Anne McCaffrey - Pern 05 - The White Dragon

VIP免费

2024-12-07 0 0 941.48KB 548 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

N'ton?" he asked politely, suddenly aware that he had spoken without

due regard for his companion's rank

as Weyrleader of Fort.

N'ton grinned and gestured toward the grassy bank of the lake. They

squelched through the mud created by

rinsing soapsand from the little dragon and, as one, turned for a full view

of Ruth gleaming wetly in the

morning sun.

"I've never seen him cleaner," N'ton remarked after due consideration,

adding hastily, "not to imply that you

haven't always kept him immaculate, Jaxom. However, if you don't ask

him to move out of that mud, he

won't stay clean long."

Jaxom passed on the request hastily. "And keep your tail up, Ruth, till

you are on the grass."

From the comer of his eye, Jaxom noticed that Dorse and his cronies

were creeping away, just in case N'ton

had any further hard work for them. Jaxom had somehow managed to

keep the smugness he felt under

control all during Ruth's bath. Dorse and the others hadn't dared dis-

obey the dragonrider when N'ton had

had to endure from his milk-brother and his cronies.

"You know," N'ton began, frowning slightly as he folded his arms across

his damp-spattered tunic, "Ruth isn't

really white."

Jaxom stared incredulously at his dragon. "He's not?"

"No. See how his hide has shadows of brown and gold, and ripples of

blue or green on the near flank."

"You're right!" Jaxom blinked, surprised at discovering something totally

new about his friend. "I guess those

colors are much more noticeable because he's so clean and the sun's

so bright today!" It was such a

pleasure to be able to discuss his favorite topic with an understanding

audience.

"He's . . . more ... all dragon shades than the lack of any," N'ton contin-

ued. He slanted one hand against the

angle of Ruth's heavily muscled shoulder, then cocked his head as he

stared at the powerful hind- quarters.

"Beautifully proportioned, too. He may be small, Jaxom, but he's a fine-

looking fellow!"

Jaxom sighed again, unconsciously straightening his shoulders and

pushing out his chest with pride.

been good.

"Do you think he's strong enough to fly me?".N'ton awarded Jaxom a

thoughtful gaze. "Let's see, you Impressed him a Turn last spring, and

we're into

cool weather now. Most dragons achieve their full growth in their first

Turn. I don't think Ruth's grown half-hand

in the last six months so we have to conclude that he has reached his

full growth. Hey, now, N'ton

reacted to Jaxom's sad sigh, "he's bigger than any runner beast by half

a head, isn't he? They can be ridden

for hours without tiring, right? And you're not exactly a heavyweight like

Dorse there."

"Flying's a different sort of effort, isn't it?"

"True, but Ruth's wings are proportionately large enough to his body to

support him in flight..."

"So he is a proper dragon, isn't he?"

N'ton stared at Jaxom. Then he put both hands on the boy's shoulders.

"Yes, Jaxom, Ruth is a proper

dragon, for all he's half the size of his fellows! And he'll prove it today

when he flies you! So let's get you and

the happy blue tone of Ruth's lightly whirling; jewel-faceted eyes.

As they walked on in silence, Jaxom raised his eyes to the imposing cliff

face which was Ruatha Hold, the

second oldest human habitation on Pern. It would be his to Hold when

he came of age or when his guardian,

Lord Lytol, former weaver-journeyman, former dragonrider, decided that

he was wise enough-that is, if the

other Lord Holders finally overcame their objections to his inadvertent

Impression of the half-sized dragon,

Ruth. Jaxom sighed, resigned to the fact that he would never be allowed

to forget that moment.

Not that he wanted to, but Impressing Ruth had caused all kinds of

problems for the Benden Weyrleaders,

F'lar and Lessa, for the Lord Holders, and for himself since he was not

allowed to be a real dragonrider and

live in a Weyr. He had to remain Lord Holder of Ruatha or every

younger Holdless son of every major Lord

would fight to the death to fill that vacancy. The worst problem he had

caused was to the man he

desperately wanted most to please, his guardian. Lord Lytol. Had Jaxom

only paused a moment to think

this was so, Jaxom often wondered, why then hadn't Lytol protested

when the Weyrleaders and Lord

Holders agreed that Jaxom must try to raise the little dragon at Ruatha?

Looking up to the fire-heights, Jaxom noticed that N'ton's bronze Lioth

was nose to nose with Wilth, the

elderly brown watch dragon. He wondered what the two dragons were

talking about. His Ruth? The trial of

the day? He noticed fire-lizards, tiny cousins to the big dragons, exe-

cuting lazy spirals above the two

dragons. Men were driving wherries and runner beasts from the main

stables out to the pastures, north of

the Hold. Smoke issued from the line of smaller cotholds that bordered

the ramp into the Great Court and

along the edge of the main road east. To the left of the ramp, new cots

were being built since the inner

recesses of Ruatha Hold were considered unsafe.

"How many fosterlings does Lytol have at Ruatha Hold, Jaxom?" N'ton

suddenly asked.

"Fosterlings? None, sir." Jaxom frowned. Surely N'ton knew that.

"Why not? You've got to get to know the others of your rank."."Oh, I ac-

company Lord Lytol quite often to the other Holds."

Weyr."

