The brown rider’s face expressed enthusiasm for his mission as he began to comprehend his leader’s intentions. With Fax dead and Ruatha under the protection of dragonmen, particularly that same one who had dispatched Fax, the Hold would have wise management.
“She caused Ruatha’s deterioration?” he asked.
“And nearly ours with her machinations,” F’lar replied but having found the admirable object of his Search, he could now be magnanimous. “Suppress your exultation, brother,” he advised quickly as he took note of F’nor’s expression. “The new queen must also be Impressed.”
“I’ll settle arrangements here. Lytol is an excellent choice,” F’nor said.
“Who is this Lytol?” demanded Lessa pointedly. She had twisted the mass of filthy hair back from her face. In the moonlight the dirt was less noticeable. F’lar caught F’nor looking at her with an all too easily read expression. He signaled F’nor, with a peremptory gesture, to carry out his orders without delay.
“Lytol is a dragonless man,” F’lar told the girl, “no friend to Fax. He will ward the Hold well and it will prosper.” He added persuasively with a quelling stare full on her. “Won’t it?”
She regarded him somberly, without answering, until he chuckled softly at her discomfiture.
“We’ll return to the Weyr,” he announced, proffering a hand to guide her to Mnementh’s side.
The bronze one had extended his head toward the watch-wher who now lay panting on the ground, its chain limp in the dust.
“Oh,” Lessa sighed, and dropped beside the grotesque beast. It raised its head slowly, lurring piteously.
“Mnementh says it is very old and soon will sleep itself to death.”
Lessa cradled the bestial head in her arms, scratching it behind the ears.
“Come, Lessa of Pern,” F’lar said, impatient to be up and away.
She rose slowly but obediently. “It saved me. It knew me.”
“It knows it did well,” F’lar assured her, brusquely, wondering at such an uncharacteristic show of sentiment in her.
He took her hand again, to help her to her feet and lead her back to Mnementh. As they turned, he glimpsed the watch-wher, launching itself at a dead run after Lessa. The chain, however, held fast. The beast’s neck broke, with a sickeningly audible snap.
Lessa was on her knees in an instant, cradling the repulsive head in her arms.
“Why, you foolish thing, why?” she asked in a stunned whisper as the light in the beast’s green-gold eyes dimmed and died out.
Mnementh informed F’lar that the creature had lived this long only to preserve the Ruathan line. At Lessa’s imminent departure, it had welcomed death.
A convulsive shudder went through Lessa’s slim body. F’lar watched as she undid the heavy buckle that fastened the metal collar about the watch-wher’s neck. She threw the tether away with a violent motion. Tenderly she laid the watch-wher on the cobbles. With one last caress to the clipped wings, she rose in a fluid movement and walked resolutely to Mnementh without a single backward glance. She stepped calmly to the dragon’s raised leg and seated herself, as F’lar directed, on the great neck.
F’lar glanced around the courtyard at the remainder of his wing which had reformed there. The Hold folk had retreated back into the safety of the Great Hall. When his wingmen were all astride, he vaulted to Mnementh’s neck, behind the girl.
“Hold tightly to my arms,” he ordered her as he took hold of the smallest neck ridge and gave the command to fly.
Her fingers closed spasmodically around his forearm as the great bronze dragon took off, the enormous wings working to achieve height from the vertical takeoff. Mnementh preferred to fall into flight from a cliff or tower. like all dragons, he tended to indolence. F’lar glanced behind him, saw the other dragonmen form the flight line, spread out to cover those still on guard at Ruatha Hold.
When they had reached a sufficient altitude, he told Mnementh to transfer, going between to the Weyr.
Only a gasp indicated the girl’s astonishment as they hung between. Accustomed as he was to the sting of the profound cold, to the awesome utter lack of light and sound, F’lar still found the sensations unnerving. Yet the uncommon transfer spanned no more time than it took to cough thrice.
Mnementh rumbled approval of this candidate’s calm reaction as they flicked out of the eerie between.
And then they were above the Weyr, Mnementh setting his wings to glide in the bright daylight, half a world away from night-time Ruatha.
As they circled above the great stony trough of the Weyr, F’lar peered at Lessa’s face, pleased with the delight mirrored there; she showed no trace of fear as they hung a thousand lengths above the high Benden mountain range. Then, as the seven dragons roared their incoming cry, an incredulous smile lit her face.
The other wingmen dropped into a wide spiral, down, down while Mnementh elected to descend in lazy circles. The dragonmen peeled off smartly and dropped, each to his own tier in the caves of the Weyr. Mnementh finally completed his leisurely approach to their quarters, whistling shrilly to himself as he braked his forward speed with a twist of his wings, dropping lightly at last to the ledge. He crouched as F’lar swung the girl to the rough rock, scored from thousands of clawed landings.
“This leads only to our quarters,” he told her as they entered the corridor, vaulted and wide for the easy passage of great bronze dragons.
As they reached the huge natural cavern that had been his since Mnementh achieved maturity, F’lar looked about him with eyes fresh from his first prolonged absence from the Weyr. The huge chamber was unquestionably big, certainly larger than most of the halls he had visited in Fax’s procession. Those halls were intended as gathering places for men, not the habitations of dragons. But suddenly he saw his own quarters were nearly as shabby as all Ruatha. Benden was, of a certainty, one of the oldest dragonweyrs, as Ruatha was one of the oldest Holds, but that excused nothing. How many dragons had bedded in that hollow to make solid rock conform to dragon proportions! How many feet had worn the path past the dragon’s weyr into the sleeping chamber, to the bathing room beyond where the natural warm spring provided everfresh water! But the wall hangings were faded and unraveling and there were grease stains on lintel and floor that should be sanded away.
He noticed the wary expression on Lessa’s face as he paused in the sleeping room.
“I must feed Mnementh immediately. So you may bathe first,” he said, rummaging in a chest and finding clean clothes for her, discards of other previous occupants of his quarters, but far more presentable than her present covering. He carefully laid back in the chest the white wool robe that was traditional Impression garb. She would wear that later. He tossed several garments at her feet and a bag of sweetsand, gesturing to the hanging that obscured the way to the bath.
He left her, then, the clothes in a heap at her feet, for she made no effort to catch anything.
Mnementh informed him that F’nor was feeding Canth and that he, Mnementh, was hungry, too. She didn’t trust F’lar but she wasn’t afraid of himself.
“Why should she be afraid of you?” F’lar asked. “You’re cousin to the watch-wher who was her only friend.”
Mnementh informed F’lar that he, a fully matured bronze dragon, was no relation to any scrawny, crawling, chained, and wing-clipped watch-wher.
F’lar, pleased at having been able to tease the bronze one, chuckled to himself. With great dignity, Mnementh curved down to the feeding ground.