The White Dragon p-4

by Anne McCaffrey

  «Nothing.» Jaxom pulled Menolly's hands from his arm and all but pushed her toward the Ground. «The eggs. The eggs!»

  His injunction was drowned in Ramoth's bellow of surprise and exultation.

  «The egg. The queen egg!»

  By the time Jaxom had recovered from his inexplicable vertigo and reached the Hatching Ground, everyone was staring with relief at the sight of the queen egg, now safely positioned once again between Ramoth's forelegs. A fire lizard, reckless with curiosity, got a scant winglength into the Ground before Ramoth's bellow of fury sent it streaking away.

  In relief, people began to chatter, as they moved back out of the Hatching Ground to where the sand was not so uncomfortable underfoot. Someone suggested that perhaps the egg had merely rolled away and Ramoth only thought it had been taken. But too many had seen the empty place, where the queen egg had too obviously been missing. And what about the three strange bronzes streaking out of the high entrance to the Ground. More acceptable was the notion that the Oldtimers had had second thoughts about the theft, that they, too, were reluctant to pit dragon against dragon.

  Lessa had remained in the Ground, trying to persuade Ramoth to let her see if the egg had come to any harm. Soon she came hurrying out of the Ground to F'lar and Robinton.

  «That's the same egg but it's older and harder, ready to Hatch anytime now. The girls must be brought.»

  For the third time that morning, Benden Weyr was in a state of high excitement happier fortunately, but still generating as much chaos. Jaxom and Menolly managed to keep out of the way but remained close enough to hear what was going on.

  «Whoever took that egg kept it at least ten days or more,» they heard Lessa saying angrily. «That demands action.»

  «The egg is back safely,» Robinton said, trying to calm her.

  «Are we cowards to ignore such an insult?» she asked the other dragonmen, turning away from Robinton's calmer words.

  «If to be brave,» Robinton's voice laid scorn on the quality, «means to pit dragon against dragon, I'd rather be a coward.»

  Lessa's white hot outrage noticeably cooled.

  Dragon against dragon. The words echoed through the crowd. The thought turned sickeningly in Jaxom's mind and he could feel Menolly beside him shutting off the implications of such a contest.

  «The egg was somewhen for long enough to be brought close to hatching hardness,» Lessa went on, her face set with her anger. «It's probably been handled by their candidate. It could have been influenced enough so that the fledgling won't Impress here.»

  «No one has ever proved how much an egg is influenced by pre Hatching contact,» Robinton was saying in his most persuasive voice. «Or so you've had me understand any number of times. Short of dumping their candidate on top of the egg when it hatches, I can't think their conniving can do them any good or the egg any more harm.»

  The assembled dragonfolk were still very tense but the initial impetus to rise in wings and destroy the Southern Weyr had cooled considerably with the return of the egg, however mysterious that return was.

  «Obviously, we can no longer be complacent,» said F'lar, glancing up at the watchdragons, «or secure in the delusion of the inviolability of the Hatching Ground. Any Hatching Ground.» Nervously he pushed the hair back from his forehead. «By the First Shell, they've a lot of gall, trying to steal one of Ramoth's eggs.»

  «The first way to secure this Weyr is to ban those dratted fire lizards,» Lessa said heatedly. «They're little tattlers, worse than useless…»

  «Not all of them, Lessa,» Brekke said, stepping up beside the Weyrwoman. «Some of them come on legitimate errands and give us a lot of assistance.»,

  «Two were playing that game,» Robinton said without humor.

  Menolly dug Jaxom in the ribs, reminding him that the Harperhall's fire lizards, hers included, did a lot of assisting.

  «I don't care,» Lessa told Brekke and glared around at the assembled, looking for fire lizards. «I don't want to see them about here. Ramoth's not to be pestered by those plaguey things. Something's to be done to keep them where they belong.»

  «Mark 'em with their colors!» was Brekke's quick reply. «Mark 'em and teach them to speak their name and origin the way dragons do. They're quite capable of learning courtesy. At least the ones who come to Benden by order.»

  «Have them report to you, Brekke, or Mirrim,» Robinton suggested.

  «Just keep them away from Ramoth and me!» Lessa peered in at Ramoth and then whipped around. «And someone bring up that wherry that Ramoth didn't eat. She'll be the better for something in her belly right now. We'll discuss this violation of our Weyr later. In detail.»

  F'lar ordered several dragonmen to get the wherry and then courteously thanked the rest of the assembled for their prompt reply to his summons. He gestured to several of the Weyrleaders and Robinton to join him in the weyr above.

  «There's not a fire lizard in sight,» Menolly said to Jaxom. «I told Beauty to stay away. She's answered me scared to her bones.»

  «So's Ruth,» Jaxom said as they crossed the Bowl to him. «He's turned almost gray.»

  Ruth was more than scared, he was trembling with anxiety.

