Chap. 339 Mosaic Mistake
The boy picked himself up after falling off his dragon.The young bronze hung his head, drained.
B’rant, K’ndar and Francie landed and approached the lad. Their fire lizards swirled overhead, then landed on their respective dragons.
Francie reached him first. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“What?”
“I said, are you okay?”
The boy responded with a string of what sounded like gibberish.
Francie processed the words, wondering where in the world the kid was from. I’ve never heard this accent before, she thought.
The boy’s bronze dragon crumpled, closing his eyes. The boy fell to his knees, crying out in panic. The dragon was immediately asleep.
He is unhurt. Just tired. We got them down just in time Banarth said.
B’rant said to the boy, “He’ll be okay, he’s just tired. Who are you?”
The boy looked up at him, uncomprehending.
Inspiration struck K’ndar. He pulled out his datalink and called Jansen.
“Jansen! Hello! I’ve got a problem here. There’s a Weyrling here who we can’t understand, he’s got the strangest accent.”
“Where is he from?”
“I’ve not a clue. We saw him blinking in and out of between and when he saw me he called for help. Now he’s down and his dragon has fallen asleep, he’s worn out. The kid looks it, too.”
“Hmmm!! Let me ping the database. While I’m doing that, are you on your way back here?”
“I am. I can see Landing, we’re about three klicks out. I have Francie here, and B’rant, Weyrlingmaster at Kahrain. I’ve been released by Cove Hold, but before I come in, we need to help this kid.”
“Got it. I’m sending a translator to your datalink. Just click on it , make a statement as an abstract so I can file it in the database, then record his speech. The database will figure it out.”
“Thank you.” The icon for translate popped up on the ‘record’ screen. I’ve finally learned how to use this thing. I think.
He clicked on “introduction” and said into it, “K’ndar here, staff biologist of Landing. B’rant, Weyrlingmaster of Kahrain Weyr, and Francie, staff member of Landing, are here upon my calling for assistance. We’ve found a Weyrling of about sixteen, he’s landed. I witnessed him going in and out of between on his bronze dragon. We are now trying to ascertain who and where he’s from.” The datalink digested it, then blinked, awaiting.
Point at subject and speak
He pointed it at the boy and said, “Who are you and where are you from?”
The boy gasped and recoiled, seeking reassurance from his dragon. The little bronze continued his slumber.
“Just talk, lad!” B’rant said, using the hand signal for ‘speak louder’. It was used by dragonriders for communicating when the fight against Thread got noisy.
The boy unleashed a torrent of words.
They all sound strange, K’ndar thought, but he could hear bits that sounded ‘normal’.
Captured. Adjusting. his datalink said. Then, Ready.
“It sounds Northern to me,” Francie said, pulling out her datalink and tapping into Jansen’s. “But not anything I’ve ever heard before.”
“Francie, can you aim your datalink at the boy? ” Jansen said, “K’ndar’s is involved in translation,” as she linked to Francie. “I’ve informed the Council of this unusual situation. The only member here at the moment is Lord Cecilia, I thought she might want to witness this, as she is a Master Harper. I want to record the video. I think your new datalink can do that.”
“It will. And can do!”
The box talks, the boy thought. His blood ran cold.
“Okay,” K’ndar said, “Now then. Who are you? Where are you from?” His datalink relayed his words in the boy’s accent. The lad’s eyes lit up.
“I’m A’dant, rider of bronze Hanath. I’m from Fort Weyr. Why is it daytime here, I left Fort Weyr at night time? Who are you?”
“I’m beginning to understand him even without a datalink,” B’rant said. I have one of those things, but I don’t like it. I’d rather use my wits, he thought.
“I’m K’ndar, rider of brown Raventh. This is Francie, rider of green Motanith, and B’rant, rider of bronze Banarth, is Weyrlingmaster of Kahrain Weyr. You are about three kilometers from Landing.”
“Kahrain Weyr? Landing? Landing on the Southern Continent?”
“Yes,” K’ndar said, wanting to add, ‘there’s another’? “Obviously, yes, because that’s Mt. Garben to our northeast.”
“You left Fort Weyr at night?” Francie asked.
“Yes. Why are you riding a green dragon?” A’dant said to her datalink.
“Why? What a strange question. Why do you ask?” she said.
“Women don’t ride green dragons. Only golds.”
Francie bristled. “You’re rude, youngster. Women definitely ride green and gold dragons here. They do all over Pern. If you’re truly from Fort Weyr, you would know this.”
The boy shrugged. “I’m from Fort Weyr. I was born there.”
