“You don’t capture them,” Kylara corrected Meron with a malicious smile. Let these Holders see that there is far more to being chosen by a dragon than physical presence at the moment of Hatching. “You lure them to you with thoughts of affection. A dragon cannot be possessed.”
“We have fire lizards here, not dragons.”
“They are the same for our purposes,” Kylara said sharply.
“Now heed me or you’ll lose the lot of them.” She wondered why she’d bothered to sweat and toil and bring him a gift, an opportunity which he was obviously unable to accept or appreciate. And yet, if she had a gold and he a bronze, when they mated it ought to be worth her troubles. “Shut out any thought of fear or profit,” she told the listening circle. “The first puts a dragon off, the second he can’t understand. As soon as one will approach you, feed it. Keep feeding it. Get it on your hand, if possible, and move to a quiet corner and keep feeding it. Think how much you love it, want it to stay with you, how happy its presence makes you. Think of nothing else or the fire lizard will go between. There’s just the short time between its hatching and its first big meal in which to make Impression. You succeed or you don’t. It’s up to you.”
“You heard what she said. Now do it. Do it right. The man who fails—” Meron’s voice trailed off threateningly.
Kylara laughed, breaking the ominous silence that followed. She laughed at the black look on Meron’s face, laughed until the Lord Holder, angered beyond caution, shook her arm roughly, pointing to the eggs which were now indulging in wild maneuvers as their occupants tried to break out.
“Stop that cackling, Weyrwoman. It’ll prejudice the hatchlings.”
“Laughter is better than threats, Lord Meron. Even you can’t order the preference of dragonkind. And tell me, good Lord Meron, will you be subject to the same dire unspeakable punishment if you fail?”
Meron grabbed her arm in a painful grip, his eyes riveted on the cracks now showing in one of his chosen eggs. He snapped his fingers for meat. Blood oozed from the raw handful as he knelt by the eggs, his body bowed tautly in his effort to effect an Impression.
Trying to show no concern, Kylara rose languidly from her chair. She strolled to the table and picked over the meaty gobbets until she had a satisfactory heap on the trencher. She signaled the tense guardsmen to supply themselves as she moved sedately back to the hearth.
She could not suppress her own excitement and heard Prideth warbling from the heights above the Hold. Ever since Kylara had seen the tiny fledglings F’nor and Brekke had Impressed, she had craved one of these dainty creatures. She would never understand that her imperious nature had subconsciously fought against the emotional symbiosis of her dragon queen. Instinctively Kylara had known that only as a Weyrwoman, a queen’s rider, could she achieve the unparalleled power, privilege and unchallenged freedom as a woman on Pern. Skilled at ignoring what she didn’t wish to admit, Kylara never realized that Prideth was the only living creature who could dominate her and whose good opinion she had to have. In the fire lizard, Kylara saw a miniature dragon which she could control—easily control—and physically dominate in a way she could not dominate Prideth.
And in presenting these fire-lizard eggs to a Holder, particularly the most despised Holder of all, Meron of Nabol, Kylara struck back at all the ignominies and imagined slights she had endured at the hands of both dragonmen and Pernese. The most recent insult—that the dishfaced fosterling of Brekke’s had Impressed three, rejecting Kylara—would be completely avenged.
Well, Kylara would not be rejected here. She knew the way of it and, whatever else, she would be a winner.
The golden egg rocked violently, and a massive crack split it lengthwise. A tiny golden beak appeared.
“Feed her. Don’t waste time,” Meron whispered to her hoarsely.
“Don’t tell me how to hatch eggs, you fool. Tend to your own.”
The head had emerged, the body struggled to right itself, claws scrabbling against the wet shell. Kylara concentrated on thoughts of welcoming affection, of joy and admiration, ignoring the cries and exhortations around her.
The little queen, no bigger than her hand, staggered free of its casing and instantly looked around for something to eat. Kylara laid a glob of meat in its path and the beast swooped on it. Kylara placed a second a few inches from the first, leading the fire lizard toward her. Squawking ferociously, the fire lizard pounced, her steps less awkward, the wings spread and drying rapidly. Hunger, hunger, hunger was the pulse of the creature’s thoughts and Kylara, reassured by receipt of this broadcast, intensified her thoughts of love and welcome.
