“You can tell by smell?” Kindan asked, eyebrows raised.
“No,” Lorana admitted. “I can only tell if something’s not right—like if I left
out an ingredient.”
“I should have asked you for the ingredients, then I could have made it
myself,” Kindan apologized.
“With a sick fire-lizard in your arms?” Lorana asked, shaking her head.
“Anyway, I’m happy to help.”
“Well, thanks again,” Kindan said. Valla snorted and turned. Lorana leaned
forward and held a hand just above the fire-lizard’s head, careful not to
touch it.
“I can feel the heat from here,” she said.
Valla coughed green phlegm, which coated Lorana’s hand before she
could pull it away.
“I’m sorry,” Kindan said.
“Don’t apologize,” Lorana said, rising to her feet. “I’ll just wash it off.
Perhaps I can find a small measuring spoon while I’m up.”
“They’re over there,” Kindan said, pointing.
“You certainly know your way around a kitchen,” Lorana answered with a
grin.
“Only this one,” Kindan agreed. “And mostly I know where to find the
medicinals for a late night of harpering—headaches from the wine, sore
throat from singing.”
Lorana washed her hands, then chose a small measuring spoon and
brought it back to where Kindan sat. She poured some of the herbal tea into
the spoon and gestured to Kindan. With Kindan holding Valla still, Lorana
managed to pry the fire-lizard’s mouth open and coax him to swallow the
dose.
“And now we wait,” Kindan guessed. He looked over to Lorana. “You
should go get your rest—it’ll be dawn soon.”
Lorana nodded, stifling a yawn, and left.
Back in her room, she found herself looking up at the ceiling once more,
watching as the brilliant light jewels started to glow with light from the early
morning sun.
Inspired, she rose again, found her sketchbook and the colored pencils
Kindan had brought, and strode out into the Bowl.
Just as before, the Bowl slowly filled with fire-lizards and dragons, rousing
and going to the lake at the far end to wash and drink, or
between
to the
Feeding Grounds outside the Weyr. She sketched quickly, filling page after
page with the brilliant colors of the dragons and fire-lizards frolicking in the
warm morning sun. She stopped when she ran out of paper and, eager to
show her work, rushed to the Kitchen Cavern.
She found Kindan just where she’d left him. He looked up at her, and his
bleak expression told all she needed to know.
“He’s gone,” the harper said in a choked voice.
“How is he taking it?” M’tal asked K’tan later that morning when the Weyr
healer gave him the news of the loss of Valla.
“As well as any,” K’tan replied, shaking his head. “He’s survived the loss of
a watch-wher, and he lived through the Plague.”
“Which is more than some of us can say,” M’tal acknowledged ruefully, for
he still felt guilty over his decision to close the Weyr when news of the
Plague first reached them.
“It was the only choice we could make,” K’tan told the Weyrleader firmly.
“Which does not make it any less painful.”
K’tan nodded. “We helped as much as we could when the Plague was
over.”
M’tal grunted and made a throwaway gesture, signaling an end to the topic.
“We have another hard choice,” K’tan told the Weyrleader after a moment
of silence.
M’tal nodded in understanding. “Do we know if Valla’s death was from
contagion?”
“Other fire-lizards are coughing,” K’tan said.
M’tal froze for a long moment. His question, when he asked it, was dire.
“Can the dragons catch this sickness?”
“I don’t know,” K’tan admitted.
“And we can’t afford to take the risk,” M’tal surmised. He locked eyes with
the healer who pursed his lips and nodded reluctantly. “Are you proposing
that we ban the fire-lizards from the Weyr?”
K’tan’s nod was nearly imperceptible.
“You must leave,” K’tan said to her.
Lorana looked up from her drawing of the fire-lizards, eyes stricken. Behind
him she could see Kindan, his eyes burning with hate.
“You killed the fire-lizards,” Kindan snarled at her. “You brought the
sickness.”
“You must leave,” K’tan repeated.
Yes, I must leave, Lorana thought to herself. This is my fault. I must go into
quarantine. Until . . . until . . .
