“T’ron’s agitated?” F’lar’s anger welled up instantly.

“That’s what I said,” Lessa replied, freeing herself and taking the steps two at a time. “I’ll order you food.” She halted abruptly, turning to say over her shoulder, “Keep your temper. I suspect T’kul never told anyone. He’s never forgiven T’ron for talking him into coming forward, you know.”

F’lar waited beside Mnementh as Fidranth circled smartly into the weyr. From the Hatching Cavern came Ramoth’s crotchety challenge. Mnementh answered her soothingly that the intruder was only Fidranth and no threat. At least not to her clutch. Then the bronze rolled one scintillating eye toward his rider. The exchange, so like one between himself and Lessa, drained anger from F’lar. Which was as well, for T’ron’s opening remarks were scarcely diplomatic.

“I found it! I found what you forgot to incorporate in those so-called infallible timetables of yours!”

“You’ve found what, T’ron?” F’lar asked, tightly controlling his temper. If T’ron had found anything that would be of help, he could not antagonize the man.

Mnementh had courteously stepped aside to permit Fidranth landing room, but with two huge bronze bodies there was so little space that T’ron slid in front of the Benden Weyrleader, waving a portion of a Record hide right under his nose.

“Here’s proof your timetables didn’t include every scrap of information from our Records!”

“You’ve never questioned them before, T’ron,” F’lar reminded the exercised man, speaking evenly.

“Don’t hedge with me, F’lar. You just sent a messenger with word that Thread was falling out of pattern.”

“And I’d have appreciated knowing that Thread had fallen out of pattern over Tillek and High Crom in the past few days!”

The look of shock and horror on T’ron’s face was too genuine to be faked.

“You’d do better to listen to what commoners say, T’ron, instead of immuring yourself in the Weyr,” F’lar told him. “Asgenar knew of it yet neither T’kul nor R’mar thought to tell the other Weyrs, so we could prepare and keep watch. Just luck I had F’rad . . .”

“You’ve not been housing dragonmen in the Holds again?”

“I always send a messenger on ahead the day of a Fall. If I didn’t follow the practice, Asgenar’s forest lands would be gone by now.”

F’lar regretted that heated reference. It would give T’ron the wedge he needed for another of his diatribes about over forestration. To divert him, F’lar reached for the piece of Record, but T’ron twitched it out of his grasp.

“You’ll have to take my word for it . . .”

“Have I ever questioned your word, T’ron?” Those words, too, were out before F’lar could censor them. He could and did keep his face expressionless, hoping T’ron would not read in it an additional allusion to that meeting. “I can see that the Record’s badly eroded, but if you’ve deciphered it and it bears on this morning’s unpredicted shift, we’ll all be in your debt.”

“F’lar?” Lessa’s voice rang down the corridor. “Where are your manners? The klah’s cooling and it is predawn T’ron’s time.”

“I’d appreciate a cup,” T’ron admitted, as obviously relieved as F’lar by the interruption.

“I apologize for rousing you . . .”

“I need none, not with this news.”

Unaccountably F’lar was relieved to realize that T’ron had obviously not known of Threadfall. He had come charging in here, delighted at an opportunity to put F’lar and Benden in the wrong. He’d not have been so quick – witness his evasiveness and contradictions over the belt-knife fight – if he’d known.

When the two men entered the queen’s weyr, Lessa was gowned, her hair loosely held by an intricate net, and seated gracefully at the table. Just as if she hadn’t ridden hard all morning and been suited five minutes before.

So Lessa was all set to charm T’ron again, huh? Despite the unsettling events, F’lar was amused. Still, he wasn’t certain that this ploy would lessen T’ron’s antagonism. He didn’t know what truth there was in a rumor that T’ron and Mardra were not on very good terms for a Weyrwoman and Weyrleader.

“Where’s Ramoth?” T’ron asked, as he passed the queen’s empty weyr.

“On the Hatching Ground, of course, slobbering over her latest clutch.” Lessa replied with just the right amount of indifference .

But T’ron frowned, undoubtedly reminded that there was another queen egg on Benden’s warm sands and that the Oldtimers’ queens laid few gold eggs.

“I do apologize for starting your day so early,” she went on, deftly serving him a neatly sectioned fruit and fixing klah to his taste “But we need your advice and help.”

T’ron grunted his thanks, carefully placing the Record hide side down on the table.

“Threadfall could come when it would if we didn’t have all those blasted forests to care for,” T’ron said, glaring at F’lar through the steam of the klah as he lifted his mug.

“What? And do without wood?” Lessa complained, rubbing her hands on the carved chair which Bendarek had made with his consummate artistry. “Those stone chairs may fit you and Mardra,” she said in a sweet insinuating voice, “but I had a cold rear end all the time.”

T’ron snorted with amusement, his eyes wandering over the dainty Weyrwoman in such a way that Lessa leaned forward abruptly and tapped the Record.

“I ought not to take your valuable time with chatter. Have you discovered something here which we missed?”

F’lar ground his teeth. He hadn’t overlooked a single legible word in those moldy Records, so how could she imply negligence so casually?

He forgave her when T’ron responded by flipping over the hide. “The skin is badly preserved, of course,” and he made it sound as if Benden’s wardship were at fault, not the depredations of four hundred Turns of abandonment, “but when you sent that weyrling with this news, I happened to remember seeing a reference to a Pass where all previous Records were no help. One reason we never bothered with timetable nonsense.”

F’lar was about to demand why none of the Oldtimers had seen fit to mention that minor fact, when he caught Lessa’s stern look. He held his peace.

“See, this phrase here is partly missing, but if you put ‘unpredictable shifts’ here, it makes sense.”

Lessa, her gray eyes wide with an expression of unfeigned awe (her dissembling nearly choked F’lar), looked up from the Record at T’ron.

“He’s right, F’lar. That would make sense. See – ” and she deftly slipped the Record from T’ron’s reluctant fingers and passed it to F’lar. He took it from her.

“You’re right, T’ron. Very right. This is one of the older skins which I had to abandon, unable to decipher them.”

“Of course, it was much more readable when I first studied it four hundred Turns back, before it got so faded.” T’ron’s smug manner was hard to take, but he could be managed better so than when he was defensive and suspicious.

“But that doesn’t tell us how the shift changes, or how long it lasted,” F’lar said.

“There must be other clues, T’ron,” Lessa suggested, bending seductively toward the Fort Weyrleader when he began to bristle at F’lar’s words. “Why would Thread fall out of a pattern they’ve followed to the second for seven mortal Turns this Pass? You yourself told me that you followed a certain rhythm in your Time. Did it vary much then?”

T’ron frowned down at the blurred lines. “No,” he admitted slowly, and then brought his fist down on the offending scrap. “Why have we lost so many techniques? Why have these Records failed us just when we need them most?”

Mnementh began to bugle from the ledge, with Fidranth adding his note.

Lessa “listened,” head cocked.

“D’ram and G’narish,” she said. “I don’t think we need expect T’kul, but R’mart is not an arrogant man.”

D’ram of Ista and G’narish of Igen Weyrs entered together. Both men were agitated, sparing no time for amenities.