Dragonflight (12 page)

“Humph? Eh? Yes?” he mumbled, blinking to focus sleep-blurred eyes.

It was too much. Lessa quickly made contact with S’lel’s Tuenth, himself just rousing from a nap. Tuenth was quite agreeable.

“Tuenth is restless, must go,” S’lel promptly muttered. He hastened up the passageway, his relief at leaving no less than Lessa’s at seeing him go. She was startled to hear him greet someone in the corridor and hoped the new arrival would provide an excuse to rid herself of R’gul.

It was Manora who entered. Lessa greeted the headwoman of the Lower Caverns with thinly disguised relief. R’gul, always nervous in Manora’s presence, immediately departed.

Manora, a stately woman of middle years, exuded an aura of quiet strength and purpose, having come to a difficult compromise with life which she maintained with serene dignity. Her patience tacitly chided Lessa for her fretfulness and petty grievances. Of all the women she had met in the Weyr, (when she was permitted by the dragonmen to meet any) Lessa admired and respected Manora most. Some instinct in Lessa made her bitterly aware that she would never be on easy or intimate terms with any of the women in the Weyr. Her carefully formal relationship with Manora, however, was both satisfying and satisfactory.

Manora had brought the tally slates of the Supply Caves. It was her responsibility as headwoman to keep the Weyrwoman informed of the domestic management of the Weyr. (One duty R’gul insisted she perform.)

“Bitra, Benden, and Lemos have sent in their tithes, but that won’t be enough to see us through the deep cold this Turn.”

“We had only those three last Turn and seemed to eat well enough.”

Manor smiled amiably, but it was obvious she did not consider the Weyr generously supplied.

“True, but that was because we had stores of preserved and dried foods from more bountiful Turns to sustain us. That reserve is now gone. Except for those barrels and barrels of fish from Tillek . . .” Her voice trailed off expressively.

Lessa shuddered. Dried fish, salted fish, fish, had been served all too frequently of late.

“Our supplies of grain and flour in the Dry Caves are very low, for Benden, Bitra, and Lemos are not grain producers.”

“Our biggest needs are grains and meat?”

“We could use more fruits and root vegetables for variety,” Manora said thoughtfully. “Particularly if we have the long cold season the weather-wise predict. Now we did go to Igen Plain for the spring and fall nuts, berries . . .”

“We? to Igen Plain?” Lessa interrupted her, stunned.

“Yes,” Manora answered, surprised at Lessa’s reaction. “We always pick there. And we beat out the water grains from the low swamplands.”

“How do you get there?” asked Lessa sharply. There could be only one answer.

“Why, the old ones fly us. They don’t mind, and it gives the beasts something to do that isn’t tiring. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“That the women in the Lower Caverns fly with dragonriders?” Lessa pursed her lips angrily. “No. I wasn’t told.” Nor did it help Lessa’s mood to see the pity and regret in Manora’s eyes.

“As Weyrwoman,” she said gently, “your obligations restrict you where . . .”

“If I should ask to be flown to . . . Ruatha, for instance,” Lessa cut in, ruthlessly pursuing a subject she sensed Manora wanted to drop, “would it be refused me?”

Manora regarded Lessa closely, her eyes dark with concern. Lessa waited. Deliberately she had put Manora into a position where the woman must either lie outright, which would be distasteful to a person of her integrity, or prevaricate, which could prove more instructive.

“An absence for any reason these days might be disastrous. Absolutely disastrous,” Manora said firmly and, unaccountably, flushed. “Not with the queen growing so quickly. You
must
be here.” Her unexpectedly urgent entreaty, delivered with a mounting anxiety, impressed Lessa far more than all R’gul’s pompous exhortations about constant attendance on Ramoth.

“You must be here,” Manora repeated, her fear naked.

“Queens do not fly,” Lessa reminded her acidly. She suspected Manora was about to echo S’lel’s reply to that statement, but the older woman suddenly shifted to a safer subject.

“We cannot, even with half-rations,” Manora blurted out breathlessly, with a nervous shuffling of her slates, “last the full Cold.”

“Hasn’t there ever been such a shortage before . . . in all Tradition?” Lessa demanded with caustic sweetness.

Manora raised questioning eyes to Lessa, who flushed, ashamed of herself for venting her frustrations with the dragonmen on the headwoman. She was doubly contrite when Manora gravely accepted her mute apology. In that moment Lessa’s determination to end R’gul’s domination over herself and the Weyr crystallized.