Lorana woke with a start, sweating. She looked around, trying to place
herself. It was late, dark. She had been dreaming.
It had been nearly four days since M’tal had ordered the fire-lizards from
Benden Weyr. Lorana had recovered her strength, but she had remained in
the infirmary, scared of being seen by the weyrfolk, particularly those who’d
had fire-lizards.
She gathered her gear together and found a carisak to stuff them into. She
left the colored pencils and her drawings behind—perhaps they would
make payment for all that the weyrfolk had done for her.
Slowly she crept out of the infirmary and toward the Weyr Bowl. Inside, she
was numb. She felt nothing.
Except, maybe, hungry. No, definitely hungry. In fact, Lorana was painfully
hungry. She could feel it in her belly, she could feel it in a hunger headache
pounding in her head. She couldn’t understand how she could feel so
hungry so suddenly.
Her ears caught a faint humming. Her nose picked up the scent of food
cooking, and her stomach rumbled.
Don’t worry, you’ll get fed,
Lorana told her stomach.
But I’m
so
hungry,
her stomach protested. Lorana was momentarily
surprised; she couldn’t remember her stomach ever answering her. She
pushed the issue aside, allowing that it could be the product of many
things—her exhaustion, her exposure, her weakness.
As she neared the end of the corridor, the sound of humming grew louder,
and the smell of roasting meat stronger. Her stomach knotted in
anticipation. Then, when she reached the torchlit Weyr Bowl,
comprehension burst upon her like a wave.
A Hatching! In the Hatching Grounds across the Bowl, dragons were
hatching, and new riders were Impressing—and around them all, the adult
dragons were humming encouragement.
For a moment, Lorana considered heading toward the sound. To see a
Hatching! What a glorious thing!
But, no, she had to get away before anyone found her. Before they knew—
But I’m hungry!
her stomach complained.
I’ll feed you, honest,
Lorana responded, wondering exactly when her
stomach had become so demanding, and also wondering when she’d
become so good at placating it.
She heard a murmur of voices growing louder, coming from the Hatching
Grounds.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing!” someone said, his voice carrying loudly
across to her. It sounded like Kindan.
“Hasn’t a hatchling ever left the Grounds before?” A female voice asked.
Ahead, the darkness split off into three shadows. Two were human shaped,
and they seemed to be following something. A hatchling!
What’s a hatchling doing here? Lorana wondered. She shrank against the
wall, trying to remain unseen, but the hatchling turned toward her.
I said I was hungry!
Lorana stopped dead, frozen in shock and fear, her breathing shallow, her
eyes wide. It could not be. The dragonet couldn’t be talking to her—it had to
be her stomach.
Please, my wing hurts.
The pitiful voice in her head was accompanied by a
painful mewling that Lorana’s ears heard.
Her instincts took over. She could never let an animal suffer. She rushed to
the waddling dragonet and quickly untangled its baby clawed feet from its
left wing tip.
“There, better?” Lorana asked out loud, oblivious to the crowd gathering
around her, concentrating solely on this marvelous young gold dragon who
had asked her for help.
Much, thank you,
the dragonet replied, butting her head against Lorana’s
side.
I am Arith.
And in that instant Lorana recognized the impossible. She had Impressed.
Lorana’s sense of shock was overwhelmed by her nurturing instincts. She
wobbled but did not fall down. Instead, she crouched beside Arith’s head
and began to gently rub, then scratch, the dragonet’s eye ridges.
“Please,” she said, looking up at the crowd for the first time, “Arith is very
hungry. Can you get her something to eat?”
“Certainly,” someone replied instantly. A figure broke from the crowd and
hastened away toward the source of the distant succulent smells.
“Best get Lorana something, as well,” Kindan added, in a rich,
well-modulated tone that carried the length of Benden’s great Bowl.
“Here,” a voice much closer to her—a woman’s voice—said, “Put this on.”
Lorana felt a warm jacket being draped over her. “You must be as frozen as
you are hungry.”
