He worried endlessly that M'leng would no longer love him, with such a scarred and imperfect body. M'leng, however, seemed to dwell so on P'tero's heroism in protecting him with his own body that the blue rider decided not to mention the fact that it had been entirely involuntary. M'leng had been unconscious from the moment of attack, and had a great lump and a cut on the back of his head as well as the chest wound.

Zulaya had arrived to see P'tero trying to remove the claws from M'leng's back, so there was little the blue rider could say to contradict the Weyrwoman's version.

Tisha, coming to give him fellis early one morning, found him in tears, positive that he had lost M'leng with such a marred body.

"Nonsense, my lad," Tisha had said, soothing back his sweaty hair as she held the straw for his fellis juice to his lips. "He will only see what you endured for his sake, to save him."

"And those scars will heal quite nicely, thanks to Corey's neat st.i.tching." The reference to the skill of the Head Medic almost reduced him to tears again. He'd caused so much fuss, he said.

"Indeed you have, but you've livened things up considerably, young man, and taught everyone some valuable lessons."

"I have?" P'tero would just as soon not have done.

"For one, dragons think they're invulnerable... and they aren't. A very good lesson to take into Fall with them, I a.s.sure you. Cool some of the hot-heads, so certain that it's just a matter of breathing fire in the right direction.

"For another, the southern continent has developed its own hazards.

"Did the Weyr ever find out about the grubs?" P'tero asked, suddenly recalling the reason for the excursion.

Tisha burst out laughing, then stifled it though P'tero's tent was a distance from any others. "There, lad, you've a good head as well as a brave heart. Yes, they completed the survey faster'n any other's ever been done." P'tero learned later that the grubs had infested yet a few more kilometres westward and southward towards the Great Barrier Range in an uneven wave of expansion. Their progress into the sandy scrub lands east of Landing had slowed to a few meters but the agricultural experts were not particularly concerned; they were more eager to have the rich gra.s.s and forest lands preserved.

"So the trip hasn't been a waste?" P'tero asked, relaxing as he felt the fellis spreading out.

Tisha gave him more maternal pats, settling the furs and making sure nothing was binding across his bottom and legs.

"By no means, lovey. Now you go back to sleep..."

As if he could prevent that, P'tero thought as the fellis took over and blotted out conscious thought as well as the pain.

It was three weeks before P'tero's wounds had healed sufficiently for the trip back. The makeshift infirmary had more patients since there were other hazards besides large, hungry and territorially-minded felines in the southern continent: the heat, unwary exposure to too much sun, and a variety of other minor injuries. Leopol got a thorn in his foot which had festered, so that he joined P'tero in the infirmary shelter until the poison drained.

Tisha and one of the weyrfolk came down with a fever that had Maranis sending back to Fort for a medic more qualified than he in such matters. The woman recovered in a few days but Tisha had a much harder time of it, sweating kilos off her big frame, to leave her so enervated Maranis was desperately worried about her. K'vin sent to Ista to beg a ship to transport her back north, since he could not subject her to trying to climb aboard a dragon.

Her illness depressed everyone.

"You don't really know how important someone is," Zulaya said, having come down to rea.s.sure herself on the state of the convalescents, "until they're suddenly... not there!" Her remark quite sank P'tero's spirits. And Tisha was not there to jolly him out of his depression. But M'leng was, and appeared in the shelter.

"How dare you be so self-centered?" the green rider said in a taut, outraged tone of voice.

"Huh?"

"Tisha's illness is not your fault. Leopol wasn't wearing shoes when he was told to, and so his infected foot also isn't your fault. In fact, it isn't even your fault that we picked that rock out of all the ones we could have picked. It was bad luck, but nothing more, and I don't want to have Ormonth upsetting Sith any more. D'you hear me?" P'tero burst into tears. Just as he'd thought: M'leng didn't love him any more.

Then M'leng's gentle arms went around him, and he was pulled to M'leng's lightly bandaged back and comforted with many caresses and kisses.

"Don't be such a stupid idiot, you stupid idiot! How could I not love you?"

Later, P'tero wondered how he could ever have doubted M'leng.

When the convalescents did return to Telgar Weyr, they found Tisha once more in charge of the Lower Caverns. If her clothes were still loose on her frame, she was tanned from the sea voyage back from the mouth of the Rubicon and looked completely recovered.

Some of the green and blue riders in the wing had freshened up both P'tero's and M'leng's weyrs, with paint and new fabrics. The worn pillows had been replaced with plump ones.

