There are other ways of remembering important matters, Canth replied.
“Just imagine being able to breed tiny fire lizards into a creature the size of you!” He was awed, knowing how long it had taken to breed faster landbeasts.
Canth rumbled restlessly. I am useful. She is not.
“I’d wager she’d improve rapidly with a little help.” The prospect fascinated F’nor. “Would you mind?”
Why?
F’nor leaned against the great wedge-shaped head, looping his arm under the jaw, as far as he could reach, feeling extremely fond and proud of his dragon.
“No, that was a stupid question for me to ask you, Canth, wasn’t it?”
Yes.
“I wonder how long it would take me to train her.”
To do what?
“Nothing you can’t do better, of course. No, now wait a minute. If, by chance, I could train her to take messages . . . You said she went between? I wonder if she could be taught to go between, alone, and come back. Ah, but will she come back here to us now?” At this juncture, F’nor’s enthusiasm for the project was deflated by harsh reality.
She comes, Canth said very softly.
“Where?”
Above your head
Very slowly, F’nor raised one arm, hand outstretched, palm down.
“Little beauty, come where we can admire you. We mean you no harm.” F’nor saturated his mental tone with all the reassuring persuasiveness at his command.
A shimmer of gold flickered at the corner of his eye. Then the little lizard hovered at F’nor’s eye level, just beyond his reach. He ignored Canth’s amusement that the tiny one was susceptible to flattery.
She is hungry, the big dragon said.
Very slowly F’nor reached into his pouch and drew out a meatroll. He broke off a piece, bent slowly to lay it on the rock at his feet, then backed away.
“That is food for you, little one”
The lizard continued to hover, then darted down and, grabbing the meat in her tiny claws, disappeared again.
F’nor squatted down to wait.
In a second, the dragonette returned, ravenous hunger foremost in her delicate thoughts along with a wistful plea. As F’nor broke off another portion, he tried to dampen his elation. If hunger could be the leash . . . Patiently he fed her tiny bits, each time placing the food nearer to him until he got her to take the final morsel from his fingers. As she cocked her head at him, not quite sated, though she had eaten enough to satisfy a grown man, he ventured to stroke an eye ridge with a gentle fingertip.
The inner lids of the tiny opalescent eyes closed one by one as she abandoned herself to the caress.
She is a hatchling. You have Impressed her, Canth told him very softly.
“A hatching?”
She is the little sister of my blood after all and so must come from an egg, Canth replied reasonably.
“There are others?”
Of course. Down on the beach.
F’nor, careful not to disturb the little lizard, turned his head over his shoulder. He had been so engrossed in the one at hand, he hadn’t even heard above the surf sounds the pitiful squawks which were issuing from the litter of shining wings and bodies. There seemed to be hundreds of them on the beach, above the high-tide mark, about twenty dragon lengths from him.
Don’t move, Canth cautioned him. You’ll lose her
“But if they’re hatching . . . they can be Impressed . . . Canth, rouse the Weyr! Speak to Prideth. Speak to Wirenth. Tell them to come. Tell them to bring food. Tell them to hurry. Quickly or it’ll be too late.”
He stared hard at the purple blotch on the horizon that was the Weyr, as if he himself could somehow bridge the gap with his thoughts. But the frenzy on the beach was attracting attention from another source. Wild wherries, the carrion eaters of Pern, instinctively flocked to the shore, their wings making an ominous line of v’s in the southern sky. The vanguard was already beating to a height, preparing to dive at the unprotected weak fledglings. Every nerve in F’nor’s body yearned to go to their rescue, but Canth repeated his warning. F’nor would jeopardize his fragile rapport with the little queen if he moved. Or, F’nor realized, if he communicated his agitation to her. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t watch.
The first shriek of pain vibrated through his body as well as the little lizard’s. She darted into the folds of his arm sling, trembling against his ribs. Despite himself, F’nor opened his eyes. But the wherries had not stooped yet, though they circled lower and lower with rapacious speed. The fledglings were voraciously attacking each other. He shuddered and the little queen rattled her pinions, uttering a delicate fluting sound of distress.
