Moreta (Dragonlady of Pern)

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Here now, Master Capiam." The guardleader came striding up, his expression alarmed. "You can't go in there without staying."

  "I don't want this medicine heaved about, Theng. Make sure they understand it's fragile."

  "I can do that much for you," Theng replied, and he strode diffidently to add the demijohn to one side of the bales. "This is to be handled carefully and preferably by a healer. Master Capiam says it's medicine."

  The internees moved forward to collect the supplies, and Theng backed up. Nerilka was right behind him and as he turned to come back to the guardhouse, she slipped past him and joined those picking up the baskets as if she were one of them.

  Capiam waited for an outcry, for surely the other guards had noticed her. Nerilka was already trudging down the slope toward the tents of the internment camp when Theng took him by the arm to escort him back. "Nah, then, Master Capiam, you know I can't allow you close contact with any of your craftsmen," Theng said as Capiam cast one more glance after Nerilka's retreating figure.

  "I know, Leader Theng. The medicine was my concern. So little of its ingredients remain."

  Theng made a conciliatory noise between his teeth and then his attention was taken by the spacing of his guards. Slowly Capiam turned in the direction of the halls.

  As he walked, he realized that he could not walk out of his Hall as Nerilka could leave her Hold. Withdrawing his healers from the Hold was quite within his right as Masterhealer, but he must remain in his Hall, available to those who need him throughout Pern. However, he felt the better for his brief flirtation with the idea. And the camp had gained not only supplies but a valuable assistant. He must ask for volunteers to take the remainder of Nerilka's purloined supplies to Ruatha with all possible haste.

  "The ichor can be extracted from one queen and applied to the joints of another," Moreta told Leri. "And you shouldn't be coming all this way for a message someone else could have brought."

  They were standing at the entrance to the Hatching Ground and talking in quiet tones, although it was doubtful that the sleeping Orlith would have paid them any attention had they bellowed. She was still exhausted from the laying of twenty‑five eggs. Orlith had curled herself about the leathery eggs, the queen egg within the circle of her forearms, her head laid at an awkward angle. Her belly skin was beginning to shrink and her color was good, so Moreta had no more anxieties about her queen and time to worry about Falga's Tamianth.

  "No one there is capable of doing that," Leri said with a fine scorn, "or so Holth was informed by Kilanath. Holth says she sounds very worried."

  "She has reason to be if Tamianth is not producing any ichor on that damaged wing." Moreta paced up and down. "Is Falga conscious?"

  "Delirious."

  "Not the plague?"

  "No, wound fever. Under control."

  "Shards! Falga knows how to draw ichor. It would have to be Kilanath and Diona ..." Moreta looked back at the slumbering Orlith.

  "She'll be out a long while," Leri murmured, stepping inside the Hatching Ground and gripping Moreta's hands tightly in hers. "It doesn't take long to draw ichor and spread it, "

  "That's abusing Oriith's trust in me!"

  "She trusts me as well. Every moment you delay ..."

  "I know! I know!" Moreta thought wretchedly of Falga and Tamianth, of all that Weyr had done the last few days.

  "If Orlith should rouse, Holth will know and, considering the emergency, Orlith will understand. The clutching's over!" Leri pressed urgently on Moreta's hands.

  Unusual circumstances, of which there were far too many recently in Moreta's opinion, warranted unusual actions.

  "Holth's willing. I asked her first, as soon as she told me about Tamianth."

  Obviously Leri felt that no one at Fort realized that Moreta had been absent two days before to treat the injured High Reaches' queen. Moreta cast a distraught look toward her sleeping queen, returned Leri's clasp with an answering pressure, and walked hurriedly from the sheltering arch of the Hatching Ground, quickly leaving Leri behind.

  "Don't stride so! I can't," Leri whispered after her. Moreta adjusted her pace. Anyone really observant would have noticed the difference in height between the woman who had entered the Ground and the one who left, but it was the gray hour before dawn and no one was about. Thread would Fall later that day at Nerat and the dragonriders rested whenever possible with so difficult a schedule.

  Moreta delayed long enough on her way to Holth to change into her own riding gear. Leri's had left a broad exposed band across her back and she couldn't risk kidney chill. Holth greeted her at the entrance to her weyr and Moreta stepped aside for the queen to reach the edge. Then she mounted, conscious once again of the difference between dragons. She wished fervently that she did not feel that she was somehow betraying Orlith.

