Dragonseye

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Which ones are Bitran Bloodline?” Paulin whispered to Vergerin.

  He pointed, and only then could Paulin pick the children out in the front rows: the girls on the one side and the boys on the other. They were much better clothed than the others but no less attentive to their teacher, and singing lustily: the older girl had the most piercing voice. Somewhat like her mother’s, Paulin thought.

  Vergerin motioned for them to withdraw, grinning.

  “Issony’s been right that those youngsters needed competition. The holder kids need no incentives: they want to learn, and Chaldon is determined not to let mere holders get better grades than he. Oh, there’s still whinings and pleadings and tantrums, but Issony has my permission to deal with them. And he does. Most effectively.”

  “Nadona?” Paulin asked.

  Vergerin raised his eyebrows. “She’s learning much the same lessons as her children, but she’s not as quick a study, as Issony would say. She has her own quarters,” and he inclined his head toward the upper levels. “She stays within.”

  “And leaves you to get along with the real work?” Paulin asked in a droll tone.

  “Exactly.”

  “Hmm, yes, well, that’s it here, I think,” Paulin said, and then made much of fastening his riding jacket to indicate his willingness to depart on the inspection tour. “Do you agree, Jamson?”

  Jamson harrumphed, but Paulin took the fact that he did not have questions as a good sign.

  When they left the house, men and women were busy putting on the flamethrower tanks.

  “I’ve scheduled a drill. Have to make up for lost time, you know,” Vergerin said by way of explanation. Jamson and S’nan exchanged such fatuous glances that Paulin did his best not to laugh out loud. Vergerin caught his eye and winked. Then bade a polite farewell to his guests before he returned to the groundcrew.

  “Well, he obviously learned a thing or two,” Jamson said in a sanctimonious tone as they went down the steps to the waiting bronze dragon.

  “Yes, it would seem he has,” S’nan said and then frowned slightly. “Although I cannot like him turning loose Chalkin’s gamesmen. They’ll cause trouble at Gathers, mark my words.”

  “No more than they’ve always done,” Paulin said, giving Jamson a discreet helping hand up Magrith’s tall shoulder. “Probably less without Chalkin exhorting them to squeeze more out of innocent and guileless holders.”

  “No gambling should be allowed for any reason in a Weyr,” S’nan said, as portentous as ever.

  Paulin mounted silently, hoping that these two would see sufficient in a quick swoop to reassure S’nan about Vergerin’s worth—and the wisdom of Chalkin’s impeachment. The brief visit had satisfied him. Especially the sight of Chalkin’s much improved portrait. He must send a message to Iantine at Telgar Weyr—Bridgely had said the artist returned there as soon as he was finished at Benden Hold—and inquire when he and his spouse could hope to have a sitting.

  Paulin was well pleased he had taken the trouble to accompany Jamson. He hoped Lady Thea would be able to tell him that Gallian was off the hot seat.

  “You are not saving the entire world from Threadfall by yourself, P’tero,” K’vin said, glaring up at the young blue rider. He was nearly beside himself with rage at P’tero’s utter disregard of common sense. “You are not going to impress M’leng. If this is how you see your role in Threadfall, I think you’ll be a long time on messenger duty.”

  “But, but—”

  “Furthermore,” and K’vin pointed a finger fiercely under the boy’s nose, “Maranis tells me that your wounds are not well enough healed for you to be back on duty.”

  “But . . . but . . .” and P’tero, eyes wide with fright, recoiled from his Weyrleader’s fury, clutching the neck ridge before he overbalanced. The pad that T’sen had given him now slipped, the ties torn loose sometime during the exercises. Blood spotted it.

  “Get down here,” K’vin roared, pointing to where he wanted P’tero: on the ground. “Right now.”

  P’tero obeyed, as promptly as he could, but he was stiff from sitting so long during the day’s maneuvers and from the barely healed flesh of his buttock.

  K’vin caught him by the shoulder and whirled him around.

  “Not only new blood, but old stains,” he said, his voice trenchant with scorn and fury. “You’re off duty . . .”