Francie was usually very patient with kids, K’ndar knew, but the best way to piss off any female green dragonrider was to question why she was doing so. It was usually cranky, tradition bound old men who did the questioning.
B’rant touched Francie’s arm. “There’s something not right here, Francie, looks to me like he’s about to drop.”
“Maybe so, but it doesn’t mean he can be rude.”
“May I?” he asked K’ndar for his datalink. K’ndar gave it to him. B’rant returned his gaze to the boy. “A’dant, what happened? You left Fort Weyr at night, why? How many times have you flown?”
The boy, shamefaced, dropped his head. “Three times. This morning, in our dragon bowl.”
“Three times? And now you’re out skyhooting around?” B’rant said, shocked.
“I wanted to see the burning mountain, like it shows in the mosaic. Like it says in the Harper’s Teaching Song.”
In her quarters, Lord Cecilia’s ears pricked up. An unknown Teaching Song! I thought I knew them all, she thought, I’ve never heard of this one.
She ran for her horse.
“What burning mountain? You mean the volcano?”
“Is that what it’s called? Yes. The burning mountain that killed the people at Landing. That one,” he pointed at Mt. Garben, “but it’s not burning now.”
“Of course it’s not.”
“But it was, I saw it.”
“You saw Mt. Garben erupting?”
“I don’t know ‘erupting’.”
“It’s when the mountain burns, like you said.”
“There’s a teaching song about the volcano?” Francie asked.
“Yes, of course!” the boy said, confusion darkening his eyes.. They’re asking me too many questions, he thought.
“Let me get this straight. You saw Mt. Garben ‘burning”?
“I did. I’ve been studying the mosaic in the Great Hall. It shows a mountain burning! So I asked our Harper and he taught me the burning mountain song. He said it was so old most people had forgotten it. So I got on Hanath, it was almost dark and I’d finished my tasks. I thought if we get high enough I could see it at night.”
“You won’t see it anywhere from Northern, A’dant!” Francie said.
“Who is your Weyrlingmaster? Didn’t he tell you not to do something so stupid?” B’rant snapped.
The boy looked ashamed. “Weyrlingmaster T’onas, sir. Rider of bronze Darmuth. Yes, he did. I knew I wasn’t supposed to do it. But I wanted to see! I see the older riders launch all the time, so I just climbed up, I kept seeing the mountain in my brain.”
“So you launched without a harness. Without permission, without a mentor, without training, breaking curfew, and at night.” B’rant’s voice was ice cold.
“Yes, sir.” I am so tired, all I want to do is sleep, he thought.
B’rant shook his head. “If you were my Weyrling, you’d be on extra duty for the rest of your life. IF you had survived. You could have died.”
“I know, sir. I think I tried.”
B’rant squatted to meet the boy eye to eye. He will probably pass out here soon, he thought, we need to learn what he’s done before he falls asleep.
“Tell us exactly what happened,” he said. He noticed the boy’s clothes had tiny holes throughout. There was an odd acrid smell to him. Both he and his sleeping dragon were covered with a fine ash.
“I was only going to go high! But then it got all dark and cold. I couldn’t see nothing. I thought ‘this must be between’. But it took longer than three breaths. Then we came out and I don’t know what time it was because the sky was all cloudy and black. The clouds went up to the stars! There was lightning in them! I couldn’t see the sun. The mountain was burning! It was shooting flames high up in the air, and there were black clouds everywhere, cinders were falling on me, it looked like Thread but it weren’t. There were rocks being thrown into the sky. And the smell, it was everywhere. It burnt my throat, almost. It was roaring, it was so loud it hurt my ears.”
K’ndar noticed a horseman galloping their way.
“Hanath said the cinders were burning him and I could feel them on my face. So I said let’s go right back, no one will ever know I saw the mountain burning. So I thought of the dragonstones, and,” he gulped, stifling a sob. He took several ragged breaths.
“So I thought of them, and we came out over the bowl and it was day time, but not the right time. Everyone was gone. Gone!! The dragonbowl was all overgrown, even trees in the middle! There’s wasn’t anybody there at the Weyr! Hanath said he couldn’t hear dragons, not anywhere.”
He looked at them with haunted eyes, the terror still shaking his mind. If anything was scarier than the volcano, it had been the abandoned Weyr, the only place he’d ever known.
“So I thought, I must be somewhere else, it looks like Fort Weyr but it’s not. It’s all overgrown, we never let it get that way, ‘cuz of Thread. So I thought, I’ll come back to the mountain and try to remember how I got there.
