DragonWarrior
By Absinthe
Disclaimers: Ms. McCaffrey's wonderful planet of Pern belongs to her and her alone. No harm is meant by this little romp. Two of the characters are going to look suspiciously like a warrior and her bard, two characters that belong to Universal studios.
Part 3:
It must have started as just a little tingle -- a vague need for each other. As all such things tend naturally to go, their affections increased with time until the tingle was a burn and the trickle was a wide and wondrous river. With the dawning of hope came an increase in the intensity of their relationship and it became an agony to conceal it from the eyes of the weyr.
Not long after their fateful trip to the hatching grounds, Tara woke one morning to the strangest feeling. She couldn't pin it down for the first few minutes as she blinked the sleep from her eyes. A few moments later she realized what was missing. Nerath wasn't talking to her, just broadcasting a general irritability that was really very uncharacteristic of her. Tara sat bolt upright, threw the covers off the bed and scrambled up, running in her bare feet out to the weyr. Nerath swiveled her head to peer at her rider for just a moment before uncurling, stretching, and stepping out onto her ledge. She was luminescently gold, and it only took a split second for Tara to recognize the signs. The queen was about to fly.
At the same time they were both overcome by a ravenous hunger. Tara narrowed her eyes as the dragon stepped off the edge and sailed out over the bowl. At that moment, Khlara and Miriam dashed into the weyr. The junior rider swayed with the intensity of the connection she now felt between herself and Nerath.
"Keep her under control," Miriam warned, "Make her blood the kills." Tara just nodded, her eyes never leaving the brilliant golden form of her beautiful Queen as she swooped with cruel intentions down on the herdbeasts in their pen. The dragon plucked a squealing buck from the herd and carried it effortlessly to a ledge where she ripped its throat out with her razor sharp talons.
Their wills battled invisibly. Nerath wanted to bury her nose in the beasts flesh, but Tara fought with her, and at last the dragon acquiesced, taking only the blood of her kill. She would have to stay light to have a good, high mating flight. Nerath went back for three more savage helpings, and when she was finished, she crouched, licking the gore from her muzzle. The weyr's eligible bronzes were poised, waiting to take off as soon as Nerath did -- waiting for the chase to begin.
A moment later, as Miriam squeezed Tara's shoulders encouragingly, Nerath sprang suddenly upwards, and a superior grin spread across the junior rider's face. She laughed mockingly, vocalizing the dragon's emotions. Nerath beat her mighty wings and was lengths ahead of the silly bronzes. They pushed desperately after her, always just a little too far behind as she spiraled upwards. Nerath reveled her superiority. She glanced back over her shoulder as the blues and then the browns fell out of the running. They circled ineffectually and were left far behind.
Tara, back on the ground, laughed viciously and swayed, her arms a little out at her sides. The bronze riders were ranged about in Nerath's weyr, each one as engrossed in their dragon's heated emotions as Tara was in Nerath's while the bronzes flew laboriously after their quarry, jostling in her wake for the lead position.
From the ground the flight of dragons had long disappeared into the blue expanse of sky. Miriam and Khlara watched the riders intently, waiting for some sign as to the victor.
High over the weyr, three big bronzes were all the remained within a length of Nerath. She had out flown all of the others, and the flight had already outlasted Willenth's by several minutes and many hundreds of dragon-lengths in altitude. Tara made a clawing gesture and grimaced as far overhead, Nerath felt the brush of Menth's neck as he battled his way upwards. Menth's success was a forgone conclusion, and while the dazed bronze riders were herded out of the weyr, Merelan, her cheeks flushed, pounded up the stairs.
The parade of glassy eyed riders baffled her. Khlara and Miriam tailed the group, and as they brushed past her, she asked obliviously,
"What's going on?"
"Darling harper," Miriam laughed, "Your Tara's Nerath just led the bronzes a merry chase -- the longest mating flight I've ever seen!"
Merelan glanced apprehensively at the weyr entryway.
