood to observe her. “Hope she grows a little. Canth could yawn and inadvertently inhale her.”
Never, and the brown’s comment did not need to be passed to the bronze rider.
“If we’d only an estimate of how long it would take to train them, if they are trainable. But time’s as inflexible as an Oldtimer.” F’lar looked his half-brother squarely in the eye, no longer hiding the deep worry that gnawed at him.
“Not entirely, F’lar,” the brown rider said, returning his gaze steadily. “As you said, the greater evil is the sickness in our own . . .”
A dragon’s brassy scream, the klaxon of Thread attack, stopped F’nor midsentence. The brown rider had swung toward his dragon, instinctively reacting to the alert, when F’lar caught him by the arm.
“You can’t fight thread with an unhealed wound, man. Where do they keep firestone here?”
Whatever criticism F’lar might have had of T’bor’s permissiveness at Southern, he could not fault the instant response of the Weyr’s fighting complement. Dragons swarmed in the skies before the alert had faded. Dragons swooped to weyrs while riders fetched fighting gear and firestone. The Weyr’s women and children were at the supply shed, stuffing sacks. A message had been sent to the seahold where fishermen from Tillek and Ista had established a settlement. They acted as ground crew. By the time F’lar was equipped and aloft, T’bor was issuing the coordinates.
Thread was falling in the west, at the edge of the desert where the terrain was swampy, where sharp broad-edged grasses were interspersed with dwarfed spongewoods and low berry bushes. For Thread, the muddy swamp was superb burrowing ground, with sufficient organisms on which to feed as the burrow proliferated and spread.
The wings, fully manned and in good order, went between at T’bor’s command. And, in a breath, the dragons hung again in sultry air and began to flame at the thick patches of Thread.
T’bor had signaled a low altitude entry, of which F’lar approved. But the wing movement was upward, seeking Thread at ever higher levels as they eliminated the immediate airborne danger. Weyrfolk and convalescents swelled the seahold group as ground crew but F’lar thought they’d need low ground support here. There were only three fighting queens, and where was Kylara?
F’lar directed Mnementh to fly a skim pattern just as the ground crews arrived, piling off the transport dragons, and flaming any patch of grass that seemed to move. They kept shouting to know where the leading Edge of the Fall was and F’lar directed Mnementh east by north. Mnementh complied, and abruptly turned due north, his head barely skimming the vegetation. He backwinged so abruptly that he nearly offset his rider. He hovered, peering so intently at the ground, that F’lar leaned over the great neck to see what attracted him. Dragons could adjust the focus of their eyes to either great distances or close inspection.
Something moved—away, the dragon said.
The gusts of his backwinging flattened grasses. Then F’lar saw the pin-sized, black-rimmed punctures of Thread on the leaves of the berry bushes. He stared hard, trying to discern the telltale evidence of burrows, the upheaval of soil, the consumption of the lush swamp greenery. The bush, the grass, the soil stood still.