“Yes, but Mardra wouldn’t have it, would she?” The pitch of T’reb’s voice was rising again.
“And no amount of weeping or moaning will change the fact that Loranth won’t produce any new clutches of eggs. She’s just too old.” Piemur thought he heard a note of sadness in B’naj’s voice.
“It’s more than that, B’naj.”
“You’re right. Loranth has been off color ever since that shaft collapsed when the Weyr was mining firestone. I’m glad I didn’t go with you and the others.”
“We should never have gone on that cursed venture—over half the Weyr was exposed to those noxious fumes.”
“Yes, yes, we’ve spoken about this already. And we still cannot change what is done, T’reb!” B’naj was growing impatient.
“But we can’t just sit by as the Weyr falls apart. That’s why we have to do something now!”
“That’s a matter for our Weyrleader, T’reb, not us.”
“Ha! You still think T’ron will do something? He’s no more use to us now than a spent glow in a basket!”
“Shh, keep your voice down!” B’naj hissed.
“I’m not going to stand by anymore, B’naj. We have a duty to our queen and our Weyr!”
“What are you up to?” B’naj asked.
“There’s this plan—half-cocked at that—but perhaps we can use it to our advantage.”
“What plan, T’reb? You can’t go behind our Weyrleader’s back, my friend.” B’naj sounded alarmed.
“During my sojourns north, I traded with a group of men from Nabol. One of them pointed out similarities between us.”
“Similarities? What are you talking about, T’reb? They aren’t dragonfolk!”
“No, they aren’t, but just like us they’ve fallen afoul of Benden!”
“I don’t understand,” B’naj said.
“When they sought help over a family feud, Benden said they couldn’t interfere in Hold matters. Benden—F’lar and Lessa so high and mighty, as if their Weyr rules all the rest! Some leaders, yeah? Left those Nabolese out in the cold just like those other meddlers, the harpers. Honestly, B’naj, I hardly listened to all the details of their silly feud. The nub of it is that they want us to help secure a holding promised to their father by Lord Meron.”
“Meron,” B’naj said, enunciating the two syllables slowly and with so much distaste in his voice that Piemur had little difficulty imagining the dragonrider’s facial expression. And no surprise there: The late Lord Meron had been cruel and uncaring; even Piemur had fallen afoul of the Lord Holder. “He always was a sneaky lick of a man. We never should’ve traded with him.”
“But we did, and strange as it now seems, his kin may actually have thought of an idea that will benefit our Weyr. We just have to assist them in securing lands to hold.”
“They can have plenty of land down here—as much as they like.”
“They won’t travel south.”
“Why not?”
“They say they can’t stomach the sea crossing. And anyway, they want lands in the north—just as was promised to them.”
“And what would we get in return?”
“Exactly what we need, B’naj. New blood.”
“How in the name of the First Egg—” B’naj’s response increased in volume until T’reb cut him short.
“Shh!” T’reb said.
A long silence followed.
“What?” B’naj asked at last, and Piemur guessed that T’reb must have whispered something. He tried to press his ear even closer to the cabin wall. There was the sound of movement inside and a low murmuring, but Piemur couldn’t make out what was said. He held his breath, straining harder to hear the two dragonriders. Suddenly a chair scraped against the floor and Piemur heard what sounded like a hand slapping bare flesh.
“You cannot stop me, B’naj!” T’reb said heatedly. “It’s obvious to me now, the less you know the better.”
What had T’reb said? Shards and fire blast! Piemur wished he’d been able to hear. It felt like all the hair on his body was standing on end, warning him of some ominous event in the offing, as sure as the dreaded Thread fell from the sky.
Footsteps marched purposefully inside the cabin, and then there was the sound of the door opening. Piemur crouch-crawled quickly to the end of the cabin and then ducked around the corner. From his new hiding place, he could see T’reb marching across the compound toward his dragon, Beth.
Without a backward glance, T’reb approached Beth and grabbed her flying harness. The green dragon turned toward her rider, and Piemur saw the color of her many-faceted eyes change from a soft green to a darker hue that was flecked with amber. Beth’s not a happy dragon, he observed in silence.