"Come, these men need klah in their stomachs!" The former weyrwoman laughed derisively, placing her hand between the harper's shoulder blades and gently propelling her along. Merelan went through the actions of ladling out klah to the dazed riders with as much enthusiasm as a marionette, but her painted smile was enough for the tired and disappointed men. Miriam, pleased and humming to herself, was oblivious as she sailed past.
When she was at last freed from her brief stint as serving girl, Merelan retreated to her small bed chamber and to the isolation she needed to just sit and breathe in and out. Who had she been kidding? She shoved her face into a pillow to stifle the tiny choking noises she was trying so hard not to make. Merelan couldn't help but think that this was the way that things were supposed to be -- that any hopes she might have harbored could lead only to a long friendship, even though her heart and her body demanded more. Perhaps Miriam had been right all along.
Merelan decided then and there not to go out to the hatching grounds at night again. Her silly pipe dream was over, she told herself, all the while silently hating L'non for what his dragon had won him the right to do.
Tara woke, slowly at first, and then when she realized that she wasn't alone in her bed she sat bolt upright with a gasp. Her bed mate grumbled, then opened his eyes and found himself staring at Tara's tanned, muscular back. He smiled and reached out, rubbing the small of her back gently. She stiffened and twisted to glare at him, pulling the sheets up to cover her breasts.
"What's wrong?" L'non asked, genuine concern creeping into his voice.
"Nothing," Tara replied, smiling a little half smile, but she couldn't unkink her muscles no matter how she tried. Brushing him gently away, she clambered out of the bed and pulled on a tunic. L'non looked confused, perhaps a little hurt, but he didn't say anything. Tara counted him among her friends, and she hoped that he could understand that this coupling wasn't going to be like the weyr-mating of the teaching songs. They weren't going to wind up as life long lovers, and Tara knew from late night conversations and drinking contests with L'non that this was what he expected.
"Tara?" he asked, "What is it?"
She immediately regretted her initial reaction. Tara was brash, but rarely cruel, and this was her friend. It wasn't like she'd wound up a-bed with F'deron or something. No, things were actually better than she'd had any right to expect, so she made a conscious effort to disspell the tension that she created. Tara "made nice" for the next hour or so, serving him breakfast and talking with him like nothing had happened between them. He tried to play along, but she could tell that he'd been disappointed.
They walked down the stairs together, bumping shoulders and talking animatedly, looking for all the world exactly like they should. Their emergence so late in the morning won them a few knowing grins and mumbled but good natured comments from their friends, but they were given a wide berth, as though no one really wanted to intrude on them just yet. Things went nicely until they split up, Tara headed for the store rooms to check the inventory as was her daily duty, and L'non went to his wing-second's weyr to get started on the day's drills.
They weren't necessarily expected to resume their duties the day after the flight, but Tara wanted to downplay the significance of the event as much as possible. When she into the first of the huge store rooms, breathing in the delicious scents of dried herbs, she almost ran smack into Miriam, who was looking about determinedly, taking a tally.
"Tara? What are you doing down here?" The former weyr woman could not conceal her surprise, "I thought you'd be asleep until the afternoon."
Tara shrugged, smiled sheepishly and replied, "Just wanted to get going on the inventory."
"No darling, wouldn't hear of it, why don't you and L'non go for a swim or something? I'll take care of this."
Tara argued half-heartedly and at last decided to take part of the woman's advice and go for a swim. She bounded up stairs and across the grassy bowl, out onto the hot sand of the beach, meandering down, shucking off clothes as she went. She stepped out of her sandals and ran the last few lengths to the surf, plunging in to her waist and then diving with the grace of a natural swimmer under the next wave. She stayed down, in the rushing noise and foreign silence of the surf, paddling to stay under until she brushed sand with her fingers and her lungs felt afire. The warm air kissed her like an old friend each time she surfaced, but here above the blue water the fears and cares of her life returned. With another deep breath, she went under again. And again, and again, until she could not stand it any longer and had to stop. She drifted on her back, watching the clouds scud along.
The shore was distant, and in the harsh glare of the noon sun, it blended in dangerously with the water. Only the looming volcanic mountain of the weyr delineated the horizon, but the glittering surface of the water and the sting of salt on her skin suddenly became too much and she felt herself losing the momentum of her arms and legs. Her muscle dense body sank and she swirled like a leaf in the water, only managing to get herself going again when the lack of air threatened to make her black out completely. She felt a jolt of concern and an anxious voice demanded, Keep paddling!