"Because Tisha said you'd need to sit real soft for a while longer," and Z'gal sn.i.g.g.e.red into his hand. "Lady Salda let us have feathers from the Turn's End birds." Then Z'gal's lover, T'sen, brought an object from behind his back. P'tero stared at it, puzzled. It seemed to be a pad with very long thongs.

"Ah, what is it?" Z'gal went into a laughing fit which annoyed T'sen, who scowled and kept pushing it to P'tero.

To sit on, of course. It'll fit between neck ridges. We measured.

Belatedly, but as effusively as he could, P'tero thanked T'sen for such a thoughtful gift. It wasn't so much his bottom that needed padding, but the muscles in the b.u.t.tocks and down his legs that needed strengthening and ma.s.sage to get them back in full working order. Of course, M'leng had been a.s.siduous in the ma.s.sage sessions, but P'tero was now concerned that he'd be fit for fighting when Threadfall began.

M'leng had been wounded in a much better site; he wouldn't miss a day's fighting.

There was wine, biscuits and cheese for a small in-weyr party.

M'leng capped the return celebrations by presenting P'tero with a flat, wrapped parcel.

M'leng's eyes were shining in antic.i.p.ation as P'tero untied the string, wondering what on earth this could be.

"Iantine's back, you know," M'leng said, breathlessly watching every movement of P'tero's hands.

The other riders were equally excited and P'tero felt a spurt of petulance that they all knew what this was and were dying to see his reaction.

Naturally, the picture was face down when he finished unwrapping.

P'tero was stunned silent when he turned it over and his eyes nearly bugged out of his head at the scene depicted.

"But... but... Iantine wasn't even there!"

"He's so good, isn't he?" Z'gal said. "Did he get it all right? M'leng described it over and over."

P'tero didn't quite know what to say - he was so bewildered.

So much of it was what he would have given his right arm to have actually happened. The lion was clawing his backside, M'leng was sprawled under him, and there were more lions climbing up the rock, their vicious intent vivid in their posture, their open mouths showing fangs longer than a dragon's.

P'tero was posed in an obvious act of defending his lover, his head turned, one arm upraised in a fist aimed at the attacking lion's head. But that wasn't the worst of the inaccuracies: both riders were fully clothed.

"P'tero?" M'leng's voice was quite anxious.

The blue rider swallowed. "I don't know what to say!"

Where am I? Ormonth wanted to know, evidently viewing it through his rider's eyes as a dragon sometimes could.

"There!" and P'tero pointed to the dragons high up in the sky, wings straight up in a landing configuration, claws unsheathed, ready to grab the attacker, eyes a mad whirl of red and orange.

"Of course, I was unconscious," M'leng was saying, "but that's what Ormonth and Sith would have been doing. Wasn't it?" And he jabbed P'tero warningly.

"Exactly," P'tero said hurriedly. And it probably was, although he hadn't seen it since he'd been looking in the other direction.

"Everything happened so fast it's almost eerie how Iantine has got it all down in one scene!" The amazement and respect in his voice was not the least bit feigned.

"Now," and M'leng pointed to the wall, "we've even got a hook for you to hang it on." "Wouldn't you rather have it?" P'tero suggested hopefully.

"I've a copy of my own. Iantine did two, one for each of us," M'leng said, beaming proudly at his lover.

So P'tero had to hang the wretched reminder of the worst day of his life on his own wall, just where he couldn't miss it every morning of his life when he woke up.

"You'll never know how much this means to me," he said and that, too, was quite truthful.

No-one thought it the least bit odd that he got very, very drunk on wine that night.

Lana'th comes, Charanth told his rider.

"So Meranath tells me," Zulaya said before K'vin could speak. "He wants to know all about our trip south."

"I thought he'd given up on that notion to practice on the first Falls in the South," K'vin said. He tried to sound diffident.

Then Zulaya put a finger across her lips and pointed to the sleeping Meranath, a signal to K'vin to guard his thoughts to Charanth outside on the ledge. He nodded understanding.

"You don't fool me, Kev," and then she waggled her finger at him. "You and B'nurrin would give your eye-teeth to be in on the first real Fall - even if it does take place in the South where nothing could be hurt. Or, for that matter, saved."

"The grubs haven't spread across the entire southern continent, you know."

"That has nothing to do with seeing Thread for the first time in two hundred years."

He answered her droll smile with an abashed grin.

"We don't need to have the dragons stoked up or anything," he said.