  "Take us to the High Reaches, please, Holth," she asked in a subdued voice.

  "The watchrider sleeps and the blue will not note our departure," Holth said impassively and, despite her dark reflections, Moreta smiled. So Leri and Holth had considered that detail.

  Then Holth propelled herself from her ledge and was barely airborne before she went between. Moreta gasped at the audacity and hadn't time to think of her verse before the darkness around them was relieved by the glows surrounding the High Reaches Bowl.

  "Tamianth is below but it is easier for me to take off from a ledge," said Holth, neatly landing on one. "Tamianth will not object to my tenancy. Then she added gently," Orlith sleeps. "And so does Leri."

  "The pair of you!" Moreta's exasperation was good natured.

  Holth turned gleaming eyes toward her and huffed softly.

  "Is that you? Moreta?" a quavering voice asked.

  "It's Moreta."

  "Oh, bless you, bless you. I'm so sorry to drag you here but I simply can't do it. I'm afraid of hurting Kilanath. Hitting a nerve or something. They tried to explain to me how simple it all is but I can't believe them. Oh, do wake up, Kilanath. Moreta's come."

  A pair of dragon eyes lit the darkness below the ledge. Moreta put her hand on the wall, her left foot seeking for the top step. Light spilled from the weyrling quarters now occupied by Tamianth but the stairs were still in confusing shadow.

  "Oh, do hurry, please, Moreta!" Diona's plea was more wail.

  "I would if I could see where I'm going." Moreta spoke sharply, irritated by Diona's ineffectuality.

  "Oh, yes, of course. I didn't think. You don't know where anything is in this Weyr." Dutifully Diona opened a glowbasket but, before she held it up, she turned its illumination away from Moreta. "Yes, Pressen, she's here. Oh, do hurry, Moreta. Oh, yes, sorry." Then she remembered to hold the basket high enough to show Moreta the steps.

  Moreta skipped down them as fast as she could before something else could distract Diona. Kilanath dipped her head close to Moreta and sniffed, as if testing the quality of the visitor.

  "Now, don't fret, Kilanath," Diona crooned in a saccharine voice that Moreta thought ought to irritate a queen. "You know she came here just to help." Diona turned apologetically to Moreta. "She really will behave because she's terribly worried about Tamianth."

  As Moreta entered the weyrling quarters, she could see why. Tamianth looked more green than gold except for the gray wing and grayspread score on her side. The wing had been propped at the shoulder and put in a sling so that the queen could relax, but her hide twitched constantly from stress. Tamianth opened one lid of her eyes, which were gray with pain.

  "Water! Water, please, water!" Falga's voice rose in feverish complaint.

  "That's all she says." Diona was wringing her hands. Pressen, the bright‑eyed healer, ran to Falga's side and offered her water, but she pushed it away before falling back into her restless tossing.

  Muttering an oath, Moreta strode to the queen, picked up a fold of hide on the neck, and cursed. The dragon was dehydrated, her skin parched.

  "Water. Of course, it's Tamianth who needs the water! Has no one offered the qu
een water?" Moreta looked about for a water tank, for anything resembling a container.

  "Oh, I never thought of that!" Diona snatched her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide with dismay. "Kilanath kept telling me about water but we all thought Falga ..." She waved feebly at the fevered woman.

  "Then, by the Egg of Faranth, get some!"

  "Please, water. Water!" Falga moaned, restlessly trying to rise.

  "Don't stand there, Diona. Are there weyrlings in the next building? Well, rout them out! Use a cauldron from the kitchen but get water for this poor beast. It's a wonder she's not dead! Of all the irresponsible, ineffectual, dithering idiots I have ever encountered." Moreta saw the startled expression on Pressen's face as he rose from Falga's side. She pulled herself together, breathing deeply to dispel the impotent anger and dismay that boiled within her. "I can't keep coming here for oversights!"

