Dragonsblood

by Todd McCaffrey

  Lorana flushed. “It’s not quite like when my Garth rose to mate,” she said, her thoughts racing along lines similar to Salina’s.

  “Garth?” M’tal asked.

  “I had two fire-lizards,” Lorana explained. “Garth was my queen.”

  “Oh,” M’tal responded, his tone both enlightened and relieved. “So you’ve been through a mating flight.”

  Lorana nodded empathically. “Yes, definitely through,” she agreed, her eyes flashing with amusement.

  “It’s a bit more intense when a queen dragon mates,” Salina cautioned. M’tal grabbed at her possessively and pulled her close to him. Salina smiled and curled against him, wrapping an arm around his waist.

  “So I’ve been told,” Lorana said. The dragons had just filled her in, and she couldn’t help but smile.

  “The dragons told you?” M’tal asked.

  “Well, not told, as it were, but more showed,” Lorana admitted.

  “When?” M’tal asked incredulously.

  “Just now,” Lorana answered.

  “Showed?” K’tan asked.

  Lorana frowned thoughtfully. “Sort of like a flurry of images and emotions,” she reported. She caught the alarmed look that passed between Weyrleader and Weyrwoman and quickly added, “All very dragonish.”

  M’tal and Salina looked relieved, and Lorana guessed that they’d entertained the notion that the dragons might have conveyed intimate details.

  I’m sleepy, Arith interjected.

  “Of course you are, you just gorged yourself,” Lorana replied. “Why don’t you go lie down?”

  All right, Arith agreed, tottering off toward their quarters. Why don’t you go eat?

  “I will,” Lorana said. “I promise.”

  “What?” M’tal and Salina both asked.

  “Eat,” Lorana said. She raised a hand apologetically. “I’m sorry, but I’m just up.”

  “May we accompany you?” K’tan asked, gesturing toward the Lower Caverns.

  “I don’t know where I’m going, actually,” Lorana admitted. “I’ve only been to the night hearth.”

  Salina’s brow creased thoughtfully. “Why didn’t you ask the dragons?”

  Lorana looked surprised. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Actually,” K’tan admitted, “I pretty much descended upon the poor girl just after Tullea finished with her.”

  M’tal sighed and exchanged a concerned look with Salina.

  “Did you have words with Tullea?” the Weyrwoman asked, pushing herself out of her cuddle with M’tal and starting across the Bowl.

  “Well . . . yes,” Lorana admitted as she and the others followed Salina.

  M’tal pursed his lips tightly before saying, “Tullea seems to—”

  “Have problems dealing with people recently,” Salina finished.

  M’tal arched an eyebrow in disagreement. “Recently being the past three Turns,” he corrected.

  “You mean she’s like that with everyone?” Lorana blurted and then clapped a hand to her mouth in surprise. The other three laughed.

  “I’m afraid so,” M’tal said when he’d recovered, eyes still dancing with amusement.

  “You shouldn’t feel singled out,” K’tan added.

  “I’m sure she’ll settle down when Thread comes,” Salina said.

  “Or her dragon rises,” M’tal added.

  “Preferably when her dragon rises,” K’tan murmured.

  “Her dragon hasn’t risen yet?” Lorana asked, feeling the beginnings of some sympathy for Tullea.

  K’tan leaned in close to Lorana, to murmur, “We’re hoping that a mating flight will calm her nerves.”

  “Or something,” Salina added, arching an eyebrow at K’tan.

  “Ah, you found her!” Kindan called from a table as they entered the Living Cavern. “Are you hungry, Lorana?” he asked, then shook his head at himself. “Of course you are, I can see it from here! Sit, sit! I’ll arrange for food.”

  Kindan eyed the group of women preparing food in the cavern and shouted out, “Kiyary! Could we have food for five—including one with a new hatchling?”

  A young brunette in the group looked up, caught sight of Kindan, and waved acknowledgment. In short order Lorana found herself replete, filled with succulent fruits, hearty porridge, and warm klah. The others politely kept up conversation all around her while she wolfed down her food with all the abandon she had so abhorred in her dragonet.

  Salina must have caught her mood, for she said, soothingly, “It’s common for new riders to find themselves eating more—the appetites of their dragons can be overwhelming.”

  “Not to mention the work,” K’tan added with a laugh. When he caught the confused look on Lorana’s face, he added, “You oiled your fire-lizards, right?”

  “Yes,” she replied, around a bite of food and still a bit dazed. Then comprehension dawned, and her eyes widened. “Oh! Oh, she is already quite a bit larger than my two.”

  “Oiling a dragon is a large part of what we dragonriders do,” K’tan admitted, eyes twinkling.

  “But if you’ve had two fire-lizards, then you probably won’t find one dragon all that difficult,” Kindan said reassuringly.