  Something is wrong. Something is not right, he told his rider, his eyes whirling erratically with gray tones.

  «Your wing was injured?»

  No. Not my wing. Something is wrong in my head. I don't feel right. Ruth shifted from all four legs to his hindquarters, and then back again to all four, rustling his wings.

  «Is it because all the fire lizards have gone? Or the excitement about Ramoth's egg?»

  Ruth said it was both and neither. The fire lizards were all frightened; they remembered something which frightened them.

  «Remembered? Huh!» Jaxom felt exasperated with fire lizards and their associative memories, and their ridiculous images which were making his sensible Ruth miserable.

  «Jaxom?» Menolly had detoured to the Lower Caverns and shared with him the handful of meatrolls, she'd cadged from the cooks. «Finder says Robinton wants me to go back to the Harpercrafthall and let them and Fort Hold know what's been happening. I'm also to start marking my fire lizards. Look!» She pointed to the Weyr rim and the Star Stones. «The watch dragon is chewing firestone. Oh, Jaxom!»

  «Dragon against dragon.» He shuddered violently.

  «Jaxom, it can't come to that,» she said in a choked voice.

  Neither of them could finish their meatrolls.

  Silently they mounted Ruth, who took them aloft.

  As Robinton climbed the steps to the queen's weyr, he was thinking faster than he had ever done. Too much was going to depend on what happened now the whole future course of the planet, if he read reactions correctly. He knew more than he ought about conditions in the Southern Weyr but his knowledge had done him no service today. He berated himself for being so naive, as unseeingly obtuse as any dragonrider for assuming that the Weyrs were inviolable and a Hatching Ground untouchable. He had had warnings from Piemur; but he simply hadn't correlated the information properly. Yet, in light of today's occurrence, he ought to have arrived at the logical conclusion that the desperate Southerners would make this prodigious attempt to revive their failing Weyr with the blood of a new and viable queen. Even if he had reached the proper conclusion, Robinton thought ruefully, how ever would he have been able to persuade Lessa and F'lar that that was what the Southerners planned today. The Weyrleaders would have been properly scornful of such a ridiculous notion.

  No one was laughing today. No one at all. Strange that so many people had assumed that the Oldtimers would meekly accept their exile and remain docilely on their continent. They had not been cramped in their accommodation, merely in their hope of a future. T'kul must have been the motivating force T'ron had lost all his vigor and initiative after that duel with F'lar. Robinton was reasonably certain that the two Weyrwomen, Merika and Mardra, had had no part in the plan; they wouldn't wish to be deposed by a young queen and her rider. Had one
of them returned the egg?

  No, thought Robinton, it had to be someone with an intimate knowledge of the Benden Weyr Hatching Ground… or someone possessed of the blindest good luck and skill to go between into and out of the cavern.

  Robinton relived briefly the compound terror he had experienced during the egg's absence. He winced thinking of Lessa's fury. She was still likely to arouse the Northern dragonriders. She was quite capable of sustaining the unthinking frenzy that had all but dominated the events of the morning. If she continued in her demand for vengeance against the guilty Southerners, it could be as much a disaster for Pern as the first Threadfall had been.

  The egg had been returned. Robinton clung to the comforting fact that it was apparently unharmed despite its aging in that elapsed subjective time. Lessa could choose to make its condition an issue. And, if the egg did not hatch an unimpaired queen, there was no doubt in Robinton's mind that Lessa would insist on retribution.

  But the egg had been returned! He must drum in that fact, must emphasize that obviously not all Southerners had been party to this heinous action. Some Oldtimers still honored the old codes of conduct. No doubt one of them had been perceptive enough to guess what punitive action would be launched against the criminals and wished, as fervently as Robinton, to avoid such a confrontation.

  «This is indeed a black moment,» someone with a deep sad voice said. The Harper turned, grateful for the sane support of the Mastersmith. Fandarel's heavy features were etched with worry and, for the first time, Robinton noticed the puffiness of age blurring the man's features, yellowing his eyes. «Such perfidy must be punished and yet it cannot be!»

  The thought of dragon fighting dragon again seared Robinton's mind with terror. «Too much would be lost!» he said to Fandarel.

  «They have already lost all they had, being sent into exile. I often wondered why they didn't rebel before.»

  «They have now. With a vengeance.»

  «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 We
yrleader 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.

  «I can't tell you how badly I feel about this, Lessa,» D'ram continued, shaking his head. «When I heard, I couldn't believe. I just don't understand what good such an action would do them. T'kul's older than I. His Salth couldn't hope to fly a Benden queen. For that matter, none of the dragons in the South could fly a Benden queen!»

  D'ram's puzzled comment did as much as Robinton's pointed remarks to ease the multiple strains in the Council Room. Unconsciously D'ram had supported Robinton's contention that an oblique compliment had been paid Benden Weyr.