The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (22 page)

“So that’s what all this coming and going’s been about,” Uloa said, propping her fists on her hips and glaring at David. “And you never gave us so much as a hint.”

David recoiled slightly. “I never had so much as a hint myself until this evening. You know how closemouthed Sean can be.”

“That’s true enough,” Jean said with a wry laugh.

“What he dislikes is that the dragons’ll have to do a lot of hauling.”

Jean made a real grimace this time and sighed deeply. “Then it’s only fair that the holders help us dig!”

“That was Sean’s point.”

Jean couldn’t see the diagram, so she pulled it down. “So this is how we’ll be spending our free time?”

“What free time?” half a dozen voices chorused around her.

“The free time tomorrow when we’ll all go over and formally take possession of our Weyr,” David said firmly. He glanced around, looking for acknowledgment. “Go easy on the beer. We’ll make a daylight start.”

“Our daylight, of course!” said an anonymous voice from the back.

“He’s got more sense than to interfere with your beering by making us start at daylight on the east coast,” Jean said tartly.

From the middle of the room a roar went up: “Telgar! Telgar Weyr!”

“As if they had any choice,” Jean said at her drollest, “though I’d like to suggest a name now for ours and let you think about it.”

“What name?”

“Benden!” she said in a proud quiet tone, lifting her chin. There was a long moment of respectful silence.

“What’s to think about?” asked a firm baritone voice from the rear.

“Could there be any other name that would be more fitting?” David Caterel asked, and Torene could see that his eyes had filled.

The murmur grew quickly as the name was repeated throughout their small gathering. Jean touched her glass to David’s, and suddenly the others all got to their feet, glasses raised.

“To Benden Weyr!” David Caterel said, though “Weyr” came out raggedly.

“To Benden Weyr!” And mugs, cups, and glasses were raised high and then drained.

Torene had to sniff and dash the tears from her eyes, but she felt uplifted by that little ceremony. Hers had been the last Hatching that the ailing admiral had attended. She remembered that he had sought her out and wished her and her new queen the very best. Though he still walked with an erect back, his step was short and jerky. One of his sons and Mihall had escorted him.

Many riders began to circulate then, some to get more beer, some to drift off, but Torene was more or less hemmed in by the other queen riders and Wingleaders.

“You got this copy from your mother?” David asked, spreading it carefully out on the table. When she nodded, he asked, “Any chance we can get more? And at least one set of enlargements for each elevation?” Torene nodded again. Her parents would be extremely proud of her assignment and willing to cooperate in any way they could. “And you’ve been there recently?” His manner was kindly, as if she were much younger than she actually was and needed to be led. She was twenty-two, but she didn’t resent that from David as much as she would have from one of her peers.

“A whole bunch of us went the day you and Sean went down to Ierne to eat,” Uloa said, with a put-you-in-your-place tone.

Grinning back at her, David said, “If I’d known Sean was going to pull it off, I’d’ve come with you. What I need to establish is how recent your visit was.”

“Very.”

“And where is this access tunnel you found, Torene?”

N’klas was closer and jammed his index finger down on the spot. “Here.”

David kept looking at Torene for his answer.

She nodded. “This echo reads as two meters high, ground to ceiling.” She indicated with a fingertip. “Here and here Ozzie says there’re tunnels that can be enlarged, with an entrance into the—into Benden Weyr—” She was interrupted by a chorus of approval: “Sounds good.” “Paul’d be pleased.” “Perfect name!” “Has a ring to it, doesn’t it?” She went on: “—and an exit on high ground above the river, here.”

Comments and suggestions flew too thick and fast for her to identify the speakers.

“That would be the priority project, so we can get materials and people in and out easily.”

“We still have to shift by dragonback. Couldn’t send a land expedition when we don’t know the overnighting places.”

“Kaarvan wouldn’t mind a good long sail. He’s bored with fishing the Bay.”

“Iernans can bring in a lot of their own gear on their ships.”

Other riders, eager to contribute, began to crowd in, and Torene, courteously letting people past her, suddenly found herself excluded.

