more bacteria on a dragon before the infection manifested itself.”
“And that gives the dragon’s immune system more time to build
antibodies,” Emorra pointed out. “So maybe this infection wouldn’t affect
dragons or watch-whers.”
“Perhaps,” Wind Blossom allowed. “But would you risk all of Pern on a
possibility?”
Kassa worked on the question. The answer left her horrified. “Are you
saying that if the dragons got infected, they could all die—and leave Pern
defenseless against Thread?”
“We hope it won’t come to that,” Emorra said fervently.
“But that is why we must know more about this fire-lizard and its owner,”
Wind Blossom declared.
“Why not look at its harness,” Tieran suggested sleepily. The others all
jumped.
“I didn’t meant to disturb you,” Wind Blossom apologized.
“Fine,” Tieran replied grumpily, “then stop talking and let me get back to
sleep.” He turned over and then turned back again, looking at Wind
Blossom. “I thought I heard you say that the fire-lizard’s illness was
bacterial.”
“I did.”
Tieran gave her a surprised look. “I can’t see why you say that. What if the
bacteria infection was only opportunistic?”
Wind Blossom’s eyes widened as she considered his question. “That is
certainly a possibility,” she admitted.
“You were the one who told me to know what you’re talking about before
you open your mouth,” he observed grumpily, rolling back in his bed again.
Kassa regarded Wind Blossom with wide eyes, waiting for the older woman
to flay the young man with her tongue. She was disappointed. Wind
Blossom raised an eyebrow at Tieran, shrugged, and lay back down in her
cot.
Emorra and Kassa exchanged amazed looks and then Emorra, too, closed
her eyes.
Presently, it was quiet once more in the tent. In her memory, the whole
conversation began to assume an unreal air as Kassa waited for dawn to
properly wake them all.
“Food’s here!”
Moira’s shout woke them several hours later. Tieran and the fire-lizard were
the first out of the tent.
“How are you today, Tieran?” Moira asked.
She had volunteered to bring their food every day since the quarantine had
started, rain or shine—and it was mostly rain. Tieran was very grateful for
her dedication.
“What’s the news?” he asked, carefully taking the basket of food from
where Moira had left it and carrying it toward the tent.
“The weather is supposed to break in three days,” Moira said. “Maybe if
Wind Blossom says—”
“If the fire-lizard is still well, that would be a good time,” Wind Blossom
said, slipping out of the tent. “Please tell Janir.”
“I will,” Moira replied with a bob of her head. “Janir sends his apologies and
says that he’ll be along later in the day.”
“Janir is always busy,” Wind Blossom said. Tieran gave her a look, not quite
certain how to take her statement. “Please tell him he must make a
stockpile of nitric acid—”
Moira looked confused.
“My mother means HNO ,” Emorra said, stepping out of the tent to stand
3
beside Wind Blossom. She looked at her mother. “Why should he do
that?”
“Precaution,” Wind Blossom said. She looked back to Moira. “Tell him to
get at least thirty barrels.”
“Thirty barrels,” Moira repeated with a nod.
“Quickly,” Wind Blossom added.
“Very well, I’ll tell him,” Moira answered. She turned to leave. “I must get
back to the College, to start the next meal.”
“Someone wake Kassa,” Emorra said, “or Tieran will eat her breakfast,
too.”
Janir came by that afternoon, stopping a good ten paces upwind of the tent.
Tieran was on watch and called to the others.
It was raining, a cold, steady drizzle. Emorra carried an umbrella to cover
their group; Janir protected himself with an umbrella of his own.
“Moira said that you wanted thirty barrels of nitric acid, is that right?” Janir
began.
“Yes,” Wind Blossom answered simply.
“Why?” Janir asked. “I thought burning the tent and its contents would
sterilize the area enough.”
“Not for the tent, for emergencies,” Wind Blossom corrected.
“For other fire-lizards,” Emorra said.
“Or dragons,” Wind Blossom added. “Have we heard any news?”
“About other fire-lizards getting sick?” Janir asked. At Wind Blossom’s nod
he replied, “No.”