From the cover of the building Piemur tilted his face up, closed his eyes briefly in concentration, and then let out a sharply pitched, three-toned whistle that sounded just like a birdcall. Then he sat back on his heels, looked up into the sky, and waited.
He felt the barest change in the air pressure above his head, and for the briefest moment it felt as if his ears were about to pop. Then the sensation ceased and Farli appeared, hovering in front of him, her golden wings easily maintaining her position at the same level as his eyes. Piemur smiled and with a single shrug offered his right shoulder as a landing pad. Farli was a queen fire-lizard, one of the small winged creatures that were distant cousins to the dragons. Fire-lizards shared almost all the attributes of their huge relatives, including telekinesis and telepathy—though due to their frivolous nature, the latter ability tended to be weaker and often inconsistent. The Southern Continent, with its warm climate, was the fire-lizards’ natural home, but more and more were being adopted by people in the north. Farli had seemed happy to join Piemur when he came south, and here, where he was so often alone, he appreciated her companionship more than ever.
Without saying a word, Piemur looked intently at Farli, one hand stroking the soft hide on her back as he sought her complete attention. He thought hard, mentally showing the little queen what he wanted her to do, repeating his command several times to ensure she understood. Farli’s faceted eyes whirred as she looked intently at him; then she leapt off his shoulder and, from one wingbeat to the next, vanished between, to that other place, the empty void that dragons and fire-lizards alike used to teleport from one space to another.
Piemur crept back toward the edge of the building and peered around the corner, hoping that on this occasion his capricious fire-lizard would do as he asked. He watched T’reb checking the tautness of one of the flying straps as Beth minced from one foot to the other, a sound not dissimilar to a hiss issuing from her mouth.
T’reb quickly mounted his dragon and urged her to take flight. With several strides, the green dragon gained enough speed to leap into the air. She rose slowly skyward as Piemur watched, nervously searching for Farli. Quickly! he thought. Quickly, Farli, before they blink out of sight and go between!
As T’reb and Beth climbed higher, Piemur saw a little speck of gold dart into the sky below them, keeping time with the dragon and rider. Once they’d reached sufficient height above the ground, T’reb and Beth disappeared, flying between, and Farli went with them.
Confident that Farli was successfully tailing the green dragon and her rider, Piemur stood up, wiping his hands across the sides of his thighs as he began to walk around the side of the building.
“Hey! What’re you doing there?” B’naj called from the doorway, from which he’d been watching T’reb’s departure.
Piemur, caught off guard, quickly ducked his head between his shoulders and kept walking as if he hadn’t heard the dragonrider calling to him.
“Hey!” B’naj yelled again, louder. “You, there!” Several of the other dragonriders around the compound looked up.
Piemur twisted toward B’naj, one hand raised above his he
ad in a jaunty wave, but he kept walking, his hat pulled down over his face.
There was nothing for it, he thought—he had to get out of there, and fast. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “That’s grand then! I’ll have those supplies ready for you in the next sevenday!” His gaze was fixed at a point beyond B’naj and slightly to the side; he hoped B’naj would think he was addressing someone else, while onlookers would assume he was speaking to B’naj.
He waved one more time, then turned his back to B’naj and walked purposefully across the clearing toward the tropical forest, hoping that any dragonriders whose attention had been caught by the interchange would lose interest and resume whatever they’d been doing. Piemur knew he’d be safe once he’d made his way into the cover of the forest surrounding the Weyr. Hoping that B’naj was no longer watching he slipped into the woods and set out at a quick jog, ducking and bending to avoid low tree branches and tenacious vines. With any luck Farli would come back to him quickly, with a clear and accurate mental picture to share exactly where T’reb had gone in such a hurry.
At last reaching his little camp near the Weyr, he could see the distinctive shape of Stupid, the runnerbeast he’d rescued as an orphaned foal. The hobbled beast, now fully mature and standing level with the top of Piemur’s head, was dozing in the shade of a fellis tree, his long neck extended to the ground and his lower lip protruding beyond the upper lip as if in a pout.