“It’s my map,” she said under her breath, trying to suppress a surge of bitterness as she took a further step back, nearly stepping on the feet of someone seated behind her.

“It’ll be your Weyr, ’Rene,” said a soft, amused tenor voice. She looked down into Mihall Connell’s slightly mocking gray-blue eyes. She’d never been close enough to see their color before. “Come the time. Alaranth flies,” he went on. “She’ll fly soon—but you know that, don’t you?”

There was no mockery in his tone, and he’d made more of a statement than a question.

“Well, if you intend to be Weyrleader, why aren’t you in there, mapping your space?” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them and bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Mihall.”

“Why?” His very regular eyebrows quirked briefly, and his gray-blue eyes, not a trace of mockery in them, met hers once more, his head tilted up at her. “I should
like
to be Weyrleader. I
intend
to be Weyrleader. Everyone
knows
that.” The mockery was back. “The question is, how does Alaranth feel about Brianth?”

“Isn’t it more how I feel about you?” The words tumbled out before she could stop them, and she shook her head and stamped her foot in annoyance: That wasn’t at all what she had intended to say.

Mihall rose slowly until he was looking down at her, an intense expression on his face. “No, it’s ultimately the dragons who decide: the one who decides how to fly this queen, and the one who decides who she’ll let catch her.”

Torene knew now why she hadn’t been in his company much. He wasn’t at all like the other bronze and brown riders in her “bunch.” And knowing the reputation he and Brianth had in “catching” queens, she had deliberately, if unconsciously, avoided being in his company. She also knew the opinions the other queen riders had of him, and those only confused her more. “Polite”? “Quick”? “Deft and considerate”? “Too controlled”? None of those comments fit what she sensed of him.

He knows he is the son of his parents,
Alaranth said.

“Yes, he would know that,” she said almost sadly, for that couldn’t be easy on him. When Mihall politely raised his eyebrows in query, she realized she had spoken aloud. “Brianth,” she added, and gave Mihall what she hoped was an understanding smile. From his stunned expression, she found she had only compounded her blunder and he had jumped to the logical conclusion. “Oh, lord, both feet are in my mouth tonight. Do you want a copy of your own when I ask Mother for them tomorrow?” She tried to keep her voice even and pleasant, but to her own ears she sounded irritated.

Mihall inclined toward her. “I’d appreciate it,” he said, but all the warmth she had seen—so briefly—in his eyes was gone and they were coldly gray. He stood clear of the chair, and before she could walk away from her embarrassment, he left her.

I could just scream,
she told Alaranth.
It all came out so wrong, Allie. How could I possibly have said the things I did to him? And the
way
I said them! Oh, how could I!

There was a long pause when she thought that her dragon was too sleepy to answer.

Don’t worry.
The voice was not Alaranth’s.

Brianth?

He’s right. Too late now
was Alaranth’s not too reassuring reply.

“Where did Torene go?” David’s voice rose above the other conversations.

“I’m here,” she said, and allowed the alacrity with which the riders parted to let her back in soothe her frustration and self-accusation.

The next morning, having asked the watchdragon to wake her at daybreak, Telgar time, Torene arrived at her parents’ cavern just as Sonja was pouring klah. To her daughter’s astonishment, she was pouring it into three cups, and there was a third bowl of steaming porridge set at the table.

“How did you know I was coming?”

“How could we not know?” Sonja said, clasping her daughter to her ample bust and joyfully, proudly, embracing her with arms well muscled from a lifetime of mining. “Telgar announces to us there will be four Weyrs, and one of them here.”

“Up there,” Volodya corrected his wife, pointing northeast, but he rose from his seat and kissed his daughter, hugging her nearly as enthusiastically as his wife had but with some consideration for Torene’s ribs. “And you are named to be at the east coast one.”

“At Benden Weyr,” she said, hoping that at least the name would be a surprise.

“Ah!” Her mother’s face lit up and she embraced her daughter again before she mopped a tear from each eye.

“As it should be. As it should be,” Volodya said, sitting down at the table and beginning to spoon his porridge into his mouth. “Sit! Eat! You will need it.”

“So, how many copies do you come for me to make for you?” Sonja asked slyly, giving Torene a little push toward the spare place.

“Oh, Mother!”

“And why shouldn’t you,
dushka
?” Sonja was unperturbed. “Always you are putting yourself behind. And where else is there a replicating machine that works? You will want enlargements, too, of each elevation? How many in all?”

“Mother . . .” Torene began in protest, and then burst out laughing.

“Sit! Eat!” her father repeated and gestured firmly for her to take her seat. “Copies we can talk of later. Now you will have breakfast with us and tell us news we don’t get to hear at Telgar.”

When she finally left, stuffed with two bowls of porridge and more klah than she liked to have swirling in her belly going
between,
she was carrying a plastic tube full of copies and enlargements—more than she would have had the nerve to request. Sonja had blithely replicated four copies of each and every possible angle of the original and secondary surveys of Benden Weyr. Torene reckoned that one reason they were so willing to go over the top was because they were so pleased with that naming.

“No, is for you,
dushka
,” Sonja said, giving her daughter a hard kiss on her cheek in farewell. “We are proud to have a queen rider daughter. Keep her safe, Alaranth!”

With her many-faceted eyes gleaming in the shadows cast by Telgar’s high mountain peaks, Alaranth turned her head and lowered her forequarters to the ground, as much to aid her rider to mount as to acknowledge the parting.

Who else is to keep you safe?
Alaranth said as she turned and dropped off the ledge into the valley below.

Torene laughed at her phrasing, the speed of their descent snatching the sounds away.
You sound just like my mother!

We go now to Benden Weyr?

Torene squeezed her eyes, which had filled slightly with tears of pride at the grand sound of the name, and then concentrated on the image of the double-cratered bowl—the bowl of Benden Weyr.

Yes!

She was certain that all that klah and porridge would turn to ice in her belly, but then they were out in the warm spring sunlight, gliding down the Weyr toward the lake.

Good morning to you!
Torene recognized Brianth’s voice though she didn’t see him below, nor any sign of Mihall.

He’s on the rim behind us, sunning,
Alaranth told her, well pleased that she and Torene had started their own errand earlier than this pair.

Torene’s mouth felt dry as Alaranth swung back to the upper crater and lost altitude. She had a view of Brianth, sunning himself on the heights. Backwinging, Alaranth landed neatly on the surface, the breeze from her pinions making the gravel rattle. A man’s head peered out from the nearby opening to what Torene thought would be the Hatching Ground. Mihall still wore his flying gear, so he couldn’t have been here long, Torene thought.

He didn’t rush, but his stride covered the distance between them so that he was at her side when she reached the ground.

“You’ve been busy this morning, I see.” He nodded at the tube.

Keeping a stern grip on her tongue, she smiled pleasantly. “Their daybreak, not ours,” she said, opening the tube.

He looked into the tube’s contents and whistled, grinning down at her with approval. That was the first time she had seen him smile so openly, and she wondered why he didn’t more often. It would have improved his reputation.

Then she could see his fingers twitching, eager to see every sheet she had brought. Was that why he had gotten here so early? How could he have been certain she’d do her errand so promptly?

Brianth told him we’d left.

This time she was careful to keep her immediate response to herself. Had Brianth slept with one eye open?

The watchdragon will speak to anyone who asks politely.
This came from Brianth, and although she knew dragons couldn’t laugh, there was amusement of that quality in the bronze’s tone.

“Here,” Torene said, perversely irritated now by both rider and dragon. Why did Mihall have the ability to disturb her with so many conflicting emotions? She tapped the tube so the roll would fall out.

Mihall was that much quicker and had the films in his hands before she could catch them.

“It’s less windy inside here,” he said, impatient to unroll the sheets but not willing to risk their damage.

When she got inside the vaulted chamber, she saw that he had been there long enough to make a small fire, set far enough in the shelter of the front wall to be protected from the wind, and secure in a neat circle of stones. A klah pot balanced close enough to keep its contents hot. A bulging sack was propped up against the wall, along with an opaque sheet of plastic wrapped around a number of finished plastic shafts.