He shook his head. One man could only Hold so much. Fax’s depredations in the north had proven that. He had not made Fax’s greatest mistake, controlling by fear. Greed, he knew, served as well for holdless men and women. But such speculations were useless at the moment, so he concentrated on the truly awe-inspiring panorama that spread below him as Tiroth circled slowly over an incredible sweep of meadow, broader and deeper than any expanse Toric had seen before.
The mountain dominated the scene. Its eastern lip had blown out, and the three smaller volcanoes crouching on its southeastern flank had also erupted at some time. Lava had flowed down, south toward the rolling plains. Was that what his fire-lizards had been screaming about recently? Toric was rarely aware of his dreams, but lately he had recalled vivid ones, totally incomprehensible. A man should not be plagued by fire-lizards in his sleep—yet there he was circling over the very site that matched their mental images.
He had no doubt that the plain at the foot of the volcanoes had once been inhabited. The morning sun threw outlines in bold relief. Such outlines could not have been the result of natural forces. The mounds, with straight lines setting them apart from one another, were formed in squares and rectangles. There was row upon row, square upon square of mounds, some large, some small; those nearest the lava flow had collapsed, proving that not even the ancients had been impervious to the planet’s restless internal forces. Rather stupid, Toric thought, to have built out in the open, totally vulnerable to Thread and volcanic eruptions.
D’ram looked back at him with an unspoken query, and reluctantly Toric nodded. He was honed with eagerness to see what Benden proposed to do about the discovery. And to see who else had gathered to view this wonder. Toric was not often impressed, but today he was awed.
Tiroth deposited them on the plain, not far from the distinctive figure of Mastersmith Fandarel, towering above the diminutive Benden Weyrwoman. Toric strode toward them, nodding to Masterminer Nicat, Mastersmith Fandarel, F’nor, and N’ton.
As he greeted F’lar and Lessa, he glanced sharply over at the small knot of younger folk standing beyond, noticing that Menolly and Piemur acknowledged his presence. He decided the tall young man standing by Sharra must be Jaxom, Ruathan Lord Holder, still a boy, much too young and insignificant for his sister. He would put a stop to that immediately—as soon as he was through dealing with Benden’s encroachment on his continent. He returned his attention to F’lar.
“Actually, Toric,” F’lar was saying, “it was young Jaxom who made this discovery, along with Menolly, Piemur, and your sister, Sharra.”
“And quite a discovery, it is, too!” Toric replied, seething inside. Smoothly he steered the discussion to the question of the ruins themselves. Soon he found himself caught up in the excitement as, shovel and picks in hand, he joined the others in attacking the mounds.
With its thick grass cover and dry, grayish soil the ground was not easy to break, but Toric, working alongside Mastersmith Fandarel, soon made good headway. The Southern holder was in excellent condition, but quickly found that he had to extend himself to keep up with the indefatigable and powerful Craftmaster. Toric had heard about the man’s energy: now he believed it. He used the infrequent rests he permitted himself to observe the impudent young scut who had kept Sharra away so long. Weyrless lordling boy, he thought. A few scowls would send him scurrying.
The next time he took a breather, he saw that Jaxom’s runt of a white dragon and some of the fire-lizards had joined in the digging. Dirt was being shifted at an amazing rate. He called his own fire-lizards to him just as Ramoth, Benden’s proud queen, began to assist at the small mound that Lessa had chosen to excavate. Toric redoubled his efforts beside Fandarel.
Lessa and F’lar, each working at separate mounds, were the first to reap any results of their hard work, and everyone rushed to see. Toric followed the crowd, but he was confident that all the digging would prove to be wasted effort. All previous evidence suggested that the ancients would have stripped everything before they left their settlement behind. He took only one look into each dragondug trench. What he saw was the same rocklike substance that had been used in the mine building he had found, except that in F’lar’s an amber panel was set in the curve of the mound. Uninterested, he stood to one side while the others argued about what to do next. Finally the Mastersmith took charge: they would unite their efforts and concentrate on Lessa’s mound.
Toric was disgusted that people he had admired should be so caught up by vain hopes. But he found that he, too, could not turn his back on the project, even supposing he was able to talk D’ram into leaving. There was always the chance, despite all his previous disappointments, that there was something left behind, and he could not miss that. It would show him what to look for in the other mounds Sharra and Hamian had discovered, the ones whose existence had not been reported to the world at large.
Late in the day a door was discovered, and amid much excitement, the mound was entered. And, as luck—good or bad, Toric wondered—would have it, Toric was the one who found the strange spoon, made of a smooth, clear, and incredibly strong nonmetal substance. Lessa was thrilled, and as they all enthusiastically trooped out to excavate another mound, Toric wished he had not encouraged them. Night had fallen before they quit for the day and he could make his escape. When Lessa invited him to join them overnight at Cove Hold, he summoned up as much politeness as he could manage and declined, calling for D’ram to give him a ride home.
That night Piemur composed a message for Jayge and Ara. With all the new wonders of the excavation to fully occupy the Halls and Weyrs, he was more sanguine about the couple’s safety. If they had found the only remaining settlement of the ancients, he would have felt compelled to mention it, out of Hall loyalty, to Master Robinton. But there was plenty of time for that—he could wait until the excitement about Two-Faced Mountain died down. In his message, Piemur told Jayge briefly that a huge settlement of great antiquity had been found and that he would try to visit them again soon. He sent Farli with the note.
In the morning she swooped to his shoulder, a brief message on the reverse side of his. “We are well. Thank you.” He just had time to thrust it into his pocket when Menolly appeared, wanting to know if he had seen either Jaxom or Sharra. Before he could frame an answer, Jaxom and Ruth, accompanied by a multitude of fire-lizards, burst into the air above the cove. The noise roused Master Robinton, who roared for silence.
“I have found the ancients’ flying machines,” Jaxom insisted, his eyes wide with wonder and excitement. “The fire-lizards have been driving me and Ruth crazy with memories of the scene. As if they could have a memory that old! I had to see, to believe,” he explained earnestly. “So Ruth and I dug down to the door into one of them. There are three, did I mention that? Well, there are. They look like this—” He grabbed a stick and, in the sand, sketched an irregular cylindrical design that had stubby wings and a straight-up section over the tail. He drew smaller rings at one end and outlined a long oval door. “That’s what Ruth and I found!”
At every sentence, there were choruses of approval from the fire-lizards outside and inside Cove Hold until Master Robinton once again begged for silence. By that time, both Menolly and Piemur had been bombarded with confirming images from their own fire-lizards, vivid scenes of men and women coming down a ramp, interwoven with views of the cylinders gliding in to land and taking off again. Everyone was thrilled at the idea of seeing the actual ships that had very likely brought their ancestors from the Dawn Sisters to Pern. Jaxom’s only disappointment was that Sharra was not there to share in his glory; she had, he learned, been called back to Southern Hold to deal with some illness there.