Stupid had grown accustomed to being left alone, happy to forage and graze unchecked, though he seemed the most content when Farli was nearby. Piemur had ensured that the runner was within reach of a source of fresh water, and as he always did, he tied a rawhide fringe to the halter to keep flies and other pesky insects from Stupid’s eyes.
Seeing Piemur, Stupid made a noise in his throat, a sound that always reminded Piemur of a mix between a hum and a hiccup. Responding with a soothing hum-buzz noise of his own, Piemur made short work of readying the runnerbeast, smoothing the hair on Stupid’s back and quickly checking for any insects that might have burrowed under the skin.
Finally, he slipped the bridle over Stupid’s head and gently eased the left ear into the loop of the single ear strap. Then, still hum-buzzing, he placed the saddle pad on Stupid’s back, behind the last neck bone. The runner blew through his muzzle gently, a sure sign he was relaxed, and shifted his weight from one forefoot to the other. Piemur tightened up the saddle pad cinch, which was positioned behind the two pairs of front legs, doing so slowly to ensure that Stupid wouldn’t be pinched by the saddle girth, a seemingly minor injury that could result in the dreaded, hard-to-cure girth galls. Stupid stomped his rear feet but didn’t seem upset.
Piemur passed a critical eye over his handiwork, still pleased, after all this time, with the way he had modified the design of the saddles he’d grown up with in Crom. His customized saddle suited the specific needs of the Southern Continent’s warmer climate, where a hide-made, wood-framed saddle would be far too hot, heavy, and cumbersome for both rider and mount. Piemur had not been in Southern long before he’d realized that a soft saddle pad would work much better: It was easier to make and maintain, it dried more quickly, and it was far less likely to harbor any pesky bugs or biters that could riddle the back of a runner with poxy ooze-sores and painful lumps.
Piemur unfastened the hobble, then, pursing his lips as if he were spitting a small seed from his mouth, he made the distinctive brrup-phut noise that seemed to enchant all runnerbeasts, sounding like wind passing from the guts of a well-sated ruminant.
Stupid lifted his head at the sound and walked forward, unguided, on a path only he seemed to know. Keeping pace on the left side of his mount, Piemur deftly grabbed the reins of the head harness in one hand, along with a hank of the beast’s long mane, and sprang from the ground in one lithe movement, swinging his right leg high and wide, to land gently on the pad without causing the beast to flinch or break stride.
He reached out silently to Farli again, but his summons remained unanswered. He hoped she’d been able to trail T’reb. Where could the dragonrider have been going? He’d said he was going to help Mardra, the most senior queen rider in Southern, and that some men from Nabol had a plan that would help the dragonriders of Southern Weyr. What could that possibly be? Even Piemur, who wasn’t weyrbred, could see that the members of the Southern Weyr were experiencing a steady, inexorable decline. All the dragons in Southern were of an older generation, and with no young blood among them to invigorate the Weyr, and none of the queens rising to mate in recent times, that left only the few smaller females, the green dragons, as an inadequate source of release for the virile males.
Piemur thought of how much change the Oldtimer dragonriders had had to endure—and now this. They came from a different time—the last time in the past when Thread had fallen—and they had fought valiantly, keeping their own generation safe. But the end of that Pass and the start of a new two-hundred-Turn Interval, free of Thread, left them unmoored, bereft of purpose. So when Lessa, the Weyrwoman of Benden Weyr, had crossed four centuries to implore them to help fight Thread in the current Pass—Piemur’s time—they must have felt they had only one option: to agree to her request to accompany her four hundred Turns into the future.
Until the arrival of the Oldtimer dragons, the modern-day dragonriders had been too few in number and insufficiently trained in aerial combat. Alone, they would have been ill equipped to survive the ravages of Thread, much less protect their planet. Piemur knew that all the inhabitants of Pern owed a huge debt to the time-traveling older generation of dragonmen who had sacrificed so much. But they also faced a different kind of challenge. In the four centuries that had elapsed between their time and the current Pass, attitudes, customs, and even aspects of the language had changed, and while most of the Oldtimers had managed to adapt to their new lives, some of them had collided disastrously with the newer generation of weyrfolk, craftspeople, and holders.
