Dragonflight Read Free

High Reaches are honored with your Search.”
    “It will be to the credit of the High Reaches,” F’lar replied smoothly, “if one of its own supplies the Weyr.”
    “To our everlasting credit,” Fax replied as suavely. “In the old days many notable Weyrwomen came from my Holds.”
    “Your Holds?” asked F’lar, politely smiling as he emphasized the plural. “Ah, yes, you are now overlord of Ruatha, are you not? There have been many from that Hold.”
    A strange, tense look crossed Fax’s face, quickly supplanted by a determinedly affable grin. Fax stepped aside, gesturing F’lar to enter the Hold.
    Fax’s troop leader barked a hasty order, and the men formed two lines, their metal-edged boots flicking sparks from the stones.
    At unspoken orders, all the dragons rose with a great churning of air and dust. F’lar strode nonchalantly past the welcoming files. The men were rolling their eyes in alarm as the beasts glided above to the inner courts. Someone on the high Tower uttered a frightened yelp as Mnementh took his position on that vantage point. His great wings drove phosphoric-scented air across the inner court as he maneuvered his great frame onto the inadequate landing space.
    Outwardly oblivious to the consternation, fear, and awe the dragons inspired, F’lar was secretly amused and rather pleased by the effect. Lords of the Holds needed this reminder that they still must deal with dragons, not just with riders, who were men, mortal and murderable. The ancient respect for dragonmen as well as dragonkind must be reinstilled in modern breasts.
    “The Hold has just risen from table, Lord F’lar, if . . .” Fax suggested. His voice trailed off at F’lar’s smiling refusal.
    “Convey my duty to your lady, Lord Fax,” F’lar rejoined, noticing with inward satisfaction the tightening of Fax’s jaw muscles at the ceremonial request.
    F’lar was enjoying himself thoroughly. He had not yet been born on the occasion of the last Search, the one that ill-fatedly provided the incompetent Jora. But he had studied the accounts of previous Searches in the Old Records that had included subtle ways to confound those Lords who preferred to keep their ladies sequestered when the dragonmen rode. For Fax to refuse F’lar the opportunity to pay his duty would have been tantamount to a major insult, discharged only in mortal combat.
    “You would prefer to see your quarters first?” Fax countered.
    F’lar flicked an imaginary speck from his soft wher-hide sleeve and shook his head.
    “Duty first,” he said with a rueful shrug.
    “Of course,” Fax all but snapped and strode smartly ahead, his heels pounding out the anger he could not express otherwise.
    F’lar and F’nor followed at a slower pace through the double-doored entry with its great metal panels, into the Great Hall, carved into the cliffside. The U-shaped table was being cleared by nervous servitors, who rattled and dropped tableware as the two dragon-men entered. Fax had already reached the far end of the Hall and stood impatiently at the open slab door, the only access to the inner Hold, which, like all such Holds, burrowed deep into stone, the refuge of all in time of peril.
    “They eat not badly,” F’nor remarked casually to F’lar, appraising the remnants still on the table.
    “Better than the Weyr, it would seem,” F’lar replied dryly, covering his speech with his hand as he saw two drudges staggering under the weight on a tray that bore a half-eaten carcass.
    “Young and tender,” F’nor said in a bitter undertone, “from the look of it. While the stringy, barren beasts are delivered up to us.”
    “Naturally.”
    “A pleasantly favored Hall,” F’lar said amiably as they reached Fax. Then, seeing Fax impatient to continue, F’lar deliberately turned back to the banner-hung Hall. He pointed out to F’nor the deeply set slit windows, heavy bronze shutters open to the bright noonday sky. “Facing east, too, as they ought.