She had the fire-lizard queen on her hand by the fifth lure. She rose carefully to her feet, popping food into the wide maw every time it opened, and moved away from the hearth and the chaos there.
For it was chaos, with the overanxious men making every mistake in the Record, despite her advice. Meron’s three eggs cracked almost at once. Two hatchlings immediately set upon each other while Meron was awkwardly trying to imitate Kylara’s actions. In his greed, he’d probably lose all three, she thought with malicious pleasure. Then she saw that there were other bronzes emerging. Well, all was not lost when her queen needed to mate.
Two men had managed to coax fire lizards to their hands and had followed Kylara’s example by removing themselves from the confused cannibalism on the hearth.
“How much do we feed them, Weyrwoman?” one asked her, his eyes shining with incredulous joy and astonishment.
“Let them eat themselves insensible. They’ll sleep and they’ll stay by you. As soon as they wake, feed them again. And if they complain about itchy skin, bathe and rub them with oil. A patchy skin breaks between and the awful cold can kill even a fire lizard or dragon.” How often she’d told that to weyrlings when she’d had to lecture them as Weyrwoman. Well, Brekke did that now, thank the First Egg.
“But what happens if they go between? How do we keep them?”
“You can’t keep a dragon. He stays with you. You don’t chain a dragon like a watch-wher, you know.”
She became bored with her role as instructor and replenished her supply of meat. Then, disgustedly observing the waste of creatures dying on the hearth, she mounted the steps to the Inner Hold. She’d wait in Meron’s chambers—there’d better be no one else there now—to see if he had, after all, managed to Impress a fire lizard.
Prideth told her that she wasn’t happy that she had transported the clutch to death on a cold, alien hearth.
“They lost more than this at Southern, silly one,” Kylara told her dragon. “This time we’ve a pretty darling of our own.”
Prideth grumbled on the fire ridge, but not about the lizard so Kylara paid her no heed.
CHAPTER VII
Midmorning at Benden Weyr
Early Morning at the Mastersmith’s
Crafthall in Telgar Hold
F’LAR RECEIVED F’nor’s message, five leaves of notes, just as he was about to set out to the Smithcrafthall to see Fandarel’s distance-writing mechanism. Lessa was already aloft and waiting.
“F’nor said it was urgent. It’s about the—” G’nag said.
“I’ll read it as soon as I can,” F’lar interrupted him. The man would talk your ear off. “My thanks and my apologies.”
“But, F’lar . . .”The rest of the man’s sentence was lost as Mnementh’s claws rattled against the stone of the ledge and the bronze dragon began to beat his way up.
It didn’t help F’lar’s temper to realize that Mnementh was making a gentle ascent. Lessa had been so right when she had teased him about staying up drinking and talking with Robinton. The man was a sieve for wine. Around midnight Fandarel had left, taking his treasure of a contraption. Lessa had wagered that he’d never go to bed, and likely no one in his Hall would either. After extracting a promise from F’lar that he’d get some rest soon, too, she’d retired.
He had meant to, but Robinton knew so much about the different Holds,
which minor Holders were important in swaying their Lords’ mind—essential information if F’lar was going to effect a revolution.
Reverence for the older rider was part of weyrlife, and respect for the able Threadfighter. Seven Turns back, when F’lar had realized humbly how inadequate was Pern’s one Weyr, Benden, and how ill-prepared for actual Threadfighting conditions, he had ascribed many virtues to the Oldtimers which were difficult—now—for him arbitrarily to sweep away. He—and all Benden’s dragonriders—had learned the root of Threadfighting from the Oldtimers. Had learned the many tricks of dodging Thread, gauging the varieties of Fall, of conserving the strength of beast and rider, of turning the mind from the horrors of a full scoring or a phosphine emission too close. What F’lar didn’t realize was how his Weyr and the Southerners had improved on the teaching; improved and surpassed, as they could on the larger, stronger, more intelligent contemporary dragons. F’lar had been able, in the name of gratitude and loyalty to his peers, to ignore, forget, rationalize the Oldtimers’ shortcomings. He could do so no longer as the weight of their insecurity and insularity forced him to reevaluate the results of their actions. In spite of this disillusionment, some part of F’lar, that inner soul of a man which requires a hero, a model against which to measure his own accomplishments, wanted to unite all the dragonmen; to sweep away the Oldtimers’ intractable resistance to change, their tenacious hold on the outmoded.