but decided against it. Instead, he scanned the area and noticed a group
approaching them. “Ah, here we are.”
The man in the center of the group was younger than B’nik, handsome and
wiry. His long hair was tied at the back of his neck, a style uncommon
among dragonriders, but the hair was such a honey-gold and so wavy that
Lorana could well imagine the attraction it would hold for some women. Her
eye moved to the woman beside him. Cisca was even taller than her
Weyrleader, a brown-eyed, brown-haired beauty with a strong, cheerful
face. She was much more buxom than Lorana, but she carried herself
proudly, her stride neither apologetic nor flaunting.
“Weyrleader B’nik, welcome to Fort Weyr!” K’lior called as he approached
the group. Cisca added a welcoming smile of her own.
“Thank you,” B’nik replied. “I wish I were coming at a more pleasant time . .
.”
“As do we all,” Cisca agreed, her lovely features creasing into a frown.
“How bad is it at Benden?”
B’nik looked at Lorana.
“There are twenty sick dragons at the Weyr,” Lorana told them. “Three
times that number have already gone
between.
”
K’lior and Cisca exchanged looks. The Weyrwoman spoke. “We have
nearly sixty sick dragons and have lost over forty.”
“I’ll be lucky to have five wings able to fight when Thread comes again,”
K’lior admitted.
B’nik nodded. “We still have seven wings of able dragons,” he said. He saw
K’lior’s look of distress and hastily added, “But I don’t know how long that
will last—and we started with more dragons than you.”
“What can we do to help?” Cisca asked, looking at Lorana. She frowned.
“Are you Tullea?”
“This is Lorana, rider of Arith. Minith rose yesterday,” B’nik said.
“Congratulations!” K’lior said, his face brightening.
“A good flight?” Cisca added, catching K’lior’s hand in hers proprietarily.
B’nik found himself grinning at their obvious affection. “Unexpected,” he
admitted. “I had not expected to be Weyrleader today.”
“Well, I can see you’ve already settled in the role,” Cisca pronounced
approvingly.
B’nik’s grin broadened.
“I can get nothing from High Reaches Weyr,” Masterharper Zist said to
Kindan as he completed his summary.
Kindan quirked an eyebrow. “Is there any reason?”
“The only message I got from G’relly was cryptic,” Zist admitted. “The
message was ‘wait.’ ”
“That doesn’t seem too cryptic,” Kindan commented.
“Not at the time,” Zist agreed. “But it’s been nearly a fortnight since then
and I’ve heard nothing further.”
Kindan frowned. “What do we know from the other Weyrs, then?”
Masterharper Zist gestured to the Masterhealer.
Masterhealer Perigar sighed. “I cannot—my specialty is humans,” he
temporized.
“Surely a disease is a disease no matter whether it affects animals or
humans?” Voice craftmaster Nonala asked in exasperation.
“Even if it were so,” Perigar responded, “I don’t have enough information to
begin to guess—”
“I do,” Verilan, the Master Archivist, interrupted gruffly. The others all turned
to him. “I don’t know anything about disease, but I can read and cipher.”
He pushed a slate across the table. “There are the numbers of dragons
sick in all the Weyrs we know of,” he said, tapping one line of numbers.
“And there are the numbers of dragons lost
between
to this illness.” He
tapped another column, then pointed to a third. “And there’s the number of
injured from each Fall.”
“What’s this tell us?” Masterharper Zist asked.
“The sickness has accelerated the losses of dragons,” Verilan said. He
raised a hand as the others started to protest the obviousness of his
statement.
“This sickness has accelerated it so much that the Weyrs are losing half
their fighting strength each time they fight Thread.” He raised his hand
higher to forestall further protests.
“I know, I know, the numbers are not exact. But the pattern is there,” he
pronounced. He gave a deep sigh and continued. “And, given that a Weyr
needs at least one Flight—three full wings—of dragons to fly successfully
against Thread . . .” He shook his head. “Given that, the Weyrs will be
incapable of fighting Thread after the next two Falls.”
