“No, of course not. Only a little and it’s pleasant. They aren’t candidates, are they?” Jaxom asked, disgusted.
“Nooo. Candidates wear white.” Felessan made a grimace for Jaxom’s ignorance. “They don’t come in till later. Ooops! And later may be sooner. Didja see that egg rock?”
The motion had been observed, for the dragons began to hum. There were excited cries from late arrivals who now scurried for places. And Jaxom could scarcely see the rest of the eggs for the sudden flutter of dragon wings in the air. Just as suddenly, there were no more impediments to vision and all the eggs seemed to be rocking. Almost as if they finally found the hot sands underneath too much. Only one egg was motionless. The little one, still off by itself against the far wall.
“What’s wrong with that one?” Jaxom asked, pointing.
“That smallest one?” Felessan swallowed, keeping his face averted.
“We didn’t do anything to it”
“I didn’t,” Felessan said firmly, glaring at Jaxom. “You touched it.”
“I may have touched it but that doesn’t mean I hurt it,” the young Lord Holder begged for reassurance.
“No, touching ’em doesn’t hurt ’em. The candidates’ve been touching ’em for weeks and they’re rocking.”
“Why isn’t that one then?”
Jaxom had difficulty making Felessan understand him for the humming had increased until it was a constant, exciting thrum reverberating back and forth across the Hatching Ground.
“I dunno,” Felessan shrugged diffidently. “It may not even Hatch. That’s what they say, at any rate.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” Jaxom insisted, mostly for his own comfort.
“I told you that! Look, here come the candidates.” Then Felessan leaned over, his lips right at Jaxom’s ear, whispering something so unintelligible that he had to repeat it three times before Jaxom did hear him.
“Re-Impress Brekke?” Jaxom exclaimed, far louder than he meant to, glancing toward Lytol.
“Deafwit!” Felessan hissed at him, jerking him back in his seat “You don’t know what’s been going on here. Let me tell you, it’s been something!” Felessan’s eyes were wide with suppressed knowledge.
“What? Tell me!”
Felessan glanced toward Lytol but the man seemed oblivious of them; his attention was on the young boys marching toward the rocking eggs, their faces white and purposeful, their bodies in the white tunics taut with excitement and anticipation.
“What do you mean about Brekke re-Impressing? Why? How?” Jaxom demanded, his mind assaulted by simultaneous conflicts: Lytol astride a dragon all his own, Brekke re-Impressing, Talina left out and crying because she was Ruathan-bred and should be dragonwoman.
“Just that. She Impressed a dragon once, she’s young. They said she was a far better Weyrwoman than that Kylara.” Felessan’s tone echoed the universally bad opinion of the Southern ex-Weyrwoman. “That way Brekke’d get well. You see,” and Felessan lowered his voice again, “F’nor loves her! And I heard—” he paused dramatically and looked around (as if anyone could overbear them), “I heard that F’nor was going to let Canth fly her queen.”
Jaxom stared at his friend, shocked. “You’re crazy! Brown dragons don’t fly queens.”
“Well, F’nor was going to try it.”
“But—but . . .”
“Yes, it is!” Felessan agreed sagely. “You should’ve heard F’lar and F’nor.” His eyes widened to double their normal size. “It was Lessa, my mother, who said what they ought to do. Make Brekke re-Impress. She was too good, Lessa said, to live half-dead.”
Both boys glanced guiltily toward Lytol.
“Do they—do they think she can re-Impress?” asked Jaxom, staring at the stern profile of his guardian and wondering.
Felessan shrugged. “We’ll know soon. Here they come.”
And sure enough, out of the black maw of the upper tunnel, flew bronze dragons in such rapid succession that they seemed nose to tail.
“There’s Talina!” Jaxom exclaimed, jumping to his feet “There’s Talina, Lytol,” and he crossed to pull at his guardian’s arm. Lytol wouldn’t have noticed either Jaxom’s importunities or Talina’s entrance. The man had eyes only for the girl entering from the Ground level. Two figures, a man and a woman, stood by the wide opening, as if they could accompany her this far, no further.
“That’s Brekke all right,” Felessan said in a hushed tone as he slid beside Jaxom.
