“What’s the matter, Jaxom?”
“Nothing.” Jaxom pulled Menolly’s hands from his arm and all but pushed her toward the Ground. “The eggs. The eggs!”
His injunction was drowned in Ramoth’s bellow of surprise and exultation.
“The egg. The queen egg!”
By the time Jaxom had recovered from his inexplicable vertigo and reached the Hatching Ground, everyone was staring with relief at the sight of the queen egg, now safely positioned once again between Ramoth’s forelegs. A firelizard, reckless with curiosity, got a scant winglength into the Ground before Ramoth’s bellow of fury sent it streaking away.
In relief, people began to chatter, as they moved back out of the Hatching Ground to where the sand was not so uncomfortable underfoot. Someone suggested that perhaps the egg had merely rolled away and Ramoth only thought it had been taken. But too many had seen the empty place, where the queen egg had too obviously been missing. And what about the three strange bronzes streaking out of the high entrance to the Ground. More acceptable was the notion that the Oldtimers had had second thoughts about the theft, that they, too, were reluctant to pit dragon against dragon.
Lessa had remained in the Ground, trying to persuade Ramoth to let her see if the egg had come to any harm. Soon she came hurrying out of the Ground to F’lar and Robinton.
“That’s the same egg but it’s older and harder, ready to Hatch anytime now. The girls must be brought.”
For the third time that morning, Benden Weyr was in a state of high excitement-happier fortunately, but still generating as much chaos. Jaxom and Menolly managed to keep out of the way but remained close enough to hear what was going on.
“Whoever took that egg kept it at least ten days or more,” they heard Lessa saying angrily. “That demands action.”
“The egg is back safely,” Robinton said, trying to calm her.
“Are we cowards to ignore such an insult?” she asked the other dragonmen, turning away from Robinton’s calmer words.
“If to be brave,” Robinton’s voice laid scorn on the quality, “means to pit dragon against dragon, I’d rather be a coward.”
Lessa’s white-hot outrage noticeably cooled.
Dragon against dragon. The words echoed through the crowd. The thought turned sickeningly in Jaxom’s mind and he could feel Menolly beside him shutting off the implications of such a contest.
“The egg was somewhen for long enough to be brought close to hatching hardness,” Lessa went on, her face set with her anger. “It’s probably been handled by their candidate. It could have been influenced enough so that the fledgling won’t Impress here.”
“No one has ever proved how much an egg is influenced by pre-Hatching contact,” Robinton was saying in his most persuasive voice. “Or so you’ve had me understand any number of times. Short of dumping their candidate on top of the egg when it hatches, I can’t think their conniving can do them any good or the egg any more harm.”
The assembled dragonfolk were still very tense but the initial impetus to rise in wings and destroy the Southern Weyr had cooled considerably with the return of the egg, however mysterious that return was.
“Obviously, we can no longer be complacent,” said F’lar, glancing up at the watchdragons, “or secure in the delusion of the inviolability of the Hatching Ground. Any Hatching Ground.” Nervously he pushed the hair back from his forehead. “By the First Shell, they’ve a lot of gall, trying to steal one of Ramoth’s eggs.”
“The first way to secure this Weyr is to ban those dratted firelizards,” Lessa said heatedly. “They’re little tattlers, worse than useless …”
“Not all of them, Lessa,” Brekke said, stepping up beside the Weyrwoman. “Some of them come on legitimate errands and give us a lot of assistance.” ,
“Two were playing that game,” Robinton said without humor.
Menolly dug Jaxom in the ribs, reminding him that the Harperhall’s firelizards, hers included, did a lot of assisting.
“I don’t care,” Lessa told Brekke and glared around at the assembled, looking for firelizards. “I don’t want to see them about here. Ramoth’s not to be pestered by those plaguey things. Something’s to be done to keep them where they belong.”