“I am Lessa, daughter of the Lord of Ruath,” she countered, stung. She drew herself erect. Her eyes flashed. “I am afraid of nothing!”
F’lar contented himself with a slight smile.
Mnementh, however, threw up his head, and stretched out his sinuous neck to its whole length. His full-throated peal rang out down the valley. The bronze dragon communicated his awareness to F’lar that Lessa had accepted the challenge. The other dragons answered back, their warbles shriller than Mnementh’s bellow. The watch-wher which had cowered at the end of its chain lifted its voice in a thin, unnerving screech until the Hold emptied of its startled occupants.
“F’nor,” the bronze rider called, waving his wingleader to him. “Leave half the flight to guard the Hold. Some nearby lord might think to emulate Fax’s example. Send one rider to the High Reaches with the glad news. You go directly to the Cloth Hall and speak to L’tol…Lytol.” F’lar grinned. “I think he would make an exemplary Warder and Lord Surrogate for this Hold in the name of the Weyr and the babe.”
The brown rider’s face expressed enthusiasm for his mission as he began to comprehend his leader’s intentions. With Fax dead and Ruatha under the protection of dragonmen, particularly that same one who had dispatched Fax, the Hold would have wise management.
“She caused Ruatha’s deterioration?” he asked.
“And nearly ours with her machinations,” F’lar replied but having found the admirable object of his Search, he could not be magnanimous. “Suppress your exultation, brother,” he advised quickly as he took note of F’nor’s expression. “The new queen must also be Impressed.”
“I’ll settle arrangements here. Lytol is an excellent choice,” F’nor said.
“Who is this Lytol?” demanded Lessa pointedly. She had twisted the mass of filthy hair back from her face. In the moonlight the dirt was less noticeable. F’lar caught F’nor looking at her with an all too easily read expression. He signaled F’nor, with a peremptory gesture, to carry out his orders without delay.
“Lytol is a dragonless man,” F’lar told the girl, “no friend to Fax. He will ward the Hold well and it will prosper.” He added persuasively with a quelling stare full on her, “Won’t it?”
She regarded him somberly, without answering, until he chuckled softly at her discomfiture.
“We’ll return to the Weyr,” he announced, proffering a hand to guide her to Mnementh’s side.
The bronze one had extended his head toward the watch-wher who now lay panting on the ground, its chain limp in the dust.
“Oh,” Lessa sighed, and dropped beside the grotesque beast. It raised its head slowly, lurring piteously.
“Mnementh says it is very old and soon will sleep itself to death.”
Lessa cradled the bestial head in her arms, scratching it behind the ears.
“Come, Lessa of Pern,” F’lar said, impatient to be up and away.
She rose slowly but obediently. “It saved me. It knew me.”
“It knows it did well,” F’lar assured her, brusquely, wondering at such an uncharacteristic show of sentiment in her.
He took her hand again, to help her to her feet and lead her back to Mnementh. As they turned, he glimpsed the watch-wher, launching itself at a dead run after Lessa. The chain, however, held fast. The beast’s neck broke, with a sickening audible snap.
Lessa was on her knees in an instant, cradling the repulsive head in her arms.
“Why, you foolish thing, why?” she asked in a stunned whisper as the light in the beast’s green-gold eyes dimmed and died out.
Mnementh informed F’lar that the creature had lived this long only to preserve the Ruathan line. At Lessa’s imminent departure, it had welcomed death.
A convulsive shudder went through Lessa’s slim body. F’lar watched as she undid the heavy buckle that fastened the metal collar about the watch-wher’s neck. She threw the tether away with a violent motion. Tenderly she laid the watch-wher on the cobbles. With one last caress to the clipped wings, she rose in a fluid movement and walked resolutely to Mnementh without a single backward glance. She stepped calmly to the dragon’s raised leg and seated herself, as F’lar directed, on the great neck.
F’lar glanced around the courtyard at the remainder of his wing which had reformed there. The Hold folk had retreated back into the safety of the Great Hall. When his wingmen were all astride, he vaulted to Mnementh’s neck, behind the girl.
“Hold tightly to my arms,” he ordered her as he took hold of the smallest neck ridge and gave the command to fly.
Her fingers closed spasmodically around his forearm as the great bronze dragon took off, the enormous wings working to achieve height from the vertical takeoff. Mnementh preferred to fall into flight from a cliff or tower. Like all dragons, he tended to indolence. F’lar glanced behind him, saw the other dragonmen form the flight line, spread out to cover those still on guard at Ruatha Hold.
When they had reached a sufficient altitude, he told Mnementh to transfer, going between to the Weyr.
