The usual copyright disclaimer. All right - drum roll - a few trumpets - we meet St'ven's father at last!
St'ven woke in the early evening and wondered what had woken him. He stared up at the ceiling and then heard the breath of a whistle outside. He rolled out of bed and grabbed at the crutch Brekke had left by the bed, and hopped over to the window.
"Hola, son."
"Pa."
St'ven leaned on the window sill, looking at his father standing outside. The resemblance between them was no more than the shape of the head, the set of their mouths, but it was easy to see they were related.
"Come on the evening tide, Mnementh said?"
"Yes. Lucky Threadfall was light, and didn't come onto me."
St'ven nodded. "I couldn't fly it."
"So I was told. Fighting, eh?"
"Wasn't me, Pa, it was Maranath."
"Look forward to meeting him again. Are you rested? Make your bed and come outside, why don't you?"
St'ven hopped back to his bed and made it neatly, and then came out of the dormitory, and around onto the terrace, sniffing at the scent of dinner cooking.
"Fish, Pa?"
"Took the liberty of bringing in some of the catch, yes. Good fishing, after Thread. Let me look at you. You've done growing at last, I see?"
"Seem to have, Pa, but I got a lot of rounding to get like you."
"Sit down then, and call this dragon of yours."
St'ven sent out a call, and after a moment Maranath appeared in the evening light, and behind him the huge bulk of Mnementh and with him F'lar and K'neth.
"Ah now - that there's a man you can look up to," St'ven's father said.
"I know it, Pa. Both of them."
Maranath brought his head to the level of the terrace, and St'ven's father reached out absently and scratched his eye ridges, running his gaze along his bulk.
"Going to be a big 'un. No wonder they thought you needed building up to match him."
K'neth gave a grunt of annoyance.
"I had no idea they would do that! Are you going to introduce us, brown rider?"
"Um - this is my father Rayden. K'neth the Weyrling Master, rider of brown Histeth, and - and Lord F'lar of Benden, rider of bronze Mnementh."
"Mnementh condescended to tell me he asked you to meet us this evening," F'lar said as they made themselves comfortable. "He seemed to think there is a story to tell?"
"Well, that would depend, would it not? First off, the dragons chose my son to be Searched. I understand that. He was at Southern, not entirely with my approval, but that's neither here nor there."
"If you say so," F'lar said smoothly. "But surely it would depend if he was running away? Or spying?"
"Spying? What should he spy upon?"
"The Lord Holder Toric?"
Rayden made a face. "That one!"
Brekke came out with lights and some food, and Rayden at once came to his feet and set a table for her, took the tray, leaving her looking confused. She looked closely at him.
"I know you - you used to bring fish - you had a fight with Toric!"
"Aye, I did at that. Holdless I've been, and holdless I continue, and no upjumped snickety little snirp tells me any different."
"My, and I wondered where you had your temper from, youngster," K'neth murmured.
Rayden gave a short laugh and sat down again. "Oh aye, I've a hard tongue."
"You met Maranath and Mnementh in the past?" F'lar asked.
"A good ten years agone, yes, and I kept my silence all these years, to see if it would work as they had said."
"Why shouldn't it? The past and present are fixed, surely?"
"There's a thing called a paradox, but I never could get my head around that. So I came to the hour they told me. Seems you want some explanation for the talents my son has."
F'lar sipped at his drink, and took out his pad, consulted it.
"He has long sight and uncommonly short sight - I expect you knew that?"
Rayden frowned at his son. "I knew he'd short sight - uncommonly short?"
"He can't see anything close up, but he uses his other senses to compensate. I sent a request to Master Starsmith Wansor, to see if lenses could be ground fine enough for him to use - he sent me this - "
F'lar produced a wrapped bundle and laid a large round glass set in horn on the table. He slid a page of writing over.
"Try that, youngster."
St'ven picked up the glass, and raised and lowered it over the sheet, and gasped in astonishment.
"Oh! It's words! Look at that! Clear as if they were a hundred paces away! It's wonderful!"
Rayden frowned more heavily.
"You never told me you had that much trouble, son."
"It never bothered me before, Pa, I could use my other senses, like the Weyrleader said. It's only since I've been in the Weyr it's been more difficult. This is fantastic!"
"Master Wansor suggests you sling it around your neck in this pouch, and use it in classes."
"Thanks! Oh, this will make life easier!"
"And these other senses - will he lose them, now he can see?"
St'ven looked across at his father, then at the other two.
"I use Maranath," he said slowly. "I never realised it before - how much I use him."
- I am your dragon, we are one, of course you will rely on me
- far too much, dear heart
- it can never be too much for you
"And he just told you off?" F'lar said accurately, with a rueful smile.
"Yes. I worry about fixing the co ordinates, you see, because I can see them from such a distance, but we're told you have to focus on them close at hand."
"I wish you'd brought those worries to me, youngster," K'neth said at once. "I could've told you it doesn't matter, so long as you have the Star Stones fixed in your mind. Do you take the image from your dragon?"