"Yes, but do you really want to have S'nan reproaching you for the rest of your career? That is, if you have one as a Weyrleader with this sort of antic in mind."

K'vin gave her a long look. "And don't tell me you like the fact that Sarrai will be leading a queen's wing in Falls before you will."

Zulaya rocked back in her chair just enough for K'vin to realize he had made a palpable hit. She was honest enough to grin back.

"We don't even know that's what's on B'nurrin's mind," she said.

That's exactly what was, however, even after both Zulaya and K'vin enumerated the problems they'd had on that ill-favored excursion to the southern continent. However, almost the first thing B'nurrin did was a repet.i.tion of Zulaya's signal to shield their thoughts from their dragons.

"In the first place, we wouldn't be landing anywhere. And I don't mean for whole wings to go, Kev," B'nurrin said, "not like it makes sense to do with the first actual Falls we do get - wherever that actually is..."

"And you're hoping S'nan doesn't get first go," Zulaya said with a malicious grin.

"Too right on that," B'nurrin agreed in a sour tone. He really gets up my nose, you know. I don't see any harm in having a look. I mean..." He paused, steeling himself a moment and staring straight into K'vin's eyes, "I'll be frank.

"I'm scared I'll be needing clean pants half a dozen times the first Fall I have to lead.

"I've wondered about that myself," K'vin admitted drolly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he was rather surprised to notice a fleeting expression of approval on Zulaya's face. "Surely B'ner had never mentioned that even as a remote possibility"?

"So, I figure, if I get a good look at it before I have to act brave and unconcerned - - -"

"Anyone who isn't concerned about Thread's a d.a.m.n fool," Zulaya put in.

"Agreed." B'nurrin nodded at her, grinning. "So, will you join me?"

"Because if two of us go, neither of us will be as much to blame?" K'vin asked, one eye on Zulaya's face.

B'nurrin scratched his jaw. "Yes, I guess that's the size of it."

"We're the first you've asked?"

B'nurrin gave a snort. "Well, I certainly wouldn't suggest it again to S'nan after the way he's clapped my ears back twice now. I figured you were more likely to than D'miel, though, you know, I think M'shall might come. If the weather's wrong at Fort and High Reaches, Benden's might be the first actual Fall we meet."

"M'shall might just be amenable at that," Zulaya said, "though he's the last one of the whole lot of you to doubt his abilities."

"That's true enough," said B'nurrin, "then his enthusiasm got the better of him. But look at it this way, even if old S'nan gets to fight this Pa.s.s's first Fall over Fort, we'll have been to one before him, so to speak." The Igen Weyrleader grinned with such boyish delight in the scheme that K'vin had to chuckle.

"How long is there between Southern's first and ours?" he asked.

He was astonished to see that Zulaya was already unrolling Telgar Weyr's Thread chart onto the table.

"Roughly two weeks," she said.

"So we could have gone and seen and not jeopardized the readiness of our own Weyrs," B'nurrin said, adding one more argument in favor of his idea.

"The first possible Fall over Fort is number seven. Number four is over the Landing Site," Zulaya went on, tapping her finger on the various Thread corridors. "Five's no good, but six starts offsh.o.r.e of the mouth of Paradise River, not far from where we just were."

"What about the first three?" B'nurrin asked, craning his neck to see. "Oh, not really as good for good coordinates, are they?"

Then he looked up in a direct challenge at K'vin. "Will you join me?"

"I'd like to," K'vin said decisively, pointedly not looking in Zulaya's direction.

"I think I would, too," she said, surprising both men. When they regarded her in amazement, "Well, queens' wings fly a lot lower into danger than the rest of the Weyr does. Makes it quicker for me to change my pants, but that doesn't mean I want to have to." Then, when they grinned with relief at her, "So, does Shanna want to come, too?"

Grinning even more broadly, B'nurrin said, "Only if you were going."

"At least one of you at Igen Weyr has some sense," said Zulaya. "Let's just sit on the idea for a few days. Just to be sure."

"Who will know, if we don't mention it?" B'nurrin asked, swiveling around to pointedly regard a sleeping Meranath.

Paulin took Jamson with him to Bitra Hold. The older Lord Holder was still furious with his son for voting High Reaches Hold in the impeachment. But he had been unable to fault his son's management during his two-month convalescence. This had indeed restored Jamson to vigorous health, if not tolerance.

The change in Bitra was obvious from the moment Magrith dropped to the courtyard and Vergerin hurried down the steps to greet his guests.

He had been alerted.