Dragonflight Read Online Free PDF Page A

been abroad in the early morning of late?” asked F’nor, grinning maliciously.
    “I have,” Lytol breathed out in a hushed, choked whisper. “I have. . . .” A groan was wrenched from his guts, and he whirled away from the dragonmen, his head bowed between hunched shoulders. “Go,” he said, gritting his teeth. And, as they hesitated, he pleaded,
“Go!”
    F’lar walked quickly from the room, followed by F’nor. The bronze rider crossed the quiet dim Hall with long strides and exploded into the startling sunlight. His momentum took him into the center of the square. There he stopped so abruptly that F’nor, hard on his heels, nearly collided with him.
    “We will spend exactly the same time within the other Halls,” he announced in a tight voice, his face averted from F’nor’s eyes. F’lar’s throat was constricted. It was difficult suddenly for him to speak. He swallowed hard, several times.
    “To be dragonless . . .” murmured F’nor pityingly. The encounter with Lytol had roiled his depths in a mournful way to which he was unaccustomed. That F’lar appeared equally shaken went far to dispel F’nor’s private opinion that his half brother was incapable of emotion.
    “There is no other way once First Impression has been made. You know that,” F’lar roused himself to say curtly. He strode off to the Hall bearing the leather-men’s device.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Honor those the dragons heed,
    In thought and favor, word and deed.
    Worlds are lost or worlds are saved
    From those dangers dragon-braved.
     
    Dragonman, avoid excess;
    Greed will bring the Weyr distress;
    To the ancient Laws adhere,
    Prospers thus the Dragonweyr.
     
     
    F’ LAR WAS AMUSED  . . . and unamused. This was their fourth day in Fax’s company, and only F’lar’s firm control on self and wing was keeping the situation from exploding into violence.
    It had been a turn of chance, F’lar mused, as Mnementh held his leisurely glide toward the Breast Pass into Ruatha, that he, F’lar, had chosen the High Reaches. Fax’s tactics would have been successful with R’gul, who was very conscious of his honor, or S’lan or D’nol, who were too young to have developed much patience or discretion. S’lel would have retreated in confusion, a course nearly as disastrous for the Weyr as combat.
    He should have correlated the indications long ago. The decay of the Weyr and its influence did not come solely from the Holding Lords and their folk. It came also from within the Weyr, a result of inferior queens and incompetent Weyrwomen. It came from R’gul’s inexplicable insistence on not “bothering” the Holders, on keeping dragonmen within the Weyr. And yet within the Weyr there had been too much emphasis on preparation for the Games until the internal competition between wings had become the be-all and end-all of Weyr activity.
    The encroachment of grass had not come overnight, nor had the Lords awakened one morning recently and decided in a flash not to give all their traditional tithe to the Weyr. It had happened gradually and had been allowed, by the Weyr, to continue, until the purpose and reason of the Weyr and dragonkind had reached this low ebb, where an upstart, collateral heir to an ancient Hold could be so contemptuous of dragon men and the simple basic precautions that kept Pern free of Threads.
    F’lar doubted that Fax would have attempted such a program of aggression against neighboring Holds if the Weyr had maintained its old prominence. Each Hold must have its Lord to protect valley and folk from the Threads. One Hold, one Lord—not one Lord claiming seven Holds. That was against ancient tradition, and evil besides, for how well can one man protect seven valleys at once? Man, except for dragon-man, can be in only one place at a time. And unless a man was dragon-mounted, it took hours to get from one Hold to another. No Weyrman of old would have permitted such flagrant disregard of ancient