“What?”
The others were out of their chairs, grabbing at the slate, trying to
examine it.
Kindan sat back first, then Masterharper Zist. They ignored the others and
the shouting. They had each seen enough of Verilan’s calculations to know
that the Master Archivist was right.
Soon—in the next two Falls or less—there would not be enough dragons to
protect Pern from Thread.
“Any luck?” B’nik asked cheerfully, sliding a platter of cheeses in Lorana’s
direction. She and Cisca looked up from the stacks of Records they had
placed in front of them. Lorana shook her head mutely and Cisca looked
back down quickly to her reading.
“When did you last eat?” B’nik asked. Lorana’s face took on a puzzled look
and before she could respond, he grinned.
“I thought so,” he said. “It’s the first question I ask Tullea, too.” He tapped
the platter. “Eat. Now. That’s an order from your Weyrleader.”
Lorana quirked her lips, dropped her Record, and dragged a plate in front
of her. B’nik started to pile some cheese and crackers on it for her. With a
gesture, he inquired if Fort’s Weyrwoman wanted any.
“I think I’d better check on K’lior,” Cisca said. She rose quickly but turned
back to tell Lorana, “I’ll be back.”
“Thanks,” Lorana told her.
“This,” Cisca gestured to the Records spread in front of them, “is for all of
us.”
“Tell me what to look for,” B’nik said as Lorana spread soft cheese on her
cracker, feeling guilty to be eating while the Weyrleader was working.
“Anything that might be useful,” she told him. “Mention of illness, Records
of other Weyrleaders consulting the Records, that sort of thing.”
B’nik nodded but his face showed confusion. Lorana shrugged. “We really
don’t know what we’re looking for,” she told him. “Dragons
don’t
get sick.”
“Except now.”
They continued their work silently. Sometime later, K’lior and Cisca joined
them, wordlessly pulling more stacks of Records and seating themselves
at Fort Weyr’s Records Room table.
It got darker. Glows were brought by the Fort Weyr Headwoman.
Finally, B’nik pushed himself back from his work, sitting upright. Lorana
looked at him, expecting him to call it a day—and she was quite ready to
end another fruitless search.
But as he drew breath to speak, Cisca, who had been tearing through the
Records so fast Lorana wondered how she could read them, sat upright
with a gasp of surprise.
“I think I’ve got something,” she told the others. She had a puzzled
expression on her face. She tapped a section on the Record she was
examining.
“This Record says that there was a special place built just at the beginning
of the First Interval.” Cisca immediately had their undivided attention.
“There was much argument about it but finally M’hall—” She nodded at
B’nik’s surprised expression. “—prevailed and it was built at—”
“Benden Weyr,” B’nik finished.
“. . . so we have found nothing, in our Records or those of the Healercraft,
to alter this conclusion?” Masterharper Zist asked, recapping the end of
several hours’ worth of intense research and debating.
“I have found nothing in the Archives,” Master Archivist Verilan admitted. He
cast a glance around the room, adding, “And I stand by my projections.”
Perigar shook his head ruefully at the Archivist and threw up his hands in
resignation. Masterharper Zist cocked an eyebrow at him, awaiting an
answer.
“As I’ve said before, I’m not an animal healer. Perhaps the
Masterherdsman might give a different answer, but my craft knows nothing
that will help the dragons,” the Masterhealer said finally.
The others all sat back from the table, either throwing up their hands or
shaking their heads sadly. Except Kelsa. Zist gave her an inquiring look.
“I hesitate to bring this up,” she said. “It’s only a snippet.”
“Anything,” Kindan said desperately.
“I found part of a song, an ancient song,” she said. “It has a sour
melody—even if it is haunting—which is doubtless why no one sings it
these days, and I’ve only found a verse or two . . .” she cast a meaningful
glance at Kindan. “It was poorly copied . . .”
Kindan gasped in horror and recognition. Then he drew a breath and sang:
“A thousand voices keen at night,
A thousand voices wail,
A thousand voices cry in fright,
A thousand voices fail.”
