Dragonseye

by Anne McCaffrey

  The noise of a Hatching, K’vin thought, was unique. Fortunately, because human eardrums were not designed to deal with such decibels and cacophony, it didn’t last too long. He always felt slightly deafened—certainly ear sore—by the end of a Hatching.

  He was suddenly aware of another sort of babble and fuss going on just outside the Hatching Ground. K’vin tried to see what was happening, but noting T’dam striding over to investigate, he turned his attention back to the pairing of the last few Hatchings, two browns and the last green. Two lads were homing on the green, desperate expressions on their faces. Abruptly the green turned from them and resolutely charged across the sands to the girl who had just entered. K’vin gave a double take. There were only five girls, weren’t there? Not that he wasn’t glad to see another. And she was the one the green wanted, for the hatchling pushed aside the boy who tried to divert her.

  Then three men strode into the Ground, furious expressions on their faces, with T’dam trying to intercept their angry progress toward the lately impressed green pair.

  “Debera!” yelled the first man, reaching out and snatching her away from the green dragonet.

  That was his first mistake, K’vin thought, running across sands to avert catastrophe. Damn it all. Why did this marvelous moment have to be interrupted so abruptly? Hatchings should be sacrosanct.

  Before K’vin could get there, the green reacted to the man’s attempt to separate her from her chosen one. She reared, despite being not altogether sure of her balance on wobbly hindquarters. Extending her short forearms with claws unsheathed, she lunged at the man.

  K’vin had one look at the shock on his face, the fear on the girl’s, before the dragon had the man down and was trying to open her jaws wide enough to fit around his head.

  T’dam, being nearer, plunged to the rescue. The girl, Debera, was also trying to detach her dragonet from her father, for that’s what she was calling him.

  “Father! Father! Leave him alone, Morath. He can’t touch me now, I’m a dragonrider. Morath, do you hear me?”

  Except that K’vin was very anxious that Morath might have already injured the man, he was close to laughing at this Debera’s tone of authority. The girl had instinctively adopted the right attitude with her newly hatched charge. No wonder she’d been Searched . . . and at some hold evidently not too far away.

  K’vin assisted Debera while T’dam pulled the fallen man out of the dragon’s reach. Then his companions hauled him even farther away while Morath continued to squeal, and writhed to resume her attack.

  He would hurt you. He would own you. You are mine and I am yours and no one comes between us, Morath was saying so ferociously that every rider heard her.

  Zulaya joined the group and, bending to check the father’s injuries, called for the medics who were dealing with the minor lacerations that generally occurred at this time. Fortunately, Morath had no fangs yet, and although there were raw weals on the man’s face and his chest had been badly scratched by unsheathed claws—despite their newness—he had been somewhat protected by the leather jerkin he wore.

  By now most of the newly hatched were out of the Grounds, being fed their first meal by their new life companions. The spectators, beginning to descend from the amphitheater’s levels, managed to get a peek at the injured man. Undoubtedly they would recount the incident at every opportunity. K’vin hoped the embellishments would stay within reason. Now he had to deal with the facts.

  “So, perhaps you would tell us what this is all about?” he asked Debera who, confronted by the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman, was suddenly overcome with remorse and doubt.

  “I was Searched,” she said, urgently stroking Morath, who was trying to burrow her head into the girl’s body. “I had the right to come. I wanted to come,” and then she waved an indignant hand at her prostrate father, “and they didn’t even show me the letter telling me to come. He wants me for a union because he had a deal with Boris for a mining site and with Ganmar for taking me on. I don’t want Ganmar, and I don’t know anything about mining. I was Searched and I have the right to decide.” The indignant words rushed out, accompanied by expressions of distaste, resentment, and anger.

  “Yes, I remember seeing your name on the Search list, Debera,” Zulaya said, ranging herself beside the girl in .a subtle position of support. The alignment was not lost on the older of the two men attending their fallen friend. “You are Boris?’ she asked him. “So you must be Ganmar,” she said, addressing the younger one. “Did you not realize that Debera had been Searched?”

