“Let me through!” she demanded imperiously, pounding on the wide backs of two tall riders. An aisle was reluctantly opened for her, and she went through, looking neither to her right or left at the excited weyrfolk. She was furious, confused, hurt, and knew she looked ridiculous because the hot sand made her walk with a curious mincing quickstep.
She halted, stunned and wide-eyed at the mass of eggs, and forgot such trivial things as hot feet.
Ramoth was curled around the clutch, looking enormously pleased with herself. She, too, kept shifting, closing and opening a protective wing over her eggs, so that it was difficult to count them.
No one will steal them, silly, so stop fluttering, Lessa advised as she tried to make a tally.
Obediently Ramoth folded her wings. To relieve her maternal anxiety, however, she snaked her head out across the circle of mottled, glowing eggs, looking all around the cavern, flicking her forked tongue in and out.
An immense sigh, like a gust of wind, swept through the cavern. For there, now that Ramoth’s wings were furled, gleamed an egg of glowing gold among the mottled ones. A queen egg!
“A queen egg!” The cry went up simultaneously from half a hundred throats. The Hatching Ground rang with cheers, yells, screams, and howls of exultation. Someone seized Lessa and swung her around in an excess of feeling. A kiss landed in the vicinity of her mouth. No sooner did she recover her footing than she was bugged by someone else she thought it was Manora, and then pounded and buffeted around in congratulation until she was reeling in a kind of dance between avoiding the celebrants and easing the growing discomfort of her feet. She broke from the milling revelers and ran across the Ground to Ramoth. Lessa came to a sudden stop before the eggs. They seemed to be pulsing. The shells looked flaccid.
She could have sworn they were hard the day she Impressed Ramoth. She wanted to touch one, just to make sure, but dared not.
You may, Ramoth assured her condescendingly. She touched Lessa’s shoulder gently with her tongue.
The egg was soft to touch and Lessa drew her hand back quickly, afraid of doing injury.
The heat will harden it, Ramoth said.
“Ramoth, I’m so proud of you,” Lessa sighed, looking adoringly up at the great eyes that shone in rainbows of pride. “You are the most marvelous queen ever. I do believe you will redragon all the Weyrs. I do believe you will.”
Ramoth inclined her head regally, then began to sway it from side to side over the eggs, protectingly. She began to hiss suddenly, raising from her crouch, beating the air with her wings, before settling back into the sands to lay yet another egg.
The weyrfolk, uncomfortable on the hot sands, were beginning to leave the Hatching Ground now that they had paid tribute to the arrival of the golden egg. A queen took several days to complete her clutch so there was no point to waiting. Seven eggs already lay beside the important golden one, and if there were seven already, this augured well for the eventual total. Wagers were being made and taken even as Ramoth produced her ninth mottled egg.
“Just as I predicted, a queen egg, by the mother of us all,” F’lar’s voice said in Lessa’s ear. “And I’ll wager there’ll be ten bronzes at least.”
She looked up at him, completely in harmony with the Weyrleader at this moment. She was conscious now of Mnementh, crouching proudly on a ledge, gazing fondly at his mate. Impulsively Lessa laid her hand on F’lar’s arm.
“F’lar, I do believe you.”
“Only now?” F’lar teased her, but his smile was wide and his eyes proud.
Weyrman, watch;
Weyrman, learn S
omething new i
n every Turn.
Oldest may be coldest, too.
Sense the right; find the true!
IF F’LAR’S orders over the next months caused no end of discussion and muttering among the weyrfolk, they seemed to Lessa to be only the logical outcomes of their discussion after Ramoth had finished laying her gratifying total of forty-one eggs.
F’lar discarded tradition right and left, treading on more than R’gul’s conservative toes.