And, and, I came out of between, it was long between again, and now the mountain isn’t burning. And it’s daytime again. Then, he,” he pointed at K’ndar, “yelled at me from overhead. I couldn’t understand you until you got that little box. Your dragons are huge, and, now I am lost and I am so tired.”
The three adults looked at each other, realization dawning.
“He timed it,” K’ndar said.
“Aye,” Francie said.”Several times. No wonder he’s tired.”
“In all my years of being Weyrlingmaster, I’ve warned my weyrlings of doing just this thing-and now it’s happened,” B’rant said, the enormity of the kid’s predicament almost mind numbing.
“At least not at Kahrain,” K’ndar added.
“Aye,” he said. I’ve never been to Fort Weyr, I don’t know anyone there, he thought. We need to learn if they’re missing a bronze riding Weyrling. I seriously doubt it. It sounds like he left his Weyr early in history, maybe saw Fort Weyr after Lessa brought the Oldtimers forward, and now, he’s here. What to do with him?
Jansen’s voice came over their datalinks.
“I checked the dragonrider lists from Fort Weyr. Then I checked the dragonrider list of all riders on Pern.”
“And?”
“There’s no one named T’onas at Fort Weyr. Nor is there a dragon named Darmuth. No dragonrider or dragon on Pern is named that.”
Their datalinks translated it into A’dant’s dialect. He moaned.
Francie shook her head in dismay. “A’dant, what is the year?”
“Year? What is a year?”
“I mean, what is the Turn? At Fort Weyr, what is the Turn?”
“Um, it’s five hundred and fifteen, because Last Turnover, Fort Weyr had a big Gather celebrating its five hundredth Turn. Isn’t it five hundred and fifteen here? When is it here?” he said, fearful. No. Something is very wrong here.
The concept sent chills up all three adult spines.
“Third Pass,” Francie breathed, stunned, “Whoa.”
The horseman pulled up. As one, they turned and nodded in respect to Lord Cecilia. She dismounted and hurried to join them.
A’dant looked at her. Judging by her carriage, he took her for a Weyrwoman, despite her being horseback.
“When is it here?” A’dant repeated.
Do we tell him he’s over two thousand years in the future? We don’t even count the years like he does anymore, not after Aivas recalculated it.
Lord Cecilia looked down at the boy.
“A’dant,” she said, and K’ndar was amazed to hear her speak in the boy’s accent, “I am Masterharper Cecilia, Lord Councilwoman at Landing.”
Did they have a Council in the Third Pass? K’ndar wondered. And she speaks in his accent. Astounding! The Harpers are amazing.
“You don’t sound like them,” the boy said.
“On your feet, boy, and show some respect!” B’rant snapped, unable to stand the boy’s diffidence, intentional or not.
The boy scrambled to his feet and bowed deeply. “I beg your pardon, ma’am.”
Lord Cecilia glanced at B’rant with a look that said, ‘It’s okay. This time.’
K’ndar felt relief at her presence. This is getting a bit too strange for me, he thought.
“You said that you had learned of the burning mountain through a Harper’s Teaching Song,” she said.
How did she know? the boy wondered, unable to comprehend datalink communication. Still, he instinctively knew that, despite her not being a gold rider, this woman had the leverage to banish him to the firestone mines in a heartbeat.
“Yes’ ma’am,” he said, quivering, from fatigue as well as fear.
He won’t last long, B’rant thought, he’s about to fall over.
“Will you sing it for me? I’ve never heard of the burning mountain song.”
“Um, I’ve, um, yes. I will sing it.”
He cleared his throat and, shutting his eyes, began to sing.
“The colonists lived on Southern for nine sunny Turns, they say,
grateful their long star voyage was done for the rest of days.
When one warm summer morning, the world began to shake,
’twas the beginning of a time of unending earthen quakes.
Then the mountain Garben woke with a great and deaf’ning roar,
and from it’s side and top burning gas and fire did pour.
The mountain is afire! with stinging, stinking fumes,
with torrents of mud and ash was Landing soon subsumed.
So many died, their livestock fried, the people cried in fear,
the ones who could fled north where the skies were clean and clear.
The mountain still burns, for how long, we’ll never know,
It’s why we left warm Southern’s land for Northern’s winter snow.”
He’s got a good voice, Lord Cecilia thought. What a source of information! The song, it’s so old, yet it’s new, to me. It’s been lost from history for thousands of years. What else can he relate? We know virtually nothing of the Third Pass.
Song now recorded in database the datalinks reported.
