The Dragonriders of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

  Prideth’s tail protruded, and on this Wirenth fastened her teeth, dragging the other from protective custody. No sooner were they clear than Wirenth bestrode the older queen’s back, talons digging deeply into her wing muscles, her jaws sinking into the unprotected neck.

  They fell, Wirenth making no attempt to stop their dangerous descent. She could see nothing from her damaged eye. She paid no attention to the screams of the other queens, the circling bronzes. Then something seized her body roughly from above, giving her a tremendous jerk.

  Unable to see on the right, Wirenth was forced to relinquish her hold to contend with this new menace. But as she turned, she caught a glimpse of a great golden body directly below Prideth. Above her—Canth! Canth? Hissing at such treachery, she was unable to realize that he was actually trying to rescue her from sure death on the dangerously close mountain peaks. Ramoth, too, was attempting to stop their plunge, supporting Prideth with her body, her great wings straining with effort.

  Suddenly teeth closed on Wirenth’s neck, close to the major artery at the junction of the shoulder. Wirenth’s mortal scream was cut off as she now struggled for breath itself. Wounded by foe, hampered by friends, Wirenth desperately transferred between, taking Prideth with her, jaws deathlocked on her life’s blood.

  The bronze fire lizard, Berd, found F’nor preparing to join the wings at the western meadows of Telgar Hold. The brown rider was so astonished at first to see the little bronze in Benden so far from his mistress that he didn’t immediately grasp the frenzied creature’s thoughts.

  But Canth did.

  Wirenth has risen!

  All other considerations forgotten, F’nor ran with Canth to the ledge. Grall grabbed at her perch on his shoulder, wrapping her tail so tightly around F’nor’s neck that he had to loosen it forcibly. Then could not be brought to roost and precious moments were lost while Canth managed to calm the little bronze sufficiently to accept instruction. As Berd finally settled, Canth let out so mighty a bugle that Mnementh challenged from the ledge and Ramoth roared back from the Hatching Ground.

  With no thought of the effect of their precipitous exit or Canth’s exceptional behavior, F’nor urged his dragon upward. The small pulse of reason that remained untouched by emotion was trying to estimate how long it had taken the little bronze to reach him, how long Wirenth would blood before rising, which bronzes were at High Reaches. He was thankful that F’lar had not had time to throw mating flights open. There were some beasts against whom Canth stood no chance.

  When they broke into the air again over High Reaches Weyr, F’nor’s worst fears were realized. The Feeding Ground was a bloody sight and no queen fed there. Nor was there a bronze among the dragons who ringed the Weyr heights.

  Without order, Canth wheeled sharply down at dizzying speed.

  Berd knows where Wirenth is. He takes me.

  The little bronze hopped down to Canth’s neck, his little talons gripping the ridge tightly. F’nor slid from Canth’s shoulder to the ground, staggering out of the way so the brown could spring back aloft

  Prideth also rises! The thought and the brown’s scream of fear were simultaneous. From the heights the other dragons answered, extending their wings in alarm.

  “Rouse Ramoth!” F’nor shouted, mind and voice, his body paralyzed with shock. “Rouse Ramoth! Bronze riders! Prideth also rises!”

  Weyrfolk rushed from the Lower Cavern, riders appeared on their ledges around the Weyr face.

  “Kylara! T’bor! Where’s Pilgra? Kylara! Varena!” Shouting with a panic that threatened to choke him. F’nor raced for Brekke’s weyr, shoving aside the people who crowded him, demanding explanations.

  Prideth rising! How could that happen? Even the stupidest Weyrwoman knew you didn’t keep a queen near her weyr during a mating flight—unless they were broody. How could Kylara . . . ?

  “T’bor!”

  F’nor raced up the short flight of steps, pounded down the corridor in strides that jolted his half-healed arm. But the pain cleared his head of panic. Just as he burst into the weyr cavern, Brekke’s angry cry halted him. The bronze riders grouped around her were beginning to show the effects of the interrupted mating flight

  “What’s she doing here? How dare she?” Brekke was shrieking in a voice shrill with lust as well as fury. “These are my dragons! How dare she! I’ll kill her!” The litany broke into a piercing scream of agony as Brekke doubled up, right shoulder hunching as if to protect her head.