  “But . . . but . . . Thread’s nearly here!” P’tero cried in anguish, almost in tears with frustration and the fear of being unable to show M’leng just how brave he really was. Not mock-brave, like the lion attack, but real brave in selflessness in the air.

  “And Thread’ll be here for fifty years, young man. That’s plenty long enough for it to fear you and Ormonth in the air! Report to Maranis immediately. You’re grounded!”

  “But I have to be in the first Fall wings,” P’tero cried, anguished.

  “That wasn’t the way to get there. Get to Maranis!”

  K’vin didn’t wait to see if P’tero obeyed. He stormed across the Bowl, the temptation to shake sense into the blue rider so intense he had to put distance between them.

  Ormonth tried to keep him from flying today, Charanth informed his rider.

  K’vin halted, glaring up now at his bronze dragon, who was settling himself on his weyr ledge to get what sun remained.

  Then you’re as bad as the pair of them! K’vin had the satisfaction of seeing Charanth quail at his fury.

  From now on, you are to report to me—instantly—when any rider, or his dragon, is not one hundred percent fit for duty. Do you understand me?

  Charanth’s eyes whirled, the yellow of anxiety coloring the blue. His tone was remorseful.

  I will not fail you again.

  If they had been in real danger I would have warned them off Meranath said, entering the conversation.

  I didn’t ask you! K’vin was so irate he didn’t really care if he offended Meranath, or her rider. But he was not going to lose riders from foolish and vainglorious actions. There were fifty years of Thread fighting ahead of them, and he was not going to lose partners. Or risk their injuries due to some cockamamie notion of what comprises courageous actions.

  If you think that 1 would jeopardize a single rider . . .

  K’vin took the stairs up to the queen’s weyr three at a time, trying to work out his rage before he had to confront Zulaya and explain why he thought he could speak to her queen in such a peremptory fashion.

  I should be informed of ANY unfit rider or dragon, at any time, anywhere, Meranath, and you should know that or by the first egg, why are you senior queen?

  “Because I am her rider!” Zulaya came storming out onto the weyr ledge, her eyes sparkling with indignation. “How dare you address my queen?”

  “How dare she withhold information from me?”

  Zulaya stared at him, surprised, for K’vin had never reprimanded either her or Meranath, though she had to admit privately that he could have legitimately done so on several occasions she would be embarrassed to admit.

  “Did you know about P’tero’s condition?” he demanded, and she backed into the weyr, away from him. He was rather magnificent furious, eyes blazing, face stern, the epitome of indignation.

  “Tisha remarked that Maranis wasn’t pleased with him assuming duty. The scar tissue is thin . . .”

  “And you said nothing to me?”

  “He’s only a blue rider . . .”

  “EVERY ONE OF MY RIDERS IS IMPORTANT TO ME!” K’vin roared, clenching his fists at his sides because they wanted to grab something to release the pent-up fury in him. “Threadfall is two days away. I need to have a Weyr in full readiness. I need to be sure of everyone I ask to face Thread in two days time. I don’t need secrets or evasions or—”

  “K’vin,” Zulaya began, reaching a hand out to him, “Kev, it’s all right. The Weyr is ready—perhaps tuned a little too tight, but that’s all to the good . . .”

  “All to the good?” K’vin batted her ha
nd away. “When we have unfit riders taking positions they couldn’t possibly manage in their condition?”

  He began pacing now, and Zulaya watched him, smiling with relief and pride. He was going to be a splendid Weyrleader, much better than B’ner would have been.

  He halted, just short of where she stood, his eyes, brilliant with his anger and frustration, fixed on her face.

  “What on earth can you find to grin about right now?” he demanded, suspiciously, for there was a quality in her smile that he’d never seen before.

  “That you’re in full control,” she said, leaving her smile in place.

  “Oh, I am, am I?” Then, as she had always hoped he would, he took her in his arms and began kissing her with the full authority of his masculinity and his position as her Weyrleader, without a trace of hesitation or deference. Just what she’d always hoped she’d provoke him to.