“No,” Manora went on calmly, “traditionally,” and she accorded Lessa a wry smile, “the Weyr is supplied from the first fruits of the soil and hunt. True, in recent Turns we have been chronically shorted, but it didn’t signify. We had no young dragons to feed. They do eat, as you know.” The glances of the two women locked in a timeless feminine amusement over the vagaries of the young under their care. Then Manora shrugged. “The riders used to hunt their beasts in the High Reaches or on the Keroon plateau. Now, however . . .”

She made a helpless grimace to indicate that R’gul’s restrictions deprived them of that victual relief.

“Time was,” she went on, her voice soft with nostalgia
,
“we would pass the coldest part of the Turn in one of the southern Holds. Or, if we wished and could, return to our birthplaces. Families used to take pride in daughters with dragonfolk sons.” Her face settled into sad lines. “The world turns and times change.”

“Yes,” Lessa heard herself say in a grating voice, “the world does turn, and times . . . times will change.”

Manora looked at Lessa, startled.

“Even R’gul will see we have no alternative,” Manora continued hastily, trying to stick to her problem.

“To what? Letting the mature dragons hunt?”

“Oh, no. He’s so adamant about that. No. We’ll have to barter at Fort or Telgar.”

Righteous indignation flared up in Lessa.

“The day the Weyr has to buy what should be given . . .” and she halted in midsentence, stunned as much by such a necessity as by the ominous echo of other words. “The day one of my Holds cannot support itself
or
the visit of its rightful overlord . . .” Fax’s words rang in her head. Did those words again foreshadow disaster? For whom? For what?

“I know, I know,” Manora was saying worriedly, unaware of Lessa’s shock. “It goes against the grain. But if R’gul will not permit judicious hunting, there is no other choice. He will not like the pinch of hunger in his belly.”

Lessa was struggling to control her inner terror. She took a deep breath.

“He’d probably then cut his throat to isolate his stomach,” she snapped, her acid comment restoring her wits. She ignored Manora’s startled look of dismay and went on. “It is traditional for you as headwoman of the Lower Cavern to bring such matters to the attention of the Weyrwoman, correct?”

Manora nodded, unsettled by Lessa’s rapid switches of mood.

“I, then, as Weyrwoman, presumably bring this to the attention of the Weyrleader who, presumably,”—she made no attempt to moderate her derision—“acts upon it?”

Manora nodded, her eyes perplexed.

“Well,” Lessa said in a pleasant, light voice, “you have dutifully discharged your traditional obligation. It is up to me now to discharge mine. Right?”

Manora regarded Lessa warily. Lessa smiled at her reassuringly.

“You may leave it in my hands, then.”

Manora rose slowly. Without taking her eyes from Lessa, she began to gather up her records.

“It is said that Fort and Telgar had unusually good harvests,” she suggested, her light tone not quite masking her anxiety. “Keroon, too, in spite of that coastal flooding.”

“Is that so?” Lessa murmured politely.

“Yes,” Manora continued helpfully, “and the herds at Keroon and Tillek had good increase.”

“I’m happy for them.”

Manora shot her a measuring look, not at all assured by Lessa’s sudden affability. She finished gathering up her Records, then set them down again in a careful pile.

“Have you noticed how K’net and his wingriders chafe at R’gul’s restrictions?” she asked, watching Lessa closely.

“K’net?”

“Yes. And old C’gan. Oh, his leg is still stiff, and Tagath may be more gray with age than blue, but he was of Lidith’s hatching. Her last clutch had fine beasts in it,” she remarked. “C’gan remembers other days . . .”

“Before the world turned and times changed?”

Lessa’s sweet voice did not mislead Manora now.

“It is not just as Weyrwoman that you are attractive to the dragonmen, Lessa of Pern,” Manora said sharply, her face stern. “There are several of the brown riders, for instance . . .”

“F’nor?” Lessa asked pointedly.

Manora drew herself up proudly. “He is a man grown, Weyrwoman, and we of the Lower Caverns have learned to disregard the ties of blood and affection. It is as a brown rider, not the son I bore, that I recommend him. Yes, I’d recommend F’nor, as I would also recommend T’sum and L’rad.”

“Do you suggest them because they are of F’lar’s wing and bred in the true traditions? Less apt to be swayed by my blandishments . . .”