Jaxom could not control the flush that rose to his hairline. Was it possi-

ble that N'ton had somehow found out

that he and F'lessan had squeezed through a hole onto Benden's

Hatching Ground for a close look at

Ramoth's eggs? He didn't think F'lessan would have told that! Not to

anyone! But Jaxom had often

wondered if touching that little egg had somehow destined its occupant

to be his!

"I don't see much of F'lessan these days. I don't have much time, taking

care of Ruth and all."

"No, of course not," N'ton said. He seemed about to say more and then

changed his mind.

As they walked on in silence, Jaxom wondered if he'd said something

wrong. But he couldn't think about it

for long. Just then N'ton's fire-lizard, brown Tris, whirled in for a landing

on the padded shoulder of the

Weyrleader, chirping excitedly.

"What's wrong?" asked Jaxom.

"He's too excited to make sense," N'ton replied with a laugh, and he

stroked the little creature's neck uttering

like to take up the Weyrleader's valuable time with silly questions. But,

today, it didn't seem like such a silly

question.

N'ton turned his head to his fire-lizard and, in a moment, Tris gave a

quick chirp and then busily cleaned his

forepaw. N'ton chuckled. "He likes Ruth. That's all the answer I get from

him. I'd hazard the notion that it's

because Ruth is nearer their size. They can see him without having to

back up several dragonlengths to do

so."

"I suppose so." Jaxom still had reservations. "What ever it is, fire-lizards

come from all over to visit him. They

tell him the most outrageous stories but that makes him happy, espe-

cially when I can't be right there with

him."

They had reached the roadway and were heading for the ramp into the

Great Court.

"Don't be long dressing, will you, Jaxom? Lessa and F'lar ought to arrive

soon," N'ton said as he kept going

straight on through the great gates toward the massive metal Hold door.

"Finder'll be in his quarters at this

not just an overgrown fire-lizard as Dorse so often teased him. And, too,

he'd finally be able to get away from

Dorse. Today was the first time in Turns he hadn't had to endure

Dorse's teasing as he washed Ruth. Not

that the boy was just jealous of Jaxom's having Ruth. Dorse had always

taunted Jaxom, ever since he could

remember. Before Ruth had come, Jaxom had managed to make him-

self scarce in the dark recesses of

Ruatha's many levels. Dorse didn't like the dark, stuffy corridors and

stayed away. But with Ruth's arrival,

Jaxom no longer was able to disappear and avoid Dorse's attentions.

He often wished that he didn't owe

Dorse so much. But he was Lord of Ruatha and Dorse was his milk-

brother so he owed him his life. For if

Deelan hadn't given birth to Dorse two days before Jaxom's unexpected

arrival, Jaxom would have died in

his first hours. Therefore, Jaxom had been taught by Lytol and the Hold

harper, he must share everything

with his milk-brother. As far as Jaxom could see, Dorse benefited far

more than he did. The boy, a full hand

he first arrived at Ruatha a Turn and

a half ago, it had been obvious that he would quickly grow too large to

enter the traditional apartment of the

Lord Holder within the Hold proper.

So Lytol had decided that the old stables, with the vaulted ceiling, could

be refurbished suitably for sleeping

quarters and a work room for Jaxom and a fine spacious Weyr for the

little dragon. New doors had been

specially designed by Mastersmith Fandarel and hung with such inge-

nuity that a slightly built lad and an

awkward hatchling could manage them.

I will sit here in the sun, Ruth told Jaxom, poking his head past the en-

trance to their quarters. My bed hasn't

been swept.

"Everyone's been so busy cleaning for Lessa's visit," Jaxom said, gig-

gling as he remembered the terror in

Deelan's face when Lytol had told her that the Weyrwoman was coming.

In his milk-mother's eyes, Lessa

was still the only full-blooded Ruathan left alive after Fax's treacherous

attack on the Hold over twenty Turns

ago.

Wilth and Lioth heralded the visitors

with appropriate trumpetings.

Jaxom rushed to the window and peered out, catching a glimpse of

huge wings as the newcomers settled

into the great courtyard. He didn't wait long enough to see the Benden

dragons remove themselves to the

fire-heights, accompanied by excited fairs of fire lizards. Drying himself

hurriedly, he wriggled out of his wet

trousers. It didn't take him long to don his good new clothes and stamp

into the boots made especially for

this occasion and lined with downy wherry-hide for warmth in flight. Re-

cent practice made it easy for him to

rig the riding straps on the eager little dragon..As Jaxom and Ruth

emerged from their quarters, Jaxom was again assailed by apprehension.

What if N'ton

had been wrong? What if Lessa and F'lar decided to wait just a few

more months to see if Ruth would grow?

What if Ruth, being such a small dragon, didn't have enough strength to

fly him? Supposing he hurt Ruth?

Ruth crooned encouragingly. You couldn't hurt me. You are my friend.

And he butted Jaxom affectionately,

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

N'ton?"heaskedpolitely,suddenlyawarethathehadspokenwithoutdueregardforhiscompanion'srankasWeyrleaderofFort.N'tongrinnedandgesturedtowardthegrassybankofthelake.Theysquelchedthroughthemudcreatedbyrinsingsoapsandfromthelittledragonand,asone,turnedforafullviewofRuthgleamingwetlyinthemorningsun."I'veneve...

展开>> 收起<<

Anne McCaffrey - Pern 05 - The White Dragon.pdf

共548页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Anne McCaffrey - Pern 05 - The White Dragon

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: