The Dragonriders of Pern Page 8

  “There was much rejoicing in the High Reaches,” F’nor continued, grinning widely, “and honest grief at the passing of Lady Gemma. It will be interesting to see which of the contenders takes title.”

  “At Ruatha?” F’lar queried, frowning down at his half brother.

  “No. At the High Reaches and the other Holds Fax conquered. Lytol will bring his own people to secure Ruatha and to give any soldiery pause before they might attempt that Hold. He knew of many in the High Reaches who would prefer to make a change of Hold, even though Fax no longer dominates the High Reaches. He intended to make all haste to Ruatha so that our men will soon rejoin us.”

  F’lar nodded approval, turning to salute two more of his wing, blue riders, who dropped with their beasts to the feeding ground. Mnementh went back for another fowl.

  “He eats light,” F’nor commented. “Canth’s still gorging.”

  “Browns are slow to get full growth,” F’lar drawled, watching with satisfaction as F’nor’s eyes flashed angrily. That would teach him to withhold news.

  “R’gul and S’lel are back,” the brown rider finally announced.

  The two blues had the herd in a frenzy, stampeding and screaming in fright.

  “The others are recalled,” F’nor continued. “Nemorth is all but rigid in death.” Then he could no longer contain himself. “S’lel brought in two. R’gul has five. Strong-willed, they say, and pretty.”

  F’lar said nothing. He had expected those two would bring in multiple candidates. Let them bring hundreds if they chose. He, F’lar, the bronze rider, had in his one choice the winner.

  Exasperated that his news elicited so little response, F’nor rose.

  “We should have backtrailed for that one in Crom and the pretty . . .”

  “Pretty?” F’lar retorted, cocking one eyebrow high in disdain. “Pretty? Jora was pretty,” he spat out cynically.

  “K’net and T’bor bring contenders from the west,” F’nor added urgently, concerned.

  The wind-torn roar of homecoming dragons crackled through the air. Both men jerked their heads skyward and saw the double spirals of two returning wings, twenty strong.

  Mnementh tossed his head high, crooning. F’lar called him in, pleased the bronze one made no quarrel at recall, although he had eaten very lightly. F’lar, saluting his brother amiably, stepped onto Mnementh’s spread foot and was lifted back to his own ledge.

  Mnementh hiccuped absently as the two walked the short passage to the vaulted inner chamber. He lumbered over to his hollowed bed and settled himself into the curved stone. When Mnementh had stretched and comfortably laid down his wedge-head, F’lar approached him. Mnementh regarded his friend with the near eye, its many facets glinting and shifting, the inner lids gradually closing as F’lar scratched the eye-ridge soothingly.

  Those unfamiliar with it might find such a regard unnerving. But since that moment, twenty Turns before, when the great Mnementh bad broken through his shell and stumbled across the Hatching Ground to stand, weaving on weak legs, before the boy F’lar, the dragonman had treasured these quiet moments as the happiest of a long day. No greater tribute could man be paid than the trust and companionship of the winged beasts of Pern. For the loyalty that dragonkind gave their chosen one of mankind was unswerving and complete from the instant of Impression.

  Mnementh’s inner content was such that the great eye quickly closed. The dragon slept, only the tip of his tail erect, a sure sign that he would be instantly on the alert if the need arose.

  By the Golden Egg of Faranth

  By the Weyrwoman, wise and true,

  Breed a flight of bronze and brown wings,

  Breed a flight of green and blue.

  Breed riders, strong and daring,

  Dragon loving, born as hatched

  Flight of hundreds soaring skyward,

  Man and dragon fully matched.

  Lessa waited until the sound of the dragonman’s footsteps proved he had really gone away. She rushed quickly through the big cavern, heard the scrape of claw and the whoosh of the mighty wings. She raced down the short passageway, right to the edge of the yawning entrance. There was the bronze dragon circling down to the wider end of the mile-long barren oval that was Benden Weyr. She had heard of the Weyrs, as any Pernese had, but to be in one was quite a different matter.

  She peered up, around, down that sheer rock face. There was no way off but by dragon wing. The nearest cave mouths were an unhandy distance above her, to one side, below her on the other. She was neatly secluded here.