“It’s hard to believe that this infection is an isolated incident,” Wind
Blossom said.
“Maybe we were lucky,” Emorra suggested.
“How much luck can we have?” Wind Blossom asked. “Do you want to bet
on luck when one of the fire-lizards is dead and all our antibiotics are
gone?”
“Has anyone asked which Holds are beading their fire-lizards?” Tieran
wondered suddenly, holding up the bead harness that the fire-lizard had
worn. The little brown saw it and gave a chirp of recognition.
“We’ll get it back on you soon enough, little one,” Tieran told him
apologetically. The fire-lizard made a small noise and rubbed his head
affectionately against Tieran’s hand.
Janir shook his head. “We’ve heard nothing so far.”
“It’s been nearly three weeks,” Emorra said with a touch of heat in her
voice. “How long can it take?”
“The holders aren’t being as responsive as we’d like,” Janir confessed.
Wind Blossom quirked an eyebrow.
“There’s some feeling that this is a bit of a tempest in a teapot,” he
explained. “There have been no reports of holders even considering
putting bead harnesses on the fire-lizards. There just aren’t all that many of
them, and everyone pretty much recognizes each fire-lizard.”
“Then where did he come from?” Wind Blossom demanded. “Are there
others like him? Other sick fire-lizards?”
“Wouldn’t they all have died or recovered from the infection by now?” Janir
asked her.
“What if the infection can be passed to dragons?” Emorra demanded.
“What then?”
Janir raised his hands. “No dragon has gotten sick like this—”
“Before now,” Wind Blossom interrupted him, “I have never seen a
fire-lizard sick like this. Ever.”
“But he recovered, didn’t he?” Janir protested. “I’m sorry, Wind Blossom,
but you know the backlash we got from Mendin over what will happen to his
best festival tent—”
“Not important,” Wind Blossom cut him off. “We must find out where this
fire-lizard came from. We must know more about this infection. We must
know how it spreads, what its symptoms are, and how fatal it is.”
“Right now you have a baseline of fifty percent mortality,” Janir pointed out.
“And this one survived only with the last of the antibiotics,” Emorra added.
“We don’t know if a fire-lizard could survive unaided.”
Wind Blossom raised her hands and said, “We know how hard the human
population was hit by the Fever Year forty-two years ago. Can you imagine
what would happen to the dragons if half of them died?”
Janir’s face slowly drained of all color.
ELEVEN
Bronze for golds,
Brown, blue, for greens,
So do the dragons
Follow their queens.
Telgar Weyr, End of Second Interval, AL 507
And you’re sure, D’nal, that the watch dragon has her orders right this
time?” D’gan sneered. They were up high at the top of Telgar Weyr, where
the watch dragon was posted.
“Yes, I’m sure,” D’nal, the object of Weyrleader D’gan’s derision, replied.
“No more fire-lizards will come into the Bowl.”
“No!”
D’gan shouted. “No more fire-lizards are to come
anywhere
near the
Weyr!”
D’nal nodded, his fists clenched tightly to his side. D’gan stared at him, jaw
clenched, until the shorter rider took a backward step involuntarily.
“How will the holders communicate with us if they can’t send their
fire-lizards?” L’rat, leader of the second wing at Telgar, asked.
D’gan raised an eyebrow at L’rat’s question and saw the other dip his eyes,
unwilling to match D’gan’s look. He snorted. “They’ll light beacons and raise
the call flags,” he replied. “The useless flitters were no good with
messages anyway.”
“No one really knows, D’gan, if the fire-lizards brought the illness,” K’rem,
the healer, said.
“Well, then, we’ll find out, won’t we?” D’gan returned sourly.
Fifteen. Fifteen dragons had died in the past sevenday, three of them so
sick that they could not even go
between
but expired in their weyrs.
“They were useful for communicating with the Masterhealer,” K’rem added.
D’gan vetoed the idea with a shake of his head. “The Masterhealer
concerns himself with people, not dragons.”
“We should tell the other Weyrs—” L’rat began.
“We will tell them
nothing
!” D’gan roared. He turned away, facing east,
away from the Weyr Bowl behind him, away from his Wingleaders, his face
into the wind.
“But surely they will have the same problems,” D’nal said.
“Listen, all of you,” D’gan said angrily, whirling around, jabbing a finger at
each of them. “Telgar Weyr will take care of itself,” he declared, pointing at
D’nal. He turned to L’rat, saying, “I will not have that addled M’tal or that
cretin C’rion making fun of us, telling us what to do.
“Remember how they chided when we brought the two Weyrs together?
How jealous they were that they hadn’t thought to absorb poor Igen when
our last queen died? How envious they were once we started winning the
Games, Turn after Turn?
“We are the largest Weyr, the strongest Weyr, the best-trained Weyr,” he
said, emphasizing each point by slapping a clenched fist into the palm of
his other hand. “We will be the best at fighting Thread,” he declared. He
turned eastward toward Benden Weyr, then south toward Ista Weyr. “And
then
they
will come asking us for advice.”
To the healer he said, “If you can figure out a way to defeat this illness,
then
we’ll have something to talk to the other Weyrs about.”
K’rem pursed his lips tightly. L’rat and D’nal exchanged troubled looks.
“K’rem, have you isolated the sick dragons?” D’gan asked.
“There are thirty dragons that are very sick,” K’rem said with a shake of his
head. “I don’t think they should be moved. Another dozen or so are only
showing the first signs of a cough—”
“Move them! Move them all,” D’gan commanded. “I told you that
already—why did you delay?”
“Do you want to lose more dragons?” K’rem asked. When D’gan’s brows
stormed together he continued quickly, “If we move them, they may die. Do
you want their deaths on your hands?”
“Do you?” D’gan replied. The healer dropped his gaze and D’gan snorted.
“I didn’t think so. Move the sick ones!”
“You will have to break up the wings,” D’nal pointed out.
“Then do it,” D’gan said. He looked at K’rem. “Isn’t this the way the herders
isolate sick beasts and save their herds?”
“But these are
dragons,
D’gan,” L’rat protested. “We don’t know how they
are getting sick, how the illness spreads.”
“And we won’t begin to find out until we isolate the sick ones,” D’gan
responded with a pointed look at K’rem.
Reluctantly, K’rem nodded. “If we isolate them, who will look after them?”
he asked. “My Darth is not ill.”
“Hmm. Good point,” D’gan agreed. He bent his head to his hand in thought.
Finally he looked up, decisive. “Have some of the weyrfolk help them.”
He gestured to the others.
“Let’s go to the Star Stones and see how much time we have before the
Fall starts,” he said in a suddenly cheerful voice. “Things will sort
themselves out when Thread comes, you’ll see.”
M’tal stood back from his observation at the Star Stones of Benden Weyr,
grim-faced.
“The Eye Rock has bracketed the Red Star,” he told K’tan and Kindan,
gesturing for them to look for themselves.
Kindan told the Weyr healer to go first. K’tan stepped forward and looked
through the Eye Rock, aligning his view with the Finger Rock beyond.
There, just above the Finger Rock, as the Records had warned, was the
Red Star.
They were all warmly bundled against the morning chill, M’tal and K’tan in
their riding gear, and even Kindan in a thick wher-hide jacket. M’tal’s
Gaminth and K’tan’s Drith lounged on a ledge near the plateau that held the
Star Stones, unperturbed by the chill in the air. As the sun rose further into
the sky, Kindan could see patches of fog along the coastline to the east. He
turned around, looking down into the darkened Bowl far below. When his
eyes adjusted to the gloom, he found he could spot a fog-diffused glow at
the entrance to the Kitchen Cavern, but nothing more.
“How much time do we have before the first Threadfall?” he asked, turning
back to the other two. He had been invited to the morning gathering by the
Weyrleader himself.
M’tal shook his head. His face was gaunt with fatigue. “Less than a month,
I’d guess.”
“We’ll be flying wing light,” K’tan said, stepping back from the Star Stones.
His breath fogged in the chilly air.
Another three dragons had started coughing just that morning, bringing the
total to eighteen. Twelve had died in the fortnight since Breth had gone