Dragon's Code by Gigi McCaffrey

Author:Gigi McCaffrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

The group from Fort Weyr and the Harper Hall were not among the first guests to arrive at Benden Weyr, so the lower tiers of the viewing stands were nearly full when they made their way across the Bowl to the Hatching Grounds. Master Robinton took the seat reserved for him, and N’ton and Menolly flanked him on either side. Piemur and Sebell happily took seats farther up the viewing stands. Any seat at a Hatching, no matter how far from the floor of the sands, was a treasured one, Piemur mused as he rubbed his hands together in eager anticipation and looked around at all the open, expectant faces, nodding or smiling in greeting to his immediate neighbors.

Within the hour, dragons from every Weyr across the northern hemisphere of Pern had delivered all the guests invited to Benden with an alacrity that even the efficiency-obsessed Mastersmith, Fandarel, would’ve deemed remarkable.

Ramoth, the senior queen dragon in Benden Weyr, stood protectively on the hot sands of the Hatching Grounds, close to the queen egg. It had been pushed away from all the other eggs in the clutch, which were still many days away from hatching. Piemur had heard that Ramoth was the largest dragon on all of Pern, and as she stood over her egg she made an awe-inspiring sight, her golden hide gleaming with good health and the muscles of her huge body rippling with vigor and strength. Piemur couldn’t help but make a mental comparison between the queen he saw in front of him now, vibrant and powerful, and the lackluster, unhealthy state of Mardra’s queen, Loranth.

Up on the ledge of the Weyr, where all the other dragons perched, he could see F’lar’s dragon, Mnementh, who was Ramoth’s mate, watching her, his eyes an intense shade of green.

Ramoth lifted her huge, wedge-shaped head and looked around intently at her clutch, her whirling green eyes tinged with a faint shade of mauve. She was still uneasy, Piemur guessed, and no wonder: It had been a tense wait, these past few days, to see whether her most precious egg had suffered any lasting damage from its travels.

An imperceptible vibration traveled along the hot sands, and Piemur could feel the slightest of shudders coursing through the stands up to where he sat. The vibrations came from the mottled egg, which had begun to ripple with slight tremors. Without realizing it, Piemur reached out a hand and gripped Sebell’s forearm; the older harper glanced at him quickly, then back at the egg, a smile of anticipation on his face.

Ramoth turned her head to where Lessa waited, and then the Weyrwoman of Benden strode to the edge of the Hatching Ground sands and stared at her queen. Lessa’s long dark hair had been scraped back severely from her face—revealing her unusual, fine features—then plaited and twisted in a tortuously intricate weave that fell down her back in a heavy coil. The style expressed the stark frame of mind she’d been in since the theft of the egg.

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