Anne McCaffrey - Pern 01 - Dragon Rider

VIP免费

2024-12-16 0 0 309.88KB 171 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

On the world called Pern, the human inhabitants have no tradition of

Earth or of space travel. There is a legendary vagueness about the menace

of the Threads which fall when the freakish orbit of the Red Star (a

captured planet) brings it close to Pern. Though nobles and commoners

are in awe of the Dragons and the elite corps who ride them, they are

ignorant of the nature of the powers bred into both Dragons and riders.

In the Hold of Ruatha, young Lessa had for half her life used her inborn

mental powers to camouflage herself from the men of Fax, the brigand lord

who slaughtered her entire family to secure his seizure of their Hold. She

also managed, by small subtle interferences, to disrupt all the workings of

Ruatha, so that Fax had no profit from his conquest.

Fax did not know of her existence; but when the dragonrider F'lar

inspected Fax's Holds in search of a potential Weyrwoman, he knew that

someone at Ruatha had the abilities he was looking for, especially when he

realized that he had been maneuvered into a duel with Fax. The latter

dead, Lessa claimed Ruatha. But in the fury to which she had provoked

him, Fax had renounced this unprofitable Hold in favor of his youngest son,

born that night. F'lar told Lessa that the infant's claim must stand, but that

she had the Power needed in a Weyrwoman. She agreed to go with him to

the Weyr.

Lessa her duties. Meanwhile few Holds sent tithes and the Lords of the

others called the dragonriders parasites, the legendary Threads a lie. After

Lessa secretly encouraged raids on the herds of disaffected Holds to make

up the shortage of food, there was active revolt. But by the time troops

marched on the Weyr, the situation had drastically changed. Ramoth, now

two Turns old, was full-grown and larger even than F'lar's bronze

Mnementh. She had made her nuptial flight, and Mnementh had claimed

her. Their rapport with the dragons brought F'lar and Lessa together with

the same passion.

The new Weyrieader F'lar was quick-witted and decisive: he sent parties

of dragonriders to make hostages of the womenfolk of the rebel lords. Their

Holds were unguarded, for they had forgotten that a dragon can fly

between, passing almost instantly from one place to another. So the tithes

would be paid; the Weyr would prosper again.

weyrleader's taunt. He ground his teeth together as if he could grind away

F'lar's authority over him.

"There have been no Threads in Pern's skies for over four hundred

Turns. They're are no more!"

"There is always that possibility," F'lar conceded amiably.

There was not, however, the slightest trace of tolerance in his amber

eyes. Nor the slightest hint of compromise in his manner.

He was more like F'lon, his sire, R'gul decided, than a son had any right

to be. Always so sure of himself, always slightly contemptuous of what

others did and thought. Arrogant, that's what F'lar was. Impertinent, too,

and underhanded in the matter of that young Weyrwoman. Why, R'gul had

trained her up to be one of the finest Weyrwomen in many Turns. Before

he'd finished her instruction, she'd known all the Teaching Ballads and

Sagas letter-perfect. And then the silly child had turned to F'lar. Didn't have

sense enough to appreciate the merits of an older, more experienced man.

Undoubtedly she felt a first obligation to F'lar for discovering her on Search.

"You do, however," F'lar was saying, "admit that when the sun hits the

Finger Rock at the moment of dawn, winter solstice has been reached?"

"Any fool knows that's what the Finger Rock is for," R'gul grunted.

"There is, you know, R'gul, incontrovertible evidence to support my

conclusions," F'lar went on with deceptive mildness. "'The Finger points/At

an Eye blood-red ...' "

"Don't quote me verses I taught you as a weyriing," R'gul exclaimed

heatedly.

"Then have faith in what you taught," F'lar snapped back, his amber

eyes flashing dangerously.

R'gul, stunned by the unexpected forcefulness, sank back into his chair.

"You cannot deny, R'gul," F'lar continued quietly, "that no less than half

an hour ago the sun balanced on the

Finger's tip at dawn and the Red Star was squarely framed by the Eye

Rock."

The other dragonriders, bronze as well as brown, murmured and

nodded their agreement to that

phenomenon. There was also an undercurrent of resentment for R'gul's

continual contest of F'lar's policies

as the new Weyrleader. Even old S'lel, once R'gul's avowed supporter,

was following the majority.

"There have been no Threads in four hundred Turns. There are no

Threads," R'gul muttered.."Then, my fellow dragonman," F'lar said

cheerfully, "all you have taught is falsehood. The dragons are, as

life. He had been bred up to it for

generations. All his male ancestors had been dragonriders. Not all

bronze, true, but a decent percentage.

His own dam's sire had been a Weyrleader just as he, R'gul, had been

until F'lar's Mnementh had flown the

new queen.

But dragonmen never left the Weyr. Well, they did if they were negligent

enough to lose their dragons, like

that Lytol fellow at Ruath Hold. And how could be leave the Weyr with a

dragon?