  “My eye! My eye! My eye!” Brekke was covering her right eye, her body writhing in an uncontrollable, unconscious mimicry of the aerial battle to which she was tuned.

  “Kill! I’ll kill her! No! No! She cannot escape. Go away!” Suddenly Brekke’s face turned crafty and her whole body writhed sensuously.

  The bronze riders were changing now, no longer completely in the thrall of the strange mental rapport with their beasts. Fear, doubt, indecision, hopelessness registered on their faces. Some portion of the human awareness was returning, fighting with the dragon responsiveness and the interrupted mating flight. When T’bor reached for Brekke, human fear was reflected in his eyes.

  But she was still totally committed to Wirenth, and the incredible triumph on her face registered Wirenth’s success in evading capture, in dragging Prideth from the encircling queens.

  “Prideth has risen, T’bor! The queens are fighting,” F’nor shouted.

  One rider began to scream and the sound broke the link of two others who stared, dazed, at Brekke’s contorting body.

  “Don’t touch her!” F’nor cried, moving to fend off T’bor and another man. He moved as close to her as possible but her ranging eyes did not see him or anything in the weyr.

  Then she seemed to spring, her left eye widening with an unholy joy, her lips bared as her teeth fastened on an imaginary target, her body arching with the empathic effort.

  Suddenly she hissed, craning her head sideways, over her right shoulder, while her face reflected incredulity, horror, hatred. As suddenly, her body was seized with a massive convulsion. She screamed again, this time a mortal shriek of unbelievable terror and anguish. One hand went to her throat, the other batted at some unseen attacker. Her body, poised on her toes, strained in an agonized stretch. With a cry that was more gasp than scream, she whirled. In her eyes was Brekke’s soul again, tortured, terrified. Then her eyes closed, her body sagged in such an alarming collapse that F’nor barely caught her in time.

  The stones of the weyr itself seemed to reverberate with the mourning dirge of the dragons.

  “T’bor, send someone for Manora,” F’nor cried in a hoarse voice as he bore Brekke to her couch. Her body was so light in his arms—as if all substance had been drained from it. He held her tightly to his chest with one arm, fumbling to find the pulse in her neck with the free hand. It beat—faintly.

  What had happened? How could Kylara have allowed Prideth near Wirenth?

  “They’re both gone,” T’bor was saying as he stumbled into the sleeping room and sagged down on the clothes chest, trembling violently.

  “Where’s Kylara? Where is she?”

  “Don’t know. I left this morning to fly patrols.” T’bor scrubbed at his face, shock bleaching the ruddy color from his skin. “The lake was polluted . . .”

  F’nor piled furs around Brekke’s motionless body. He held his hand against her chest, feeling its barely perceptible rise and fall.

  F’nor?

  It was Canth, his call so faint, so piteous that the man closed his eyes against the pain in his dragon’s tone.

  He felt someone grip his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see the pity, the understanding in T’bor’s. “There’s nothing more you can do for her right now, F’nor.”

  “She’ll want to die. Don’t let her!” he said. “Don’t let Brekke die!”

  Canth was on the ledge, his eyes glowing dully. He was swaying with exhaustion. F’nor encircled the bowed head with his arms, their mutual grief so intense they seemed afi
re with pain.

  It was too late. Prideth had risen. Too close to Wirenth. Not even the queens could help. I tried F’nor I tried. She—she fell so fast. And she turned on me. Then went between. I could not find her between.

  They stood together, immobile.

  Lessa and Manora saw them as Ramoth circled into High Reaches Weyr. At Canth’s bellow, Ramoth had come out of the Hatching Ground, loudly calling for her rider, demanding an explanation of such behavior.

  But F’lar, believing he knew Canth’s errand, had reassured her, until Ramoth had informed them that Wirenth was rising. And Ramoth knew instantly when Prideth rose, too, and had gone between to Nabol to stop the mortal combat if she could.

  Once Wirenth had dragged Prideth between, Ramoth had returned to Benden Weyr for Lessa. The Benden dragons set up their keen so that the entire Weyr soon knew of the disaster. But Lessa waited only long enough for Manora to gather her medicines.

