“Well, that’s to be expected—you’re a queen rider now,” Salina said, with a
touch of tartness in her tone.
Lorana flushed. “It’s not quite like when my Garth rose to mate,” she said,
her thoughts racing along lines similar to Salina’s.
“Garth?” M’tal asked.
“I had two fire-lizards,” Lorana explained. “Garth was my queen.”
“Oh,” M’tal responded, his tone both enlightened and relieved. “So you’ve
been through a mating flight.”
Lorana nodded empathically. “Yes, definitely
through,
” she agreed, her
eyes flashing with amusement.
“It’s a bit more intense when a queen dragon mates,” Salina cautioned.
M’tal grabbed at her possessively and pulled her close to him. Salina
smiled and curled against him, wrapping an arm around his waist.
“So I’ve been told,” Lorana said. The dragons had just filled her in, and she
couldn’t help but smile.
“The dragons told you?” M’tal asked.
“Well, not told, as it were, but more showed,” Lorana admitted.
“When?” M’tal asked incredulously.
“Just now,” Lorana answered.
“Showed?” K’tan asked.
Lorana frowned thoughtfully. “Sort of like a flurry of images and emotions,”
she reported. She caught the alarmed look that passed between
Weyrleader and Weyrwoman and quickly added, “All very dragonish.”
M’tal and Salina looked relieved, and Lorana guessed that they’d
entertained the notion that the dragons might have conveyed intimate
details.
I’m sleepy,
Arith interjected.
“Of course you are, you just gorged yourself,” Lorana replied. “Why don’t
you go lie down?”
All right,
Arith agreed, tottering off toward their quarters.
Why don’t you go
eat?
“I will,” Lorana said. “I promise.”
“What?” M’tal and Salina both asked.
“Eat,” Lorana said. She raised a hand apologetically. “I’m sorry, but I’m just
up.”
“May we accompany you?” K’tan asked, gesturing toward the Lower
Caverns.
“I don’t know where I’m going, actually,” Lorana admitted. “I’ve only been to
the night hearth.”
Salina’s brow creased thoughtfully. “Why didn’t you ask the dragons?”
Lorana looked surprised. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Actually,” K’tan admitted, “I pretty much descended upon the poor girl just
after Tullea finished with her.”
M’tal sighed and exchanged a concerned look with Salina.
“Did you have words with Tullea?” the Weyrwoman asked, pushing herself
out of her cuddle with M’tal and starting across the Bowl.
“Well . . . yes,” Lorana admitted as she and the others followed Salina.
M’tal pursed his lips tightly before saying, “Tullea seems to—”
“Have problems dealing with people recently,” Salina finished.
M’tal arched an eyebrow in disagreement. “Recently being the past three
Turns,” he corrected.
“You mean she’s like that with everyone?” Lorana blurted and then clapped
a hand to her mouth in surprise. The other three laughed.
“I’m afraid so,” M’tal said when he’d recovered, eyes still dancing with
amusement.
“You shouldn’t feel singled out,” K’tan added.
“I’m sure she’ll settle down when Thread comes,” Salina said.
“Or her dragon rises,” M’tal added.
“
Preferably
when her dragon rises,” K’tan murmured.
“Her dragon hasn’t risen yet?” Lorana asked, feeling the beginnings of
some sympathy for Tullea.
K’tan leaned in close to Lorana, to murmur, “We’re
hoping
that a mating
flight will calm her nerves.”
“Or something,” Salina added, arching an eyebrow at K’tan.
“Ah, you found her!” Kindan called from a table as they entered the Living
Cavern. “Are you hungry, Lorana?” he asked, then shook his head at
himself. “Of course you are, I can see it from here! Sit, sit! I’ll arrange for
food.”
Kindan eyed the group of women preparing food in the cavern and shouted
out, “Kiyary! Could we have food for five—including one with a new
hatchling?”
A young brunette in the group looked up, caught sight of Kindan, and waved
acknowledgment. In short order Lorana found herself replete, filled with
succulent fruits, hearty porridge, and warm
klah.
The others politely kept up
conversation all around her while she wolfed down her food with all the
abandon she had so abhorred in her dragonet.