  Weyrwoman, he had told her. His woman? In his weyr? Was that what he had meant? No, that was not the impression she got from the dragon. It occurred to her suddenly that it was odd she had understood the dragon. Were common folk able to? Or was it the dragonman Blood in her Line? At all events, Mnementh had implied something greater, some special rank. They must mean her, then, to be Weyrwoman to the unhatched dragon queen. Only how did she, or they, go about it? She remembered vaguely that when dragonmen went on Search, they looked for certain women. Ah, certain women. She was one, then, of several contenders. Yet the bronze rider had offered her the position as if she and she alone qualified. He had his own generous portion of conceit, that one, Lessa decided. Arrogant he was, though not the bully Fax had been.

  She could see the bronze dragon swoop down to the running herdbeasts, saw the strike, saw the dragon wheel up to settle on a far ledge to feed. Instinctively she drew back from the opening, back into the dark and relative safety of the corridor.

  The feeding dragon evoked scores of horrid tales. Tales at which she had scoffed, but now . . . Was it true, then, that dragons did eat human flesh? Did . . . Lessa halted that trend of thought. Dragonkind was no less cruel than mankind. The dragon, at least, acted from bestial need rather than bestial greed.

  Assured that the dragonman would be occupied awhile, she crossed the larger cave into the sleeping room. She scooped up the clothing and the bag of cleansing sand and proceeded to the bathing room. It was small but ample for its purpose. A wide ledge formed a partial lip to the uneven circle of the bathing pool. There was a bench and some shelves for drying cloths. In the glowlight she could see that the near section of the pool had been sanded high so a bather could stand comfortably. Then there was a gradual dip approaching the deeper water that slapped the very rock wall on the farther side.

  To be clean! To be completely clean and to be able to stay that way. With a distaste at touching them no less acute than the dragonman’s, she stripped off the remains of the rags, kicking them to one side, not knowing where to dispose of them. She shook out a generous handful of the sweetsand and, bending to the pool, wet it.

  Quickly she made a soft mud with the sweet soap, and she scoured hands and bruised face. Wetting more sand, she attacked her arms and legs, then her body and feet. She scrubbed hard until she drew blood from half-healed cuts. Then she stepped, or rather jumped, into the pool, gasping as the warm water made the sweetsand foam in her scratches. She ducked under the surface, shaking her head to be sure her hair was thoroughly wetted. Then briskly she rubbed in more sweetsand, rinsing and scrubbing until she felt her hair might possibly be clean. Years, it had been. Great strands floated away in tangles like immense crawlers with attenuated legs, toward the far edge of the pool and then were drawn out of sight. The water, she was glad to note, constantly circulated, the cloudy and dirty replaced with clear. She turned her attention again to her body, scrubbing at ingrained dirt until her skin smarted. It was a ritual cleansing of more than surface soil. She felt a pleasure akin to ecstasy for the luxury of cleanliness.

  Finally satisfied her body was as clean as one long soaking could make her, she sanded her hair yet a third time. She left the pool almost reluctantly, wringing out her hair and tucking it up on her head as she dried herself. She shook out the clothing and held one garment against her experimentally. The fabric, a soft green, felt smooth under her water-shrunken fingers, although the nap caught on he
r roughened hands. She pulled it over her head. It was loose, but the darker-green overtunic had a sash that she pulled in tight at the waist. The unusual sensation of softness against her bare skin made her wriggle with voluptuous pleasure. The skirt, no longer a ragged hem of tatters, swirled heavily around her ankles, making her smile in sheer feminine delight. She took up a fresh drying cloth and began to work on her hair.

  A muted sound came to her ears, and she stopped, hands poised, head bent to one side. Straining, she listened. Yes, there were sounds without. The dragonman and his beast must have returned. She grimaced to herself with annoyance at this untimely interruption and rubbed harder at her hair. She ran fingers through the half-dry tangles, the motions arrested as she encountered snarls. She tried patting her hair into place, pushing it defiantly behind her ears. Vexed, she rummaged on the shelves until she found, as she had hoped to, a coarse-toothed metal comb. With this she attacked her unruly hair and, by the dint of much yanking and groaning as she pulled ruthlessly through years of tangles, she was able to groom the mass.

