Dragonflight

by Anne McCaffrey

  No one will steal them, silly, so stop fluttering, Lessa advised as she tried to make a tally.

  Obediently Ramoth folded her wings. To relieve her maternal anxiety, however, she snaked her head out across the circle of mottled, glowing eggs, looking all around the cavern, flicking her forked tongue in and out.

  An immense sigh, like a gust of wind, swept through the cavern. For there, now that Ramoth’s wings were furled, gleamed an egg of glowing gold among the mottled ones. A queen egg!

  “A queen egg!” The cry went up simultaneously from half a hundred throats. The Hatching Ground rang with cheers, yells, screams, and howls of exultation.

  Someone seized Lessa and swung her around in an excess of feeling. A kiss landed in the vicinity of her mouth. No sooner did she recover her footing than she was hugged by someone else—she thought it was Manora—and then pounded and buffeted around in congratulation until she was reeling in a kind of dance between avoiding the celebrants and easing the growing discomfort of her feet.

  She broke from the milling revelers and ran across the Ground to Ramoth. Lessa came to a sudden stop before the eggs. They seemed to be pulsing. The shells looked flaccid. She could have sworn they were hard the day she Impressed Ramoth. She wanted to touch one, just to make sure, but dared not.

  You may, Ramoth assured her condescendingly. She touched Lessa’s shoulder gently with her tongue.

  The egg was soft to touch and Lessa drew her hand back quickly, afraid of doing injury.

  The heat will harden it, Ramoth said.

  “Ramoth, I’m so proud of you,” Lessa sighed, looking adoringly up at the great eyes that shone in rainbows of pride. “You are the most marvelous queen ever. I do believe you will redragon all the Weyrs. I do believe you will.”

  Ramoth inclined her head regally, then began to sway it from side to side over the eggs, protectingly. She began to hiss suddenly, raising from her crouch, beating the air with her wings, before settling back into the sands to lay yet another egg.

  The weyrfolk, uncomfortable on the hot sands, were beginning to leave the Hatching Ground now that they had paid tribute to the arrival of the golden egg. A queen took several days to complete her clutch so there was no point to waiting. Seven eggs already lay beside the important golden one, and if there were seven already, this augured well for the eventual total. Wagers were being made and taken even as Ramoth produced her ninth mottled egg.

  “Just as I predicted, a queen egg, by the mother of us all,” F’lar’s voice said in Lessa’s ear. “And I’ll wager there’ll be ten bronzes at least.”

  She looked up at him, completely in harmony with the Weyrleader at this moment. She was conscious now of Mnementh, crouching proudly on a ledge, gazing fondly at his mate. Impulsively Lessa laid her hand on F’lar’s arm.

  “F’lar, I do believe you.”

  “Only now?” F’lar teased her, but his smile was wide and his eyes proud.

  Weyrman, watch; Weyrman, learn

  Something new in every Turn.

  Oldest may be coldest, too.

  Sense the right; find the true!

  IF F’LAR’S ORDERS over the next months caused no end of discussion and muttering among the weyrfolk, they seemed to Lessa to be only the logical outcomes of their discussion after Ramoth had finished laying her gratifying total of forty-one eggs.

  F’lar discarded tradition right and left, treading on more than R’gul’s conservative toes.

  Out of perverse distaste for outworn doctrines against which she herself had chafed during R’gul’s leadership, and out of respect for F’lar’s intelligence, Lessa backed him completely. She might not have respected her earlier promise to him that she would believe with him until spring if she had not seen his predictions come true, one after another. These were based, however, not on the premonitions she no longer trusted after her experience between times, but on recorded facts.

  As soon as the eggshells hardened and Ramoth had rolled her special queen egg to one side of the mottled clutch for attentive brooding, F’lar brought the prospective riders into the Hatching Ground. Traditionally the candidates saw the eggs for the first time on the day of Impression. To this precedent F’lar added others: very few of the sixty-odd were weyrbred, and most of them were in their late teens. The candidates were to get used to the eggs, touch them, caress them, be comfortable with the notion that out of these eggs young dragons would hatch, eager and waiting to be Impressed. F’lar felt that such a practice might cut down on casualties during Impression when the boys were simply too scared to move out of the way of the awkward dragonets.

