Dragonflight

F’lar and Lessa share the plan with F’nor, not revealing his later self’s strange visit. After a moment of humor—F’nor is nervous to go to the Reaches with Kylara, who has made romantic passes at him in the past—Lessa and F’nor take off.

F’lar has a Council meeting with the Hold Lords, who are nervous about the coming of the Threads. F’lar eases their concerns with the hard evidence from his research: he can predict the times, durations, and locations of upcoming attacks and station dragons there to combat them (he hides the dragons’ ability to time travel for now). Thread attacks last exactly six hours. The intervals between attacks will steadily grow shorter over the next few years until the Red Star swings closest to Pern. Then, for 40 years, Thread attacks will occur every 14 hours. The troublemaker Lord Meron still doubts, but Lord Larad, formerly a fellow rebel, reminds Meron that the Teaching Ballads support all this information.

A new character named Robinton is present at the table. He is a Masterharper and expert on the Teaching Ballads: “His craft, like that of the dragonmen, had been much mocked, and this new respect amused him” (224). Robinton scathingly chastises the Lords first for their inaction and then for daring to take their fear and anger out on the dragonmen and the harpers, who have warned them of this danger for centuries. F’lar builds on his momentum to suggest that the Holds police their own territories and destroy any Thread burrows they find. The Mastersmith Fandarel adds that he is reinventing the burrow-destroying technology the ancient sketches depict but has not cracked the code yet. A Masterweaver, Zurg, mentions a tapestry in Ruatha that seems to depict flamethrowers; Fanadarel wants to examine it. The Lords disperse to prepare their Holds for war. After the meeting, the time-travelling version of F’nor meets with F’lar again to report some success. Kylara’s dragon Pridith is laying eggs, including 14 bronzes, but no new queen.

In private with F’lar, Robinton shares his knowledge of a secret ballad so unsettling that he has forbidden its performance. Its discordant melody has eerie lyrics: they describe how after the last war against the Threads 400 years ago, the inhabitants of five of the six Weyrs (that is, every Weyr but Benden) disappeared into thin air. There are no records of catastrophe that would explain this—just mournful lyrics that describe them as “Gone away, gone ahead” (231-34). This explains why the five Weyrs are abandoned now. Robinton’s intelligence and helpfulness convince F’lar to divulge the secret ability of dragons to time travel, as well as the plan in the Southern Reaches. Both men agree to give these mysteries further consideration. 

Lessa and the present-day F’nor go on their exploratory expedition of the Southern Reaches (though Lessa secretly already knows the journey will be a success). While the Reaches lack a proper place to establish a Weyr—that is, a high craggy mountain with caves for the dragons—it is otherwise suitable for a colony. At home, F’lar then catches F’nor up to speed: F’nor and Kylara will spend 10 years in the past, but only three days will pass in the present before they arrive with fully matured dragons.

As before when she time travelled, Lessa grows woozy and weak. F’lar and F’nor conclude that time-jumping places severe mental stress on the human traveler, though the dragons seem unaffected. As Lessa rests, F’lar reflects on the deep affection he has for her: “She looked fragile, child-like, and very precious to him […] Never would Lessa learn from him that Kylara, for all her bold beauty and sensuous nature, did not have one tenth the attraction for him that the unpredictable, dark, and delicate Lessa had” (246).

F’lar and the Mastersmith from the Council meeting, Fandarel, travel to Lord Vincet’s Hold of Nerat. Despite the dragonriders’ best efforts in the previous battle, some Threads got through the blockade and have burrowed there. Fandarel demonstrates his primitive contraption: a type of gardening water gun that sprays agenothree, which is a pesticide against Threads. The method is effective but takes too much time. Fandarel considers crop-dusting with agenothree. Lord Vincet is frightened that it will kill his Hold’s orchards, but Fandarel shuts him down: the sacrifice is necessary. Fandarel is still interested in looking at the Ruathan tapestry that might teach him how to build a flamethrower.

Robinton updates F’lar with an important development. He has discovered that 400 years ago, a Masterharper visited Fort Weyr just before the dragonriders’ disappearance. Usually detailed records are kept of such visits, yet this one has no explanation. The men posit that the harper was called to construct a Teaching Ballad to cover the five Weyrs’ disappearance.

It is Lessa who finally solves the riddle. The dragonriders had quite literally “gone ahead”—into the future—but had covered their tracks carefully so as not to affect the progress of history. Lessa realizes she must go back in time to fetch the riders, which F’lar instantly tries to shut down. If time travel of 10 years had made Lessa so ill, who knows what a journey of 400 years would do to her? Lessa argues that it’s worth it, but F’lar responds that not even Pern is worth losing Lessa and Ramoth.

Lytol arrives from Ruatha Hold bearing the flamethrower tapestry, a masterwork of art. Lessa stares closely at its depiction of Ruatha Hold. Fandarel begins his work on the flamethrower.