  Now dry, her hair suddenly had a life of its own, crackling about her hands and clinging to face and comb and dress. It was difficult to get the silky stuff under control. And her hair was longer than she had thought, for, clean and unmatted, it fell to her waist—when it did not cling to her hands.

  She paused, listening, and heard no sound at all. Apprehensively, she stepped to the curtain and glanced warily into the sleeping room. It was empty. She listened and caught the perceptible thoughts of the sleepy dragon. Well, she would rather meet the man in the presence of a sleepy dragon than in a sleeping room. She started across the floor and, out of the corner of her eye, caught sight of a strange woman as she passed a polished piece of metal hanging on the wall.

  Amazed, she stopped short, staring, incredulous, at the face the metal reflected. Only when she put her hands to her prominent cheekbones in a gesture of involuntary surprise and the reflection imitated the gesture did she realize she looked at herself.

  Why, that girl in the reflector was prettier than the Lady Tela, than the clothman’s daughter! But so thin. Her hands of their own volition dropped to her neck, to the protruding collarbones, to her breasts, which did not entirely reflect the gauntness of the rest of her. The dress was too large for her frame, she noted with an unexpected emergence of conceit born in that instant of delighted appraisal. And her hair . . . it stood out around her head like an aureole. It wouldn’t lie contained. She smoothed it down with impatient fingers, automatically bringing locks forward to hang around her face. As she irritably pushed them back, dismissing a need for disguise, the hair drifted up again.

  A slight sound, the scrape of a boot against stone, caught her back from her bemusement. She waited, momentarily expecting him to appear. She was suddenly timid. With her face bare to the world, her hair behind her ears, her body outlined by a clinging fabric, she was stripped of her accustomed anonymity and was therefore, in her estimation, vulnerable.

  Sternly she controlled the desire to run away, the irrational shock of fearfulness. Observing herself in the looking metal, she drew her shoulders back, tilted her head high, chin up; the movement caused her hair to crackle and cling and shift about her head. She was Lessa of Ruatha, of a fine old Blood. She no longer needed to resort to artifice to preserve herself, so she must stand proudly bare-faced before the world . . . and that dragonman.

  Resolutely she crossed the room, pushing aside the hanging on the doorway to the great cavern.

  He was there, beside the head of the dragon, scratching its eye ridges, a curiously tender expression on his face. It was a tableau completely at variance with all she had heard of dragonmen.

  She had, of course, heard of the strange affinity between rider and dragon, but this was the first time she realized that love was part of that bond. Or that this reserved, cold man was capable of such deep emotion. He had been brusque enough with her over the old watch-wher. No wonder it had thought he had meant her harm. The dragons had been more tolerant, she remembered with an involuntary sniff.

  He turned slowly, as if loath to leave the bronze beast. He caught sight of her and pivoted completely around, his eyes intense as he took note of her altered appearance. With quick, light steps he closed the distance between them and ushered her back into the sleeping room, one strong hand holding her by the elbow.

  “Mnementh has fed lightly and will need quiet to rest,” he said in a low voice, as if this were the most important consideration. He pulled the heavy hanging into place across the opening.

  Then he held her away from him, turning her this way and that, scrutinizing her closely, a curious and slightly surprised expression fleeting across his face.

  “You wash up . . . pretty, yes, almost pretty,” he allowed with such amused condescension in his voice that she pulled roughly away from him, piqued. His low laugh mocked her. “How could one guess, after all, what was under the grime of . . . ten full Turns, I would say? Yes, you are certainly pretty enough to placate F’nor.”

  Thoroughly antagonized by his attitude, she asked in icy tones, “And F’nor must be placated at all costs?”

  He stood grinning at her till she had to clench her fists at her sides to keep from beating that grin off his face.

  At length he said, “No matter, we must eat, and I shall require your services.” At her startled exclamation, he turned, grinning maliciously now as his movement revealed the caked blood on his left sleeve. “The least you can do is bathe wounds honorably received in fighting your battle.”

