“Oh, that one,” Martha laughed with amused dismay. “She’ll eat us out of the weyr, and even my Loranth has had to call the other queens to restrain her.”

“She perches on the Star Stones as if she owned them and keens constantly,” T’ton added, less charitably. He cocked an ear. “Ha. She’s stopped.”

“You can come, can’t you?” Lessa blurted out.

“Come? Come where, my dear?” Mardra asked, confused. “You’ve been going on and on about our ‘coming,’ and Threads approaching, and the Red Star bracketed in the Eye Rock, and . . . my dear, don’t you realize the Red Star has been past Pern these two months?”

“No, no, they’ve started. That’s why I came back between times . . .”

“Back? Between times?” T’ton exclaimed, striding over to the bed, eyeing Lessa intently.

“Could I have some klah? I know I’m not making much sense, and I’m not really awake yet. But I’m not mad or still sick, and this is rather complicated.”

“Yes, it is,” T’ton remarked with deceptive mildness. But he did call down the service shaft for klah. And he did drag a chair over to her bedside, settling himself to listen to her.

“Of course you’re not mad,” Mardra soothed her, glaring at her weyrmate. “Or she wouldn’t ride a queen.”

T’ton had to agree to that. Lessa waited for the klah to come; when it did, she sipped gratefully at its stimulating warmth.

Then she took a deep breath and began, telling them of the Long Interval between the dangerous passes of the Red Star: how the sole Weyr had fallen into disfavor and contempt, how Jora had deteriorated and lost control over her queen, Nemorth, so that, as the Red Star neared, there was no sudden increase in the size of clutches. How she had Impressed Ramoth to become Benden’s Weyrwoman. How F’lar had outwitted the dissenting Hold Lords the day after Ramoth’s first mating flight and taken firm command of Weyr and Pern, preparing for the Threads he knew were coming. She told her by now rapt audience of her own first attempts to fly Ramoth and how she had inadvertently gone back between time to the day Fax had invaded Ruath Hold.

“Invade . . . my family’s Hold?” Mardra cried, aghast.

“Ruatha has given the Weyrs many famous Weyrwomen,” Lessa said with a sly smile at which T’ton burst out laughing.

“She’s Ruathan, no question,” he assured Mardra.

She told them of the situation in which Dragonmen now found themselves, with an insufficient force to meet the Thread attacks. Of the Question Song and the great tapestry.

“A tapestry?” Mardra cried, her hand going to her cheek in alarm. “Describe it to me!”

And when Lessa did, she saw—at last—belief in both their faces.

“My father has just commissioned a tapestry with such a scene. He told me of it the other day because the last battle with the Threads was held over Ruatha.” Incredulous, Mardra turned to T’ton, who no longer looked amused. “She must have done what she has said she’d done. How could she possibly know about the tapestry?”