  "No, no, of course not!" Pressen's reply was conciliatory, anxious. The poor beast was too weak to reach farther than her rider who had, even in her pain‑wracked daze, tried to communicate! Fuming at Diona's ineptitude, Moreta snatched down the nearest glowbasket to examine Tamianth's wing. Two days without any lubrication and the wing fragments might not reconstruct. The glowlight glistened ominously on a stain on the floor, under Tamianth's injured side. With a muffled cry of despair, Moreta dropped to one knee, dipped her fingers in the moisture, sniffing it.

  "Pressen! Bring me your kit, redwort and oil! This dragon's bleeding to death!"

  "What?"

  Pressen stumbled toward her and she held the basket high, at Tamianth's side. Grimly she recalled the instructions she had given Pressen, unused to dragon injuries. Keep the side wound covered with numbweed. Why hadn't she checked it? How could she have assumed, given the chaotic conditions at High Reaches, the inexperienced healers, and the tired riders, that the wound had been properly attended? Instead she had blithely flitted off, smugly pleased with her wing repair.

  "The fault is mine, Pressen. I ought to have seen to the side as well. What has happened is that Threadscore ruptured veins along the side and shoulders. Numbweed covered the ooze. Ichor isn't reaching the wing. We'll need to repair the veins. The surgery is much the same sort you'd do on a human. Color is the main difference."

  "Surgery is not my speciality, Lady, but," he added, seeing her desperate expression, "I have assisted and can do so now."

  "I'll need surgical clamps, oil, redwort, threaded needle ..." Pressen was pouring oil and redwort into bowls. "I have all the instruments we'd need. Barly's effects were handed over to me when I arrived."

  Dreading what she might find, Moreta examined the injured wing. Some ichor beaded the joints but far less than was required. Tamianth would have to be very lucky; stupidity had already worked against the poor beast. Possibly, with application of Kilanath's ichor at crucial points, the damage could still be reversed. Liberal and frequent dressings of numbweed had, at least, kept the fragments moist. Once Tamianth's veins had been mended and water brought the poor thirsty beast ...

  Moreta scrubbed her hands in the redwort, hissing at the sting in half‑healed scratches. Then she oiled her hands thoroughly while Pressen made the same preparation.

  "First we must clean the numbweed away from the wound. I'd say the stoppage is here ... and here, and perhaps, even down here near the hearts." She lightly indicated the areas, then with oil‑soaked pads, she and Pressen cleaned away the numbweed. Tamianth shuddered. "With all this numbweed, she can't feel any pain. Here! See where the ichor is oozing ..." Her father had always talked as he worked on injured runners. Much of what she had heard from her earliest years she had been able to apply to dragons. She oughtn't to think of her father at a time like this, but his habit would help her teach Pressen. Someone in the Weyr had to know. "Ah, here's the first one. Just below your left hand, Pressen, should be another. Yes, and a third, a major vein leading to the hearts, and the belly vein." Moreta reached for the fine needle and the treated thread Pressen had made ready.

  "Yes, the colors are different!" Pressen saw the greenish flesh and the darker green ichor that was dragon blood, the curious shining fiber that was dragon muscle. He was absorbed. "Has she had any supply to the wing at all?" His nimble fingers were suturing the first severed vein.

  "Not really enough."

  "Thirsty! Thirsty. Water, please, water!" Falga raved.

  "Can't that idiotic woman do anything? There's a lake full of water out there!"

  There was suddenly a great amount of noise, the hollow sound of metal banging against another object, the sleepy complaints of young voices. The smell of desperately desired water roused the dragon from her stupor.

  Hidden from sight behind the droop of the wing, Moreta could not see what was happening but she heard the bong of the kettle being dropped and the plash of buckets of water being poured. She heard the greedy slurping of Tamianth as the dragon sucked water down a parched throat.

  "By the Egg, she'd drink barrels!" said the bemused voice of an older man. "She mustn't have too much at once, boys, so take your time with the refills. Anything else I can do, " The Weyrlingmaster ducked carefully under the wing and stared in surprise at Moreta. "I thought your queen had clutched, Moreta."

  "She has, but this one would have died ..."

  When Moreta pointed to the ichor‑stained puddle on the floor, the disapproval in the Weyrlingmaster's face turned to shock.

  "S'ligar's down with a touch of the plague, despite the vaccine," Cr'not said. "But," he gestured impotently toward Pressen, at the sound of Diona's voice thanking the weyrlings, "I could hear Falga calling for water ..."

