Anne Mccaffrey_ Dragonriders of Pern 20

by Dragon Harper

  With a jerk of his head, Kindan caught Vaxoram’s attention and they moved toward the two.

  “Master Kilti?” Kindan guessed as they approached.

  “Kindan,” Koriana said, her voice subdued but her eyes still bright when she spotted him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was sent to help,” Kindan said. “By Master Resler.”

  “Resler’s an idiot,” the white-haired man muttered before turning his attention to the body in the cot below him. He felt the man’s forehead, bent forward, grabbed a wrist, and stood up again, shaking his head. “This one’s dead,” he said sadly. He glanced up to Vaxoram. “Take his body.”

  Vaxoram paled.

  “Where?” Kindan asked, dropping down to the dead man’s cot.

  “Ask the guard,” Kilti replied dismissively. “You stay, your friend goes.”

  “He’s not big enough—” Kindan began in protest.

  “You’re to clear the cot and find another to fill it,” Kilti ordered. He jerked his head toward Koriana. “Next bed,” he told her.

  Kindan had just a moment to shake his head in apology to Vaxoram.

  “It’s all right,” the older lad said, bending down to pick up the body.

  “I’ll help,” Kindan offered.

  “No,” Vaxoram replied, going down to his knees. He grabbed the body at the waist and rolled it onto his shoulder. With a grunt he stood up, staggered for a moment, and began to hobble off slowly toward the front door.

  Kindan eyed the mess left behind. The sheets were soiled, they’d have to be replaced. He bundled them up and looked for some place to put them.

  “Soiled sheets?” Kindan called toward Kilti. The old healer didn’t look up.

  “Dump them out in the necessary,” Koriana called back. “Then drop them in the great tub in the laundry.” She made a face. “There should be someone there.”

  She sounded like she wasn’t sure if there still was. Kindan nodded mutely and headed off on his task, partly familiar with the layout of the Hold from the several events he had attended in the past as a harper.

  A small girl met him at the laundry. He dropped the dirtied sheets into the great tub and she tamped them down into the boiling water with a long stick.

  “Clean sheets?” he asked. She gestured outside. Kindan found long lines of sheets drying in the cold air. He felt for the driest and pulled them off, returning to the Great Hall through the laundry.

  “Are you all right?” he asked the girl as he went back.

  She shook her head wordlessly, stamping the boiling clothes down into the tub angrily.

  How could anyone be all right, Kindan wondered.

  Back in the Great Hall he made the bed carefully, then looked around for another patient. At the far end of the Great Hall, he spied Vaxoram and Bemin carrying two small people over their backs. One was a young woman, the other was a young man.

  “Over here,” Kindan called, gesturing for Vaxoram to put one of them on his cot. To Bemin he said, “I don’t see any others free.”

  “This one!” Kilti called, looking up mournfully from another full cot.

  Kindan helped Vaxoram position the fevered young woman on the cot. As they did, the woman broke into a coughing fit, spraying them in an ugly greenish-yellow mist.

  “Now you’ve caught it,” Bemin told them, his voice dead. “Just like Semin.” He gestured to the young man on his shoulders.

  “Your son?” Kindan asked in surprise. He glanced to the fevered woman, now covered in a fine mist of sputum. “And she is?”

  “I don’t know,” Bemin said, shaking his head. “A holder of mine.” His face softened as he implored Kindan bleakly, “Do what you can for her, please?”

  “Of course, my lord,” Kindan replied, covering the woman’s body with a sheet and the blanket. He felt her forehead—it was blistering hot. “I should get her some water.”

  “No time!” Kilti shouted. “Get this corpse out of here!”

  Kindan shook his head and started to obey, but Bemin blocked him. “You get the water, you’re the smallest,” he said to Kindan. “Just hurry back.”

  Kindan nodded and raced out of the room. He went back in the kitchen and found a large bucket. While it was filling, he had time to check on the laundry girl. She had collapsed beside the tub. He pulled her away hurriedly and felt her forehead—boiling. His throat choked up in sorrow and his eyes were spangled with tears as he hauled her up and lifted her in the crook of his arm, staggering back to the kitchen to grab the bucket in the other.

