"To be met with more vengeance. My friend, we must keep our wits today as never before. I fear Lessa may be unreasonable and unthinking. Already she has let emotion dominate common sense." The Smith indicated the leather patch on Robinton's shoulder where his fire-lizard, Zair, customarily perched. "Where is your little friend now?"

"Brekke's weyr with Grall and Berd. I wanted him to return to the Harpercrafthall with Menolly, but he refused."

The Smith shook his great head again in sad slow sweeps as the two men entered the Council Chamber.

"I do not have a fire-lizard myself but I know only good of the little creatures. I never occurred to me that they constituted any threat for anyone."

"You will support me in this then, Fandarel?" asked Brekke, who had entered behind them with F'nor. "Lessa is not herself. I do really understand her anxiety but she cannot be allowed to damn all fire-lizards for the mischief of a few."

"Mischief?" F'nor was perturbed. "Don't let Lessa hear you call what happened mischief. Mischief? Stealing a queen egg?"

"The fire-lizard's part was only mischief… popping in to Ramoth's cave like how many others have been doing since the eggs were laid." Brekke spoke more sharply than she usually did, and a tightness about F'nor's eyes and mouth indicated to Robinton that this couple were not in accord. "Fire-lizards have no sense of wrong or right."

"They'll have to learn…" F'nor began with more heat than discretion.

"I fear that we, who have no dragons," said Robinton, quickly intervening-lest today's event fracture the bond between the two lovers-"have been making too much of our little friends, carting them about with us wherever we go, doting as parents of a late child, permitting too many liberties of conduct. But a more restrained attitude toward fire-lizards in our midst is a very minor consideration in today's affair."

F'nor had dampened his aggravation. He nodded now at the Harper. "Suppose that egg hadn't been returned, Robinton…" His shoulders jerked in a convulsive shake and he pushed at his forehead as if trying to eliminate all memory of that scene.

"If the egg hadn't been returned," Robinton said implacably, "dragon would have fought dragon!" He spaced out his words, putting as much force and distaste as he could in his tone.

F'nor quickly shook his head, denying that outcome. "No, it would not have come to that, Robinton. You were wise…"

"Wise?" Spat out by the infuriated Weyrwoman, the word cut like a knife. Lessa stood at the entrance to the Council Room, her slender frame taut with the emotions of the morning, her face livid with her anger. "Wise? To let them get away with such a crime? To let them plot even more base treacheries? Why did I ever think it necessary to bring them forward? When I remember that I pleaded with that excrescence T'ron to come and help us? Help us? He helps himself! To my queen's egg. If I could only undo my stupidity…"

"Your stupidity is in carrying on in this fashion," the Harper said coldly, knowing that what he had to say before the Weyrleaders and Craftmasters assembled in the Council Room might well alienate them all. "The egg has been returned-"

"Yes, and when I-"

"That was what you wanted half an hour, an hour ago, was it not?" Robinton demanded, raising his voice commandingly. "You wanted the egg returned. To achieve that end you were within your rights to send dragon against dragon, and no one to fault you. But the egg has been returned. To set dragon against dragon for revenge? Oh, no, Lessa. That you have no right to do. Not in revenge.

"And if you must have revenge to satisfy your queen and your angry self, just think: They failed! They don't have that egg. Their actions have put all the Weyrs on guard so they could never succeed a second time. They have lost their one chance, Lessa. Their one hope of reviving their dying bronzes has failed. They have been thwarted. And they face…nothing. No future, no hope.

"You can do nothing worse to them, Lessa. So with the return of that egg, you have no right in the eyes of the rest of Pern to do anything more."

"I have the right to revenge that insult to me, to my queen, and to my Weyr!"

"Insult?" Robinton gave a short bark of laughter. "My dear Lessa, that was no insult. That was a compliment of the highest order!"

His unexpected laughter as well as his startling interpretation stunned Lessa into silence.

"How many queen eggs have been laid this past Turn?" Robinton demanded of the other Weyrleaders. "And in Weyrs the Oldtimers would know more intimately than Benden. No, they wanted a queen of Ramoth's clutch! Nothing but the best that Pern could produce for the Oldtimers!" Adroitly Robinton left that argument. "Come, Lessa," he said with great sympathy and compassion, "we're all overwrought by this terrible event. None of us is thinking clearly…"

He passed his hand across his face, no sham gesture for he was perspiring with the effort to redirect the mood of so many. "Emotions are running far too high. And you've borne the brunt of it, Lessa." He took her by the arm and led the shocked but unresisting Weyrwoman to her chair, seating her with great concern and deference. "You must have been half-crazed by Ramoth's distress. She is calmer now, isn't she?"

Lessa's jaw dropped in amazement and she continued to stare at Robinton with wide-open eyes. Then she nodded, closing her mouth and moistening her lips.

"So you'll be more yourself then, too." Robinton poured a cup of wine and passed it to her. Still bemused by his startling attitude, she even sipped it. "And able to realize that the worst catastrophe that could happen to this world would be for dragon to fight dragon."

Lessa set the cup down then, spilling wine on the stone table. "You… with your clever words…" and she pointed at Robinton, rising from the chair like an uncoiling spring. "You…"

"He was right, Lessa," F'lar said from the entrance where he'd been watching the scene. He walked into the room, toward the table where Lessa sat. "We only had cause to invade Southern to search for our egg. Once it was returned, we would be damned by all Pern to pursue vengeance." He spoke to her but his eyes had gone to each Weyrleader and Craftsmaster to judge their reactions. "Once dragon fights dragon, for whatever reason," his gesture wiped away any possible consideration, "we, the dragonriders of Pern, lose the rest of Pern!" He gave Lessa a long hard look which she returned with frozen implacability. Squarely he faced the room. "I wish with all my heart that there'd been some other solution that day at Telgar for T'ron and T'kul. Sending them to the Southern Continent seemed to be the answer. There they could do the rest of Pern scant harm…"

"No, just us-just Benden!" Lessa spoke with palpable bitterness. "It's T'ron and Mardra, trying to get back at you and me!"

"Mardra would not favor a queen to depose her," said Brekke, who did not turn aside when Lessa whirled on her.

"Brekke's right, Lessa," F'lar said, putting his hand on Lessa's shoulder with apparent casualness. "Mardra wouldn't like competition."

Robinton could see the pressure of the Weyrleader's fingers whitening his knuckles, although Lessa gave no sign.

"Neither would Merika, T'kul's Weyrwoman," said D'ram, the Istan Weyrleader, "and I knew her well enough to speak with surety now."

More than any of the others in this room, Robinton thought that the Oldtimer felt this turn of events most keenly. D'ram was an honest, loyal, fair-minded man. He had felt compelled to support F'lar against those of his own Time. By such backing, he had influenced R'mart and G'narish, the other Oldtime Weyrleaders, to side with the Benden Weyr at Telgar Hold. So many undercurrents and subtle pressures abounded in this chamber, Robinton thought. Whoever had conceived of kidnapping the queen egg might not have succeeded in that stratagem, but they had effectively shattered the solidarity of the dragonriders.