10. Dragonflight

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Flight for Life

With a sudden golden movement Ramoth arched her great back. She sprang into the sky, wings

wide. With unbelievable speed she was airborne. After her, in the blink of an eye, seven bronze

shapes followed, their mighty wings churning buffets of sandladen air into the faces of the

watching weyrfolk.

Her heart in her mouth at the prodigious flight, Lessa felt her soul lifting with Ramoth. She,

Ramoth-Lessa, was alive with limitless power, her wings beating effortlessly to the thin heights,

elation surging through her frame, elation and – desire.

“Stay with her,” F’nor whispered urgently. “Stay with her. She must not escape your control

now ... Think with her. She cannot go between ..."

THE DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN ®

Dragonsdawn

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

Nerilka’s Story

Dragonflight

Dragonquest

The White Dragon

The Renegades of Pern

DRAGONFLIGHT

Volume I of

The Dragonriders of Pern ®

Anne McCaffrey

A Del Rey Book

BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW YORK

Dedicatory Note

Dear God,

Yes, there is a Virginia who helped me create this planet and the marvels thereon. And for

whom I thank you. AMJ

Contents

MAP

INTRODUCTION

PART I WEYR SEARCH

PART II DRAGONFLIGHT

PART III DUST FALL

PART IV THE COLD BETWEEN

DRAGONDEX

INTRODUCTION

When is a legend, legend? Why is a myth, a myth? How old and disused must a fact be for it to

be relegated to the category: “Fairy tale”? And why do certain facts remain incontrovertible, while

others lose their validity to assume a shabby, unstable character?

Rukbat, in the Sagittarian sector, was a golden G-type star. It had five planets, plus one stray it

had attracted and held in recent millennia. Its third planet was enveloped by air man could breathe,

boasted water he could drink, and possessed a gravity which permitted man to walk confidently

erect. Men discovered it, and promptly colonized it, as they did every habitable planet they came to

and then, whether callously or through collapse of empire, the colonists never discovered, and

eventually forgot to ask, left the colonies to fend for themselves.

When men first settled on Rukbat’s third world, and named it Pern, they had taken little notice

of the stranger-planet, swinging around its primary in a wildly erratic elliptical orbit. Within a few

generations they had forgotten its existence. The desperate path the wanderer pursued brought it

close to its stepsister every two hundred (Terran) years at perihelion. When the aspects were

harmonious and the conjunction with its sister-planet close enough, as it often was, the indigenous

life of the wanderer sought to bridge the space gap to the more temperate and hospitable planet.

It was during the frantic struggle to combat this menace dropping through Pern's skies like silver

threads, that Pern's contact with the mother-planet weakened and broke. Recollections of Earth

receded further from Pernese history with each successive generation until memory of their origins

degenerated past legend or myth, into oblivion.

To forestall the incursions of the dreadful Threads, the Pernese, with the ingenuity of their

forgotten Terran forebears, developed a highly specialized variety of a life-form indigenous to their

adopted planet. Such humans as had a high empathy rating and some innate telepathic ability were

trained to use and preserve this unusual animal whose ability to teleport was of great value in the

fierce struggle to keep Pern bare of Threads.

The winged, tailed, and fiery-breathed dragons (named for the Earth legend they resembled),

their dragonmen, a breed apart, and the menace they battled, created a whole new group of legends

and myths.

Once relieved of imminent danger, Pern settled into a more comfortable way of life. The

descendants of heroes fell into disfavor, as the legends fell into disrepute.

This, then, is a tale of legends disbelieved and their restoration. Yet how goes a legend? Where

is myth?

PART I

Weyr Search

Drummer, beat, and piper, blow,

Harper, strike, and soldier, go.

Free the flame and sear the grasses

Till the dawning Red Star passes.

LESSA WOKE, cold. Cold with more than the chill of the everlastingly clammy stone walls. Cold

with the prescience of a danger stronger than the one ten full Turns ago that had then sent her,

whimpering with terror, to hide in the watch-wher's odorous lair.

Rigid with concentration, Lessa lay in the straw of the redolent cheeseroom she shared as

sleeping quarters with the other kitchen drudges. There was an urgency in the ominous portent

unlike any other forewarning. She touched the awareness of the watch-wher, slithering on its

rounds in the courtyard. It circled at the choke limit of its chain. It was restless, but oblivious to

anything unusual in the predawn darkness.

Lessa curled into a tight knot of bones, hugging herself to ease the strain across her tense

shoulders. Then, forcing herself to relax, muscle by muscle, joint by joint, she tried to feel what

subtle menace it might be that could rouse her, yet not distress the sensitive watch-wher.

The danger was definitely not within the walls of Ruatha Hold. Nor approaching the paved

perimeter without the Hold where relentless grass had forced new growth through the ancient

mortar, green witness to the deterioration of the once stone-clean Hold. The danger was not

advancing up the now little-used causeway from the valley, nor lurking in the craftsmen's stony

holdings at the foot of the Hold's cliff. It did not scent the wind that blew from Tillek's cold shores.