  As she and the headwoman reached the ledge of Brekke’s weyr and the motionless mourners, Lessa looked anxiously to Manora. There was something dangerous in such stillness.

  “They will work this out together. They are together, more now than ever before,” Manora said in a voice that was no more than a rough whisper. She passed them quietly, her head bent and her shoulders drooping as she hurried down the corridor to Brekke.

  “Ramoth?” asked Lessa, looking down to where her queen had settled on the sands. It was not that she doubted Manora’s wisdom, but to see F’nor so—so reduced—upset her. He was much like F’lar . . .

  Ramoth gave a soft croon and folded her wings. On the ledges around the Bowl, the other dragons began to settle in uneasy vigil.

  As Lessa entered the Cavern of the Weyr, she glanced away from the empty dragon couch and then halted midstep. The tragedy was only minutes past so the nine bronze riders were still in severe shock.

  As well they might be, Lessa realized with deep sympathy. To be roused to performance intensity and then be, not only disappointed, but disastrously deprived of two queens at once! Whether a bronze won the queen or not, there was a subtle, deep attachment between a queen and the bronzes of her Weyr . . .

  However, Lessa concluded briskly, someone in this benighted Weyr ought to have sense enough to be constructive. Lessa broke this train of thought off abruptly. Brekke had been the responsible member.

  She turned, about to go in search of some stimulant for the dazed riders when she heard the uneven steps and stertorous breathing of someone in a hurry. Two green fire lizards darted into the weyr, hovering, chirping excitedly as a young girl came in at a half-run. She could barely manage the heavy tray she carried and she was weeping, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

  “Oh!” she cried, seeing Lessa. She stifled her sobs, tried to bob a curtsey and blot her nose on her shoulder at one and the same time.

  “Well, you’re a child with wits about you,” Lessa said briskly, but not without sympathy. She took one end of the tray and helped the girl deposit it on the table. “You brought strong spirits?” she asked, gesturing to the anonymous earthenware bottles.

  “All I could find.” And the consonant ended in a sob.

  “Here” and Lessa held out a half-filled cup, nodding toward the nearest rider. But the child was motionless, staring at the curtain, her face twisted with grief, the tears flowing unnoticed down her cheeks. She was washing her hands together with such violent motions that the skin stretched white across her knuckles.

  “You’re Mirrim?”

  The child nodded, her eyes not leaving the closed entrance. Above her the greens whirred, echoing her distress.

  “Manora is with Brekke, Mirrim.”

  “But—but she’ll die. She’ll die. They say the rider dies, too, when the dragon is killed. They say . . .”

  “They say entirely too much,” Lessa began and then Manora stood in the doorway.

  “She lives. Sleep is the kindest blessing now.” She flipped the curtain shut and glanced at the men. “These could do with sleep. Have their dragons returned? Who’s this?” Manora touched Mirrim’s cheek, gently. “Mirrim? I’d heard you had green lizards.”

  “Mirrim had the sense to bring the tray,” Lessa said, catching Manora’s eye.

  “Brekke—Brekke would expect—” and the girl could go no further.

  “Brekke is a sensible person,” Manora said briskly and folded Mirrim’s fingers around a cup, giving her a shove toward a rider. “Help us now. These men need our help.”

  In a daze, Mirrim moved, rousing herself to help actively when the bronze rider could not seem to get his fingers to the cup.

  “My lady,” murmured Manora, “we need the Weyrleader. Ista and Telgar Weyrs would be fighting Thread by now and . . .”

  “I’m here,” F’lar said from the weyr entrance. “And I’ll take a shot of that, too. Cold between is in my bones.”

  “We’ve more fools than we need right now,” Lessa exclaimed, but her face brightened to see him there.

  “Where’s T’bor?”

  Manora indicated Brekke’s room.

  “All right. Then where’s Kylara?”

  And the cold of between was in his voice.

  By evening some order had been restored to the badly demoralized High Reaches Weyr. The bronze dragons had all returned, been fed, and the bronze riders weyred with their beasts, sufficiently drugged to sleep.