Salina must have caught her mood, for she said, soothingly, “It’s common
for new riders to find themselves eating more—the appetites of their
dragons can be overwhelming.”
“Not to mention the work,” K’tan added with a laugh. When he caught the
confused look on Lorana’s face, he added, “You oiled your fire-lizards,
right?”
“Yes,” she replied, around a bite of food and still a bit dazed. Then
comprehension dawned, and her eyes widened. “Oh! Oh, she is already
quite a bit larger than my two.”
“Oiling a dragon is a large part of what we dragonriders do,” K’tan admitted,
eyes twinkling.
“But if you’ve had two fire-lizards, then you probably won’t find
one
dragon
all that difficult,” Kindan said reassuringly.
“At least not to start,” K’tan corrected. He gestured to Lorana’s plate. “Eat
up, you’ll need your strength.”
“I think I’ve had enough, already.” Lorana covered her mouth to stifle a
yawn.
“And after you eat, you sleep,” Kindan said. “When you’re not eating, or
sleeping—” The others joined in. “—you’re oiling.”
“Dragons and fire-lizards aren’t the same,” M’tal said, directing his comment
to Salina.
Lorana’s eyes narrowed as she detected an undercurrent in the
conversation. She realized that it had been there all along but she’d been
too hungry and too distracted to notice it. In fact, now that she had
recovered from her encounter with Tullea, Lorana became aware of a
shadow of dread in the Weyr’s atmosphere.
She looked entreatingly at K’tan, but the Weyr healer had ducked his head
in thought. She turned her attention to Kindan. He caught her glance and
imperceptibly tilted his head toward Salina.
Something was wrong with the Weyrwoman? Lorana wondered. Salina
looked pensive, withdrawn, but otherwise healthy. Lorana gave Kindan a
slight shake of her head to say “I don’t understand.”
Just then she heard a loud cough and a snort, which echoed around the
Weyr. Salina started, looked out toward the Bowl, and then lowered her
head slowly, leaning against M’tal.
“It may not be the same thing,” M’tal said, grabbing her hand consolingly. “It
may not be the same thing at all.”
Lorana felt her stomach wrench in fear. She did not have to ask which
dragon had coughed, nor did she need to hear Breth’s apologetic,
Sorry.
“Repeat that herbal recipe for me,” K’tan asked her urgently. All too
willingly, Lorana complied.
Salina lifted her head from M’tal’s shoulder and smiled wanly at Lorana.
“We shouldn’t keep you, dear,” she told her. She gestured toward the
weyrs. “Go, get some rest. Your Arith will be awake again soon enough.”
“I will not tolerate shirkers,” Weyrleader D’gan growled at the blue rider in
front of him. Telgar’s Weyrleader was dressed ready to ride. Above him in
the distance were arrayed the wings of Telgar Weyr—all except one.
D’gan’s face was twisted in a scowl.
“But Jalith is—”
“Shirking!” D’gan shouted back, towering over the shorter blue rider in his
rage. He spared a contemptuous glare for the blue’s Wingleader, who
wilted visibly. Jalith and M’rit were oldsters who had been at Telgar Weyr
when D’gan had first arrived. “They are testing my authority as
Weyrleader.”
D’gan remembered the derision he and the riders from Igen Weyr had
received when they had first arrived at Telgar Weyr. It was not their fault that
Igen had fallen on such hard times, nor that their dying queen had failed to
lay a gold egg.
“I honestly don’t think so,” K’rem, Telgar’s Weyr healer, said as soothingly
as he could. “Jalith is aspirating the same ooze that the fire-lizards—”
“Don’t tell me!” D’gan roared again. “I don’t care.” He jabbed a finger
upward, pointing to the sky. “Thread is coming. I won’t have any shirkers.
‘Dragonmen must fly when Thread is in the sky.’ ”
It had taken hard work—more work, D’gan was certain, than old Telgar
riders would have required—for D’gan to win respect at his new Weyr, and
finally to win the senior queen and become Weyrleader. Since then he’d
shown them, every day, what sort of riders came from
Igen
Weyr.
“I know my duty,” D’gan growled. “And all the riders in
my
Weyr will do
theirs.
