Tieran was there, too, with his fire-lizard—Wind Blossom remembered that
fire-lizards did not like the rain—skittering and chittering above him.
“Look!” Tieran shouted above the thunder and the rainfall. He darted out
from under the courtyard tunnel and onto the roadway that led from the
College.
Wind Blossom followed him. She looked up. There was a shape high up in
the air, falling. Before she could react, the shape hit the ground in front of
them with a sickening thud.
It was a dragon. Wind Blossom peered at it through the rain and dark night
until another lightning bolt illuminated it. She gasped in horror.
“Rouse the College!” she shouted over the rain. “Get the agenothree!”
“Wind Blossom, what is it?” a voice called from behind her. She recognized
it as Emorra’s. “Get the agenothree! We must burn this corpse. We must
burn it now!”
“It’s infected?” Emorra asked, gesturing to the others behind her and
quickly issuing orders.
“And worse,” Wind Blossom agreed, as teams formed up with barrels of
agenothree. “Pour it on. Don’t stop. All of Pern depends on this.”
As the first agenothree hissed over the young dragon’s corpse, Tieran
rushed forward, his belt knife in his hand.
“Tieran!” Wind Blossom shouted, her voice merging with Emorra’s at her
side. “What are you doing?”
Quickly Tieran cut a part of the dragon’s riding harness, tore off a silver
buckle and retreated toward the others. He nodded curtly at one of the
groups carrying a barrel of agenothree and, jaw clenched against the pain,
plunged his hands into the acid.
“What are you doing?” Wind Blossom shouted again.
“It’s all right,” Tieran said, showing her his hands. They were pitted and raw
from where the acid had burned through the oils of his skin. He waved the
piece of metal at them. “This will tell us whose dragon this is.”
He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as the pain from his hands burned
through the adrenaline that had carried through his wild act.
“Besides,” he added, gasping in pain, “it doesn’t hurt as much as
wher-bite.”
When the cold, gray light of morning finally broke through the scattering
clouds, Wind Blossom was still hunched beside the steaming remains of
the dragon. The agenothree had eaten all its flesh and left only bleached
bone. As each barrel of the nitric acid had burned another layer of flesh and
muscle away from the dead dragon, Wind Blossom had felt herself similarly
stripped, her emotions laid open and raw to her as they never had been
before.
The stream of green mucus that had been forced from the dragon’s nostrils
on its impact with the ground had made it crystal clear to Wind Blossom that
the dragon had been infected with the same illness as the two fire-lizards.
Over and over again her mind replayed the instant when she had
known
that she had to go outside, that something was coming. Over and over her
memory showed her the images of the dragon appearing, faintly, high in the
sky and falling uncontrollably to the ground—dead. The sickening sound of
the dragon’s body hitting the ground still made her shudder.
Again she replayed the memory in her mind, fighting with herself to slow it
down, to bring every detail into sharp relief. She sighed angrily as she once
again failed to determine the precise feeling she had the instant she had
known
she had to go outside. She had felt it before, when the fire-lizards
had appeared. Some connection, something.
Bitterly, Wind Blossom shook her head to rid herself of the problem. There
were other problems.
She expected M’hall and maybe even Torene to arrive presently. She
wouldn’t be surprised if every dragon on Pern arrived. She had started
workmen digging a grave large enough for the skeletal remains of the
young dragon. The grave would be lined with lime; even though Wind
Blossom was certain that the infection itself had been destroyed by the
agenothree, she was not certain
enough.
All those images and memories ought to have been enough to keep Wind
Blossom awake through the night.
But there was one more. And it alone had kept her up, had kept her from
accepting anything more than a winter cloak and hot
klah.
It was the image of the dragon’s skin, mottled, patchy, and pockmarked, as
though it were changing consistency. She had only seen it for a moment
and in the gray of night. The image bothered her for a reason she couldn’t
explain. Deep inside her, she knew that what she had seen held some
special significance, but she couldn’t identify it. That bothered her—and
kept her awake through the night.