  K’vin was still very much in complete control even very early the next morning, before dawn in fact, when Meranath told them that B’nurrin and Shanna were waiting for them.

  “Waiting for what?” K’vin asked, pulling himself reluctantly away from Zulaya to reach for his pants.

  It is time to go, Charanth added.

  “Go where?” K’vin asked in a querulous tone of voice.

  “Go where?” Zulaya asked sleepily.

  South, they say, Meranath and Charanth echoed.

  Suddenly K’vin remembered. Today was the day they would go see Thread. He said that very, very quietly in the back of his mind where Charanth might not hear it. Both dragons had been asleep when B’nurrin had made his visit. Which was just as well or the whole Weyr might have been privy to the notion of previewing Thread.

  “B’nurrin wants us to join him,” K’vin said, giving Zulaya a cautionary look.

  She frowned for a moment, then her face cleared abruptly as she said “Oh.” With a conspiratorial grin, she was out of the bed, trailing the sheet on her way to her riding gear.

  When they passed each other once in the course of dressing, she pulled his head down to her mouth. “I could bring my flamethrower . . .”

  “Might as well paint your destination on your forehead,” he murmured back. “We’re only going to watch.”

  “Yes, watch.” Then she asked more loudly, “Where do we meet B’nurrin, Meranath?”

  “We know that, too, remember?” K’vin said, grabbing Zulaya and giving her arm a little shake. Then he mouthed “Landing.”

  “Yes, how could I forget?”

  If the dragon and rider on watch on the rim wondered why the two Weyrleaders were slipping away long before dawn, neither asked, and the rider gave a cheery swing of his arm as they passed over him.

  Ianath says to count to three and then go, Charanth told his rider, still mystified.

  Landing is where we’re going, K’vin replied, glancing across the space between his dragon and Meranath. Zulaya showed him a thumb’s-up signal to signify she had had the same message. Visualizing the arid sweep of desolate volcanic ash from Mount Garben down to Monaco Bay, K’vin nodded his head three times.

  Go!

  Abruptly, Charanth rumbled deep in his belly while his mind said in surprised shock Oh! K’vin felt him shift. Consequently he was perhaps not as surprised as he might have been to realize that the airspace around them, and Meranath and Zulaya, was well occupied. With that extra sense dragons had, the two had averted a collision. In fact, as K’vin swiveled about to check, the only two Weyrleaders he didn’t see were S’nan and Sarai, although they might well have been among those who winked out of sight between so as not to be recognized. K’vin caught flashes of blue, brown, and even one or two green hides in the southern sun before they disappeared. Nor was this meeting composed now only of Weyrleaders and dragons: some thirty or so bronzes and browns were present.

  The sight was too much for K’vin’s sense of the ridiculous, and it was a good thing that he was clipped into his safety harness. He was seized of such a laughing fit that he reeled back and forth against Charanth’s neck ridges. Had every rider on Pern been possessed of the compulsion to come here this morning? Of course, the particular site of Landing was well known to all riders. But for so many to decide independently to come here . . . probably every one certain he or she’d be the only ones daring enough.

  Nor was K’vin the only one laughing hard. Right now he was more in danger of wetting his britches from mirth, not fright at seeing Thread for the first time. Which reminded him why he was here. Again that realization became universal. Laughter faded as every dragon and rider irresistibly turned northeastward.

  It was there, too, the much-described silvery gray haze on the upper levels of the blue sky. Not a dragon wing moved, not a rider recoiled as the silver stuff began to drop onto the sea. Thread! And so aptly called.

  Thread!

  The word seemed to rumble from dragon to dragon, and K’vin had to grab hold of the neck ridge as Charanth started to lurch toward what he had known all his life as his adversary.

  I have no firestone! How can I flame it! What is wrong? Why have you brought me here where there is Thread and I have no fire to char it!

  It’s all right, Charanth. We’re here to watch. To see.

  But it is Thread! I must chew to flame. Why may I not flame when there is THREAD!

  Glancing wildly around him, K’vin realized that he was by no means the only rider having the same difficulty with a frustratedly zealous dragon, rapidly trying to close the gap to Threadfall.

