Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey Page A

at him, wondering at her fault. He retrieved the fruit and placed it back in her hand as he continued to speak. Wide-eyed, she nibbled, disarmed, and gave him her full attention.
    “Listen to me. You must not show a moment’s fear at whatever happens on the Hatching Ground. And you must not let her overeat.” A wry expression crossed his face. “One of our main functions is to keep a dragon from excessive eating.”
    Lessa lost interest in the taste of the fruit. She placed it carefully back in the bowl and tried to sort out what he had not said but what his tone of voice implied. She looked at the dragonman’s face, seeing him as a person, not a symbol, for the first time.
    His coldness was caution, she decided, not lack of emotion. His sternness must be assumed to offset his youth, for he couldn’t be that much her senior in Turns. There was a blackness about him that was not malevolent; it was a brooding sort of patience. Heavy black hair waved back from a high forehead to brush his shirt collar. Heavy black brows were too often pulled together in a glower or arched haughtily as he looked down a high-bridged nose at his victim; his eyes (an amber, light enough to seem golden) were all too expressive of cynical emotions or cold hauteur. His lips were thin but well-shaped and in repose almost gentle. Why must he always pull his mouth to one side in disapproval or in one of those sardonic smiles? Handsome he must be considered, she supposed candidly, for there was a certain compelling air about him that was magnetic. And at this moment he was completely unaffected.
     
    He meant what he was saying. He did not want her to be afraid. There was no reason for her, Lessa,
to
fear.
    He very much wanted her to succeed. In keeping whom from overeating what? Herd animals? A newly hatched dragon certainly wasn’t capable of eating a full beast. That seemed a simple enough task to Lessa. The watch-wher had obeyed her and no one else, at Ruath Hold. She had understood the great bronze dragon and had even managed to hush him up as she raced under his Tower perch for the birthing-woman. Main function?
Our
main function?
    The dragonman was looking at her expectantly.
    “Our main function?” she repeated, an unspoken request for more information inherent in her inflection.
    “More of that later. First things first,” he said, impatiently waving off other questions.
    “But what happens?” she insisted.
    “As I was told, so I tell you. No more, no less. Remember those two points. Turn out fear and do not let her overeat.”
    “But . . .”
    “You, however, need to eat. Here.” He speared a piece of meat on his knife and thrust it at her, frowning until she managed to choke it down. He was about to force more on her, but she grabbed up her half-eaten fruit and bit down into the firm sweet sphere instead. She had already eaten more at this one meal than she was accustomed to having all day at the Hold.
    “We shall soon eat better at the Weyr,” he remarked, regarding the tray with a jaundiced eye.
    Lessa was surprised, for in her opinion this was a feast.
    “More than you’re used to? Yes, I forgot you left Ruatha with bare bones indeed.”
    She stiffened.
    “You did well at Ruatha. I mean no criticism,” he added, smiling at her reaction. “But look at you,” and he gestured at her body, that curious expression crossing his face, half-amused, half contemplative. “No, I should not have guessed you’d clean up pretty,” he remarked. “Nor with such hair.” This time his expression was frankly admiring.
    Involuntarily she put one hand to her head, the hair crackling over her fingers. But what reply she might have made him, indignant as she was, died a-borning. An unearthly keening filled the chamber.
    The sounds set up a vibration that ran down the bones behind her ear to her spine. She clapped both hands to her ears. The noise rang through her skull, despite her defending hands. As abruptly as it started, it