Lorana looked up to see a woman about six or seven Turns older than
herself with blond hair and piercing blue eyes. A red-haired man stood
beside her, looking protective. Lorana couldn’t see that the woman needed
it, she had rarely seen such a selfpossessed person in her life.
“For a moment I thought maybe she was coming for me,” the woman said
with a chuckle. “I’m so glad it was you.
Two
would be impossible.”
A sound, not quite a dragon sound, burst in the sky above them, and a
small, ungainly, ugly gold shape descended toward them. It was a
watch-wher, and when it alit deftly on the floor of the Bowl, it trotted over to
the woman.
The gold watch-wher snuffed at Arith, who returned the gesture full of
curiosity; then, with a satisfied
chirp,
the watch-wher sidled over to place
her head under the blond woman’s hand.
“I know you!” Lorana exclaimed. “You’re Nuella.”
“I told you your fame has traveled far and wide,” Kindan said, bowing
toward Nuella.
“This is Weyrleader M’tal,” Kindan continued, gesturing to a silver-haired,
wiry older man beside him.
“My lord—” Lorana was abashed to have been in the Weyr all this time
without meeting him.
M’tal cut her off with a wave of his hand. “M’tal, please,” he said. “Or
Weyrleader, if you must. You are one of us now, Lorana.”
Tears burst from her, running unchecked down her face. Arith looked at her
worriedly.
Are you hurt?
the dragonet asked, ready to both comfort and defend her
mate.
It’s all right, it’s all right. I’m just so happy,
Lorana assured her. And she
was. M’tal’s words had been just what she’d needed to hear. She had a
home. She was Lorana, rider of gold Arith, dragonrider of Benden Weyr.
“I could not be happier,” she said aloud.
Lorana found herself ensconced in the last empty Weyrwoman’s weyr, her
scant things moved without her asking, her stomach—and Arith’s—filled
beyond bulging, and all the while she was lost in the magic of gold Arith’s
whirling eyes.
Her
dragon’s eyes.
All the pain, the loss, everything that had gone before in Lorana’s life was
redeemed, erased, made nothing in the warmth of Arith’s love.
It was as natural as breathing to Lorana that she’d pull her bedclothes over
to her hatchling’s lair and fall asleep, curled up tight around
her
dragon.
Kindan’s rich voice woke her the next morning. “There’s a warm pool just
the other side of your sleeping quarters. I’m afraid you’ll need it.”
Lorana stretched—and winced. The hard stone of Arith’s lair might be
comfortable to the dragon, but it had left a lot to be desired by her
weyrmate. Her muscles ached and threatened to cramp as she gently
disengaged herself from the still-sleeping dragonet.
“I brought you some
klah,
” Kindan added, extending a mug toward her as
she rose.
“Would you happen to know where a robe is?” Lorana asked, feeling
awkward in her nightdress.
Kindan pulled something off his other shoulder and tossed it to her. He
turned away to give her privacy while she robed herself. “She’ll sleep for
several more hours, judging by her stomach,” he told her.
“And she’ll wake ravenous,” Lorana added.
“Ten of the eggs still lie on the Hatching Grounds,” Kindan said suddenly.
“Ten out of thirty-two.”
Lorana turned suddenly to Arith, reassuring herself that the dragon was all
right, still here—still hers.
“That’s not normal?” she asked, turning back to him with an apologetic
look.
Kindan shook his head. “Not at all,” he answered. “Oh, sometimes one or
two are stillborn, but Salina’s Breth has never had a stillborn egg in any of
her clutches.”
“What of the other Weyrs?” Lorana asked, her curiosity blending with her
growing sense of unease.
“M’tal has spoken with C’rion,” Kindan said, “the Weyrleader of Ista.” He
continued, “C’rion’s queen has just laid a new clutch, so it will be some time
before we find out more from there.”
“And the other Weyrs?” Lorana asked.
Kindan shrugged. “We are only beginning to think of the questions we want
to ask,” he admitted. “That’s why I wanted to talk with you.”
“Me?” Lorana asked, trying to keep a note of panic out of her voice. What if
she
was
the cause?