Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online

about her gait attracted him, and he stared at her, trying to identify it.
    “Oh, yes, poor Lady Gemma,” Lady Tela babbled, sighing deeply. “We are so concerned. Why my Lord Fax insisted on her coming I do not know. She is not near her time, and yet . . .” The lighthead’s concern sounded sincere.
    F’lar’s incipient hatred for Fax and his brutality matured abruptly. He left his partner chattering to thin air and courteously extended his arm to the Lady Gemma to support her down the steps and to the table. Only the brief tightening of her fingers on his forearm betrayed her gratitude. Her face was very white and drawn, the lines deeply etched around mouth and eyes, showing the effort she was expending.
    “Some attempt has been made, I see, to restore order to the Hall,” she remarked in a conversational tone.
    “Some,” F’lar admitted dryly, glancing around the grandly proportioned Hall, its rafters festooned with the webs of many Turns. The inhabitants of those gossamer nests dropped from time to time, with ripe splats, to the floor, onto the table, and into the serving platters. Nothing replaced the old banners of the Ruathan Blood, removed from the stark brown stonewalls. Fresh rushes did obscure the greasy flagstones. The trestle tables appeared recently sanded and scraped, and the platters gleamed dully in the refreshed glows. Those unfortunately, were a mistake, for brightness was much too unflattering to a scene that would have been more reassuring in dimmer light.
    “This was such a graceful Hall,” the Lady Gemma murmured for F’lar’s ears alone.
    “You were a friend?” he asked politely.
    “Yes, in my youth.” Her voice dropped expressively on the last word, evoking for F’lar a happier girlhood. “It was a noble line!”
    “Think you
one
might have escaped the sword?”
    The Lady Gemma flashed him a startled look, then quickly composed her features, lest the exchange be noted. She gave a barely perceptible shake of her head and then shifted her awkward weight to take her place at the table. Graciously she inclined her head toward F’lar, both dismissing and thanking him.
    He returned to his own partner and placed her at the table on his left. As the only persons of rank who would dine that night at Ruatha Hold, Lady Gemma was seated on his right; Fax would be beyond her. The dragonmen and Fax’s upper soldiery would sit at the lower tables. No guildmen had been invited to Ruatha.
    Fax arrived just then with his current lady and two underleaders, the Warder bowing them effusively into the Hall. The man, F’lar noticed, kept a good distance from his overlord—as well a Warder might whose responsibility was in this sorry condition. F’lar flicked a crawler away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Lady Gemma wince and shudder.
    Fax stamped up to the raised table, his face black with suppressed rage. He pulled back his chair roughly, slamming it into the Lady Gemma’s before he seated himself. He pulled the chair to the table with a force that threatened to rock the none too stable trestle-top from its supporting legs. Scowling, he inspected his goblet and plate, fingering the surface, ready to throw them aside if they displeased him.
    “A roast, my Lord Fax, and fresh bread, Lord Fax, and such fruits and roots as are left.”
    “Left? Left? You said there was nothing harvested here.”
    The Warder’s eyes bulged and he gulped, stammering, “Nothing to be sent on. Nothing
good
enough to be sent on. Nothing. Had I but known of your arrival, I could have sent to Crom . . .”
    “Sent ot Crom?” roared Fax, slaming the plate he was inspecting onto the table so forcefully that the rim bent under his hands. The Warder winced again as if he himself had been maimed.
    “For decent foodstuffs, my Lord,” he quavered.
    “The day one of my Holds cannot support itself
or
the visit of its rightful overlord, I shall renounce it.”
    The Lady Gemma gasped. Simultaneously the