The White Dragon p-4

by Anne McCaffrey

  «I've always maintained that we came from the Southern Continent,» the Harper said, more to himself than anyone else. Then he signaled Jaxom to continue.

  Jaxom obeyed but was soon aware that only half the Harper's attention was on his narrative, though the man nodded and asked occasional questions. Jaxom told of his and Menolly's safe return to Benden Weyr, remembered to mention his gratitude to Mnementh for permitting Ruth to eat. He fell silent then, wondering how to ask a question of his own of the Harper, but Robinton was frowning at some private reflections.

  «Tell me again what the fire lizards said about these men,» the Harper asked, leaning forward, elbows on the table, eyes fixed on Jaxom. On his shoulder, Zair echoed a querying note.

  «They didn't say much, Master Robinton. That's the trouble! They got so excited, they made little sense at all. Menolly could probably tell you more because she had Beauty and the three bronzes with her. But «

  «What did Ruth say?»

  Jaxom shrugged, unhappily aware that his half answers were inadequate.

  «He said the images were too confused, even if they were all about men, their men. And we, Menolly and I, weren't their sort of men.»

  Jaxom reached for the pitcher of klah, to slake the dryness of his mouth. He courteously filled a cup for the Harper who absently drained half of it while deep in thought.

  «Men,» Master Robinton said again, extending the last consonant and ending the sound with a click of his tongue. He got to his feet in such a fluid motion that Zair squawked, clawing for balance. «Men, and so long ago that the images the fire lizards retain are vague. That is very interesting, very interesting indeed.»

  The Harper began to pace, stroking Zair, who chittered reprovingly.

  Jaxom glanced out the window at Ruth, sunning himself in the courtyard, the local fire lizards clustered about him. Jaxom listened idly to the chorus, wondering why they were stopped so often in the Ballad, for he couldn't detect discord in their harmonies. The breeze coming in the window was pleasant, soft with summer scents, and he was jerked back to his surroundings when Robinton's hand gripped his shoulder.

  «You've done very well, lad, but you'd better get back to Ruatha now. You're half asleep. That time jump took more out of you than I think you realize.»

  As Master Robinton accompanied Jaxom to the courtyard, he had him rehearse the conversation with the fire lizards just once more. This time the Harper nodded his head sharply at each point as if to insure accurate recall.

  «That you found D'ram and Tiroth safe, Jaxom, is the least of this affair, I think. I knew I was right to involve you and Ruth. Don't be surprised if you hear more from me on this business, with Lytol's permission, of course.»

  With a final affectionate grip of his arm, Robinton stepped back to let Jaxom mount Ruth, the fire lizards shrilling their disappointment at the end of their friend's visit. As Ruth obediently climbed higher, Jaxom waved a cheery farewell to the diminishing figure of the Master Harper. Then Jaxom looked down toward the river for Menolly and Sebell. He was annoyed with himself, at the same time, for wanting to know where they were and further irritated, because, when he did spot them, the intimacy of their attitude proved that they enjoyed a relationship of which he had been totally unaware.

  He did not go straight back to Ruatha Hold. Lytol would not be expecting him at any particular hour. As he also saw no fire lizards abroad to betray his delinquency, he asked Ruth to take him to the Plateau Hold. At Ruth's cheerful compliance, he wondered if the white dragon knew his mind better than he did himself.

  Now, it was close to midday in western Pern, and Jaxom wondered how he was going to attract Corana's attention without every dependent in the hold knowing of his visit. His need of her was great enough to make him irritable.

  She comes, Ruth said, dipping his wing so that Jaxom could see the girl emerging from the hold, walking in the direction of the river, a basket balanced on one shoulder.

  What could have been more fortuitous! He told Ruth to take them to the river edge where the women of her hold generally did their washing.

  The stream is not very deep, Ruth said casually, but there is a large rock in the sun where I can be comfortable and warm. And before Jaxom could answer, he began to glide down to the river, past the rapid boiling waters flowing across treacherously strewn boulders, to the calm pool and the flat stone outcropping. Angling himself neatly so as not to foul his wings in the branches of the heavy shade trees that bordered the river, Ruth landed lightly on the biggest rock. She comes, he repeated, ducking his shoulder so that Jaxom could dismount.