"Yes. I thought it ought to be the other way around?"
F'lar shook his head.
"Dragons have compound eyes, they can see much more than we can, but it's a different sort of seeing. Maranath has trained himself to see for you, so he's developed a narrowness of vision, Mnementh tells me."
"Oh. Things are so much more different, when you're a dragon rider."
"And I imagine your father would have told you that if you'd asked him," another man said, and D'ram came into view, and stood looking at Rayden.
"Well met, Rayden, son of Layder."
Rayden stared up at the aged dragon rider in silence, and then reached and poured a drink, as St'ven watched in wary astonishment.
"Do you know my father, Lord D'ram?"
"Indeed, do I know you, Rayden?"
"I came forward from the Eighth Pass, son, there being no more to hold me to that time, thanks to Lord Holders and their ilk."
"Still harping back on that, Rayden?"
Rayden scowled at him and proferred the drink.
"That's in the past, and done with."
"You were an Old Time dragon rider?" F'lar asked incredulously. "When did you lose your dragon?"
"A few years into this Pass," Rayden said evenly. "I left Ista Weyr almost immediately after that."
"Where did you go?" K'neth asked. "If you had no family?"
"I had family, even in these times. My father was wrongly accused of theft by a rich Holder with a grudge, and thrown out of his lands, lands our family had held since the days of the Charter and coming north from the disaster at Landing. My father was sent to the Islands, and my mother and three sisters went to join him. I was a dragon rider, I couldn't leave my trust. What would you? There was nothing left of our home, and although I gave them everything I had, it was little enough. My mother and sisters set sail after him in the ship my father had built, and no one ever bothered to ask me about them."
"I would think we assumed they had drowned," D'ram said into the silence.
"Oh, you would assume that, would you? Why should you not assume they made it to the Islands? In those days there were still charts and notes, and decent weather maps as well. I tell you, when I realised how much had been lost and destroyed in the Long Interval, I had more scorn for the Lord Holders."
"They did their best," F'lar said sharply.
"It was a Long Interval, and there had been such before," Rayden said impatiently. "Granted, they thought the Interval would last only the statutory couple of hundred years, as it had in the past, but that was no excuse for the way things were never copied, never talked about, once they realised what was going on. The Lord Fax, for instance, was an example of the best this generation could produce?"
"That's enough!" D'ram said heatedly. "You always had a bitter tongue, and it got you into trouble when you were a Weyrling, and I see it has not improved!"
An uncomfortable silence fell, and they all heard Mnementh.
- tell us about the brown rider's mother, ex-rider of Goranth
Rayden jumped and nearly spilled his drink.
- don't name him - do you think I have forgotten him? My soul and my strength!
- I know you have not forgotten him. Tell us about the boy's mother, and your other relatives
Rayden took a slow sip of his drink, staring at the great bronze dragon.
"My wife is from where my relatives lived, in fact she is one of my relatives, a descendant from my sister Tinira."
"How did you - oh - a boat?" D'ram asked. "Yes, you were always tinkering about in boats."
"I built myself a large sea-going boat after - Goranth - but before that, I had a monetary interest in a couple of fishing boats at Ista."
"You went back between," F'lar said suddenly. "Once we'd figured out how to do it, and you'd had practice, you went back - how far did you go? And when?"
"I went back a couple of times, when there was no Thread forecast for a few days. You have to leave yourself time to recover, from that sort of timing."
"Yes, we learned about that," F'lar said ruefully.
"The first time, I went back twenty five years, to the co-ordinates we had from the Lady Lessa's jump, and went to Southern. I saw your place, Lord D'ram, but our times didn't co-incide. I built a boat in Southern, and sailed out to the Islands, and found the cousins I had on those Islands."
"So you knew about the Islanders, and you never spoke of them?" F'lar asked.
Rayden shook his head.
"I took an oath to them, Weyrleader, and I don't intend to break it. St'ven's mother came from the Islands, though, and I've kept my connections with them ever since."
"You went back in time to Southern, though, and made a place for yourself?"
"Yes. The place where my family live now, with the things I found there. Ten years back from the beginning of the Pass, and with no Thread, I could afford to make it secure and safe for later. I didn't know how much later, but as a dragon rider you never know the future when Thread's falling. It was sooner, that's all."
"Goranth died in an unusual Thread fall," D'ram said sorrowfully. "I remember we lost a half dozen dragons and riders in that one awful day. So then you left - you could have petitioned for land on Ista, you know."
Rayden studied him, and then shrugged. "I could have, but why? I knew my place waited me, I knew people on the Islands. I was a loner always, you know that, and I couldn't wait to get away from - from dragons."
"People - criminals - are exiled to the Islands - " F'lar said.
Rayden looked around at all of them.
"What happened to all those people exiled over the last twenty five hundred years on the Eastern Islands? Do their heirs and successors deserve to be exiled - are the sins of the fathers to be visited on the generations following?"