  He staggered back to the Great Hall.

  “What about cups?” Kilti croaked. “And who’s she?”

  “She was boiling the sheets,” Kindan explained, anxiously looking around for a spare cot.

  “Alerilla,” Bemin said. “She’s barely turned ten.”

  “Fever?” Kilti asked, rising unsteadily to his feet and slowly moving toward Kindan and the girl. Behind him, Vaxoram was lifting the dead body off the cot and Koriana was rolling up the soiled sheets.

  “Like a fire,” Kindan replied.

  “Good,” Kilti said, much to Kindan’s surprise. The healer noticed his look and explained, “Fever’s a body’s way of fighting.”

  Kindan gestured helplessly around the room at all the fevered people lying in cots.

  “The worst seems to be the cough,” Kilti said. “Fever without cough seems to survive.” He put his hand gently around the underside of the girl’s jaw and felt. “Glands are swollen, that can be good or bad.”

  He nodded toward Kindan. “If she starts coughing in the next day or two…”

  Kindan nodded. “How long after that?”

  “It varies,” Kilti said with a shrug. “Sometimes a day, sometimes four. Never more than four.”

  “After four?”

  “I don’t know,” Kilti said. “Some recover, some get worse and die.” The healer shook his head sadly. “I’ve never seen the like.” He glanced up at Kindan. “Have they found anything in the Records?”

  “Hints,” Kindan said. “Fragments. The Records just stop and don’t start until months later, usually written by someone else.”

  “Harper?”

  Kindan shook his head. “No.”

  “They died trying, then,” Kilti guessed, his voice a mix of scorn and praise. He glanced to Kindan once more. “So are they still looking in the Records?”

  “No,” Kindan confessed.

  “They’ve stopped?” Kilti barked in surprise. “They can’t! That’s our only hope.”

  “There was a fire,” Kindan told him with a sinking feeling in his gut.

  “A fire?” Kilti repeated, aghast. “The Records, how are they?”

  “We lost as much as a quarter, no less than a tenth,” Kindan told him.

  “A quarter?” Kilti gasped. “What happened? Who started it?”

  “I did,” Kindan said.

  Without warning, the healer took two quick steps and slapped Kindan hard across the face. “Do you know how many you’ve killed?” Kilti roared at him.

  “It was not his fault,” Vaxoram called from his position nearby. “I started the fire.”

  “So they sent you here,” Bemin said sourly.

  Kindan hung his head in shame.

  Kilti started to say something more in his anger, his hand still poised for another blow, but then he shook himself and lowered his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was uncalled for.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kindan said. “Millions will die because of me.”

  “Millions will die,” Kilti agreed. “But you don’t own all the blame by yourself.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have hit you, it was wrong.”

  “I deserved it.”

  “No,” Kilti said with a sigh. “No, you didn’t. You made a mistake, right?” Kindan nodded. “Mistakes shouldn’t be punished, shouldn’t be condemned.”

  “But there’s nothing I can do that will make up for it,” Kindan protested.

&nb
sp; “Yes, there is,” Kilti corrected him. “You can live.” He gestured to the listless holders in their cots. “You can live and save them.”

  “We need more spaces,” Bemin announced, carefully not looking at Kindan. Kindan glanced briefly toward Koriana, but she was not looking at him.

  “At once, my lord,” Kindan said, bowing his head.

  At some point the day turned to night, but Kindan never knew it. At some point he had food, but he didn’t taste it; water, but he wasn’t thirsty. At some point he found himself lying against a cot; he pushed himself upright, checked the forehead of the occupant, found it cold, and worked with Vaxoram to haul the body away and find a new occupant.

  As the night grew darkest and then lightened with the first light of morning, Kindan realized that there were other people amongst the ill, more people than just himself, Kilti, Koriana, and Lord Bemin. But their numbers were few, maybe four or six more.

  Death was all around him. Coughing filled the air, masking the moaning and other sounds of pain as the fevered sick slowly lost their battle with death.

