DragonWarrior
By Absinthe
Disclaimers: Ms. McCaffrey's wonderful planet of Pern belongs to her and her alone. No harm is meant by this little romp. Two of the characters are going to look suspiciously like a warrior and her bard, two characters that belong to Universal studios.
Part 4:
That evening, after the guests had drunk and danced themselves to exhaustion, Khlara and F'deron "asked" Tara to accompany them to the Queen's weyr. Her stomach knotted a little, but she followed in a tired haze of wine. As soon as they reached the secluded safety of one of Khlara's antechambers, the weyrwoman rounded on her subordinate. She, too, looked haggard, but her righteous anger leant her energy.
"You had something to do with this didn't you?!" It was more accusation than question.
"With what? With the dragon's choice? How could I influence that?"
"You helped her sneak onto the hatching grounds to handle Vath's egg," F'deron interjected before his weyrmate could snap out anything else.
"No, actually, I didn't. Ask Willenth if you don't believe me, she'll know what happened, if anything."
Khlara's eyes unfocused as she followed Tara's suggestion immediately and roused the sleeping queen. Her mouth fell open in shock.
"Well?" Tara demanded.
"She says that you tried to stop Merelan when you caught her on the grounds . . . and that the dragons all think it was a good idea . . . that she herself approves," Khlara said, nearly dumbstruck by the words falling from her own lips.
"A good idea? F'deron repeated slowly, "A good idea to have an . . . an abomination on our hands here? This is just . . . completely unheard of. How can it be a GOOD IDEA for a fighting bronze to have a woman for a rider? Shards . . . what if he flies a gold dragon?"
Khlara and Tara's eyes met, but neither spoke. F'deron was obviously ignorant of the "incident".
"I guess we'll just have to deal with it if it happens. There's no going back now so my suggestion is that we let Tara get some sleep," Miriam announced, suddenly standing in the doorway. Tara took the moment to slip out, clatter down the stairs and then back up into her own weyr. She smiled lovingly at the slumbering dragon of hers, and then collapsed into bed, tired enough that even the adrenaline in her veins could keep her awake no longer.
Tara stumbled out of bed around midday, wandered into her bathing room and sank gratefully into the cool water. She leaned against the stone, waiting for the cobwebs to clear from her mind. At least in here, she could avoid Khlara, who would inevitably be back for more. When her fingers had pruned nicely, the person she found waiting for her in her chamber was not Khlara, but Miriam.
"Good of you to finally get up," the former weyrwoman teased.
Tara smiled but said nothing. She really didn't know what was expected of her at this point.
"Ordinarily we ‘apprentice' weyrlings to an older rider, beginning the day after impression. With Merelan, however, I hardly think that such a situation would be appropriate. I've already spoken to Khlara and F'deron about this. You're to take her on, she's from a beasthold originally so I'm sure you can learn a lot from each other."
"You're really asking me to do this?" Tara asked after a shocked pause.
"No. I'm telling you."
"Ah. So I'm to mentor her. To save face for the weyr -- so that when Vath flies Nerath it won't look too suspicious."
"If Vath ever participates in a mating flight at all."
"What do you mean by that? He might not mature?"
"It's a male dragon with a woman rider."
"Greens are female, traditionally ridden by males, and they rise to mate," Tara countered.
"True, but we can't be certain either way. I've been looking at the weyr records, and I've found nothing like this for the last 200 turns and longer. It may be completely unprecedented," Miriam sighed, sinking into a chair. She obviously hadn't slept, "You know, this isn't going to be easy for any of us. We only have five turns before the pass begins, but no matter how valuable the dragon is we'll, and I mean all of us, will still have to take the weight of . . . of this . . . incident."
"Weight? Why should anyone care? She hasn't done anything wrong. Even the dragons agree, and what a rider's dragon thinks can do a lot to sway the rider."
"I don't deny that, But just keep in mind that even after the weyr gets used to it, she'll have to convince the rest of the world."
"Yes, but I think we'll deal with that when it comes around."
"I believe L'non should be just about finished with them," Miriam announced, "You may want to head out there. I'll cover your normal duties."
"No, I'll bring her along. You should get some rest," Tara argued, grabbing the older woman's calloused hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.
With all that said, and pressing like a blanket on Tara's heart, the junior queen rider bounded down her stairs and out onto the floor of the weyr. The young dragons were nowhere in evidence, probably still asleep in the barracks, and most of the weyrlings had already been picked up by their mentors. All but one. Tara felt a little start of guilt. Merelan was looking about pathetically, obviously afraid that she'd been forgotten. Tara shouted her name across the few dragon-lengths between them. Merelan waved but didn't move. Tara smiled, remembering L'non's angry warning of days of old, not to move, unless thread started falling on the weyrlings heads, until their mentor came to greet them.
