Anne McCaffrey - Dragonquest

“No, he’s not a dragonrider,” Kylara agreed emphatically a smile of remembered pleasure touching her full red lips. It gave her a soft, mysterious, alluring look, she thought, bending to the mirror. But the surface was mottled and the close inspection made her skin appear diseased.

I itch, Prideth said, and Kylara could hear the dragon moving. The ground under her feet echoed the effect.

Kylara laughed indulgently and, with a final swirl and a grimace at the imperfect mirror, she went out to ease Prideth. If only she could find a real man who could understand and adore her the way the dragon did. If, for instance, F’lar . . .

Mnementh is Ramoth’s, Prideth told her rider as she entered the clearing which served as gold queen’s Weyr in Southern. The dragon had rubbed the dirt off the bedrock just beneath the surface. The southern sun baked the slab so that it gave off comfortable heat right through the coolest night. All around, the great fellis trees drooped, the pink clustered blossoms scenting the air.

“Mnementh could be yours, silly one,” she told her beast, scrubbing the itchy spot with the long-handled brush.

No. I do not contend with Ramoth.

“You would quick enough if you were in mating heat,” Kylara replied, wishing she had the nerve to attempt such a coup. “It’s not as if there was anything immoral about mating with your father or clutching your mother . . .”

Kylara thought of her own mother, a woman too early used and cast aside by Lord Telgar, for younger, more vital bedmates. Why, if she hadn’t been found on Search, she might have had to marry that dolt what-ever-his-name-had-been. She’d never have been a Weyrwoman and had Prideth to love her. She scrubbed fiercely at the spot until Prideth, sighing in an excess of relief, blew three clusters of blooms off their twigs

You are my mother, Prideth said, turning great opalescent eyes on her rider, her tone suffused with love, admiration, affection, awe and joy.

Despite her annoying reflections, Kylara smiled tenderly at her dragon. She couldn’t stay angry with the beast, not when Prideth gazed at her that way. Not when Prideth loved her, Kylara, to the exclusion of all other considerations. Gratefully the Weyrwoman rubbed the sensitive ridge of Prideth’s right eye socket until the protecting lids closed one by one in contentment. The girl leaned against the wedge shaped head, at peace momentarily with herself, with the world, the balm of Prideth’s love assuaging her discontent.

Then she heard T’bor’s voice in the distance, ordering the weyrlings about, and she pushed away from Prideth. Why did it have to be T’bor? He was so ineffectual. He never came near making her feel the way Meron did, except of course when Orth was flying Prideth and then, then it was bearable. But Meron, without a dragon, was almost enough. Meron was just ruthless and ambitious enough so that together they could probably control all Pern . . .

“Good day, Kylara.”

Kylara ignored the greeting. T’bor’s forcedly cheerful tone told her that he was determined not to quarrel with her over whatever it was he had on his mind this time. She wondered what attraction he had ever held for her, though he was tall and not ill-favored; few Dragonriders were. The thin lines of Thread scars more often gave them a rakish rather than repulsive appearance. T’bor was not scarred but a frown of apprehension and a nervous darting of his eyes marred the effect of his good looks.

“Good day, Prideth,” he added.

I like him, Prideth told her rider. And he is really devoted to you. You are not kind to him.

“Kindness gets you nowhere,” Kylara snapped back at her beast. She turned with indolent reluctance to the Weyrleader. “What’s on your mind?”

T’bor flushed as he always did when he heard that note in Kylara’s voice. She meant to unsettle him.

“I need to know how many weyrs are free. Telgar Weyr is asking.”

“Ask Brekke. How should I know?”

T’bor’s flush deepened and he set his jaw. “It is customary for the Weyrwoman to direct her own staff . . .”

“Custom be Thread-bared! She knows. I don’t. And I don’t see why Southern should be constantly host to every idiot rider who can’t dodge Thread.”

“You know perfectly well, Kylara, why Southern Weyr . . .”

“We haven’t had a single casualty of any kind in seven Turns of Thread.”

“We don’t get the heavy, constant Threadfall that the northern continent does, and now I understand . . .”

“Well, I don’t understand why their wounded must be a constant drain on our resources . . .”

“Kylara. Don’t argue with every word I say.”

Smiling, Kylara turned from him, pleased that she had pushed him so close to breaking his childish resolve.

“Find out from Brekke. She enjoys filling in for me.” She glanced over her shoulder to see if he understood exactly what she meant. She was certain that Brekke shared his bed when Kylara was otherwise occupied. The more fool Brekke, who, as Kylara well knew, was pining after F’nor. She and T’bor must have interesting fantasies, each imagining the other the true object of their unrequited loves.

“Brekke is twice the woman and far more fit to be Weyrwoman than you!” T’bor said In a tight, controlled voice.

“You’ll pay for that, you scum, you sniveling boy-lover,” Kylara screamed at him, enraged by the unexpectedness of his retaliation. Then she burst out laughing at the thought of Brekke as the Weyrwoman, or Brekke as passionate and adept a lover as she knew herself to be. Brekke the Bony, with no more roundness at the breast than a boy. Why, even Lessa looked more feminine.

Thought of Lessa sobered Kylara abruptly. She tried again to convince herself that Lessa would be no threat, no obstacle in her plan. Lessa was too subservient to F’lar now, aching to be pregnant again, playing the dutiful Weyrwoman, too content to see what could happen under her nose. Lessa was a fool. She could have ruled all Pern if she had half-tried. She’d had the chance and lost it. The stupidity of going back to bring up the Oldtimers when she could have had absolute dominion over the entire planet as Weyrwoman to Pern’s only queen! Well, Kylara had no intention of remaining in the Southern Weyr, meekly tending the world’s wounded weyrmen and cultivating acres and acres of food for everyone else but herself. Each egg hatched a different way, but a crack at the right time speeded things up.

And Kylara was all ready to crack a few eggs, her way. Noble Larad, Lord of Telgar Hold, might not have remembered to invite her, his only full-blood sister, to the wedding, but surely there was no reason why she should remain distant when her own half sister was marrying the Lord Holder of Lemos.

Brekke was changing the dressing on his arm when F’nor heard T’bor calling her. She tensed at the sound of his voice an expression of compassion and worry momentarily clouding her face.

“I’m in F’nor’s weyr,” she said, turning her head toward the open door and raising her light voice.

“Don’t know why we insist on calling a hold made of wood a weyr,” said F’nor, wondering at Brekke’s reaction. She was such a serious child, too old for her years. Perhaps being junior Weyrwoman to Kylara had aged her prematurely. He had finally got her to accept his teasing. Or was she humoring him, F’nor wondered, during the painful process of having the deep knife wound tended.

She gave him a little smile. “A weyr is where a dragon is, no matter how it’s constructed.”

T’bor entered at that moment, ducking his head, though the door was plenty high enough to accommodate his inches.

“How’s the arm, F’nor?”

“Improving under Brekke’s expert care. There’s a rumor,” F’nor said, grinning slyly up at Brekke, “that men sent to Southern heal quicker.”