  Suddenly Jaxom was assailed by a conflict of desires and doubts. Mirrim's angry remarks resounded in his head. Ruth was indeed well beyond the usual age of mating and yet…

  She comes and she is good for you. If she is good for you, it is good for me, Ruth said. She makes you feel happy and relaxed and that is good. The sun here makes me warm and happy, too. Go.

  Startled by the strength of his weyrmate's tone, Jaxom stared up at Ruth's face. The eyes were whirling gently, with the blues and greens of a contentment at odds with the force of his voice.

  Then Corana reached the last loop in the path to the river's edge and saw him. She dropped her basket, spilling the linen, and ran, embracing him so fiercely, kissing his face and neck with such uninhibited delight, that he was soon too involved to think.

  Together they moved toward the soft moss that carpeted the ground beyond the stones, out of sight of the river bank, out of Ruth's actual vision. Corana was as willing and eager as he was to satisfy desires thwarted on his previous visit to the hold. As his hands touched her soft flesh and he felt her body press against his, he wondered briefly if she'd have been as willing a lover had he not been Ruatha's Lord. But he didn't care! He was her lover now! He gave himself to that pursuit with no further reservation. At the precise moment of his release, exquisite to the point of pain, he was aware of a gentle touch and knew, with a sense of relief that enhanced his own, that Ruth was joined to him then, as always.

  CHAPTER XII

  Ruatha Hold, Fidello's Hold, Threadfall, 15.7.6

  KEEPING A SECRET from one's dragon was not easy. About the only safe time for Jaxom to think of anything he didn't wish Ruth to perceive was very late at night when his friend was sound asleep, or in the morning if Jaxom happened to wake before Ruth. He had seldom needed to shield his thought from Ruth, which further complicated and inhibited the process. Then, too, the pace of Jaxom's life the now boring training with the weyrling wing, helping Lytol and Brand to gear up the Hold to full summer activity, not to mention excursions to the Plateau Hold caused Jaxom to fall asleep as soon as he pulled his bed furs about his shoulders. Mornings, he was often dragged out of his bed by Tordril or another fosterling just in time to keep appointments.

  Nevertheless, the problem of Ruth's maturity cropped up in Jaxom's mind at inconvenient times during his waking hours and had to be rigidly suppressed before a hint of his anxiety reached his dragon.

  Twice at Fort Weyr, to intensify the problem, a proddy green had taken off on a flight, pursued by such browns and blues as felt able to rise to her. The first time, Jaxom was in the middle of drill sequence and only happened to notice the flight above and beyond the weyrlings' wing. His attention was abruptly diverted from them as a most unconcerned Ruth continued in the wing's maneuver. Jaxom had to grab at the fighting straps to remain in place.

  The second time, Jaxom and Ruth were aground when the mating shrieks of a green blooding her kill startled the Weyr. The other weyrlings were immature enough to be disinterested but the weyrlingmaster looked in Jaxom's direction for a long moment. All at once, Jaxom realized that K'nebel was apparently wondering if Jaxom and Ruth were going to join those waiting for the green to launch herself.

  Jaxom was assailed by such a gamut of emotions anxiety, shame, expectation, reluctance, and pure terror that Ruth reared, wings wide, in alarm.

  What has upset you? Ruth demanded, settling t
o the ground and curving his neck about to regard his rider, his eyes whirling in quick response to Jaxom's emotions.

  «I'm all right. I'm all right,» Jaxom said hastily, stroking Ruth's head, desperately wanting to ask if Ruth felt at all like flying the green and hoping in a muted whisper deep inside him that Ruth did not!

  With a challenging snarl, the green dragon was airborne, the blues and browns after her while she repeated her taunting challenge. Quicker, lighter than any of her prospective mates, her facility strengthened by her sexual readiness, she achieved a conspicuous distance before the first male had become airborne. Then they were all after her. On the killing ground, their riders closed into a knot about the green's rider. All too quickly, challenger and pursuers dwindled to specks in the sky. The riders half ran, half stumbled to the Lower Caverns and the chamber reserved there.