Tara jogged the rest of the distance.
"You know, I think somebody's playing a prank or something. They wouldn't have forgotten would they?" Merelan asked, anxiously.
"They didn't forget. I overslept, sorry."
"What does that have to do with my mentor? Thanks for coming out her to keep me company though."
"Merelan, I didn't come to keep you company, I came to get you. For a smart girl you're really very thick in the head at times."
"Stop jerking me around, Tara, that's not funny!" Merelan replied, peevishly. She gave her friend a playful shove.
"I'm not, I swear!"
"You're serious?"
"Absolutely."
Merelan's face lit up like a glowbasket and she said, "So where do we start?"
"I'm going to show you what I do, then we'll talk about what kind of training you've had, so on and so forth, the usual. Your family breeds runners and herdbeasts, right?"
"Yes . . . "
"So you've had some experience in healing?"
"Some," a sudden thought hit her and she added, "what about my classes? The children?"
"Let's go find out," Tara replied, cheerily. They went to speak with Fiemur, and the crotchety old harper informed them, in his own cranky way, that there would be no new journeyman to take Merelan's place for at least two sevendays time. Harpers were in high demand, he said. There were never enough to go around, he said. The children cannot have their educations interrupted like this, it simply wasn't to be borne, he said.
The tirade took Tara off guard, she hadn't dealt much with Fiemur.
"Well if you make the classes later in the afternoon, Merelan should be able to teach until a new harper arrives . . . " she offered, albeit very hesitantly. The first month or so after impression was invariably exhausting enough without this additional work. Merelan, glanced at Tara as if for permission, then said,
"Perhaps Tara could help me out with the lessons. That would make it easier, to be sure."
Tara glared at Merelan's ineffable profile.
The harper harrumphed a few times as Tara grabbed her new pupil cum teacher by the arm and made their excuses. Once safely out of range, Tara released the blonde.
"You're crazy, did I ever tell you that? What am I supposed to do to help you teach the learning songs? I don't know anything about harpering."
"Well I don't know anything about fighting thread so I guess we're about even."
Trading ‘words' the whole time, the duo went about Tara's duties. These were unimportant in the scheme of Merelan's learnings as she would probably never actually have anything to do with inventory or tithes once threadfall began. It wasn't until evening that they sat down to hash out what skills outside of harpering that Merelan might offer the weyr. Music was nice, but not exactly useful to a life or death situation. Tara and Miriam were the only two people in the weyr trained in dragon healing. Injuries among dragonkind were rare between passes, and threadscore was a bit different from the burn and collision damage that some of the creatures incurred during drills. Tara's experience had been, thereby, limited. In actuality they would both be learning from Miriam. The mentorship was in name only, as far as the former weyrwoman was concerned, and it wouldn't take Merelan long to figure that much out.
Merelan's classes, though, were a different matter entirely. Tara knew the same teaching songs that the children needed to learn, but Merelan insisted on a few practice sessions before Tara's first lesson. Merelan sang her warm - up scales, then indicated that Tara should try to imitate them. From the first three notes on, Merelan's jaw hung open.
"Merelan? You all right?" Tara asked, shaking the harper in alarm.
"Yeah . . . Yeah, I'm fine!" Merelan refocused.
"I'm not that bad am I?"
"No. No, not at all. You're . .. You're absolutely amazing!" Merelan sighed, not without a hint of jealousy. As their session wore on, the harper realized that Tara knew instinctively many of the things that she had spent years learning. It simply wasn't fair.
Nevertheless, all minor envy aside, Tara made the classes go by in half the time. They divided the lot into levels of ability so that Tara could work with the younger children at the same time that Merelan worked with the older ones. As Merelan's schedule grew busier, the necessity of this arrangement made itself painfully apparent. Sometimes it was all the harper could do to stay awake through class.
Tara's reputation among the kids grew to legendary proportions, making her a most sought after teacher. They would be dissappointed once she left. The fact that only one child had been withdrawn from class because of parental dissapproval of the new bronze rider spoke of a willingness to look the other way, if not to actually embrace this new situation.
The day the new harper arrived, Tara and Merelan handed the children over to their new instructor. The moment the pair left them alone, the unfortunate young journeyman was faced with a recalcitrant mob. It took Fiemur and the journeyman the rest of the afternoon to get them to assent to the new teacher. Fiemur shook his head in dismay. Who would have thought?
Part 5
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