“But that hasn’t happened,” Verilan protested. “There have been no
thousand voices—”
Kindan held up a hand for silence, closing his eyes in concentration. He
continued:
“You followed them, young healer lass,
Till they could not be seen;
A thousand dragons made their loss
A bridge ’tween you and me.”
Outside, a dragon appeared from
between
unnoticed as Kindan continued:
“And in the cold and darkest night,
A single voice is heard,
A single voice both clear and bright,
It says a single word.”
He paused, then opened his eyes, shaking his head. “That’s all I can
remember.”
“Has there been a healer lass come to Benden Weyr?” Perigar asked of
everyone, looking particularly to Kindan.
“Lorana,” Kindan said instantly, certain of his conviction.
“But she’s not a healer,” Perigar protested. His continued protests were
halted by Masterharper Zist’s upraised hand. The Masterharper tilted his
head toward the corridor outside. Steps were running toward them.
A figure burst through the doorway.
“Kindan, come quick! Arith is sick,” Lorana cried through her tears.
FIFTEEN
Ecosystems are constantly changing, adapting to new life-forms, while
simultaneously life-forms are adapting to the ecosystem. To engineer a
change to an ecosystem is to commit to a lifetime of monitoring.
—Glossary of terms,
Ecosystems: From -ome to Planet, 24th Edition
Tillek Hold, First Interval, AL 58
I wouldn’t quite call Tillek
warm
this time of year,” M’hall shouted over his
shoulder to Wind Blossom as they spiraled down toward the northern Hold.
“It will do for my purposes,” she replied calmly, although she was enjoying
her ride on dragonback too much to let anything like a mere chill in the air,
or a foggy day, disturb her.
M’hall’s Brianth was wise and experienced—as was Benden’s Weyrleader
himself. All the same, the descent through the foggy air was unnerving for
both of them. M’hall was just about to give up and order Brianth
between
to
safety when they broke through the cloud cover and saw land beneath—far
too close for M’hall’s comfort.
Brianth immediately shifted from a spiral to a hover, allowing his rider to
direct him toward a safe landing spot.
The fog was so dense that it wasn’t until M’hall and Wind Blossom were
through the gates of Tillek Hold that anyone noticed them.
“At least it’s not cold,” M’hall admitted as they waved at the startled guards.
“Da said old Ireland—on Earth where he lived as a boy—could get like this,
in the summer, with a fog coming in off the shore.”
He craned his neck up behind him and let out a whistle as a gap in the fog
showed the mountains in the distance.
“It is a beautiful view, isn’t it?” a voice called cheerfully to them.
A shadow in the fog resolved into a figure, which grew clearer as they
approached. It was a man. He was bearded and wore a heavy-knit sweater.
He had seaman’s hands and the swaggering walk that came from months
spent at sea.
“Malon of Tillek at your service,” he said, extending a hand first to Wind
Blossom and then to M’hall. “Your fire-lizard messenger told me you were
coming, but I wasn’t sure in this fog.”
M’hall recalled from L’can that Malon had taken over the running of Tillek
Hold just recently, after Jim Tillek’s successor had passed on. The man
was about M’hall’s own height, big-boned, brown-haired and brown-eyed,
with a pleasant gentleness in his eyes.
“Pleased to meet you,” M’hall said.
“I think the pleasure is ours,” Malon responded, gesturing toward the Great
Hall. “We’ve got a hearty fish stew waiting and a warm spot for Wind
Blossom for her stay.” He peered down at the diminutive old lady, his
curiosity obvious. “Although why you would prefer our shores to the warmer
ones of Southern Boll . . .”
“You have a spot picked out for me on the beach?” Wind Blossom asked.
“No prying eyes?”
Malon nodded, his expression perplexed. “We do, and a shelter for all
occasions.”
“I asked for some other things—were you able to provide them?” Wind
Blossom continued.
“With pleasure,” Malon said, white teeth flashing bright against the brown
beard. “Although I will confess that you’ve got many people scratching their