  "It's no one's fault, Cr'not. Everyone's tired, pushed beyond their strength or trying to take on unfamiliar tasks. I should have examined this wound two days ago!"

  "Sometimes I think it's only the momentum of routine that keeps any of us going," Cr'not said, rubbing at his face and eyes.

  "You could be right. There. That's the last! Thank you, Pressen. You've the makings of a good Weyr healer!"

  "Once I get accustomed to such large patients!" Pressen smiled back at Moreta.

  "And you're about to learn another invaluable technique for healing dragons," Moreta said, beckoning to Pressen to follow her. She took the largest syringe from Barly's kit, fitted a needlethorn to its opening, soaked a pad quickly in redwort and then ducked under Tamianth's wing. "Diona."

  "Oh, no," Diona moaned timorously, spreading her arms to protect her queen. "Tamianth's looking ever so much better. Her color's improved enormously."

  "I should hope so, but, if we don't get some ichor on her joints, she may never fly again. Holth, tell Kilanath!"

  Cr'not moved toward the Weyrwoman, his expression ferocious, and Diona moaned again.

  "It doesn't take long, and it won't hurt Kilanath."

  The queen was a good deal more cooperative than her rider, dipping her wing as she knelt for Moreta's ministration.

  "Pressen, see? Here, where the vein crosses the bone?" As Pressen nodded, Moreta rubbed on some redwort, turning the golden skin brown. The fine sharp needlethorn entered hide and vein so smoothly that the dragon never felt the prick. Moreta deftly drew ichor into the tube. It glistened green and healthy in the glowlight.

  "Most interesting," Pressen said, his expression intent. Neither of them paid any attention to Diona's moaning or Cr'not's exclamation of disgust.

  "Now we will apply this," Moreta returned to Tamianth, Pressen right beside her, "to the joints and the cartilage. See how dry the cartilage is? Soaks the ichor right up. Well, ah, here, nearest the shoulder, see how the beads are forming? Tamianth's beginning to function again. We'll save that wing yet!" She grinned at the little man whose face beamed back at her. "And color's returning to Tamianth's eyes, too."

  "Why, so there is! Is she winking at me?"

  Moreta chuckled. The gray had certainly receded from Tamianth's huge eyes and the 'winking' was just the sparkle returning to the facets as the dragon improved. "I believe so.
She knows who's helped her."

  "And Falga is sleeping." Pressen hurried to the cot, feeling the pulse along Falga's neck. He sighed with relief. "She's much quieter now."

  "Holth?" Moreta asked, aware of other obligations.

  "They sleep!" Holth was unperturbed.

  "I must get back to Fort. Cr'not, will you keep checking on the wing for me? Pressen knows how to draw ichor and where to put it but not when. You would."

  "I will!" Cr'not nodded solemnly. "Now, you ought not to leave your queen," he added, shaking his head worriedly.

  "There is a point at which ought has little to do with actions, Cr'not. I was sent for. I came! Now I'm going!" She gave him a curt nod. Weyrlingmasters were a breed of their own and felt they could criticize with impunity anyone in a Weyr. As she collected her riding gear, she gave Pressen a saucy wink and then strode out of the building.

  She ran to the stairs and took the steps two at a time.

  "They sleep," Holth repeated, her eyes whirling serenely.

  "And so shall we once we're back home," Moreta said, swinging up onto Holth's lean back. "Take us to Fort Weyr, please, Holth."

  Obligingly, Holth sprang from the ledge and, once again, went between as soon as there was free air about her. As the chill of nothingness wrapped them, Moreta wondered if she should mention Holth's curious trick to Leri. Was it just that the queen was old and could not jump as forcefully? Did it not seem an impertinence on Moreta's part to criticize?

  Then they were back in the dawn, skimming low above the lake in Fort Weyr. That was the explanation: Holth was practising stealth. The watchrider was unlikely to notice a dragon leaving so low in darkness.

  Holth glided to her own ledge and accepted Moreta's effusive thanks before lurching wearily into her weyr. Moreta ran down the stairs and into the Hatching Ground. To the Weyrwoman's relief, Orlith hadn't so much as changed the angle of her head during her rider's absence. And Leri slept soundly on Moreta's cot.

  CHAPTER XIII