  F’lar also had Lessa persuade Ramoth to let Kylara near her precious golden egg. Kylara readily enough weaned her son and spent hours, with Lessa acting as her tutor, beside the golden egg. Despite Kylara’s loose attachment to T’bor, she showed an open preference for F’lar’s company. Therefore, Lessa took great pains to foster F’lar’s plan for Kylara since it meant her removal, with the new-hatched queen, to Fort Weyr.

  F’lar’s use of the Hold-born as riders served an additional purpose. Shortly before the actual Hatching and Impression, Lytol, the Warder appointed at Ruath Hold, sent another message.

  “The man positively delights in sending bad news,” Lessa remarked as F’lar passed the message skin to her.

  “He’s gloomy,” F’nor agreed. He had brought the message. “I feel sorry for that youngster cooped up with such a pessimist.”

  Lessa frowned at the brown rider. She still found distasteful any mention of Gemma’s son, now Lord of her ancestral Hold. Yet . . . as she had inadvertently caused his mother’s death and she could not be Weyrwoman and Lady Holder at the same time, it was fitting that Gemma’s Jaxom be Lord at Ruatha.

  “I, however,” F’lar said, “am grateful for his warnings. I suspected Meron would cause trouble again.”

  “He has shifty eyes, like Fax’s,” Lessa remarked.

  “Shifty-eyed or not, he’s dangerous,” F’lar answered. “And I cannot have him spreading rumors that we are deliberately choosing men of the Blood to weaken Family Lines.”

  “There are more craftsmen’s sons than Holders’ boys, in any case,” F’nor snorted.

  “I don’t like him questioning that the Threads have not appeared,” Lessa said gloomily.

  F’lar shrugged. “They’ll appear in due time. Be thankful the weather has continued cold. When the weather warms up and still no Threads appear, then I will worry.” He grinned at Lessa in an intimate reminder of her promise.

  F’nor cleared his throat hastily and looked away.

  “However,” the Weyrleader went on briskly, “I can do something about the other accusation.”

  So, when it was apparent that the eggs were about to hatch, he broke another long-standing tradition and sent riders to fetch the fathers of the young candidates from craft and Hold.

  The great Hatching Cavern gave the appearance of being almost full as Holder and Weyrfolk watched from the tiers above the heated Ground. This time, Lessa observed, there was no aura of fear. The youthful candidates were tense, yes, but not frightened out of their wits by the rocking, shattering eggs. When the ill-coordinated dragonets awkwardly stumbled—it seemed to Lessa that they deliberately looked around at the eager faces as though pre-Impressed—the youths either stepped to one side or eagerly advanced as a crooning dragonet made his choice. The Impressions were made quickly and with no accidents. All too soon, Lessa thought, the triumphant procession of stumbling dragons and proud new riders moved erratically out of the Hatching Ground to the barracks.

  The young queen burst from her shell and moved unerringly for Kylara, standing confidently on the hot sands. The watching beasts hummed their approval.

  “It was over too soon,” Lessa said in a disappointed voice that evening to F’lar.

  He laughed indulgently, allowing himself a rare evening of relaxation now that another step had gone as planned. The Holder folk had been ridden home, stunned, dazed, and themse
lves impressed by the Weyr and the Weyrleader.

  “That’s because you were watching this time,” he remarked, brushing a lock of her hair back. It obscured his view of her profile. He chuckled again. “You’ll notice Naton . . .”

  “N’ton,” she corrected him.

  “All right, N’ton—Impressed a bronze.”

  “Just as you predicted,” she said with some asperity.

  “And Kylara is Weyrwoman for Pridith.”

  Lessa did not comment on that, and she did her best to ignore his laughter.

  “I wonder which bronze will fly her,” he murmured softly.

  “It had better be T’bor’s Orth,” Lessa said, bridling.

  He answered her the only way a wise man could.

  Crack dust, blackdust,

  Turn in freezing air.

  Waste dust, spacedust,

  From Red Star bare.

  LESSA WOKE ABRUPTLY, her head aching, her eyes blurred, her mouth dry. She had the immediate memory of a terrible nightmare that, just as quickly, escaped recall. She brushed her hair out of her face and was surprised to find that she had been sweating heavily.