Piemur knew all about the numerous clashes and claims of foul play that had occurred while all the Oldtimers resided in the Weyrs of the north, clashes that had grown so frequent that they culminated in a group of more than two hundred Oldtimers moving to the Southern Continent where they could live by their old ways, unchallenged. But in a cruel twist of fate, while their northern peers embraced a new life as heroes, the Southerners’ inability to accept change not only made them exiles but also tarnished their reputations, turning them from heroes to castoffs.
Piemur felt a stab of empathy for the Oldtimers of Southern—he felt like a discard, too. No longer of any use as an apprentice at the Harper Hall, where his young singing voice had been extraordinary until the dreadful day when it broke, Piemur was now, at the age of just seventeen Turns, a castoff, stuck doing odd-jobber tasks until his Master found an alternative role for him. He clenched his jaw and shook his head slightly, determined not to let his feelings of misfortune engulf him yet again. He’d been working hard to get past the loss of his voice and had no wish to wallow in self-pity anymore. What’s done is done, he reflected.
There was no point in waiting idly for Farli to return, and besides, she could usually locate him no matter where he was, so Piemur decided to scout out the Hatching Grounds and see firsthand what had disturbed T’reb so much. And so he guided Stupid through the denser parts of the forest to clear ground and the place where he knew the Southern Weyr Hatching Grounds were located. He’d never been here before; no one outside the Weyrs ever visited the Grounds except by express invitation.
Hatching Grounds, hallowed by dragons and their riders alike, were always kept immaculately clean, the sand raked regularly to keep it free from debris or potentially sharp objects. After every Hatching ceremony, those fortunate enough to Impress a dragon often kept a small shard of their dragon’s eggshell as a treasured keepsake, while the rest of the spent dragon shells were buried with great care and solemnity.
Here, however, withered
seaweed and tumbleweed mixed together in a gnarled mess among the sands. Other debris was strewn all around the sand; sharp rocks and flotsam, washed up from the beach, littered the site. Clumps of what looked like old feces dotted the ground, and one clump appeared to be made up of bone, hide, and sinew. Piemur’s lips pursed in distaste as he wondered if any of the other members of Southern Weyr, apart from Mardra, T’reb, and now B’naj, knew how sullied their Hatching Grounds were. As he passed a critical eye over the rest of the area, looking for some kind of evidence that might explain this dereliction, his gaze fell on a few egg shards, smashed and scattered around the sand. Though hold-born, not weyrbred, even Piemur knew it was unthinkable for dragonfolk to allow their most treasured space to fall into such disorder.
He walked slowly through the Hatching Grounds and then returned to the indeterminate clump of bone and hide to examine it more closely. He felt uneasy, fearful of what might greet him when he looked closer. But with a compulsion bordering on morbid curiosity, Piemur knew he had to determine what was in the mangled clump of tissue. He sidled up close, dropped down to the ground to squat on his heels, and peered at the mass. He sniffed the air tentatively but detected no noxious odor. No form or definitive skeletal structure was obvious, and from all appearances the clump was so old it was in the last stages of decay. Searching among some of the nearby detritus that littered the Grounds, he picked up a stick and used it to poke at the clump. His heart lifted when he nudged it further and recognized a little matted wad as a rib of feathers amid the remains.
Sweet shards, what a relief! Dragons, even in their shells, didn’t have feathers. It’s probably only the remains of a wherry, he speculated. The clump looked like something that had been eaten and then regurgitated. Do dragons vomit? he wondered.
Deeply thankful that the clump was not the remains of a dragon embryo, Piemur looked around at the other shell shards. The fragments had been broken up and scattered about, but as he picked up a piece of shell to examine it, he thought it seemed curiously insubstantial, brittle even, in his hand, and far more fragile than he thought a dragon’s shell should be. While he was carefully replacing the fragment where he’d found it, he saw a partially intact egg hidden behind a small boulder. Nervously, Piemur moved closer to examine it.
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