“You’re safe with me. Far safer with me. Nothing can harm you with me,” F’nor told her repeatedly, and Canth crooned reassurance in harmony with that litany.
The strident shriek of the wherries as they plunged suddenly changed to their piercing wail of terror. F’nor glanced up, away from the carnage on the beach, to see a green dragon in the sky, belching flame, scattering the avian hunters. The green hovered, several lengths above the beach, her head extended downward. She was riderless.
Just then, F’nor saw three figures, charging, sliding, slipping down the high sand dune, heading as straight as possible toward the many-winged mass of cannibals. Although they looked as if they’d carom into the middle, they somehow managed to stop.
Brekke said she has alerted as many as she could, Canth told him.
“Brekke? Why’d you call her? She’s got enough to do.”
She is the best one, Canth replied, ignoring F’nor’s reprimand.
“Are they too late?” F’nor glanced anxiously at the sky and at the dune, willing more men to arrive.
Brekke was wading toward the struggling hatchlings now, her hands extended. The other two were following her example. Who had she brought? Why hadn’t she got more riders? They’d know instantly, how to approach the beasts.
Two more dragons appeared in the sky, circled and landed with dizzying speed right on the beach, their riders racing in to help. The skyborne green flamed off the insistent wherries, bugling to her fellows to help her.
Brekke has one. And the girl. So does the boy but the beast is hurt. Brekke says that many are dead.
Why, wondered F’nor suddenly, if he had only just seen the truth of the legend of fire lizards, did he ache for their deaths? Surely the creatures had been hatching on lonely beaches for centuries, been eaten by wherries and their own peers, unseen and unmourned.
The strong survive, said Canth, undismayed.
They saved seven, two badly hurt. The young girl, Mirrim, Brekke’s fosterling, attached three; two greens and a brown, seriously injured by gouges on his soft belly. Brekke had a bronze with no mark on him, the green’s rider had a bronze, and the other two riders had blues, one with a wrenched wing which Brekke feared might never heal properly for flight.
“Seven out of over fifty,” said Brekke sadly after they had disposed of the broken bodies with agenothree. A precaution which Brekke suggested as a frustration for the carrion eaters and to prevent other fire lizards from avoiding the beach as dangerous to their kind. “I wonder how many would have survived if you hadn’t called us.”
“She was already far from the others when she discovered us,” F’nor remarked. “Probably the first to hatch, or on top of the others.”
Brekke’d had the wit to bring a full haunch of buck, though the Weyr might eat light that evening. So they had gorged the hatchlings into such a somnolent state that they could be carried, unresisting, back to the Weyr, or to Brekke’s Infirmary.
“You’re to fly home straight,” Brekke told F’nor, in much the way a woman spoke to a rebellious weyrling.
“Yes, ma’am,” F’nor replied, with mock humility, and then smiled because Brekke took him so seriously.
The little queen nestled in his arm sling as contentedly as if she’d found a weyr of her own. “A weyr is where a drag
on is no matter how it’s constructed,” he murmured to himself as Canth winged steadily eastward.
When F’nor reached Southern, it was obvious the news had raced through the Weyr. There was such an aura of excitement that F’nor began to worry that it might frighten the tiny creatures between.
No dragon can fly when he is belly-bloated Canth said. Even a fire lizard. And took himself off to his sun-warmed wallow, no longer interested.
“You don’t suppose he’s jealous, do you?” F’nor asked Brekke when he found her in her Infirmary, splinting the little blue’s wrenched wing.
“Wirenth was interested, too, until the lizards fell asleep,” Brekke told him, a twinkle in her green eyes as she looked up at him briefly. “And you know how touchy Wirenth is right now. Mercy, F’nor, what is there for a dragon to be jealous of? These are toys, dolls as far as the big ones are concerned. At best, children to be protected and taught like any fosterling.”
F’nor glanced over at Mirrim, Brekke’s foster child. The two green lizards perched asleep on her shoulders. The injured brown, swathed from neck to tail in bandage, was cradled in her lap. Mirrim was sitting with the erect stiffness of someone who dares not move a muscle. And she was smiling with an incredulous joy.
“Mirrim is very young for this,” he said, shaking his head.
