The Mastersmith tapped his stained, branchlike finger on the faded Record skin which draped the table, except where the boys were sitting. Fandarel had one arm wrapped possessively around something in his lap, but Jaxom couldn’t see what it was.

“If I judge this accurately, there should be several levels of rooms in this section, both beyond the one the boys found and above.”

Jaxom goggled at the map and caught Felessan’s eye. He was excited, too, but he kept on eating. Jaxom spooned up another huge mouthful – it tasted so good – but he did wish that the skin were not upside down to him.

“I’d swear there were no upper weyr entrances on that side of the Bowl,” F’lar muttered, shaking his head.

“There was access to the Bowl on the ground level,” Fandarel said, his forefinger covering what he ought to be showing. “We found it, sealed up. Possibly because of that rockfall.”

Jaxom looked anxiously at Felessan who became engrossed in his plate. When Felessan made those faces, had he meant he hadn’t told them? Or he had? Jaxom wished he knew.

“That seam was barely discernible,” the Masterharper said. “The sealing substance was more effective than any mortar I’ve ever seen; transparent, smooth and strong.”

“One could not chip it,” rumbled Fandarel, shaking his head.

“Why would they seal off an exit to the Bowl?” Lessa asked.

“Because they weren’t using that section of the Weyr,” F’lar suggested. “Certainly no one has used those corridors for the Egg knows how many Turns. There weren’t even footprints in the dust of most of them we searched.”

Waiting for the adult wrath that must surely descend on him now, Jaxom kept his eyes on his plate. He couldn’t bear Lessa’s recriminations. He dreaded the look in Lytol’s eyes when he learned of his ward’s blasphemous act. How could he have been so deaf to all Lytol’s patient teachings?

“We found enough of interest in the dusty, moldy old Records that had been ignored as useless,” F’lar’s voice went on.

Jaxom hazarded a glance and saw the Weyrleader tousle Felessan’s hair; watched as the man actually grinned at him, Jaxom. Jaxom was almost sick with relief. None of the adults knew what he and Felessan had done in the Hatching Grounds.

“These boys have already led us to exquisite treasures, eh, Fandarel?”

“Let us hope that they are not the only legacies left in forgotten rooms,” the Mastersmith said in his deep rumble of a voice. Absently he stroked the smooth metal of the magnifying device cradled in the crook of his arm.

Midmorning at Southern Weyr

Early Morning at Nabol Hold:

Next Day

HOT, sandy and sticky with sweat and salt, triumph over-rode all minor irritations as Kylara stared down at the clutch she had unearthed.

“They can have their seven,” she muttered, staring in the general direction of northeast and the Weyr. “I’ve got an entire nest. And another gold.”

Exaltations welled out of her in a raucous laugh. Just wait until Meron of Nabol saw these beauties! There was no doubt in her mind that the Holder hated dragonmen because he envied them their beasts. He’d often carped that Impressions ought not to be monopolized by one inbred sodality. Well, let’s see if mighty Meron could Impress a fire lizard. She wasn’t sure which would please her more: if he could or if he couldn’t. Either way’d work for her. But if he could Impress a fire lizard, a bronze, say, and she had a queen on her wrist, and the two mated . . . It might not be as spectacular as with the larger beasts, but then, given Meron’s natural endowment . . . Kylara smiled in sensuous anticipation.

“You’d better be worth this,” she told the eggs.

She put the thirty-four hardened eggs into several thicknesses of the firestone bagging she’d brought along. She wrapped that bundle in wher-hides and then in her thick wool cloak. She’d been Weyrwoman long enough to realize that a suddenly cooled egg would never hatch. And these were mighty close to cracking shell.

So much the better.

Prideth had been tolerant of her rider’s preoccupation with fire-lizard eggs. She had obediently landed in a hundred coves along the western coast, waiting, not unhappily in the hot sun, while Kylara quartered the burning sands, looking for any trace of fire-lizard buryings. But Prideth grumbled anxiously when Kylara gave her the coordinates for Nabol Hold, not Southern Weyr.

It was just first light, Nabol time, when Kylara’s arrival sent the watch-wher screaming into its lair. The watchguard knew the Southern Weyrwoman too well to protest her entry and some poor wit was dispatched to wake his Lord. Kylara blithely disregarded Meron’s angry frown when he appeared on the stairs of the Inner Hold.

“I’ve fire-lizard eggs for you, Lord Meron of Nabol,” she cried, gesturing to the lumpy bundle she’d had a man bring in. “I want tubs of warm sand or we’ll lose them.”

“Tubs of warm sand?” Meron repeated with overt irritation.

So, he’d someone else in his bed, had he? Kylara thought, of half a mind to take her treasure and disappear.

“Yes, you fool. I’ve a clutch of fire-lizard eggs about to hatch. The chance of your lifetime. You there,” and Kylara pointed imperiously at Meron’s holdkeeper who’d come shuffling in, half-dressed. “Pour boiling water over all the cleansing sand you’ve got and bring it here instantly.”

Kylara, born to a high degree in one Hold, knew exactly the tone to take with lesser beings, and was, in fact, so much the female counterpart of her own irascible Lord that the woman scurried to her bidding without waiting for Meron’s consent.

“Fire-lizard eggs? What on earth are you babbling about, woman?”

“They’re Impressionable. Catch their minds at their hatching, just like dragons, feed ‘em into stupidity and they’re yours, for life.” Kylara was carefully laying the eggs down on the warm stones of the great fireplace. “And I’ve got them here just in time,” she said in triumph. “Assemble your men, quickly. We’ll want to Impress as many as possible.”

“I’m trying,” Meron said through gritted teeth as he watched her performance with some skepticism and much malice, “to apprehend exactly how this will benefit anyone.”

“Use your wits, man,” Kylara replied, oblivious to the Lord Holder’s sour reaction to her imperiousness. “Fire lizards are the ancestors of dragons and they have all their abilities.”

It took only a moment longer for Meron to grasp the significance. Even as he shouted orders for his men to be roused, he was beside Kylara, helping her to lay the eggs out before the fire.

“They go between? They communicate with their owners?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“That’s a gold egg,” Meron cried, reaching for it, his small eyes glittering with cupidity.

She slapped his hand away, her eyes flashing. “Gold is for me. Bronze for you. I’m fairly sure that that second one – no, that one – is a bronze.”

The hot sands were brought and shoveled onto the hearth stones. Meron’s men came clattering down the steps from the Inner Hold, dressed for Threadfall. Peremptorily Kylara ordered them to put aside their paraphernalia and began to lecture them on how to Impress a fire lizard.

“No one can catch a fire lizard,” someone muttered, well back in the ranks.

“I have but I doubt you will, whoever you are,” Kylara snapped.

There was something, she decided, in what the Oldtimers said: Holders were getting far too arrogant and aggressive. No one would have dared speak up in her father’s Hold when he was giving instructions. No one in the Weyrs interrupted a Weyrwoman.

“You’ll have to be quick,” she said. “They hatch ravenous and eat anything in reach. They turn cannibal if you don’t stop them.”

“I want to hold mine till it hatches,” Meron told Kylara in an undertone. He’d been stroking the three eggs whose mottled shells he fancied contained bronzes.