  Jaxom had never witnessed a mating flight of dragons. He swallowed, trying to moisten his dry throat. He felt heart and blood thudding and a tension that he usually experienced only as he held Corana's slender body against him. He suddenly wondered which dragon had flown Mirrim's Path, which rider had…The touch on his shoulder made him Jump and cry out.

  «Well, if Ruth isn't ready to fly, you certainly are, Jaxom,» K'nebel said. The weyrlingmaster glanced up at far distant specks in the sky. «Even a green's mating can be unsettling.» K'nebel's expression was understanding. He nodded at Ruth. «He wasn't interested? No, well, give him time! You'd better be off. Drill was all but over today, anyhow. I've just got to keep these younger ones occupied someplace else when that green gets caught.»

  Then Jaxom realized that the rest of the wing had dispersed. With a second encouraging clap on Jaxom's back, K'nebel walked off toward his bronze, agilely mounting and urging the beast up toward their weyr.

  Jaxom thought of the skyborne beasts. Unwillingly he thought of their riders in the inner room, linked to their dragons in an emotional struggle that was resolved in a strengthening and fusing of the links between dragons and riders. Jaxom thought of Mirrim. And of Corana.

  With a groan, he sprang on Ruth's neck, fleeing the emotional atmosphere of Fort Weyr, trying to flee from his sudden realization of what he had probably always known about riders but had only this very morning assimilated.

  He had intended to go to the lake to immerse himself in the cold waters and let that icy shock cure his body and chill the torment in his mind. But Ruth took him instead to the Plateau Hold.

  «Ruth! The lake. Take me to the lake!»

  It is better for you to be here right now, was Ruth's astonishing reply. The fire lizard says the girl is in the upper field. Once again Ruth seized the initiative, gliding toward the field where young grain waved, brilliantly green in the noonday sun, where Corana was diligently hoeing away the tenacious creeper vine that grew from the borders of the field and threatened to strangle the crop.

  Ruth achieved a landing on the narrow margin between grain and wall. Corana, recovering from surprise at his unexpected arrival, waved a welcome. Instead of rushing toward him as she usually did, she smoothed back her hair and blotted the perspiration beading her face.

  «Jaxom,» she began as he strode toward her, the urgency in his loins increasing at the sight of her, «I wish you wouldn't «

  He silenced her half teasing scold with a kiss, felt something hard clout him along his side. Pinning her against him with his right arm, he found the offending hoe with his left hand. Wrenching it from her grasp, he spun it away from them. Corana wriggled to get free, as unprepared for this mood in him as he was. He held her closer, trying to temper the pressures rising within him until she could respond. She smelled of the earth and her own sweat. Her hair, covering his face as he kissed her throat and breast, also smelled of sun and sweat, and the odors excited him further. Somewhere in the back of his mind was a green dragon, shrieking her defiance. Somewhere, too close to his need, was that vision of dragonriders in an inner room, waiting, with an excitement that matched his own, waiting until the green dragon had been captured by the fastest, the strongest or the smartest of her pursuers. But it was Corana he was holding in his arms, and Corana who was beginning to respond to his need. They were on the warm ground, the dampness of earth she had just hoed soft under his elbows and knees. The sun was warm on his buttocks as he tried to erase the memory of those riders half stumbling toward the inner room, and the mocking taunt of a green dragon in flight. He did not resist or deny Ruth's familiar beloved touch as his orgasm released the turmoil of body and mind.

  Jaxom could not bring himself to go to weyrling practice the next morning. Lytol and Brand were out early, riding to a distant holding with the fosterlings so no one questioned his presence. When he left the Hold in the afternoon, he firmly directed Ruth to the lake and scrubbed and scrubbed his dragon until Ruth meekly asked what was the matter.

  «I love you, Ruth. You are mine. I love you,» Jaxom said, wanting with all his heart to be able to add, with his former blithe confidence, that he would do anything in the world for his friend. «I love you!» he repeated through gritted teeth and dove from Ruth's back as deeply as he could into the ice cold waters of the lake.

  Perhaps I am hungry, Ruth said as Jaxom fought the pressure of water and airlessness in his lungs.

  That could certainly provide a diversion, Jaxom thought as he erupted to the surface, gasping for breath. «There's a hold in South Ruatha where there're wherries fattening.»