“On the contrary, she’s as old as most weyrlings at their first Impression. And she’s more mature in some ways than half a dozen grown women I know with several babes of their own.”
“Oh-ho. The female of the species in staunch defense . . .”
“It’s no teasing matter, F’nor,” Brekke replied with a sharpness that put F’nor in mind of Lessa. “Mirrim will do very well. She takes every responsibility to heart.” The glance Brekke shot her fosterling was anxious as well as tender.
“I still say she’s young . . .”
“Is age a prerequisite for a loving heart? Does maturity always bring compassion? Why are some weyrbred boys left standing on the sand and others, never thought to have a chance, walk off with the bronzes? Mirrim Impressed three, and the rest of us, though we tried, with the creatures dying at our feet, only managed to attach one.”
“And why am I never told what occurs in my own Weyr?” Kylara’ demanded in a loud voice. She stood on the threshold of the Infirmary, her face suffused with an angry flush, her eyes bright and hard.
“As soon as I finished this splinting, I was coming to tell you,” Brekke replied calmly, but F’nor saw her shoulders stiffen.
Kylara advanced on the girl, with such overt menace that F’nor stepped around Brekke, wondering to himself as he did so whether Kylara was armed with more than a bad temper.
“Events moved rather fast, Kylara,” he said, smiling pleasantly. “We were fortunate to save as many of the lizards as we did. Too bad you didn’t hear Canth broadcast the news. You might have Impressed one yourself.”
Kylara halted, the full skirts of her robe swirling around her feet. She glared at him, twitching the sleeve of her dress but not before he saw the black bruise on her arm. Unable to attack Brekke, she turned, spotting Mirrim. She swept up to the girl, staring down in such a way that the child looked appealingly toward Brekke. At this point, the tension in the room roused the lizards. The two greens hissed at Kylara but it was the crystal bugle of the bronze on G’sel’s shoulder that diverted the Weyrwoman’s attention.
“I’ll have the bronze! Of course. The bronze’ll do fine,” she exclaimed. There was something so repellent about the glitter in her eyes and the nasty edge to her laugh that F’nor felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
“A bronze dragon on my shoulder will be most effective, I think,” Kylara went on, reaching for G’sel’s bronze lizard.
G’sel’s put up a warning hand.
“I said they were Impressed, Kylara,” F’nor warned her, quickly signaling the rider to refuse. G’sel was only a green rider and new to this Weyr at that; he was no match for Kylara, particularly not in this mood. “Touch him at your own risk.”
“Impressed, you say?’ Kylara hesitated, turning to sneer at F’nor. “Why, they’re nothing but fire lizards.”
“And from what creature on Pern do you think dragons were bred?”
“Not that old nursery nonsense. How could you possibly make a fighting dragon from a fire lizard?” She reached again for the little bronze. It spread its wings, flapping them agitatedly.
“If it bites you, don’t blame G’sel,” F’nor told her in a pleasant drawl though it cost him much to keep his temper. It was too bad you couldn’t beat a Weyrwoman with impunity. Her dragon wouldn’t permit it but a sound thrashing was what Kylara badly needed.
“You can’t be certain they’re that much like dragons,” Kylara protested, glancing suspiciously around at the others. “No one’s ever caught one and you just found them.”
“We’re not certain of anything about them,” F’nor replied, beginning to enjoy himself. It was a pleasure to see Kylara frustrated by a lizard. “However, look at the similarities. My little queen . . .”
“You? Impressed a queen?” Kylara’s face turned livid as F’nor casually drew aside a fold of his sling to expose the sleeping gold lizard.
“She went between when she was frightened. She communicated that fright, plus curiosity, and she evidently received our reassurances. At least she came back. Canth said she’d just hatched. I fed her and she’s still with me. We managed to save only these seven because they got Impressed. The others turned cannibal. Now, how long these will be dependent on us for food and companionship is pure conjecture. But the dragons admit a blood relationship and they have ways of knowing beyond ours.”
“Just how did you Impress them?” Kylara demanded, her intentions transparent. “No one’s ever caught one before.”
If it got her out of the Weyr and kept her on sandy beaches and off Brekke’s back, F’nor was quite agreeable to telling her.