Tara smiled in spite of her vertigo and started trying to swim for shore, finding her stride after a few splutters in the shadow of her dragon who suddenly appeared overhead, her eyes whirling with anxiety for her rider. Tara made her way back to the shore, glad when the sand met her probing feet at last. Nerath settled on the beach and extended her head to her rider as Tara stumbled out of the breakers. The junior rider grasped her dragon's head knob with one hand and rubbed the queen's sensitive eye ridge with the other, pressing her cheek to the fragrant hide of her closest companion.
"Thanks, love," Tara murmured, then gently pushed off from Nerath and stood up uneasily, "I'm good now."
No, you are not. A nap?
Tara glared at the big dragon, but the insistent tone of her "voice" brooked no arguments. Of course, a nap was Nerath's answer to every problem, but in this case, perhaps the dark coolness of her bed chamber would be a welcome change. She didn't know what was wrong with her, but when she finally got up the stairs to the weyr, the cool shade slid over her like a cotton sheet. A brief nap revitalized her, but left her with a nagging kind of worry in the back of her mind as she went about her duties that evening and the following morning.
The interesting thing about life in the weyr was that it never stopped, or for that matter, slowed down. It wasn't two days after the mating flight that a new kind of excitement filled the hearts of the weyrfolk. A hatching. Willenth's first brood of eggs was hard on the hatching grounds, and the adult dragons began to hum deep in their huge throats, signaling the beginning of the emergence of the new dragons from their imprisoning shells. Some of the shells were beginning to quiver, some to rock a little, but it would be a good hour before any broke open. Dragonriders scrambled to assemble Lord Holders, prominent craftsmen, and the families of all the candidates for impression. The bronze riders had the honor of bringing in the potentiates, and all the weyrfolk gathered in the huge amphitheater that surrounded the grounds -- those not involved in the hasty preparation of a huge feast, anyway.
Tara sat in the front row, watching Khlara and her insipid Weyr Leader hold hands and flirt like the teenagers that they weren't. Miriam sat on one side of her, and Merelan on the other. The tension between the pair was palpable in spite of Tara's reassurances that nothing had changed, and the junior rider knew that Merelan felt hopeless, as though things were now out of her hands. In a way, they were.
The bronzes started arriving, each carrying a white robed candidate along with his rider. One by one they landed and dropped off their passengers, then lifted off and perched along the outer edges of the grounds, heads weaving from side to side a little, a deep and almost electric hum sounding from their throats and chests. At last, all 150 or so boys were standing in a circle around the arrangement of immense speckled eggs, and the 20 girls stood in a looser circle around the single golden egg. A large silvery one started to rock and show some small fractures in its surface, and soon another and another. Tara was hard put to decide where to look as hatchling after hatchling made its selection from the candidates. More than a few riders' eyes were moist at that point.
A collective gasp rose from the audience. A clumsy bronze hatchling had pressed through the circle of potentiates and was stumbling his way towards the stands. Tara nudged Merelan, but a glance at the harper proved that the woman was already watching the little beast. She was making small shooing noises and flicking a hand at him, as if he was paying attention to anything but the problem of moving his damp bulk across the hot sand. He scrabbled up the first step, then the second, then the third and finally fell against Merelan's trouser leg, the claws of his wingtips entangled in the fabric. A dead silence fell.
Miriam went white as a sheet, but said nothing. Merelan looked absolutely radiant. Tara just smiled, though she was more than a little afraid of what Miriam's reaction was going to be.
"He says his name is Vath," Merelan murmured, awestruck. A little wave of sound traveled through the audience, then attention was turned back to the creeling hatchlings on the sands as the queen egg began to rock. Tara lost all interest in the goings on down there, and turned to Merelan, touching her arm gently.
"C'mon, let's get him down the steps and to some food," Tara said, preempting the next thing she knew would be coming out of Merelan's pretty little mouth.
Part 4
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