Only a gasp indicated the girl’s astonishment as they hung between. Accustomed as he was to the sting of the profound cold, to the awesome utter lack of light and sound, F’lar still found the sensations unnerving. Yet the uncommon transfer spanned no more time than it took to cough thrice.
Mnementh rumbled approval of this candidate’s calm reaction as they flicked out of the eerie between.
And then they were above the Weyr, Mnementh setting his wings to glide in the bright daylight, half a world away from night-time Ruatha.
As they circled above the great stony trough of the Weyr, F’lar peered at Lessa’s face, pleased with the delight mirrored there; she showed no trace of fear as they hung a thousand lengths above the high Benden mountain range. Then, as the seven dragons roared their incoming cry, an incredulous smile lit her face.
The other wingmen dropped into a wide spiral, down, down while Mnementh elected to descend in lazy circles. The dragonmen peeled off smartly and dropped, each to his own tier in the caves of the Weyr. Mnementh finally completed his leisurely approach to their quarters, whistling shrilly to himself as he braked his forward speed with a twist of his wings, dropping lightly at last to the ledge. He crouched as F’lar swung the girl to the rough rock, scored from thousands of clawed landings.
“This leads only to our quarters,” he told her as they entered the corridor, vaulted and wide for the easy passage of great bronze dragons.
As they reached the huge natural cavern that had been his since Mnementh achieved maturity, F’lar looked about him with eyes fresh from his first prolonged absence from the Weyr. The huge chamber was unquestionably big, certainly larger than most of the halls he had visited in Fax’s procession. Those halls were intended as gathering places for men, not the habitations of dragons. But suddenly he saw his own quarters were nearly as shabby as all Ruatha. Benden was, of a certainty, one of the oldest dragon weyrs, as Ruatha was one of the oldest Holds, but that excused nothing. How many dragons had bedded in that hollow to make solid rock conform to dragon proportions! How many feet had worn the path past the dragon’s weyr into the sleeping chamber, to the bathing room beyond where the natural warm spring provided ever-fresh water! But the wall hangings were faded and unraveling and there were grease stains on lintel and floor that should be sanded away.
He noticed the wary expression on Lessa’s face as he paused in the sleeping room.
“I must feed Mnementh immediately. So you may bathe first,” he said, rummaging in a chest and finding clean clothes for her, discards of other previous occupants of his quarters, but far more presentable than her present covering. He carefully laid back in the chest the white wool robe that was traditional Impression garb. She would wear that later. He tossed several garments at her feet and a bag of sweetsand, gesturing to the hanging that obscured the way to the bath.
He left her, then, the clothes in a heap at her feet, for she made no effort to catch anything.
Mnem
enth informed him that F’nor was feeding Canth and that he, Mnementh, was hungry, too. She didn’t trust F’lar but she wasn’t afraid of himself.
“Why should she be afraid of you?” F’lar asked. “You’re cousin to the watch-wher who was her only friend.”
Mnementh informed F’lar that he, a fully matured bronze dragon, was no relation to any scrawny, crawling, chained, and wing-clipped watch-wher.
F’lar, pleased at having been able to tease the bronze one, chuckled to himself. With great dignity, Mnementh curved down to the feeding ground.
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 was the 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 inferred something greater, some special rank. 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 a bully like Fax.
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 a while, 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.
To be clean! To be completely clean and to be able to stay that way. With distaste, she stripped off the remains of the rags, kicking them to one side. She made a soft mud with the sweetsand and scrubbed her entire body until she drew blood from various half-healed cuts. Then she jumped into the pool, gasping as the warm water made the sweetsand foam in the lacerations.
It was a ritual cleansing of more than surface soil. The luxury of cleanliness was ecstasy.
Finally satisfied she was as clean as one long soaking could make her, she left the pool, reluctantly. Wringing out her hair she tucked 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 her roughened hands. She pulled it over her head. It was loose but the darker-green over-tunic had a sash which 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. She smiled. 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. Vexed, she rummaged on the shelves until she found, as she had hoped to, a coarse-toothed metal comb.
Dry, her hair had a life of its own suddenly, 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 unmated, 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 cheek-bones 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 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 accord with 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.
She controlled the desire to run away—the irrational fear. 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 artifice to preserve herself; 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. The tableau was 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 turned slowly, as if loath to leave the bronze beast. He caught sight of her and pivoted completely round, 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. 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, curious and slightly surprised.
“You wash up…pretty, yes, almost pretty,” he said, amused condescension in his voice. She pu
lled roughly away from him, piqued. His low laugh mocked her. “After all, how could one guess what was under the grime of…ten full Turns?”
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 fighting your battle.”
He pushed aside a portion of the drape 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 drape-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. She took the things he handed her numbly.
“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.
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