  He pushed aside a portion of the drapery that curtained the inner wall. “Food for two!” he roared down a black gap in the sheer stone.

  She heard a subterranean echo far below as his voice resounded down what must be a long shaft.

  “Nemorth is nearly rigid,” he was saying as he took supplies from another drapery-hidden shelf, “and the Hatching will soon begin, anyhow.”

  A coldness settled in Lessa’s stomach at the mention of a Hatching. The mildest tales she had heard about that part of dragonlore were chilling, the worst dismayingly macabre. Numbly she took the things he handed her.

  “What? Frightened?” the dragonman taunted, pausing as he stripped off his torn and bloodied shirt.

  With a shake of her head, Lessa turned her attention to the wide-shouldered, well-muscled back he presented her, the paler skin of his body decorated with random bloody streaks. Fresh blood welled from the point of his shoulder, for the removal of his shirt had broken the tender scabs.

  “I will need water,” she said and saw she had a flat pan among the items he had given her. She went swiftly to the pool for water, wondering how she had come to agree to venture so far from Ruatha. Ruined though it was, it had been hers and was familiar to her, from Tower to deep cellar. At the moment the idea had been proposed and insidiously prosecuted by the dragonman, she had felt capable of anything, having achieved, at last, Fax’s death. Now it was all she could do to keep the water from slopping out of the pan that shook unaccountably in her hands.

  She forced herself to deal only with the wound. It was a nasty gash, deep where the point had entered and torn downward in a gradually shallower slice. His skin felt smooth under her fingers as she cleansed the wound. In spite of herself, she noticed the masculine odor of him, compounded not unpleasantly of sweat, leather, and an unusual muskiness that must be from close association with dragons.

  Although it must have hurt him when she cleansed away clotted blood, he gave no indication of discomfort, apparently oblivious to the operation. It annoyed her still more that she could not succumb to the temptation of treating him roughly in return for his disregard of her feelings.

  She ground her teeth in frustration as she smeared on the healing salve generously. Making a small pad of bandage, she secured the dressing deftly in place with other strips of torn cloth. She stood back when she had finished her ministrations. He flexed his arm experimentally in the constricting bandage, and the
motion set the muscles rippling along his side and back.

  When he faced her, his eyes were dark and thoughtful.

  “Gently done, my lady. My thanks.” His smile was ironic.

  She backed away as he rose, but he only went to the chest to take out a clean, white shirt.

  A muted rumble sounded, growing quickly louder.

  Dragons roaring? Lessa wondered, trying to conquer the ridiculous fear that rose within her. Had the Hatching started? There was no watch-wher’s lair to secrete herself in here.

  As if he understood her confusion, the dragonman laughed good-humoredly and, his eyes on hers, drew aside the wall covering just as some noisy mechanism inside the shaft propolled a tray of food into sight.

  Ashamed of her unbased fright and furious that he had witnessed it, Lessa sat rebelliously down on the fur-covered wall seat, heartily wishing him a variety of serious and painful injuries that she could dress with inconsiderate hands. She would not waste future opportunities.

  He placed the tray on the low table in front of her, throwing down a heap of furs for his own seat. There were meat, bread, a pitcher of klah, a tempting yellow cheese, and even a few pieces of winter fruit. He made no move to eat, nor did she, though the thought of a piece of fruit that was ripe instead of rotten set her mouth to watering. He glanced up at her and frowned.

  “Even in the Weyr, the lady breaks bread first,” he said and inclined his head politely to her.

  Lessa flushed, unused to any courtesy and certainly unused to being first to eat. She broke off a chunk of bread. It was like nothing she remembered having tasted before. For one thing, it was fresh-baked. The flour had been finely sifted, without trace of sand or hull. She took the slice of cheese he proffered her, and it, too, had an uncommonly delicious sharpness. Much emboldened by this indication of her changed status, Lessa reached for the plumpest piece of fruit.

  “Now,” the dragonman began, his hand touching hers to get her attention.

  Guiltily she dropped the fruit, thinking she had erred. She stared at him, wondering at her fault. He retrieved the fruit and placed it back in her hand as he continued to speak. Wide-eyed, she nibbled, disarmed, and gave him her full attention.