  The living fought on. Whenever Kindan’s energy flagged, Kilti or Vaxoram or, once, Koriana, would seem to appear and give him a brief nod or a ghost smile, and then Kindan would find the strength to go on.

  Valla and Koriss were a strong presence throughout. The two fire-lizards seemed to quickly learn how to check on the ill, how to get attention when it was needed. Their company seemed to cheer all but the most fevered.

  But by morning, their energy had lagged and Kindan had sternly ordered his bronze fire-lizard to rest. Valla made it plain by his reaction that he felt Kindan should do the same.

  “I can’t,” Kindan explained. He gestured to the cots. “They need me.”

  He looked around for the others and, in one panicked moment, found himself totally alone. Had the plague taken everyone? Was he the only healthy person in a room full of the desperately ill?

  He spotted a slumped body leaning against a cot. It was Vaxoram. Kindan trotted over to him, the closest he could come to a run. He knelt down, felt the other’s forehead, and was thrilled to discover that it was neither stone cold nor boiling.

  “Vaxoram,” Kindan called gently but urgently. “Come on, you’ve got to get up, you’ll get all cramped like this.”

  Blearily, Vaxoram opened his eyes. “What happened?”

  “You fell asleep.”

  “I’m sorry.” The older harper rose unsteadily on his feet.

  “You need rest,” Kindan told him.

  “Can’t stop,” Vaxoram muttered in response. His eyes grew more focused as he looked at Kindan. “Any more’n you.” He looked around the Great Hall. “Where are the others?”

  Kindan shook his head. “I’ll look in the kitchen,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

  “No,” Vaxoram replied glumly. Kindan understood, it was hard to be hungry in such a depressing place. “I’ll check on the patients.”

  Kindan nodded.

  “It’d help if we could know their temperature without touching them,” Vaxoram grumbled as he moved off.

  Kindan nodded once more and shambled off to the kitchen and the laundry. He paused at the exit, looking back to the bed where they’d put the little girl who’d been stirring the boiling sheets. With relief he saw that she was still there.

  There was fresh klah in the kitchen and the smell of baking bread, which surprised Kindan as he saw no other signs of activity. In the laundry, he found that someone had stoked the fires under the boiling tub and a few sheets were roiling desultorily. Remembering the little girl, he grabbed the stick and poked the sheets further down into the pot. He went to the laundry line, found the driest sheets, quickly folded them, then brought them back with him to the Great Hall and laid them on one of the huge tables that had been pushed against the wall to make room for the cots.

  His thoughts came back to Vaxoram’s idea. Could there be some way to measure temperature? Of course! he thought, remembering some remark of Conar’s in what seemed an age ago: moodstone.

  The thin flaky crystal changed color with temperature. But where to get it? And how to get it to stick to people’s foreheads, even when they were sweating?

  “Moodstone!” Kindan called to Vaxoram across the hall. “And glue!”

  “What?” Vaxoram asked, looking up from the patient he was checking.

  “What do you want with moodstone?” another voice, Kilti’s, called from the other end of the hall. Kindan was both surprised and relieved to hear the healer’s voice; he guessed now that the healer had been off tending the sick in other parts of the Hold.

  “We could use moodstone to measure temperature,” Kindan replied.

  “How’d you get it to stick?”

  “Use glue,” Kindan replied. “Soft glue, not hard.”

  “Might work,” Kilti agreed. “But we’ve no time to try,” he said, gesturing to all the sick patients laid out around them.

  Kindan dropped his head in acknowledgment and despair. Then he raised it again triumphantly. “We’ve no time, but the dragonriders do!”

  “How would you get a message to them?” Vaxoram asked.

  “Valla,” Kindan replied, sending a mental summons to the sleeping fire-lizard. The bronze fire-lizard must have been only dozing, for he looked up from his place among a bundle of blankets and chirped inquiringly. In a moment he was hovering in front of Kindan.

  Kindan held out his arm so that Valla could land.

  “I’ve got a message for you to take,” he said. He looked around and called to Kilti, “Where can I find a stylus and paper?”