  Kylara had been found. Or, rather, returned, by the green rider assigned to Nabol Hold.

  “Someone’s got to be quartered there,” the man said, his face grim, “but not me or my green.”

  “Please report, S’goral.” F’lar nodded his appreciation of the rider’s feelings.

  “She arrived at the Hold this morning, with some tale about the lake here being fouled and no kegs to hold any supply of water. I remember thinking that Prideth looked too gold to be out. She’s been off cycle, you know. But she settled down all right on the ridge with my green so I went about teaching those Holders how to manage their fire lizards.” S’goral evidently did not have much use for his pupils. “She went in with the Nabolese Holder. Later I saw their lizards sunning on the ledge outside the Lord’s sleeping room.” He paused, glancing at his audience and looking grimmer still. “We were taking a breather when my green cried out. Sure enough there were dragons, high up. I knew it was a mating fight. You can’t mistake it. Then Prideth started to bugle. Next thing I knew, she was down among Nabol’s prize breeding stock. I waited a bit, sure that she’d be aware of what was happening, but when there wasn’t a sign of her, I went looking. Nabol’s bodyguards were at the door. The Lord didn’t want to be disturbed. Well, I disturbed him. I stopped him doing what he was doing. And that’s what was doing it! Setting Prideth off. That and being so close to rising herself, and seeing a mating flight right over her, so to speak. You don’t abuse your dragon that way.” He shook his head then. “There wasn’t anything me and my green could do there. So we took off for Fort Weyr, for their queens. But—” and he held out his hands, indicating his helplessness.

  “You did as you should, S’goral,” F’lar told him.

  “There wasn’t anything else I could do,” the man insisted, as if he could not rid himself of some lingering feeling of guilt.

  “We were lucky you were there at all,” Lessa said. “We might never have known where Kylara was.”

  “What I want to know is what’s going to happen to her—now?” A hard vindictiveness replaced the half-shame, half-guilt in the rider’s face.

  “Isn’t loss of a dragon enough?” T’bor roused himself to ask.

  “Brekke lost her dragon, too,” S’goral retorted angrily, “and she was doing what she should!”

  “Nothing can be decided in heat or hatred, S’goral,” F’lar said, rising to his feet. “We’ve no precedents—” He broke off, turning to D’ram and G’narish. “Not in our time, at least.”

  “Nothing should be decided in heat or hatred,” D’ram echoed, “but there were such i
ncidents in our time.” Unaccountably he flushed “We’d better assign some bronzes here, F’lar. The High Reaches men and beasts may not be fit tomorrow. And with Thread falling every day, no Weyr can be allowed to relax its vigilance. For anything.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Night at Fort Weyr:

  Six Days Later

  Robinton was weary, with fatigue of the heart and mind that did not lift to the thrill the Masterharper usually experienced on dragonback. In fact, he almost wished he’d not had to come to Fort Weyr tonight These past six days, with everyone reacting in varying ways to the tragedy at High Reaches, had been very difficult. (Must the High Reaches always push the knottiest problems on Pern?) In a way, Robinton wished that they could have put off this Red Star viewing until minds and eyes had cleared and were ready for this challenge. And yet, perhaps the best solution was to press this proposed expedition to the Red Star as far and as fast as possible—as an anodyne to the depression that had followed the deaths of the two queens. Robinton knew that F’lar wanted to prove to the Lord Holders that the dragonmen were in earnest in their desire to clear the air of Thread, but for once, the Masterharper found himself without a private opinion. He did not know if F’lar was wise in pushing the issue, particularly now. Particularly when the Benden Weyrleader wasn’t recovered from T’ron’s slash. When no one was sure how T’kul was managing in Southern Weyr or if the man intended to stay there. When all Pern was staggered by the battle and deaths of the two queens. The people had enough to rationalize, had enough to do with the vagaries of Threadfall complicating the seasonal mechanics of plowing and seeding. Leave the attack of the Red Star until another time.

  Other dragons were arriving at Fort Weyr and the brown on which Robinton rode took his place in the circling pattern. They’d be landing on the Star Stones where Wansor, Fandarel’s glassman, had set up the distance-viewer.