  “At least not to start,” K’tan corrected. He gestured to Lorana’s plate. “Eat up, you’ll need your strength.”

  “I think I’ve had enough, already.” Lorana covered her mouth to stifle a yawn.

  “And after you eat, you sleep,” Kindan said. “When you’re not eating, or sleeping—” The others joined in. “—you’re oiling.”

  “Dragons and fire-lizards aren’t the same,” M’tal said, directing his comment to Salina.

  Lorana’s eyes narrowed as she detected an undercurrent in the conversation. She realized that it had been there all along but she’d been too hungry and too distracted to notice it. In fact, now that she had recovered from her encounter with Tullea, Lorana became aware of a shadow of dread in the Weyr’s atmosphere.

  She looked entreatingly at K’tan, but the Weyr healer had ducked his head in thought. She turned her attention to Kindan. He caught her glance and imperceptibly tilted his head toward Salina.

  Something was wrong with the Weyrwoman? Lorana wondered. Salina looked pensive, withdrawn, but otherwise healthy. Lorana gave Kindan a slight shake of her head to say “I don’t understand.”

  Just then she heard a loud cough and a snort, which echoed around the Weyr. Salina started, looked out toward the Bowl, and then lowered her head slowly, leaning against M’tal.

  “It may not be the same thing,” M’tal said, grabbing her hand consolingly. “It may not be the same thing at all.”

  Lorana felt her stomach wrench in fear. She did not have to ask which dragon had coughed, nor did she need to hear Breth’s apologetic, Sorry.

  “Repeat that herbal recipe for me,” K’tan asked her urgently. All too willingly, Lorana complied.

  Salina lifted her head from M’tal’s shoulder and smiled wanly at Lorana.

  “We shouldn’t keep you, dear,” she told her. She gestured toward the weyrs. “Go, get some rest. Your Arith will be awake again soon enough.”

  “I will not tolerate shirkers,” Weyrleader D’gan growled at the blue rider in front of him. Telgar’s Weyrleader was dressed ready to ride. Above him in the distance were arrayed the wings of Telgar Weyr—all except one. D’gan’s face was twisted in a scowl.

  “But Jalith is—”

  “Shirking!” D’gan shouted back, towering over the shorter blue rider in his rage. He spared a contemptuous glare for the blue’s Wingleader, who wilted visibly. Jalith and M’rit were oldsters who had been at Telgar Weyr when D’gan had first arrived. “They are testing my authority as Weyrleader.”

  D’gan remembered the derision he and the riders from Igen Weyr had received when they had first arrived at Telgar Weyr. It was not their fault that Igen had fallen on such hard times, nor that their dying queen had failed to lay a gold egg.

  �
�I honestly don’t think so,” K’rem, Telgar’s Weyr healer, said as soothingly as he could. “Jalith is aspirating the same ooze that the fire-lizards—”

  “Don’t tell me!” D’gan roared again. “I don’t care.” He jabbed a finger upward, pointing to the sky. “Thread is coming. I won’t have any shirkers. ‘Dragonmen must fly when Thread is in the sky.’ ”

  It had taken hard work—more work, D’gan was certain, than old Telgar riders would have required—for D’gan to win respect at his new Weyr, and finally to win the senior queen and become Weyrleader. Since then he’d shown them, every day, what sort of riders came from Igen Weyr.

  “I know my duty,” D’gan growled. “And all the riders in my Weyr will do theirs.”

  “Thread is not in the sky today,” K’rem protested. “Perhaps if we let Jalith rest . . .”

  “No!” Veins stood out in the side of D’gan’s neck. “Not today, not tomorrow, not any day. All my wings will fly with all their dragons. We will train to fight Thread. There will be no shirkers.” He pointed at the wilting blue rider. “Mount your dragon, join your wing.”

  The blue rider blanched.

  “Maybe if I could give Jalith something—” K’rem suggested.

  D’gan cut him off. “You may do anything you like, Healer—after we fly our pattern.” He took two quick strides toward his bronze, leapt onto the great neck, and drove his dragon skyward.

  The next several sevendays were a blur of feeding and oiling Arith, occasionally catching food for herself and snatches of sleep where she could. Lorana naturally assumed that young dragons were awake at all hours—just like young children—so it was not until K’tan explained that she realized there was anything out of the ordinary.

  “Normally things wouldn’t be this disrupted,” the Weyr Healer told her as he met her on her way to the Food Cavern, “except for Breth’s problems. When the queen doesn’t sleep, the Weyr doesn’t sleep.”

  “Does Arith wake the others, too?” Lorana asked, worriedly.

  K’tan shook his head. “Only a little,” he assured her. “All the bronzes and most of the browns are attuned to the Senior Queen, so . . .”