”
“Thread is not in the sky today,” K’rem protested. “Perhaps if we let Jalith
rest . . .”
“No!” Veins stood out in the side of D’gan’s neck. “Not today, not tomorrow,
not any day. All my wings will fly with all their dragons. We will
train
to fight
Thread. There will be no shirkers.” He pointed at the wilting blue rider.
“Mount your dragon, join your wing.”
The blue rider blanched.
“Maybe if I could give Jalith something—” K’rem suggested.
D’gan cut him off. “You may do anything you like, Healer—
after
we fly our
pattern.” He took two quick strides toward his bronze, leapt onto the great
neck, and drove his dragon skyward.
The next several sevendays were a blur of feeding and oiling Arith,
occasionally catching food for herself and snatches of sleep where she
could. Lorana naturally assumed that young dragons were awake at all
hours—just like young children—so it was not until K’tan explained that she
realized there was anything out of the ordinary.
“Normally things wouldn’t be this disrupted,” the Weyr Healer told her as he
met her on her way to the Food Cavern, “except for Breth’s problems.
When the queen doesn’t sleep, the Weyr doesn’t sleep.”
“Does Arith wake the others, too?” Lorana asked, worriedly.
K’tan shook his head. “Only a little,” he assured her. “All the bronzes and
most of the browns are attuned to the Senior Queen, so . . .”
Lorana nodded in understanding.
“And then there are the fire-lizards,” Kindan chimed in from behind them.
Lorana whirled, and Kindan gave her an apologetic wave, all the while
smiling most unapologetically.
“ ‘A harper’s best instrument is his ears,’ ” K’tan said, quoting the old
saying.
Kindan shook his head, grinning and pointing to his forehead. “Ears are
second, brains are first.”
“Then mouth is third,” K’tan said with a snort.
“Of course,” Kindan agreed, grinning. His mood sobered. “As I was saying,
the fire-lizards.”
“What about them?” Lorana asked.
“We’re trying to understand how they got sick and how long before . . .”
Kindan’s voice trailed off.
“They die?” Lorana finished. Kindan nodded, lips drawn tight.
They reached the Cavern and sat near the fire. Kindan waved cheerfully to
Kiyary, who smiled back and brought over a plate of cheese and a pitcher
of
klah.
Mugs and plates were already laid out on the table in anticipation of
the midday meal. Kindan grabbed a roll out of the basket in the center of
the table, tore it open, and deftly spread it with the soft cheese. With a
raised eyebrow, he tilted the basket toward Lorana, who grabbed a roll with
a nod of thanks, and then Kindan repeated the performance with K’tan.
For a moment the three were silent, intent on preparing and eating their
rolls. Kindan finished his first, then reached for the pitcher of
klah
and filled
his glass and the glasses of the other two. He drank deeply before
continuing. “If we can understand how the illness progresses in fire-lizards,
then maybe we can gain some understanding about how the illness will
affect dragons.”
“I can’t help you,” Lorana told them, shaking her head sadly. “I don’t know
quite when my two got sick—I’m not even sure if they did.”
“And you sent your two
between
?” K’tan asked, eyes narrowed in thought.
“Valla went
between,
too,” Kindan added.
“To die?” K’tan wondered.
“Valla was hot and feverish,” Lorana said.
“Maybe the cold of
between
is too much for them when they’re sick,” K’tan
suggested.
“Or they got disoriented,” Kindan said.
“Lost
between
?” Lorana shuddered. Then she thought for a moment. “So
the first thing to do would be to prevent a sick fire-lizard—”
“Or dragon,” Kindan interjected.
“—or dragon,” she continued, “from going
between.
”
“But that doesn’t answer whether the disease itself is deadly,” K’tan
objected.
“True,” Kindan agreed with a shrug.
“On the other hand,” K’tan noted, “we’ll
never
know if the disease itself is
fatal if we can’t keep a fire-lizard from going
between.
”
“Or a dragon,” Kindan added darkly.
“I hope,” K’tan said fervently, “that it doesn’t come to that.”
“Someone’s coming,” Lorana said suddenly, eyes wide.
The other two looked around. “Where?”
“Between,”
she said. She looked pained. “The dragon is unhappy; so is the