Moreta Read Free

I’ll sun. When I get hot enough, I’ll swim in Ruatha Lake.
    “Would that be wise so close to clutching, my dear? That lake’s cold as
between.
” Moreta shivered at her memory of those ice-fed waters.
    Nothing is colder than
between. Orlith spoke definitively.
    Having laid out her Gather finery, Moreta strode into the bathing room. She grabbed a handful of sweet sand, then swung her legs over the lip of the raised pool, whose surface was faintly steaming. Standing waist deep, she sanded her body until her skin tingled. Submerging for a moment, she surfaced, tipping her head until her short hair fanned out in the water. Then she pushed back to the edge of the pool, reaching for more sand, which she scrubbed into her scalp and hair.
    You take a long time to get clean though there’s not much of you,
Orlith remarked, somewhat impatient now that she was fully awake.
    “There may not be much of me, but there was a great deal of
you
to be bathed and oiled.”
    You always say that.
    “So do you.”
    The countercomplaints were lodged with total affection and understanding. Queen and rider had been partnered for nearly twenty Turns, though they had only recently become the leading pair at Fort Weyr when Len’s Holth had not risen to mate the previous winter.
    Moreta gave her head a final scrubbing, then flicked her fingers through her hair to make the short crop settle into natural waves. Wearing a leather cap during Threadfall made her scalp sweat so much that the long blond braids in which she had taken so much pride as a holder girl had been shorn. Once this Pass was completed, she could grow her hair!
    Once the Pass was completed
 . . . In the act of pulling on a clean undertunic, Moreta paused in surprise. Why, this Pass would end in another eight Turns. No, seven if one counted this Turn a quarter gone. Moreta sternly corrected an optimistic attitude. The Turn was barely seventy days old. Eight Turns then. In eight Turns, she, Moreta, would no longer
have
to fly with Orlith against Thread. The Red Star would have passed too far to rain the devastating parasitic Thread over Pern’s tired continent. Dragonriders would not have to fly because no Thread would blur the sky.
    Did Thread just stop, Moreta wondered as she slipped on her soft brown shoes, like a sudden summer storm? Or did it dribble off like a winter rain?
    They could use some rain. Snow would be even better. Or a good hard frost. Frost was always a Weyr ally.
    She slipped into the dress now, smoothing it over her rather too broad shoulders, over breasts firm rather than large, a waist that was trim, and buttocks flat from long hours of riding astride. The gown hid muscled thighs that she sometimes resented, but they, too, were the legacy of twenty Turns riding a dragon and little enough inconvenience for being a queen’s rider.
    She did wish that Sh’gall had chosen to come with her. She wasn’t acquainted with the new Ruathan Lord Holder, Alessan. She had a vague recollection that he was the leggy young man with light-green eyes that were an odd contrast to his dark complexion and shaggy black hair. He had always stood most correctly behind the old Lord Holder, his father. Lord Leef had been a stern if just holder from whom the Weyr could expect every traditional duty and the last tittle of tithe: just the sort of man the Weyr, and Pern, needed in command of such a prosperous Hold. But then, at Ruatha traditions had always been zealously maintained, and many of that bloodline had impressed queen as well as bronze.
    None of the many sons that the old Lord Leef had bred had known which would be named his successor. Lord Leef had kept the whole tangle of them in hand, preventing discord. Despite Threadfall and the other dangers of a Pass, Lord Leef had contrived to build several new holds into the sides of Ruatha’s steep valleys, to accommodate the worthiest of his sons and their families. Such expansion had been one of his many schemes to keep order