She stumbled slightly, halted, seeming impervious to the uncomfortably hot sands. She straightened her shoulders and slowly walked across to join the five girls who waited near the golden egg. She stopped by Talina, who turned and gestured for the newcomer to take a place in the loose semicircle about the queen egg.
The humming stopped. In the sudden, unquiet silence, the faint crack of a shell was clearly audible, followed by the pop and shatter of others.
The dragonets, glistening, awkward, ugly young things, began to flop from their casings, squawking, crooning, their wedge-shaped heads too big for the thin, sinuous necks. The young boys stood very still, their bodies tense with the mental efforts of attracting the dragonets to them.
The first was free of its encumbrance, staggering beyond the nearest boy who jumped adroitly out of its way. It fell, nose first at the feet of a tall black-haired lad. The boy knelt, helped the dragonet balance on his shaky feet, looked into the rainbow eyes. Jaxom saw Lytol close his, and saw the fact of Lytol’s terrible loss engraved on the man’s gray face, as much of a torture now as the day his Larth had died of phosphine burns.
“Look,” Jaxom cried, “the queen egg. It’s rocking. Oh, how I wish . . .”
Then he couldn’t go on without compromising himself in his friend’s good opinion. For much as he wanted Talina to Impress which would mean three living Ruathan-bred Weyrwomen, he knew that Felessan was betting on Brekke.
Felessan was so intensely involved in the scene below that he hadn’t been aware of Jaxom’s unfinished phrase.
The golden shell cracked suddenly, right down the center, and its inmate, with a raucous protest, fell to the sand on her back Talina and two others moved forward quickly, trying to help the little creature right herself. The queen was no sooner on all four legs than the girls stepped back, almost as if they could not press their claim, by mutual consent leaving the first opportunity to Brekke.
She was oblivious. To Jaxom, it seemed she didn’t care. She seemed limp, broken, pathetic, listing to one side. A dragon crooned softly and she shook her head as if only then aware of her surroundings.
The queen’s head turned to Brekke, the glistening eyes enormous in the outsized skull. The queen lurched forward a step.
At that moment a small blur of bronze streaked across the Hatching Ground. With defiant screams, a fire lizard hung just above the queen’s head. So close, in fact, that the little queen reared back with a startled shriek and bit at the air, instinctively spreading her wings as protection for her vulnerable eyes.
Dragons protested from their ledges. Talina interposed her body between the queen and her small attacker.
“Berd! Don’t!” Brekke moved forward, arm extended, to capture the irate bronze. The little queen cried out in protest, hiding her face in Talina’s skirts. The two women faced one another, their bodies tense, wary.
Then Talina stretched her hand out to Brekke, smiling. Her pose lasted only a moment for the queen butted her legs peremptorily. Talina knelt, arms reassuringly about the dragonet. Brekke turned, no longer a statue immobilized by grief, and retraced her steps to the figures waiting at the entrance. All the time, the little bronze fire lizard whirred around her head, emitting sounds that ranged from scolding to entreaty. The racket sounded so like the cook at Ruatha Hold at dinnertime that Jaxom grinned.
“She didn’t want the queen,” Felessan said, stunned. “She didn’t try!”
“That fire lizard wouldn’t let her,” Jaxom said, wondering why he was defending
Brekke.
“It would be wrong, terribly wrong for her to succeed,” Lytol said in a dead voice. He seemed to shrink in on himself, his shoulders sagging, his hands dangling limply between his knees
Some of the newly Impressed boys were beginning to lead their beasts from the Ground. Jaxom turned back, afraid to miss anything. It was all happening much too quickly. It’d be over in a few minutes.
“Didja see, Jaxom?” Felessan was saying, pulling at his sleeve. “Didja see? Birto got a bronze and Pellomar only Impressed a green. Dragons don’t like bullies and Pellomar’s been the biggest bully in the Weyr. Good for you, Birto!” Felessan cheered his friend.
“The littlest egg hasn’t cracked yet,” Jaxom said, nudging Felessan and pointing. “Shouldn’t it be hatching?”
Lytol frowned, roused by the anxiety in his ward’s voice.