What did F'lar want of him? Was it not enough that he was Weyrleader

now in R'gul's stead? Wasn't F'lar's

pride sufficiently swollen by having bluffed the Lords of Pern into

disbanding their army when they were all

set to coerce the Weyr and dragonmen? Must F'lar dominate every

dragonman, body and will, too? He

stared a long moment, incredulous.

"I do not believe we are parasites," F'lar said, breaking the silence with a

soft, persuasive voice. "Nor

anachronistic. There have been long Intervals before. The Red Star

does not always pass close enough to

we record you, R'gul?"

The Council Room was tense. R'gul was aware of someone breathing

harshly and realized it was himself.

He looked at the adamant face of the young Weyrleader and knew that

the threat was not empty. He would

either concede to F'lar's authority completely, though concession

rankled deeply, or leave the Weyr. And

where could he go, unless to one of the other Weyrs, deserted for

hundreds of Turns? And R'gul's thoughts

were savage wasn't that indication enough of the cessation of Threads?

Five empty Weyrs? No, by the Egg

of Faranth, he would practice some of F'lar's own brand of deceit and

bide his time. When all Pern turned on

the arrogant fool, he, R'gul, would be there to salvage something from

the rylns.

"A dragonman stays in his Weyr," R'gul said with what dignity he could

muster.

"And accepts the policies of the current Weyrleader?" The tone of F'lar's

voice made it less of a question and

more of an order.

do. Have you the morning's

report?"

"Weather is fair at dawning . . . all across Telgar and Keroon . . . if all

too cold," T'bor said with a wry grin.

"Tithing trains have good hard roads, though, so they ought to be here

soon." His eyes twinkled with

anticipation of the feasting that would follow the supplies' arrival a mood

shared by all, to judge by the

expressions around the table..F'lar nodded. "S'lan and D'nol, you are to

continue an adroit Search for likely boys. They should be

striplings, if possible, but do not pass over anyone suspected of

talent.It's all well and good to present for

Impression boys reared up in the Weyr traditions." F'lar gave a one-

sided smile.

"But there are not enough in the Lower Caverns. We, too, have been

behind in begetting. Anyway, dragons

reach full growth faster than their riders. We must have more young

men to Impress when Ramoth hatches.

Take the southern holds, Ista, Nerat, Fort, and South Boll where

maturity comes earlier. You can use the

R'gul had argued that there were

eighteen youngsters in the Lower Caverns, some quite young, to be

sure, but R'gul would not admit that

Ramoth would lay more than the dozen Nemorth had always dropped.

In the second place, R'gul persisted

in wanting to avoid any action that might antagonize the Lords.

R'gul made no overt protest, and F'lar went on.

"K'net, back to the mines. I want the dispositions of each firestone-dump

checked and quantities available.

R'gul, continue drilling recognition points with the weyriings. They must

be positive about their references. If

they're used as messengers and suppliers, they may be sent out quickly

and with no time to ask questions.

"F'nor, T'sum"F'lar turned to his own brown riders "you're clean-up

squad today." He allowed himself a grin

at their dismay. "Try Ista Weyr. Clear the Hatching Cavern and enough

weyrs for a double wing. And, F'nor,

don't leave a single Record behind. They're worth preserving. That will

be all, dragonmen. Good flying." And

with that, F'lar rose and strode from the Council Room up to the queen's

weyr.

that would defeat his purpose. He had to remain discontented with the

vague fact that the restlessness was

some kind of instinctive reaction.

Lessa was not in the sleeping room, nor was she still bathing. F'lar

snorted. That girl was going to scrub her

hide off with this constant bathing. She'd had to live grimy to protect

herself in Ruath Hold, but bathing twice

a day? He was beginning to wonder if this might be a subtle Lessa-

variety insult to him personally. F'lar

sighed. That girl. Would she never turn to him of her own accord?

Would he ever touch that elusive inner

core of Lessa? She had more warmth for his half brother, F'nor, and for

K'net, the youngest of the bronze

riders than she had for F'lar who shared her bed.

He pulled the curtain back into place, irritated. Where had she gone to

today when, for the first time in

weeks, he had been able to get all the wings out of the Weyr just so he

could teach her to fly between?

Ramoth would soon be too egg-heavy for such activity. He had

promised the Weyrwoman, and he meant to

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：

OntheworldcalledPern,thehumaninhabitantshavenotraditionofEarthorofspacetravel.ThereisalegendaryvaguenessaboutthemenaceoftheThreadswhichfallwhenthefreakishorbitoftheRedStar(acapturedplanet)bringsitclosetoPern.ThoughnoblesandcommonersareinaweoftheDragonsandtheelitecorpswhoridethem,theyareignorantofthe...

收起<<

Anne McCaffrey - Pern 01 - Dragon Rider.pdf

共171页,预览35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 01 - Dragon Rider

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: