“Poor hungry critters,” Jancis said in mock sympathy. “All this for centuries and not one thing edible!”
“Or long since consumed.” Piemur noticed that their glowbaskets were getting dim. “How long have we been down here?”
“Long enough for me to get hungry,” she replied, her dimple showing.
They had already started on their way back to the entrance when they heard their names echoing down the corridors. When they got back to the entrance, they found Master Esselin halfway down one ladder in an urgent discussion with F’lar, who was a few rungs up another, peering more at the sky than at the man he was talking to.
“Ah, Piemur, there’s a squall bearing down on us,” Master Robinton said. His eyes twinkled as he acknowledged Jancis’s presence. “Esselin is certain we’ll all drown along with our treasures.”
“Well, we won’t,” Lessa said, chuckling. “Dragons have many unlikely uses.”
A little baffled, Jancis looked sideways at Piemur.
“Ramoth and Mnementh both?” the journeyman asked the Weyrwoman, craning his neck to look up the fissure. He could not see any stormclouds from that limited range.
“Their combined wings will overlap quite nicely,” Lessa said. “It’s Esselin who thinks it’s beneath Benden’s dignity. Just as well he wasn’t there to see Ramoth and Mnementh digging out the mounds that day. Esselin, do send us down something to eat while we wait out the squall,” she added, raising her voice as the Masterminer disappeared up the ladder.
The light dimmed abruptly as two great dragon pinions spread over the hole. P’lar, Lessa, and Robinton looked smugly satisfied.
“I’ve never appreciated dragon wings quite so much before,” Jancis remarked softly to Piemur. “No, I mean it. Look at the delicate veining. So fine a membrane and yet so incredibly strong. A rather magnificent design, you know.”
Lessa took the few steps across the aisle that separated them and smiled at Jancis. “According to Master Robinton, some of the very old Records suggest that the dragons were indeed designed,” she remarked, settling herself on the crate beside the younger woman.
“Not cousins to the fire-lizards?” Jancis asked.
“Oh, they admit that,” Lessa said with a shrug. “Though how they know,” she added, her expression fondly doting, “is beyond me.”
“About something to eat, Lessa,” Piemur said. “I think we’d better not wait on Master Esselin’s assistance. If Ramoth and Mnementh can shelter us, then Farli and Zair can feed us.” He gave Lessa a sideways grin that bordered on a challenge. He held up his hand, and Farli abruptly appeared, squeaking with surprise at finding herself so close to the Weyrwoman and nearly dropping the basket she carried in her talons. “If you’ll pardon the impudence, Weyrwoman.” He rose, relieved Farli of her burden, and with a gesture sent her off again. “Well, it’s something to start with at any rate,” he said after he had examined the contents. “She’s coming back with more.”
“You are irrepressible!” Lessa exclaimed, but her laugh was gay, and she was quite willing to share the sandwiches that the fire-lizard had brought.
With Zair supplying the Harper and F’lar, the group stranded in the cavern was able to make quite a satisfactory meal while rain pelted in a torrential downpour on shielding dragon wings.
“Well, and what did you discover on your search, Jancis, Piemur?” Robinton asked.
“Famine or feast, Master Robinton,” Piemur replied. He held out the file, flipping the pages until he came to the one with the map. “This seems to indicate which buildings were used for what.”
Master Robinton took the file, bending closer to the nearest glowbasket to read it. “This is marvelous, Piemur. Marvelous! Just look, Lessa. Each square is named! And HOS-PI-TAL—that was an old name for a Healer’s Hall. ADMIN?—administration, no doubt. Ah, and that one hasn’t been excavated yet. Marvelous. What else, Piemur?” The Master’s expression was eager.
“Not until you tell me what you found!” Piemur replied.
“Gloves!” F’lar said, holding up three wrapped pairs. “Different weights for different jobs, evidently. I think they’d be cold to fly in, but we’ll let the experts decide.”
“We could clothe the weyrfolk in what I found,” Lessa added.
“She even found boots her size,” F’lar said, grinning at his diminutive weyrmate.
“I can’t imagine why they left such necessities as clothing behind,” Lessa commented.
“And I,” Master Robinton said, still clutching the file, “found pots and pans of immense size; and more spoons, forks, and knives than you’d need at a Gather. I also found immense wheels, small wheels, medium wheels, and crates and crates of tools. Master Fandarel has already absconded with a selection of their implements. Some were well smeared with a protective oil or grease. He’s fearful that sudden exposure to the air might cause them to become friable and dissolve, or something.” He winked at Jancis.
The rain was still pounding down.
“If we could locate the original entry,” F’lar remarked, glancing up at the shielding dragon wings, “it would be wise to cover that hole over completely. Fine thing it would be to have all this mystifying and unusual stuff survive earthshake, eruption, and the centuries only to ignominiously drown.”
“That certainly can’t be allowed to happen,” Master Robinton agreed.
“It wouldn’t be efficient,” Jancis murmured in Piemur’s ear.
“And you’re incorrigible,” Lessa said, her keen hearing having picked up the soft remark. “Your grandfather has probably already solved that minor problem. He’s eager to use some of the building materials Master Esselin discovered. You weren’t here when they hauled some of the slabs up to the surface. I think every Mastersmith on Pern will be congregating here. And, by any chance, do you have some spare sheets I might use, Jancis?” she went on, briskly rubbing crumbs from her fingers and jerkin. The girl nodded. “Excellent, because I feel that a strict list should be made of things removed from here—though what we found were certainly not one of a kind. The quantities of things all of a kind are amazing.”
“Amazing what they left behind here,” F’lar said wonderingly. “They must have intended to return…” A thoughtful silence followed his remark.
“They have,” the Master Robinton said gently. “They have returned in us, their descendants.”
15: Southern Continent, PP 17
DUE TO JANCIS’S excellent measurements, the original entrance to the cavern was found the next day, dug out, and shored up, and the fissure closed using—at Master Fandarel’s insistence—one of the sheets of the ancients’ translucent material.
“It’s efficient,” Jancis told Piemur, her eyes dancing with merriment, “because it provides a certain amount of light. It’s strange, really,” she added, tilting her head in a manner that Piemur found exceedingly endearing, “to think that here”—she gestured toward the unearthed mounds—“they seemed to encourage light in their dwellings, and then they go carve out cliffs to live in and hide away from it.”
“Baffling, indeed. It seems such a drastic change to make,” Piemur said. “Is it possible that they didn’t know about Thread when they first landed?” He had not even mentioned that idea yet to Master Robinton.
“And Thread sent them scurrying north to caves?”
“Well, there are more caves in the North. Mind you,” he said, qualifying that statement, “there’s a good-sized complex at Southern Hold, and this rambling one here, and I’ve only been along the coast, so there could be hundreds inland…”