DRAGONRIDER
Anne McCaffrey
Anne McCaffrey Editor’s note:
What follows is selfcontained and selfexplanatory. That’s obvious; how else could it have won an award?
At the same time, it is the concluding half of a larger work, part of which appeared in Nebula Three. Therefore Karen Anderson has prepared a synopsis of what went before. You may well prefer to skip that and go directly on to the gorgeously colored world of dragons and their riders which Anne McCaffrey has created for you. On the other hand, many travelers prefer to read a guidebook before they leave home.
On the world called Pern, the human inhabitants have no tradition of Earth or of space travel. There is a legendary vagueness about the menace of the Threads which fall when the freakish orbit of the Red Star (a captured planet) brings it close to Pern. Though nobles and commoners are in awe of the Dragons and the elite corps who ride them, they are ignorant of the nature of the powers bred into both Dragons and riders.
In the Hold of Ruatha, young Lessa had for half her life used her inborn mental powers to camouflage herself from the men of Fax, the brigand lord who slaughtered her entire family to secure his seizure of their Hold. She also managed, by small subtle interferences, to disrupt all the workings of Ruatha, so that Fax had no profit from his conquest.
Fax did not know of her existence; but when the dragonrider F’lar inspected Fax’s Holds in search of a potential Weyrwoman, he knew that someone at Ruatha had the abilities he was looking forespecially when he realized that he had been maneuvered into a duel with Fax. The latter dead, Lessa claimed Ruatha. But in the fury to which she had provoked him, Fax had renounced this unprofitable Hold in favor of his youngest son, born that night. F’lar told Lessa that the infant’s claim must stand, but that she had the Power needed in a Weyrwoman. She agreed to go with him to the Weyr.
This had fallen very low in prestige, due in part to the incompetence of the last Weyrwoman, Jora, now dead. The last clutch of the dying queen-dragon Nemorth included one queen-egg; they had been sired by Hath, and consequently his rider R’gul was Weyrleader. On hatching, the queen-chick chose Lessa after clumsily injuring two other candidates. At the moment their eyes met, their minds joined in joyful rapport. Lessa and the golden dragon Ramoth would now be devoted to each other for the rest of their lives. R’gul remained Weyrleader while Ramoth grew up, and taught Lessa her duties. Meanwhile few Holds sent tithes and the Lords of the others called the dragonriders parasites, the legendary Threads a lie. After Lessa secretly encouraged raids on the herds of disaffected Holds to make up the shortage of food, there was active revolt. But by the time troops marched on the Weyr, the situation had drastically changed. Ramoth, now two Turns old, was full-grown and larger even than F’lar’s bronze Mnementh. She had made her nuptial flight, and Mnementh had claimed her. Their rapport with the dragons brought F’lar and Lessa together with the same passion.
The new Weyrieader F’lar was quick-witted and decisive: he sent parties of dragonriders to make hostages of the womenfolk of the rebel lords. Their Holds were unguarded, for they had forgotten that a dragon can fly between, passing almost instantly from one place to another. So the tithes would be paid; the Weyr would prosper again.
“You STILL doubt, R’gul?” F’lar asked, appearing slightly amused by the older bronze rider’s perversity.
R’gul, his handsome features stubbornly set, made no reply to the weyrleader’s taunt. He ground his teeth together as if he could grind away F’lar’s authority over him.
“There have been no Threads in Pern’s skies for over four hundred Turns. Thkre are no more!”
“There is always that possibility,” F’lar conceded amiably.
There was not, however, the slightest trace of tolerance in his amber eyes. Nor the slightest hint of compromise in his manner.
He was more like F’lon, his sire, R’gul decided, than a son had any right to be. Always so sure of himself, always slightly contemptuous of what others did and thought. Arrogant, that’s what F’lar was. Impertinent, too, and underhanded in the matter of that young Weyrwoman. Why, R’gul had trained her up to be one of the finest Weyrwomen in many Turns. Before he’d finished her instruction, she’d known all the Teaching Ballads and Sagas letter-perfect. And then the silly child had turned to F’lar. Didn’t have sense enough to appreciate the merits of an older, more experienced man. Undoubtedly she felt a first obligation to F’lar for discovering her on Search.
“You do, however,” F’lar was saying, “admit that when the sun hits the Finger Rock at the moment of dawn, winter solstice has been reached?”
“Any fool knows that’s what the Finger Rock is for,” R’gul grunted.
“Then why don’t you, you old fool, admit that the Eye Rock was placed on Star Stone to bracket the Red Star when it’s about to make a Pass?” burst out K’net.
R’gul flushed, half-starting out of his chair, ready to take the young sprout to task for such insolence.
“K’net!” F’lar’s voice cracked authoritatively. “Do you really like flying the lgen patrol so much you want another few weeks at it?”
K’net hurriedly seated himself, flushing at the reprimand and the threat.
“There is, you know, R’gul, incontrovertible evidence to support my conclusions,” F’lar went on with deceptive mildness. ” ‘The Finger points/At an Eye blood-red …’ ” “Don’t quote me verses I taught you as a weyriing,” R’gul exclaimed heatedly.
“Then have faith in what you taught,” F’lar snapped back, his amber eyes flashing dangerously.
R’gul, stunned by the unexpected forcefulness, sank back into his chair.
“You cannot deny, R’gul,” F’lar continued quietly, “that no less than half an hour ago the sun balanced on the Finger’s tip at dawn and the Red Star was squarely framed by the Eye Rock.”
The other dragonriders, bronze as well as brown, murmured and nodded their agreement to that phenomenon. There was also an undercurrent of resentment for R’gul’s continual contest of F’lar’s policies as the new Weyrleader. Even old S’lel, once R’gul’s avowed supporter, was following the majority.
“There have been no Threads in four hundred Turns. There are no Threads,” R’gul muttered.
“Then, my fellow dragonman,” F’lar said cheerfully, “all you have taught is falsehood. The dragons are, as the Lords of the Holds wish to believe, parasites on the economy of Pern, anachronisms. And so are we.
“Therefore, far be it from me to hold you here against the dictates of your conscience. You have my permission to leave the Weyr and take up residence where you will.”
Someone laughed. R’gul was too stunned by F’lar’s ultimatum to take offense at the ridicule. Leave the Weyr? Was the man mad? Where would he go? The Weyr had been his life. He had been bred up to it for generations. All his male ancestors had been dragonriders. Not all bronze, true, but a decent percentage. His own dam’s sire had been a Weyrleader just as he, R’gul, had been until F’lar’s Mnementh had flown the new queen.
But dragonmen never left the Weyr. Well, they did if they were negligent enough to lose their dragons, like that Lytol fellow at Ruath Hold. And how could be leave the Weyr with a dragon?
What did F’lar want of him? Was it not enough that he was Weyrleader now in R’gul’s stead? Wasn’t F’lar’s pride sufficiently swollen by having bluffed the Lords of Pern into disbanding their army when they were all set to coerce the Weyr and dragonmen? Must F’lar dominate every dragonman, body and will, too? He stared a long moment, incredulous.