“You Impress them by being there when they hatch, same as with dragons. After that, I assume the ones which survive stay wild. As to why no one ever caught any before, that’s simple; the fire lizards hear them coming and disappear between.” And, my dear, may it be a warm night between before you catch one.
Kylara stared hard at Mirrim and so resentfully at G’sel that the young rider began to fidget and the little bronze rustled his wings nervously.
“Well, I want it clearly understood that this is a working Weyr. We’ve no time for pets who serve no purpose. I’ll deal severely with anyone shirking their duties or—” She broke off.
“No shirking or tramping the beaches until you’ve had a chance to get one first, huh, Kylara?” asked F’nor, still grinning pleasantly.
“I’ve better things to do.” She spat the words at him and then, skirts kicking out before her, swept out of the room.
“Maybe we ought to warn the lizards,” F’nor said in a facetious way, trying to dispel the tension in the Infirmary.
“There’s no protection against someone like Kylara,” Brekke said, motioning the rider to take his bandaged blue. “One learns to live with her.”
G’sel gave an odd gargle and rose, almost unsettling his lizard.
“How can you say that, Brekke, when she’s so mean and nasty to you?” Mirrim cried, and subsided at a stern look from her foster mother.
“Make no judgments where you have no compassion,” Brekke replied. “And I, too, will not tolerate any shirking of duties to care for these pretties. I don’t know why we saved them!”
“Make no judgments where you have no compassion,” F’nor retorted.
“They needed us,” Mirrim said so emphatically that even she was surprised at her temerity, and immediately became absorbed in her brown.
“Yes, they did,” F’nor agreed, aware of the little queen’s golden body nestled trustingly against his ribs. She had twined her tail as far as it would reach around his waist. “And true weyrmen one and all, we responded to the cry for succor.”
br /> “Mirrim Impressed three and she’s no weyrman,” Brekke said in a dry, didactic correction. “And if they are Impressionable by non-riders, they might well be worth every effort to save.”
“How’s that?”
Brekke frowned a little at F’nor as if she didn’t credit his obtuseness.
“Look at the facts, F’nor. I don’t know of a commoner alive who hasn’t entertained the notion of catching a fire lizard, simply because they resemble small dragons—no, don’t interrupt me. You know perfectly well that it’s just in these last eight Turns that commoners were permitted on the Ground as candidates at Impression. Why, I remember my brothers plotting night after night in the hope of catching a fire lizard, a personal dragon of their own. I don’t think it ever occurred to anyone, really, that there might be some truth in that old myth that dragons—weyrdragons—were bred from lizards. It was just that fire lizards were not proscribed to commoners, and dragons were. Out of our reach.” Her eyes softened with affection as she stroked the tiny sleeping bronze in the crook of her arm. “Odd to realize that generations of commoners were on the right track and never knew it. These creatures have the same talent dragons have for capturing our feelings. I oughtn’t to take on another responsibility but nothing would make me relinquish my bronze now he’s made himself mine.” Her lips curved in a very tender smile. Then, as if aware she was displaying too much of her inner feelings, she said very briskly, “It’d be a very good thing for people—for commoners—to have a small taste of dragon.”
“Brekke, you can’t mean you think that a fire lizard’s loving company would mellow someone like Vincet of Nerat or Meron of Nabol toward dragonriders?” Out of respect for her, F’nor did not laugh aloud. Brekke was a sackful of unexpected reactions.
She gave him such a stern look that he began to regret his words.
“If you’ll pardon me, F’nor,” G’sel spoke up, “I think Brekke’s got a good thought there. I’m holdbred myself. You’re weyrbred. You can’t imagine how I used to feel about dragonriders. I honestly didn’t know myself—until I Impressed Roth.” His face lit with a startling joy at the memory. He paused, unabashed, to savor the moment anew. “It’d be worth a try. Even if the fire lizards are dumb, it’d make a difference. They wouldn’t understand how much more it is with a dragon. Look, F’nor, here’s this perfectly charming creature, perched on my shoulder, adoring me. He was all ready to bite the Weyrwoman to stay with me. You heard how angry he was. You don’t know how—spectacular—it’d make a commoner feel.”