“Mother?” Emorra’s voice startled her. “Have you been up all night?”
Wind Blossom nodded. “I’m trying to remember something.”
“Well, come to breakfast—perhaps you’ll remember better when you’re
warm,” Emorra suggested.
“M’hall and the others will be here soon,” Wind Blossom said.
“I’ll stay,” Tieran said, walking up with a breakfast roll in one hand. “I . . .” He
trailed off, unable to finish his sentence.
Wind Blossom turned and smiled at him understandingly. Emorra added
her smile, as well.
“Go on,” Tieran said. “I’ll direct any dragonriders to you and keep watch
here.”
“Thank you,” Wind Blossom said, her throat unexpectedly tight.
Tieran nodded and turned back to survey the charred remains of the dead
queen dragon.
To keep watch.
And honor the dead.
EIGHTEEN
Thread scores
Dragons scream.
Thread burns
Freeze
between.
Benden Weyr, Third Pass, 12th Day, AL 508
I will stay with her. You go get some rest,” Salina declared, shoving Kindan
out of Lorana’s quarters.
It had been two days since the Weyr had been jolted awake by Lorana’s
grab
of all the dragons, by Arith’s horrific cry, and Lorana’s soul-torn shout.
“She’s wasting away,” Kindan cried. “See if you can get her to eat
something.”
“I’ll try,” Salina told him. “You get some rest, Kindan. It’s your strength she
needs now.”
“Go on,” M’tal declared gruffly, entering the room. “She’s right.”
Kindan gave the dragonrider a wary look that settled as it registered in his
sleep-numbed mind that M’tal had comforted Salina on her loss.
“You’re all worn out,” M’tal said, patting the harper on the shoulder as he
passed by. “Get a good night’s rest. We’ll call you if she stirs.”
After Kindan left, M’tal spoke to Gaminth, who replied miserably,
She won’t
hear
me. She won’t hear any of us.
M’tal crouched down by Salina. “Gaminth says she’s blocking the dragons’
voices,” he told her.
“Can you blame her?” Salina asked, her voice blurred with sorrow. “I can
only imagine how much that would torment her.”
“It would have helped so much today,” M’tal said. He had just returned from
flying Fall over Ista. “Two dead, eight injured, three seriously,” he told her.
“That’s good,” Salina murmured approvingly. “In a normal Fall I would have
expected five times that many casualties.”
“Ista’s losses were worse,” M’tal continued, grimacing. “Three dead, nine
injured. They have only thirty-four dragons left fit to fly.”
“J’lantir must be beside himself with worry.”
“B’nik pledged that, as long as there are dragons at Benden Weyr, Ista
would have them at their side,” M’tal said, his voice full of adamant
approval.
“He does you proud,” Salina said, grabbing his hand and clenching it
tightly.
“He does us
all
proud,” M’tal agreed. “He always had the makings. He’s
risen marvelously to the challenge.”
“If only we could say the same of Tullea,” Salina said. Beside her, M’tal
nodded mutely.
The sound of boots outside the doorway alerted them and they looked up
to see K’tan enter.
“I’ve come to check on her,” he told them. He looked around the room.
“Has Kindan finally left for some rest?”
“I sent him on his way,” M’tal said. He asked Gaminth to get one of the
weyrlings to check on the weary harper.
K’tan nodded wearily. “Good.”
He gestured entreatingly to Salina, who stood up and moved away from
Lorana’s bedside to give him room to examine her. K’tan listened to her
breathing, took her pulse, and then straightened up again.
“Has she eaten anything? Drunk anything?” When Salina shook her head
twice in response, K’tan grimaced. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “You
know yourself better than any what this is like. What made
you
decide to
live?”
M’tal gripped Salina’s hand tightly. The ex-Weyrwoman’s eyes shimmered
with tears, which she wiped away hastily before explaining, “I couldn’t go. I
was
needed.