But still it twanged sharply through her senses, vibrating every nerve in Lessa's slender frame.

Fully roused, she sought to identify it before the prescient mood dissolved. She cast outward,

toward the Pass, farther than she had ever pressed. Whatever threatened was not in Ruatha ... yet.

Nor did it have a familiar flavor. It was not, then. Fax.

Lessa had been cautiously pleased that Fax had not shown himself at Ruatha Hold in three full

Turns. The apathy of the craftsmen, the decaying farmholds, even the green-etched stones of the

Hold infuriated Fax, self-styled Lord of the High Reaches, to the point where he preferred to forget

the reason he had subjugated the once proud and profitable Hold.

Relentlessly compelled to identify this oppressing menace, Lessa groped in the straw for her

sandals. She rose, mechanically brushing straw from matted hair, which she then twisted quickly

into a rude knot at her neck.

She picked her way among the sleeping drudges, huddled together for warmth, and glided up the

worn steps to the kitchen proper. The cook and his assistant lay on the long table before the great

hearth, wide backs to the warmth of the banked fire, discordantly snoring. Lessa slipped across the

cavernous kitchen to the stable-yard door. She opened the door just enough to permit her slight

body to pass. The cobbles of the yard were icy through the thin soles of her sandals, and she

shivered as the predawn air penetrated her patched garment.

The watch-wher slithered across the yard to greet her, pleading, as it always did, for release.

Comfortingly, she fondled the creases of the sharp-tipped ears as it matched her stride. Glancing

fondly down at the awesome head, she promised it a good rub presently. It crouched, groaning, at

the end of its chain as she continued to the grooved steps that led to the rampart over the Hold's

massive gate. Atop the tower, Lessa stared toward the east where the stony breasts of the Pass rose

in black relief against the gathering day.

Indecisively she swung to her left, for the sense of danger issued from that direction as well. She

glanced upward, her eyes drawn to the red star that had recently begun to dominate the dawn sky.

As she stared, the star radiated a final ruby pulsation before its magnificence was lost in the

brightness of Pern's rising sun. Incoherent fragments of tales and ballads about the dawn

appearance of the red star flashed through her mind, too quickly to make sense. Moreover, her

instinct told her that, though danger might come from the northeast, too, there was a greater peril to

contend with from due east. Straining her eyes as if vision would bridge the gap between peril and

person, she stared intently eastward. The watch-wher's thin, whistled question reached her just as

the prescience waned.

Lessa sighed. She had found no answer in the dawn, only discrepant portents. She must wait.

The warning had come and she had accepted it. She was used to waiting. Perversity, endurance, and

guile were her other weapons, loaded with the inexhaustible patience of vengeful dedication.

Dawnlight illumined the tumbled landscape, the unplowed fields in the valley below. Dawnlight

fell on twisted orchards, where the sparse herds of milchbeasts hunted stray blades of spring grass.

Grass in Ruatha, Lessa mused, grew where it should not, died where it should flourish. Lessa could

hardly remember now how Ruatha Valley had once looked, sweetly happy, amply productive.

Before Fax came. An odd brooding smile curved lips unused to such exercise. Fax realized no

profit from his conquest of Ruatha... nor would he while she, Lessa, lived. And he had not the

slightest suspicion of the source of this undoing.

Or had he, Lessa wondered, her mind still reverberating from the savage prescience of danger.

West lay Fax's ancestral and only legitimate Hold. Northeast lay little but bare and stony mountains

and the Weyr that protected Pern.

Lessa stretched, arching her back, inhaling the sweet, untainted wind of morning.

A cock crowed in the stable yard. Lessa whirled, her face alert, eyes darting around the outer

Hold lest she be observed in such an uncharacteristic pose. She unbound her hair, letting the rank

mass fall about her face concealingly. Her body drooped into the sloppy posture she affected.

Quickly she thudded down the stairs, crossing to the watch-wher. It cried piteously, its great eyes

blinking against the growing daylight. Oblivious to the stench of its rank breath, she hugged the

scaly head to her, scratching its ears and eye ridges. The watch-wher was ecstatic with pleasure, its

long body trembling, its clipped wings rustling. It alone knew who she was or cared. And it was the

only creature in all Pern she had trusted since the dawn she had blindly sought refuge in its dark,

stinking lair to escape the thirsty swords that had drunk so deeply of Ruathan blood.

Slowly she rose, cautioning it to remember to be as vicious to her as to all, should anyone be

near. It promised to obey her, swaying back and forth to emphasize its reluctance.

The first rays of the sun glanced over the Hold's outer wall, and, crying out, the watch-wher

darted into its dark nest. Lessa crept swiftly back to the kitchen and into the cheeseroom.

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摘要：

FlightforLifeWithasuddengoldenmovementRamotharchedhergreatback.Shesprangintothesky,wingswide.Withunbelievablespeedshewasairborne.Afterher,intheblinkofaneye,sevenbronzeshapesfollowed,theirmightywingschurningbuffetsofsandladenairintothefacesofthewatchingweyrfolk.Herheartinhermouthattheprodigiousflight...

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