  That would do very nicely.

  Jaxom dried himself quickly, shrugged into his clothes and boots, absently coiling the damp bath sheet over his shoulders as he mounted Ruth and directed him up and between to the Southern Holding. He realized his foolishness the moment the deathly chill of between compounded the dampness about his neck. He'd surely contract a distressingly uncomfortable head cold from such stupidity.

  Ruth hunted with his usual dispatch. Fire lizards, local by their band colors, arrived, apparently invited by the white dragon to share the feast. Jaxom watched, freer to think while Ruth was totally involved with hunting and eating. Jaxom was not pleased with himself. He was thoroughly disgusted and revolted by the way he had used Corana. The fact that she seemed to have matched what he had to admit was a violent lust dismayed him. Their relationship, once innocent pleasure, had somehow been sullied. He wasn't at all certain that he cared to continue as her lover, an attitude that posed another unpleasant burden of guilt. One point in his favor, he had helped her finish the hoeing his importunity had interrupted. That way she'd not be in trouble with Fidello for shorting her task. The young grain was important. But he ought not to have taken Corana like that. Doing so was inexcusable.

  She liked it very much. Ruth's thought touched him so unexpectedly that Jaxom jerked straight.

  «How could you possibly know?»

  When you are with Corana, her emotions are also very strong and just like yours. So I can feel her, too. Only at that time. Otherwise I do not hear her. Acceptance rather than regret colored Ruth's tone. Almost as if he were relieved that the contact was limited.

  Ruth was padding up from the field as he spoke, having disposed of two fat wherries without leaving much for the fire lizards to pick over. Jaxom regarded his friend, the whirl of the jeweled eyes slowing as the red of hunger paled into dark violet and then the blue of contentment.

  «Do you like what you hear? Our lovemaking?»

  Jaxom asked, abruptly deciding to air his concern.

  Yes. You enjoy it so much. It is good for you. I like it to be good for you.

  Jaxom jumped to his feet, consumed by frustration and guilt. «But don't you want it for yourself? Why are you always worried about me? Why didn't you go fly that green?»

  Why does that worry you? Why should I fly the green?

  «Because you're a dragon.»

  I am a white dragon. Blues and browns, and occasionally a bronze, fly greens.

  «You could have flown her. You could have flown her, Ruth!»

  I did not wish to.
You are upset again. I have upset you. Ruth extended his neck, his nose gently touching Jaxom's face in apology.

  Jaxom threw his arms about Ruth's neck, burrowing his forehead against the smooth, spicy smelling hide, concentrating on how very much he loved his Ruth, his most unusual Ruth, the only white dragon on all Pern.

  Yes, I am the only white dragon there has ever been on Pern, Ruth said encouragingly, moving his body so that he could gather Jaxom closer within the circle of his foreleg. I am the white dragon. You are my rider. We are together.

  «Yes,» Jaxom said, wearily admitting defeat, «we are together.»

  A chill shook Jaxom and he sneezed. Shells, if he was heard sneezing about the Hold, he'd be subjected to some of those noxious medicines Deelan foisted on everyone. He closed his jacket, folded the now dry bathing sheet about his neck and chest and mounting Ruth, suggested that they get back to the Hold as fast as possible.

  He escaped the dosing only because he kept out of Deelan's way by staying in his own quarters. He announced that he was occupied in a task for Robinton and did not care to interrupt it for the evening meal. He hoped that his sneezing would abate by evening. Lytol would be sure to visit him, which reminded Jaxom that if he didn't have something to show for his afternoon's occupation Lytol might be difficult. Actually, Jaxom had wanted to set down his observations about that beautiful cove, with the cone of the huge mountain center so neatly in its curve. Using the soft carbon stick that Master Bendarek had developed to use on his paper leaves, Jaxom became absorbed in the project. Much easier to work with these tools, he thought, than with sandtable. Errors, since his memory of the cove did not appear to be that precise, could be rubbed out with a blob of softwood tree sap as long as he was careful not to abrade the leaf's surface too much.

  He had achieved a respectable map of D'ram's cove when a knock on the door broke his concentration. He sniffed mightily before calling permission to enter.