  “My office,” Kilti replied, gesturing vaguely toward the farther of the two Great Hall exits. “Down the circular staircase to the landing, then over to the broad stair and my dispensary. Take some glows, I haven’t been there in days.”

  “Should I bring anything else back?” Kindan asked.

  “Anything you think of,” Kilti said. “More fellis, although I don’t know when we can make more juice. Numbweed, if you see it.”

  “Numbweed?” Kindan asked in surprise. Numbweed was great in numbing the pain of cuts or bruises but he couldn’t imagine how it would be useful for fever.

  “Just get it,” Kilti barked.

  Kindan shrugged and took off, following Kilti’s instructions. He could only find one dim glow in the kitchen, so he collected a bunch of others and put them out with the drying linen. The sunlight, even the feeble light of early winter, would recharge them by nightfall.

  He took his dim glow and retraced his steps to the large circular stairway. He moved cautiously down it, came to the landing and stopped—was he supposed to turn left or right? He went left and walked for a long while before he decided that he’d gone the wrong way and retraced his steps. The passageway widened and he spotted the broad stairs just before he stepped down on them. Moments later he was in Kilti’s office. He found stylus and paper, searched through the cupboards and found some dried fellis leaves—he took the whole drawer and put the stylus and paper on top. He found a bottle of ink, sealed it tightly, and laid it on top of the bundle. Then he looked around and found a jar of numbweed. Still confused as to why Kilti would want it, he grouped it with the other things, took one last look around the dimly lit room, and left.

  Back in the Great Hall, Kindan wrote his message carefully in tiny, neat block letters. He didn’t want to overburden his tired fire-lizard—Valla had been his constant companion and had slept no more than Kindan—but he also needed to be sure that the message was understood. Satisfied, he put the message in the little holder that was attached to Valla’s bead harness.

  “Take this to the Star Stones at Benden,” Kindan said, staring into Valla’s softly whirling faceted eyes. “Drop it at the Star Stones and let the dragons know.”

  Valla chirped and bobbed his head.

  “Come back as soon as you can,” Kindan told the fire-lizard affectionately.

  Valla chirped once, rubbed his head against
Kindan’s jaw, jumped up, and vanished between.

  Just as Kindan had collected himself to go back to his patrolling of the sick, the sounds of a drum reverberated through the Great Hall.

  Report, the message said.

  “You handle it,” Kilti said, looking up from the bedside of a feverish young holder girl.

  “Where’s a drum?” Kindan asked, glancing around the hall.

  “I don’t know,” Kilti snapped, “figure something out. You’re wasting time.”

  Stung, Kindan glanced around the hall and then went back to the kitchen. He paused long enough to find a covered pot, fill it with water, and throw in the fellis leaves he’d collected, setting the pot to warm near the flames; he knew they’d soon be out of fellis juice.

  He went to the laundry, looked around, and then returned to the kitchen. He found the largest pot he could carry and went back through the laundry to the linen line.

  He squatted with the pot cradled upended between his legs and rapped out, Kindan reports.

  There was a long moment before a reply came. Status?

  Kindan furrowed his brow. What did that mean? Whoever was on the drums wasn’t all that good.

  Many ill, many dead, Kindan rapped back.

  Kilti, Bemin?

  Alive, Kindan responded only to pause—he hadn’t seen the Lord Holder all morning. So he added, Healer.

  Holder? Came the question.

  Unknown, he replied. Sender?

  Kelsa, came the reply. Kelsa was the worst on drums, Kindan recalled. The others must all be sick if she was the only drummer.

  Masters? Kindan rapped back.

  All sick, came the response. Murenny dead.

  “Dead?” Kindan said aloud and was startled to hear his own voice. Tears streaked down his face. The Masterharper of Pern was dead, what could they do?

  Lenner? Kindan rapped out slowly, his heart pounding.

  Sick, Kelsa responded. There was a pause. Help?

  Was that a request or a question, Kindan wondered.

  Coming soon, Kindan replied after a moment’s deliberation. Dragonriders.

  Dragonriders must stay away! Kelsa drummed back, her drumming loud in emphasis.