There was suddenly no time for her to return to her cubicle and change. Tgellan appeared at the cavern entrance, gesturing urgently to her. She made as much speed as her feet would permit because she could see Monarth waiting outside the entrance. Tgellan had already taken her hand when she exclaimed over the cooking stains and wet marks on her overshirt,
“I told you to be ready. I’ll put you in a corner, pet, not that anyone will notice stains today,” Tgellan reassured her.
A trifle resentful, Menolly noticed that he was dressed in new dark trousers, a handsomely overstitched tunic,
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a belt worked with metal and jewels, but she didn’t resist.
**I have to get you in place first, because I’m to collect some visitors,” Tgellan said, climbing nimbly into place in front of her on Monarth’s neck ridges. “Flar*s filling the Hatching Ground with anyone who’ll ride a dragon between.”
Monarth was awing, slanting up from the Bowl floor to an immense opening, high up on the Weyr wall, which Menolly had not noticed before. Other dragons were angling towards it, too. Menolly gasped as they entered the mouth, with a dragon before them and one abaft, so close that she had momentary fears of collision. The dark core of the tunnel was lit at the far end, and abruptly they were in the gigantic Hatching Ground.
The whole north quadrant of the Weyr must be hollow, thought Menolly, awed. Then she saw the gleaming clutch of dragon eggs and gasped. Slightly to one side was a larger egg, and hovering over it was the zealous golden form of Ramoth, her eyes incredibly brilliant with the coming of Impression.
Monarth dropped with distressing abruptness, then backwinged to land neatly on a ledge.
“Here you are, Menolly. Best seat in the Ground, ni be back for you afterwards.”
Menolly was only too glad to sit still after that incredible ride. She was in the third tier, by the outer wall, so she had a perfect view of the Hatching Ground and the entrance through which people were beginning to file. They were all so elegantly dressed that she brushed vainly at the stains and crossed her arm over her chest. At least the clothes were new.
Other dragons were arriving from the upper entrance, depositing their passengers, often three and four at a time. She watched the now steady stream of visitors coming in from the ground entrance. It was amusing to watch the elegant, and sometimes overdressed, ladies
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having to pick up their heavy skirts and run in awkward little steps across the hot sands. The tiers filled rapidly, and the excited thrumming of the dragons increased in pitch so that Menolly found it difficult to sit quietly.
A sudden cry announced the rocking of some of the eggs. Late arrivals began to hurry across the sands, and the seats beyond Menolly were filled with a group of minecraftsmen, to judge from their red-brown tunic devices. She crossed her arms again and then uncrossed them because she had to lean forward to see around the minecraftsmen’s stocky bodies.
More eggs were rocking, all of them except the smallish gray egg that had somehow got shoved back against the inside wall.
Another rush of wings, and this time bronze dragons entered, depositing the girls who were candidates for the queen egg. Menolly tried to figure out which one was Brekke, but they all looked very aware and healthy. Hadn’t the weyrwomen remarked that morning how Brekke just lay like someone dead? The girls formed a loose but incomplete semicircle about the queen egg while Ramoth hissed softly behind it.
Young boys inarched in now from the Bowl, their expressions purposeful, their shoulders straight in the white tunics as they approached the main clutch.
Menolly did not see Brekke’s entrance because she was trying to figure out which of the violently rocking eggs would hatch first. Then one of the miners exclaimed and pointed towards the entrance, to the slender figure, stumbling, halting, then moving onward, apparently insensitive to the hot sands underfoot
‘That would be the one. That would be Brekke,” he told his comrades. “Dragonrider said she’d be put to the egg.”