  I’ve seen enough, Charanth. Take us back to Telgar.

  But THREAD? And the bronze dragon’s tone was piteous, confused, and horrified.

  We leave. Now!

  Leave? But we have not met Thread.

  Not here or now or in this place, Charanth.

  It took K’vin every bit of willpower and moral strength, and Charanth’s faith in him, to overcome his bronze’s impassioned protest. Then, all of a sudden, Charanth stopped flying toward Thread.

  Oh, all right! The tone was that of a petulant child forced by a senior authority to follow orders totally against the grain.

  What?

  The queens say we must go to the Red Butte.

  Then let us go there. K’vin did not question the order, being far too glad that one was given that the dragon would obey.

  The Butte was a training landmark in lower Keroon, a laccolithic dome so difficult to mistake that it figured in all weyrling training programs. And there the would-be observers managed to get their dragons to land. Even the queens’ eyes were whirling at a stiff red-orange pace; some of the bronzes were so distraught with anger that their eyes pulsed wickedly, whirling at incredible speed in their anger. K’vin was almost relieved to swing down from Charanth’s neck. But he and the other Weyrleaders all kept one hand on their dragons’ legs, shoulders, muzzles: some contact was maintained. In a wide outer circle were the brown and bronze riders, who had also been “rescued”: they remained mounted, soothing their dragons, allowing their leaders the center for discussion.

  It was M’shall who spoke first. “Well, that was one good idea gone awry,” he said in a droll tone. “Great minds, all of us.”

  “Except for forgetting one simple rule,” Irene added, pulling off her flying cap. Her face was still pale from fright.

  K’vin glanced at Zulaya, who was wiping sweat from her face, so he knew none of the queen riders had had an easy time to get their queens to insist on the disengagement.

  “Dragons know what they’re supposed to do when Thread falls,” M’shall said, nodding. And then he started to laugh.

  K’vin grinned and, when he heard G’don’s bass chuckle, saw no reason any longer to hold his laughter in. B’nurrin was howling so, he had to clutch at K’vin to keep his balance. Even D’miel looked properly abashed, and Laura’s giggle was infectious enough to increase the volume. Beyond the inner circle the rest of the riders caught the joke on themselves and joined in the laugh. It was a good release from the fright
that they had all just had.

  “Did anyone happen to notice a Fort rider disappearing in guilty retreat?” M’shall asked when the laughter died down. He’d been checking the identity of those on the rim of this informal assembly.

  “They’d be the last to admit coming,” Irene said. “I doubt that, Renee,” G’don said. “S’nan runs a strict Weyr, it’s true, but I’ll wager there’re a few renegades among his wingleaders.”

  “I know there are,” Man said, blotting her eyes, which were still merry from laughter. “It’s just such a hoot that we all,” and she ringed them with a swirl of her hand, “thought to come have a peek.”

  “It’s not going to inhibit any of the dragons, is it?” Laura asked, turning pale at the sudden thought, “turning them off like that?”

  D’miel wasn’t the only Weyrleader to dismiss that notion derisively. “Hardly! It’s increased rider credibility a hundredfold. They now know without doubt that what we’ve been telling them since they were hatched is true!”

  “Oh, yes, it would, wouldn’t it?” she said, relieved.

  “I myself would like to thank the queen riders for exerting their powerful influence on our bronzes,” G’don said with a formal hand over his heart as he bowed to the five queen riders.

  “The advantage of having three very senior queens,” Zulaya said, “and two very strong-minded young women.”

  Laura blushed while Shanna stood even straighter.

  “All right, then,” M’shall said, having taken note that most of the male dragons’ eyes were resuming normal color and speed. He took a step toward the center of the sandy circle and cupped his hands, turning as he spoke. “All right, then, every one of you. This is a meeting that never happened and isn’t to be referred to in any Weyr for any reason. Do you understand me?” The response was loud and clear. He nodded and stepped back toward Craigath. “We’ll meet . . .” he said now to the other leaders, “where Thread first—officially—falls North.”

  “We’ve sweep riders out all the time,” G’don reminded them.