  “F’lar?” she called in an uncertain voice. He had evidently risen early. “F’lar,” she called again, louder.

  He’s coming, Mnementh informed her. Lessa sensed that the dragon was just landing on the ledge. She touched Ramoth and found that the queen, too, had been bothered by formless, frightening dreams. The dragon roused briefly and then fell back into deeper sleep.

  Disturbed by her vague fears, Lessa rose and dressed, forgoing a bath for the first time since she had arrived at the Weyr.

  She called down the shaft for breakfast, then plaited her hair with deft fingers as she waited.

  The tray appeared on the shaft platform just as F’lar entered. He kept looking back over his shoulder at Ramoth.

  “What’s gotten into her?”

  “Echoing my nightmare. I woke in a cold sweat.”

  “You were sleeping quietly enough when I left to assign patrols. You know, at the rate those dragonets are growing, they’re already capable of limited flight. All they do is eat and sleep, and that’s . . .”

  “. . . what makes a dragon grow,” Lessa finished for him and sipped thoughtfully at her steaming hot klah. “You are going to be extra-careful about their drill procedures, aren’t you?”

  “You mean to prevent an inadvertent flight between times? I certainly am,” he assured her. “I don’t want bored dragonriders irresponsibly popping in and out.” He gave her a long, stern look.

  “Well, it wasn’t my fault no one taught me to fly early enough,” she replied in the sweet tone she used when she was being especially malicious. “If I’d been drilled from the day of Impression to the day of my first flight, I’d never have discovered that trick.”

  “True enough,” he said solemnly.

  “You know, F’lar, if I discovered it, someone else must have, and someone else may. If they haven’t already.”

  F’lar drank, making a face as the klah scalded his tongue. “I don’t know how to find out discreetly. We would be foolish to think we were the first. It is, after all, an inherent ability in dragons, or you would never have been able to do it.”

  She frowned, took a quick breath, and then let it go, shrugging.

  “Go on,” he encouraged her.

  “Well, isn’t it possible that our conviction about the imminence of the Threads could stem from one of us coming back when the Threads are actually falling? I mean . . .”

  “My dear girl, we have both analyzed every stray thought and action—even your dream this morning upset you, although it was no doubt due to all the wine you drank last night—until we wouldn’t know an honest presentiment if it walked up and slapped us in the face.”

  “I can’t dismiss the thought that this between times ability is of crucial value,” she said emphatically.

  “That, my dear Weyrwoman, is an honest presentiment.”

  “But why?”

  “Not why,” he corrected her cryptically. “When.” An idea stirred vaguely in the back of his mind. He tried to nudge it out where he could mull it over. Mnementh announced that F’nor was entering the weyr.

  “What’s the matter with you?” F’lar demanded of his half brother, for F’nor was choking and sputtering, his face red with the paroxysm.

  “Dust . . .” he coughed, slapping at his sleeves and chest with his riding gloves. “Plenty of dust, but no Threads,” he said, describing a wide arc with one arm as he fluttered his fingers suggestively. He brushed his tight wher-hide pants, scowling as a fine black dust drifted off.

  F’lar felt every muscle in his body tense as he watched the dust float to the floor.

  “Where did you get so dusty?” he demanded.

  F’nor regarded him with mild surprise. “Weather patrol in Tillek. Entire north has been plagued with dust storms lately. But what I came in for . . .” He broke off, alarmed by F’lar’s taut immobility. “What’s the matter with dust?” he asked in a baffled voice.

  F’lar pivoted on his heel and raced for the stairs to the Record Room. Lessa was right behind him, F’nor belatedly trailing after.

  “Tillek, you said?” F’lar barked at his wingsecond. He was clearing the table of stacks for the four charts he then laid out. “How long have these storms been going on? Why didn’t you report them?”

  “Report dust storms? You wanted to know about warm air masses.”

  “How long have these storms been going on?” F’lar’s voice crackled.

  “Close to a week.”

  “How close?”

  “Six days ago the first storm was noticed in upper Tillek. They have been reported in Bitra, Upper Telgar, Crom, and the High Reaches,” F’nor reported tersely.

  He glanced hopefully at Lessa but saw she, too, was staring at the four unusual charts. He tried to see why the horizontal and vertical strips had been superimposed on Pern’s land mass, but the reason was beyond him.