  Ganmar looked very uncomfortable and dropped his eyes, while the scowl on Boris’s face deepened and he jutted his jaw out obstinately.

  “Lavel told me she’d refused.”

  At that point Maranis, the Weyr’s medic, arrived to have a look at the wounded man. When he had, he sent a helper for litter bearers. Then he began to deal with the injuries, pulling back the tattered jerkin, provoking a groan from the dazed man.

  “Well, Boris,” Zulaya said at her sternest. “As you seem to be aware, Debera does have the right . . .”

  “That’s what you Weyrfolk always say. But it’s us who suffer from what you call ‘right.’ ”

  “Making more trouble, Boris?” asked Tashvi, arriving just then with Salda.

  “You agreed, Tashvi,” Boris said with little courtesy for his Lord Holder. “You said we could dig that new mine. You were glad to have me and my son here start. And Lavel was willing for Ganmar to have his daughter . . .”

  “Ah, but the daughter seems not to have been so willing,” Lady Salda remarked.

  “She was willing, all right, wasn’t you, Deb?” Boris said, staring with angry accusation at the girl, who returned his look by lifting her chin proudly. “Till they came from the Weyr on Search . . .”

  “Search has the priority,” Tashvi said. “You know that, Boris.”

  “We had it all arranged,” the father said, speaking up now that his pain had been alleviated by the numbweed

  Maranis had slathered on his wounds. “We had it arranged!” And the look he gave his daughter was trenchant with angry, bitter reproach.

  “You had it all arranged,” Debera said, equally bitter, “between yourselves but not with me, even before the Search.” A wistful moan from Morath interrupted her angry rebuttal. “She’s hungry. I have to feed her. Come along now,” she added in a far more loving tone. Without a backward glance, she led her green dragon out of the Hatching Ground.

  “I’d say that the matter was certainly not well arranged, then,” Tashvi said.

  “But it was,” Lavel said, jabbing one fist at the dragonriders, “until they came ’round, putting ideas in her head when she was a good, hardworking girl who always did as she was told. Then you riders tell her she’s fit for dragons. Fit! I know what you riders get up to, and Debera’s a good girl. She’s not like you lot—”

  “That’s quite enough of such talk,” Zulaya said, drawing herself up, insulted.

  “Indeed it is,” Tashvi said, scowling angrily. “The Weyrwoman will realize that you’re not yourself, wounded as you are . . .”

  “Wounds got nothing to do with my righteous anger, Lord Holder. I know what I know, and I know we had it all arranged and you should stick up for your holders, not these Weyrfolk and all their queer customs and doings, and I dunno what’ll happen to my daughter.” At that point he began to weep, more in frustrated anger than from the pain of the now well-anesthetized injuries. “She was a good girl until they come. A good biddable girl!”

  Tashvi gestured peremptorily to the two litter men to take the man out. Then he turned back to the Weyrleaders.

  “I did approve the new mine, and Boris and Ganmar as owners, but I’d no idea that Lavel was in any way involved. He’s a troublemaker from way back,” Tashvi said, absently shifting his feet on the hot sands.

  Zulaya gestured for them all to leave the Hatching Ground. Despite the extra lining she’d put in her boots this morning, she was uncomfo
rtable standing there, and Tashvi was wearing light pull-ons.

  “And it’s not that he doesn’t have other daughters,” Salda said, taking her husband’s arm to speed up his progress. “He’s got upward of a dozen children and had two wives already. At the rate he’s been making these arrangements of his, he’ll have himself sufficient land among his relatives to start his own hold. Not that anyone in their right mind would want him as a Lord Holder.”

  They paused outside the Ground now. Adroitly, Zulaya and K’vin chose a position so that they could also keep a weather eye on the newly hatched who, with the help of their riders, were rapidly devouring the piles of cut meat prepared for their initial feeding.

  Debera’s situation was unusual. Most families were glad enough to have a child chosen on Search, because of the advantages of having a dragonrider in the family: the combination of the prestige accrued to the Bloodline as well as the availability of transport.