“I suggest them because they believe in the tradition that the Weyr must be supplied from the Holds.”

“All right.” Lessa grinned at Manora, seeing the woman could not be baited about F’nor. “I shall take your recommendations to heart, for I do not intend . . .” She broke off her sentence. “Thank you for apprising me of our supply problems. We need fresh meat most of all?” she asked, rising to her feet.

“Grains, too, and some of the southern root vegetables would be very welcome,” Manora replied formally.

“Very well,” Lessa agreed.

Manora left, her expression thoughtful.

Lessa reflected for long moments on that interview, sitting like a slim statuette in the capacious stony chair, her legs curled up under her on the padding.

Foremost was the disturbing knowledge that Manora was deeply afraid of the mere prospect of Lessa absent from the Weyr, from Ramoth’s side, for any reason, for any length of time. Her instinctive fear reaction was a far more effective argument than any of R’gul’s sententious mouthings. However, Manora had given no hint of the reason for that necessity. Very well, Lessa would not try to fly one of the other dragons, with or without the rider, as she had been beginning to think she could.

As for this matter of short supplies, on that Lessa would act. Especially since R’gul would not. And, since R’gul could not protest what he did not know, she would contrive, with the help of K’net or F’nor or however many she needed, to keep the Weyr decently supplied. Eating regularly had become a pleasant habit she did not wish to curtail. She did not intend being greedy, but a little judicious pilfering of a bountiful harvest would go unnoticed by the Hold Lords.

K’net, though, was young; he might be rash and indiscreet. Perhaps F’nor would be the wiser choice. But was he as free to maneuver as K’net, who was, after all, a bronze rider? Maybe C’gan. The absence of a retired blue rider, time heavy on his hands, might not be noticed at all.

Lessa smiled to herself, but her smile faded quickly.

“The day the Weyr has to barter for what should be given . . .” She thrust back the premonitory shudder, concentrated on the ignominy of that situation. It certainly emphasized the measure of her self-delusion.

Why had she thought being at the Weyr would be so different from Ruath Hold? Had her early childhood training instilled such a questionless reverence for the Weyr that life must alter its pattern because Lessa of Ruatha had been Impressed by Ramoth? How could she have been such a romantic little fool?

Look around you, Lessa of Pern, look around the Weyr with unveiled eyes. Old and hallowed is the Weyr? Yes, but shabby and worn—and disregarded. Yes, you were elated to sit in the Weyrwoman’s great chair at the Council Table, but the padding is thin and the fabric dusty. Humbled to think your hands rest where Moreta’s and Torene’s had rested? Well, the stone is ingrained with dirt and needs a good scrubbing. And your rump may rest where theirs did—but that’s not where you have your brains.

The shabby Weyr reflected the deterioration of its purpose in the scheme of life on Pern. Those handsome dragonriders, too, so brave in their wher-hide accouterments, proud on the necks of their great beasts—they did not submit kindly to close examination without a few disappointing revelations. They were only men, with manlike lusts and ambitions, full of very human faults and frustrations, unwilling to disrupt their easy existence for the harsh exigencies that would reestablish the Weyr. They had settled too deeply in their isolation from the rest of their race; they did not realize they were little thought of. There was no real leader at their head . . .

F’lar! What was he waiting for? For Lessa to see through R’gul’s ineffectiveness? No, Lessa decided slowly, for Ramoth to grow up. For Mnementh to fly her when he can . . . traditionalist that F’lar is, and Lessa thought this excuse to be specious . . . when the mating dragon’s rider became, traditionally, the Weyrleader. That rider!

Well, F’lar might just find events not turning out as
he
planned.

My eyes were dazzled by Ramoth’s, but I can see around the rainbow now, Lessa thought, steeling herself against the tenderness that always accompanied any thought of the golden beast. Yes, I can see into the black and gray shadows now, where my apprenticeship at Ruatha should stand me in good stead. True, there’s more to control than one small Hold and far more perceptive minds to influence. Perceptive but dense in their own way. A greater hazard if I lose. But how can I? Lessa’s smile broadened. She rubbed her palms against her thighs in anticipation of the challenge. They can do nothing with Ramoth without me, and they must have Ramoth. No one can coerce Lessa of Ruatha, and they’re as stuck with me as they were with Jora. Only, I’m no Jora!

Elated, Lessa jumped from the chair. She felt alive again. And more powerful in herself than she felt when Ramoth was awake.