“That’s just how it looked, only worse, worse than anything. Please tell me when it is here. You all talk strange, the mountain isn’t burning, it’s green and warm here. When am I?”
They looked at Lord Cecilia, all three grateful to allow her to handle the lad.
“A’dant, now you have learned why you were told to only fly when under supervision. It’s two Turns after Ninth Pass,” she said. “You’ve jumped well over two thousand Turns into your future.”
The boy’s eyes widened in shock. Then he collapsed.
His eyes closed. For a moment, K’ndar wondered if he’d died. “He’s not dead, is he?”
“Doubtful. He’s fairly well fed. It’s probably the time jumps catching up on him,” Francie said. She knelt and felt for his pulse. “Or it could be plain ol’ mental shock, like fainting.”
“Probably a bit of both,” Lord Cecilia said.
“He’s asleep, that’s all. I’ve seen it happen when riders have timed it,” B’rant said.
“My lord, how is it you immediately understood his accent, when we all had to rely on datalinks?” K’ndar asked the Master Harper.
The woman smiled. How to explain a lifetime of training?
“K’ndar, Harpers are born with the ability to create music, just like dragonriders are born with the ability to communicate telepathically with a dragon. When I heard the boy speak, I didn’t hear just his words, I heard how he said them. Some of his words were higher pitched, some lower, some dragged out, some clipped. I heard the rhythm he used when he said the words, even the emotions behind them. That’s what music really is-a combination of tones, pitch, even breaths. Speech is music but in a much abbreviated form. In fact, I am convinced that when we as a species developed the abililty to speak, at first, we sang. And even to this day, mothers sing to their newborn babies.”
“And our pets,” Francie said, grinning.
_____________________________________________________________
The three landed in the dragon meadow. Jansen was waiting for them.
“Where is Lord Cecilia?”
Francie indicated the horse trotting towards Landing with her thumb. “She’s on her way here, to gather her Harper tools and her datalink. She plans to go back and gain as much information as she can from boy. He’s asleep.”
“He dropped like a stone after singing, he was out the minute he hit the ground. No wonder, time jumps, especially of those lengths, take a lot out of you. He’ll be okay, he’s right next to his dragon,” B’rant said.
“Third Pass,” Jansen breathed, “we know so little about Third Pass. By then the only writing was done on hides, and we all know they don’t last long, no matter how well kept they are.” She turned to B’rant.
“What happens to him now? Is he marooned here forever? What do we do with him? B’rant, can he stay at your Weyr?”
B’rant shook his head. “Ordinarily, if he were from our time, I’d take him back to Fort Weyr and have his Weyrlingmaster deal with him. But with this lad, I’m not willing to go anywhere if it involves time travel. I’ve never done it and I won’t, especially when I have no reference points. Never mind that Benden Weyr has forbidden time traveling. Add to that I don’t have Weyrlings in his early stage of training. I can’t spend time on one weyrling when I have an entire class that is months ahead of him.”
“So he’s stuck here? Forever? Landing isn’t set up for a Weyrling.”
“Oh, no. I’m going to send one of my best mentors, C’val, to coach him in timing jumps. It’s a matter of finding what point in time did he leave. For instance, he said he’d just finished his tasks. C’val will tell him to remember what he did after finishing his tasks, tell him to imagine himself turning to go back to his barracks rather than head for the dragon meadow. Hopefully he’ll go back to his time, probably just in time for breakfast. And C’val will insist the boy immediately report to his Weyrlingmaster what he’s done, before his dragon reports it. It does NOT go well with you when your Weyrlingmaster learns of your crime via dragon gossip,” B’rant said, laughing.
K’ndar laughed, too. “I imagine he’s going to be on extra duty for the rest of his training.”
“That is, if he survives one more jump in time,” Jansen said.
“I think he’s gotten the lesson of a lifetime, Jansen. He got rattled, especially when he came out of between to see an abandoned Fort Weyr. That must have completely blown the last shred of sense he had.”
“You said ‘hopefully’. I never realized how risky it is to time travel. We’ll never know if he makes it back to his own time,” she said, soberly.
“That’s true. It’s on him to listen to C’val. There’s only so much we can do to send him back. If he survives, if he does get back to his own time, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about seeing him return. C’val will forbid him from ever returning here. He’s seen the mountain burning. He needs to stay in his own time for the rest of his life.”
B’rant looked up at the sun. “As for me, it’s time I got back to the Weyr. I was working on tomorrow’s classes for my Weyrlings. Now I have the perfect topic. The sooner I terrify my Weyrlings with the perils of timing it, the longer it will last in their heads.”
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