  Listening to the vitriol in Lavel’s criticism of Weyr life upset both Weyrleaders and Lord Holders. It was true that certain customs and habits had been developed in the Weyrs to suit dragon needs, but promiscuity was certainly not encouraged. In fact, there was a very strictly observed code of conduct within the Weyr. There might not be formal union contracts, but no rider reneged on his word to a woman nor failed to make provision for any children of the pairing. And few Weyrbred children, reaching puberty, left the Weyr for the grandparental holds even if they failed to Impress.

  By now the festivities had started in the Main Cavern, with the instrumentalists playing a happy tune, one that reflected the triumph of a successful Hatching. Although the new riders were still feeding their dragons or settling them into the weyrling barracks, once the sated dragonets fell asleep, the new dragonmen and women would join their relatives.

  Zulaya wondered if she should remind Lavel that the female riders were housed separately from the males. He obviously had no idea at all how much care a new dragonet required from its human. Most days the weyrlings fell into bed too exhausted to do anything but sleep. And had to be rousted out of their bunks by the Weyrlingmaster when they failed to respond to their hungry dragons’ summonses.

  The young lad, Ganmar, sulked, looking decidedly uncomfortable in his present situation. Zulaya doubted that his heart was the least bit broken by this turn of events. Of course, if he had to work with that father of his building a new hold, maybe a pretty girl to bed at night would have been a major compensation.

  “What I should like to know,” Salda was saying, “is why Debera arrived here so late, on her own and you evidently in hot pursuit. You realize, of course,” and the stern expression in Salda’s eyes was one Zulaya knew well, “that we—Lord Tashvi and I—would not be at all pleased to find that Debera has been denied her holder rights.”

  “Holder?” Lavel snorted and then moaned as the injudicious movement caused him pain. “She’ll not be a holder now, will she? She’ll be lost to us forever, she will.”

  “And any chance of bagging her legal land allotment,” Salda said with mock remorse. Lavel growled and tried to turn away from the Lady Holder. “You’ve claimed more than most as it is. I trust Gisa is in good health? Or have you got yet another child on her? You’ll wear her out the same as you did Milla, you know. But I suppose there are women stupid enough to fall for your ever-increasing land masses. Sssh,” and Salda turned from him in disgust. “Get him out of my sight. He offends me. And sullies the spirit of this occasion.”

  “He’s not so wounded he can’t travel,” the medic said helpfully.

  “Travel?” Boris exclaimed, pretending dismay as he had glanced in the direction of the Lower Cavern, where the roasts were being served.

  “I could find him a place overnight,” Maranis began hesitantly.

  Just then four young Weyrfolk led up the visitors’ horses, which they had recaptured.

  “Ah, here are your mounts, Boris,” Zulaya said. “Let us not keep you from a safe journey home. You should easily make it home before dark. Maranis, give Lavel enough fellis juice to see him to his hold. Lads, help him mount. Come, K’vin, we’re overlong congratulating the happy parents.”

  She linked her right arm in K’vin’s and her left with Lady Salda and hauled them along across the Bowl.

  “A very good Hatching, I’d say,” she began, without a backward look at the three dismissed holders. “Nineteen greens, fifteen blues, eleven browns, and seven bronzes. Good distribution, too. Good size to the bronzes as well.

  I do believe every clutch produces dragons just slightly larger than the last.”

  “Dragons haven’t yet reached their design size,” K’vin said, answering her lead. “I doubt we’ll see that in our lifetime.”

  “Surely they’re big enough already?” Salda asked, her eyes wide.

  Zulaya laughed. “Larger by several hands than the first ones who fought Thread, which will make it all that much easier for us this time ’round.”

  “You know what to expect, too,” Tashvi said, nodding approval.

  Zulaya and K’vin exchanged brief glances. Hopefully what they could expect did not include unwelcome surprises.

  “Indeed we have the advantage of our ancestors in that,” K’vin said stoutly.