  F’lar was making hurried notations, pushing first one map and then another away from him.

  “Too involved to think straight, to see clearly, to understand,” the Weyrleader snarled to himself, throwing down the stylus angrily.

  “You did say only warm air masses,” F’nor heard himself saying humbly, aware that he had somehow failed his Weyrleader.

  F’lar shook his head impatiently.

  “Not your fault, F’nor. Mine. I should have asked. I knew it was good luck that the weather held so cold.” He put both hands on F’nor’s shoulders, looking directly into his eyes. “The Threads have been falling,” he announced gravely. “Falling into cold air, freezing into bits to drift on the wind”—F’lar imitated F’nor’s finger-fluttering—“as specks of black dust.”

  “ ‘Crack dust, blackdust,’ ” Lessa quoted. “In ‘The Ballad of Moreta’s Ride,’ the chorus is all about black dust.”

  “I don’t need to be reminded of Moreta right now,” F’lar growled, bending to the maps. “She could talk to any dragon in the Weyrs.”

  “But I can do that!” Lessa protested.

  Slowly, as if he didn’t quite credit his ears, F’lar turned back to Lessa. “What did you just say?”

  “I said I can talk to any dragon in the Weyr.”

  Still staring at her, blinking in utter astonishment, F’lar sank down to the table top.

  “How long,” he managed to say, “have you had this particular skill?”

  Something in his tone, in his manner, caused Lessa to flush and stammer like an erring weyrling.

  “I . . . I always could. Beginning with the watch-wher at Ruatha.” She gestured indecisively in Ruatha’s westerly direction. “And I talked to Mnemeuth at Ruatha. And . . . when I got here, I could . . .” Her voice faltered at the accusing look in F’lar’s cold, hard eyes. Accusing and, worse, contemptuous.

  “I thought you had agreed to help me, to believe in me.”

  “I’m truly sorry, F�
�lar. It never occurred to me it was of any use to anyone, but . . .”

  F’lar exploded onto both feet, his eyes blazing with aggravation.

  “The one thing I could not figure out was how to direct the wings and keep in contact with the Weyr during an attack, how I was going to get reinforcements and firestone in time. And you . . . you have been sitting there, spitefully hiding the . . .”

  “I am NOT spiteful,” she screamed at him. “I said I was sorry. I am. But you’ve a nasty, smug habit of keeping your own counsel. How was I to know you didn’t have the same trick? You’re F’lar, the Weyrleader, you can do anything. Only you’re just as bad as R’gul because you never tell me half the things I ought to know . . .”

  F’lar reached out and shook her until her angry voice was stopped.

  “Enough. We can’t waste time arguing like children.” Then his eyes widened, his jaw dropped. “Waste time? That’s it.”

  “Go between times?” Lessa gasped.

  “Between times!”

  F’nor was totally confused. “What are you two talking about?”

  “The Threads started falling at dawn in Nerat,” F’lar said, his eyes bright, his manner decisive.

  F’nor could feel his guts congealing with apprehension. At dawn in Nerat? Why, the rainforests would be demolished. He could feel a surge of adrenalin charging through his body at the thought of danger.

  “So we’re going back there, between times, and be there when the Threads started falling, two hours ago. F’nor, the dragons can go not only where we direct them but when.”

  “Where? When?” F’nor repeated, bewildered. “That could be dangerous.”

  “Yes, but today it will save Nerat. Now, Lessa,” and F’lar gave her another shake, compounded of pride and affection, “order out all the dragons, young, old, any that can fly. Tell them to load themselves down with firestone sacks. I don’t know if you can talk across time . . .”

  “My dream this morning . . .”

  “Perhaps. But right now rouse the Weyr.” He pivoted to F’nor. “If Threads are falling . . . were falling . . . at Nerat at dawn, they’ll be falling on Keroon and Ista right now, because they are in that time pattern. Take two wings to Keroon. Arouse the plains. Get them to start the firepits blazing. Take some weyrlings with you and send them on to Igen and Ista. Those Holds are not in as immediate danger as Keroon. I’ll reinforce you as soon as I can. And . . . keep Canth in touch with Lessa.”