“Hands aren’t warm enough” Kylara replied in a loud, flat voice. “We’ll need red meat, plenty of it. Fresh-slaughtered is the best.”

The platter which was subsequently brought in was contemptuously dismissed as inadequate. Two additional loads were prepared, still steamy from the body heat of the slaughtered animals. The smell of the bloody raw meat was another odor to mingle with the sweat of men, the overheated crowded hall and the general tension.

“I’m thirsty, Meron. I require bread and fruit and some chilled wine,” Kylara said.

She ate daintily when the food was brought, eyeing Lord Meron’s sloppy table habits with veiled amusement. Someone passed bread and sour wine to the men, who had to eat standing about the room. Time passed slowly.

“I thought you said they were about to hatch,” Meron said in an aggrieved voice. He was as restless as his men and beginning to have second thoughts about this ridiculous project of Kylara’s.

Kylara awarded him a slightly contemptuous smile. “They are, I assure you. You Holders ought to learn patience. It’s needed in dealing with Dragonkind. You can’t beat dragons, you know, or fire lizards, as you do a landbeast. But it’ll be worth it.”

“You’re sure?” Meron’s eyes glittered with unconcealed irritation.

“Think of the effect on dragonmen when you arrive at Telgar Hold in a few days with a fire lizard clinging to your arm.”

The slight smile on Meron’s face told Kylara that her suggestion appealed to him. Yes, Meron could be patient if it gave him any advantage over dragonmen.

“It will be at my beck and call?” Meron asked, his gaze avidly caressing his trio.

Kylara didn’t hesitate to reassure him, though she wasn’t at all sure a fire lizard would be faithful, or intelligent. Still, Meron didn’t require intelligence, just obedience. Or compliance. And if the fire lizards did not live up to his expectation, she could always say the lack was in him.

“With such messengers, I’d have the advantage,” Meron said so softly that she barely caught the words.

“More than mere advantage, Lord Meron,” she said, her voice an insinuating purr. “Control”

“Yes, to have solid, dependable communications would mean I’d have control. I could tell that wherry-blooded High Reaches Weyrleader T’kul to . . .”

One of the eggs rocked on its long axis and Meron started from his chair. Hoarsely he ordered his men to come closer, swearing as they halted at the normal distance from him.

“Tell them again, Weyrwoman, tell them exactly how they are to capture these fire lizards.”

It never troubled Kylara that even after nine Turns in a Weyr and seven Turns as a Weyrwoman herself, she could not have given the criteria by which one candidate was accepted by a dragon and another, discernibly as worthy, was rejected by an entire Hatching. Nor why the queens invariably chose women raised outside the Weyr. (For instance, at the time that boy-thing Brekke had Impressed Wirenth, there had been three other girls, any of whom Kylara would have thought considerably more interesting to a dragonette queen. But Wirenth had made a skyline directly to the craftbred girl. The three rejected candidates had remained at Southern Weyr – any girl in her right mind would – and one of them, Varena, had been presented at the next queen Impression and taken. One simply couldn’t judge.) Generally speaking, weyrbred lads were always acceptable at one Hatching or another, for a weyrboy could attend Hatchings until he was in his twentieth Turn. No one was ever required to leave his Weyr, but those few who did not become riders usually left, finding places in one of the crafts.

Now, of course, with Benden and Southern Weyrs producing more dragons’ eggs than the Weyrwomen bore babies, it was necessary to range Pern to find enough candidates to stand on the Hatching Grounds. Evidently a commoner simply couldn’t realize that the dragons, usually the browns or bronzes, did the choosing, not their riders.

There seemed to be no accounting for draconic tastes. A well-favored commoner might find himself passed over for the skinny, the unattractive.

Kylara looked around the hall, at the variety of anxious expressions on the rough men assembled. It could be hoped that fire lizards weren’t as discriminating as dragons for there wasn’t much to offer them in this motley group. Then Kylara remembered that that brat of Brekke’s had Impressed three. In that case, anything on two legs in this room would stand a chance. It had been handed them, their one big opportunity to prove that Dragonkind did not need special qualities for Impression, that common Pernese of Holds and Crafts need only be exposed to dragons to have the same chance as the elite of the Weyrs.

“You don’t capture them,” Kylara corrected Meron with a malicious smile. Let these Holders see that there is far more to being chosen by a dragon than physical presence at the moment of Hatching. “You lure them to you with thoughts of affection. A dragon cannot be possessed.”

“We have fire lizards here, not dragons.”

“They are the same for our purposes,” Kylara said sharply. “Now heed me or you’ll lose the lot of them.” She wondered why she’d bothered to sweat and toil and bring him a gift, an opportunity which he was obviously unable to accept or appreciate. And yet, if she had a gold and he a bronze, when they mated it ought to be worth her troubles. “Shut out any thought of fear or profit,” she told the listening circle. “The first puts a dragon off, the second he can’t understand. As soon as one will approach you, feed it. Keep feeding it. Get it on your hand, if possible, and move to a quiet corner and keep feeding it. Think how much you love it, want it to stay with you, how happy its presence makes you. Think of nothing else or the fire lizard will go between. There’s just the short time between its hatching and its first big meal in which to make Impression. You succeed or you don’t. It’s up to you.”

“You heard what she said. Now do it. Do it right. The man who fails – ” Meron’s voice trailed off threateningly.

Kylara laughed, breaking the ominous silence that followed. She laughed at the black look on Meron’s face, laughed until the Lord Holder angered beyond caution, shook her arm roughly, pointing to the eggs which were now indulging in wild maneuvers as their occupants tried to break out.

“Stop that cackling, Weyrwoman. It’ll prejudice the hatchlings.”

“Laughter is better than threats, Lord Meron. Even you can’t order the preference of Dragonkind. And tell me, good Lord Meron, will you be subject to the same dire unspeakable punishment if you fail?”

Meron grabbed her arm in a painful grip, his eyes riveted on the cracks now showing in one of his chosen eggs. He snapped his fingers for meat. Blood oozed from the raw handful as he knelt by the eggs, his body bowed tautly in his effort to effect an Impression.

Trying to show no concern, Kylara rose languidly from her chair. She strolled to the table and picked over the meaty gobbets until she had a satisfactory heap on the trencher. She signaled the tense guardsmen to supply themselves as she moved sedately back to the hearth.

She could not suppress her own excitement and heard Prideth warbling from the heights above the Hold. Ever since Kylara had seen the tiny fledglings F’nor and Brekke had Impressed, she had craved one of these dainty creatures. She would never understand that her imperious nature had subconsciously fought against the emotional symbiosis of her dragon queen. Instinctively Kylara had known that only as a Weyrwoman, a queen’s rider, could she achieve the unparalleled power, privilege and unchallenged freedom as a woman on Pern. Skilled at ignoring what she didn’t wish to admit, Kylara never realized that Prideth was the only living creature who could dominate her and whose good opinion she had to have. In the fire lizard, Kylara saw a miniature dragon which she could control – easily control – and physically dominate in a way she could not dominate Prideth.