  Zulaya gave his arm a little squeeze before she released him and strode to the first table, where the families of two new brown riders were sitting. K’vin continued in with Salda and saw her and Tashvi settled at the head table, where he and Zulaya would join them after they’d done their obligatory rounds of the tables. Then, making a private bet with himself, he started at the opposite end of the wide cavern.

  By the fourth stop he had won his bet: news of the unusual Impression of the last green dragon was already circulating.

  “Is it true,” the holder mother of a bronze rider asked, “that that girl had to run away from her hold?” She, and the others at this table, were clearly appalled at such a circumstance.

  “She got here in time, that’s what’s important,” K’vin said, glossing over that query.

  “What if she hadn’t come?” asked one of the adolescents, her expression avid. “Would the dragon haveþ”

  She stopped abruptly, as if she’d been kicked under the table, K’vin thought, suppressing a grin.

  “Ah,” he said, bridging the brief pause, “but I’m sure you saw that other lads crowded ’round, ready and willing. The dragonet would have chosen one of them.”

  That was not exactly true. Which was why every Weyr had more than sufficient Candidates on the Ground during a Hatching. Early on, the records mentioned five occasions when a dragonet had not found a compatible personality. Its subsequent death had upset the Weyr to the point where every effort was then made to eliminate a second occurrence, including accepting the dragonet’s choice from among spectators.

  There were also cases where an egg did not hatch. In the early days, when the technology had still been available, necropsies had been performed to establish cause. In most of the recorded instances, there had been obvious yolk problems or the creature had been malformed and would not have survived Hatching. Three times, however, the cause of death could not be established, as the fetus had been perfect, with no apparent deficiency or disability. The message was handed down to dispose of such unhatched eggs between immediately: a duty performed on such rare occasions by the Weyrleader and his bronze.

  “I saw her ride up,” the girl said, delighted to recount this fact. “And then the men who tried to stop her.”

  “You must have had the best seat in the house,” K’vin said, grinning.

  The girl shot a vindictive glance around the table. “Yes, I did, didn’t I? I saw it all! Even when the dragonet tried to eat someone. Was that her father?”

  “Suze, now, that’s enough of that,” said her own father, and the older boy beside her must have pinched her for she shot straight up on the bench and glared at him.

  “Yes, it was her father,” K’vin said.

  “Did
n’t he know any better than to strike a dragon’s rider?” asked Suze’s father, shocked by such behavior.

  “I think he has perceived his error,” K’vin said dryly and caught Suze’s startled reaction. “What has your son”—and Charanth, as he always did, supplied the boy’s name so quickly that the pause was almost unnoticeable—“Thomas, decided on for a rider name?”

  “Well, I don’t think Thomas dared to hope,” his mother said, but her expression revealed both her pride in his modesty and her delight in his success.

  “He never liked being a Thomas,” Suze said, irrepressible. “He’ll pick a new name,” and she gave a snide sideways glance at her parents.

  “And here he is, if I don’t miss my guess,” K’vin said, gesturing toward the lad making his way across the cavern floor. K’vin had lectured the candidates on their responsibilities to their dragonets, so he was familiar with many of them. This Thomas, or whatever, bore a strong enough resemblance to both sister and brother to make him easily identifiable. He hoped that a facial resemblance was all Thomas shared with his sister. She was a spiteful one.

  “Well done, young man,” K’vin said, holding out his hand. “And how shall we style you now?”

  “S’mon, Weyrleader,” the new bronze rider said, still flushed with elation. He had a good firm handshake. “I considered T’om but I never liked the nickname.”

  “You said you’d—” Suze got yet another kick under the table for she yipped this time and tears started in her eyes.

  “It’s easier to say,” S’mon said. “Tiabeth likes it.” Now he showed the delightful confusion of pride and proprietariness so many brand-new weyrlings exhibited while accustoming themselves to their new condition and duties. As K’vin remembered so vividly, that took time. “And there was a T’mas in the first group at Benden.”