”
M’tal circled behind her and hugged her tightly against him. K’tan nodded,
uneasy in the presence of their intense emotions.
“Then let’s hope that Lorana feels as needed,” he said softly. He looked up
at Salina, his lips showing the hint of a smile. “I’m glad you decided to
stay—it would have been much harder without you.”
M’tal felt Salina stiffen in his arms and, through years of intimacy, correctly
interpreted her gratitude at the healer’s words. The ex-Weyrleader eyed the
healer, however, with the eyes of a leader of dragonmen.
“You need to take your own advice, K’tan, and get some rest.”
“Lorana was the last of the charges I needed to check on,” K’tan said.
“One of us will stay with her,” Salina promised.
She will not hear us but she knows we are here for her,
Gaminth told
M’tal.
“Drith says the dragons are doing what they can to comfort her,” K’tan
added.
“Gaminth also,” M’tal said. He gestured K’tan out the door. “Get some rest,
Healer.”
K’tan, intent on rousing Kindan from his depression, paused outside the
Benden Weyr harper’s door at the sound of the harper singing:
“A thousand voices keen at night,
A thousand voices wail,
A thousand voices cry in fright,
A thousand voices fail.
You followed them, young healer lass,
Till they could not be seen;
A thousand dragons made their loss
A bridge ’tween you and me.
And in the cold and darkest night,
A single voice is heard,
A single voice both clear and bright,
It says a single word.
That word is what you now must say
To—“
Kindan paused, intent, trying to remember the next words. With a growl of
disgust and a ragged jangle on the guitar’s strings, he threw the instrument
onto his bed.
“Harper, you sing a mournful tune,” K’tan said loudly as he entered Kindan’s
rooms.
Kindan turned to face the Weyr healer, scowling and shaking his head. “I
can’t
remember it!”
“Is it so important?” K’tan asked mildly.
Kindan bit off a quick retort and paused before giving K’tan a thoughtful
answer. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It just seems to fit the times we’re in.”
“How could anyone know about the times we’re in?” K’tan mused, shaking
his head. “I think it’s just a song. Perhaps it was written after a fever or
plague—”
“But that’s just it!” Kindan protested. “There hasn’t
been
a fever or plague
that affected dragons—you know that. We’ve looked through all the
Records.”
“Perhaps it was . . .” He trailed off as he caught sight of Kindan’s
expression.
The harper bounded beyond him, grabbing the guitar back from the bed,
and shouting, “That’s it!”
Triumphantly, he strummed and sang:
“That word is what you now must say
To open up the door
In Benden Weyr, to find the way
To all my healing lore.”
“I remember now, I remember it all.”
With a wince of pain, the Benden Harper continued:
“It’s all that I can give to you,
To save both Weyr and Hold.
It’s little I can offer you,
Who paid with dragon gold.”
“That’s great, Kindan,” K’tan told him, clapping him on the back. “That’s
marvelous. I’m glad you’ve remembered the song.” He paused. “But what
does it mean?”
Kindan’s cheerful look faded. “I don’t know,” he admitted sadly. “Only . . .
I’m sure it means something.” He frowned in thought.
The drums on the watch heights sounded sharply and Kindan held up a
hand for silence as he strained to hear the incoming message.
“What is it?” K’tan asked, not knowing the drum codes as well as the
harper.
“It’s a message from Fort Weyr,” he said. “They flew Threadfall last night
over Ruatha and the Weyr itself.”
Still listening, the harper gasped and smiled, eyes alight. K’tan bottled his
curiosity up until the Weyr drummer sent back his acknowledgment.
“And?” he asked then.
Kindan smiled at him. “And the watch-whers fought the fall,” he said, taking
delight in the way the healer’s eyes grew wide with astonishment.
“Nuella led them,” Kindan went on cheerfully. “Looks like Wind Blossom’s