  Lorana nodded in understanding.

  “And then there are the fire-lizards,” Kindan chimed in from behind them.

  Lorana whirled, and Kindan gave her an apologetic wave, all the while smiling most unapologetically.

  “ ‘A harper’s best instrument is his ears,’ ” K’tan said, quoting the old saying.

  Kindan shook his head, grinning and pointing to his forehead. “Ears are second, brains are first.”

  “Then mouth is third,” K’tan said with a snort.

  “Of course,” Kindan agreed, grinning. His mood sobered. “As I was saying, the fire-lizards.”

  “What about them?” Lorana asked.

  “We’re trying to understand how they got sick and how long before . . .” Kindan’s voice trailed off.

  “They die?” Lorana finished. Kindan nodded, lips drawn tight.

  They reached the Cavern and sat near the fire. Kindan waved cheerfully to Kiyary, who smiled back and brought over a plate of cheese and a pitcher of klah. Mugs and plates were already laid out on the table in anticipation of the midday meal. Kindan grabbed a roll out of the basket in the center of the table, tore it open, and deftly spread it with the soft cheese. With a raised eyebrow, he tilted the basket toward Lorana, who grabbed a roll with a nod of thanks, and then Kindan repeated the performance with K’tan.

  For a moment the three were silent, intent on preparing and eating their rolls. Kindan finished his first, then reached for the pitcher of klah and filled his glass and the glasses of the other two. He drank deeply before continuing. “If we can understand how the illness progresses in fire-lizards, then maybe we can gain some understanding about how the illness will affect dragons.”

  “I can’t help you,” Lorana told them, shaking her head sadly. “I don’t know quite when my two got sick—I’m not even sure if they did.”

  “And you sent your two between?” K’tan asked, eyes narrowed in thought.

  “Valla went between, too,” Kindan added.

  “To die?” K’tan wondered.

  “Valla was hot and feverish,” Lorana said.

  “Maybe the cold of between is too much for them when they’re sick,” K’tan suggested.

  “Or they got disoriented,” Kindan said.

  “Lost between?” Lorana shuddered. Then she thought for a moment. “So the first thing to do would be to prevent a sick fire-lizard—”

  “Or dragon,” Kindan interjected.

  “—or dragon,” she continued, “from going between.”

  “But that doesn’t answer whether the disease itself is deadly,” K’tan objected.

  “True,” Kindan agreed with a shrug.

  “On the other hand,” K’tan noted, “we’ll never know if the disease itself is fatal if we can’t keep a fire-lizard from going between.”

  “Or a dragon,” Kindan added darkly.

  “I hope,” K’tan said fervently, “that it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Someone’s coming,” Lorana said suddenly, eyes wide.

  The other two looked around. “Where?”

  “Between,” she said. She looked pained. “The dragon is unhappy; so is the rider.”

  “You can feel them?” K’tan asked.

  Lorana nodded. “They’re very distressed.”

  Outside came the sound of a dragon popping out of between. The watch dragon bugled a challenge.

  Nidanth and C’rion from Ista, was the response Lorana heard from the arriving dragon.

  “Come on,” K’tan called as he started out toward the Bowl.

  A wave of emotion swept Lorana off her feet. Kindan grabbed her before she could fall.

  Dragons keened mournfully. Kamenth of Ista is no more, Gaminth reported. Then the noise redoubled. Jalith of Telgar has gone between, Salina’s queen, Breth, added.

  “Here, lean on me,” Kindan told Lorana. She pushed away from him. The pain of the dragons’ loss tore her heart.

  “No! I must get up—Arith will be worried.”

  “Then let me help you,” Kindan repeated firmly.

  Lorana forced herself to recognize his logic and, with an angry sigh, wrapped her arms around him. “Be quick,” she told him.

  In the Bowl, a bronze dragon was just landing. The rider looked shaken. Other riders, no less shaken than he, were gathering about him. Lorana recognized M’tal and Salina. Tullea was clinging unnaturally to B’nik.

  K’tan was beside the bronze rider, supporting him while the bronze dragon curved its head down close beside, eyes whirling in distress.

  “I’d heard you had some cure,” C’rion, Weyrleader of Ista Weyr, said hoarsely to K’tan.

  A loud, gurgling cough from high above startled them all.

  “Breth, no!” Salina shouted as her queen leaped off her ledge and into the air. “No! Stop!”

  Lorana took a hasty breath, looked up just as the queen went between, and closed her eyes. In her mind she leapt after the queen, calling, Breth, come back! Come back!

  She bent her will to holding onto the queen, but Breth was stronger. Slowly, Lorana felt the queen draw away from her, farther between than Lorana had ever been before. In a frightened instant, she lost the queen, and then felt herself become lost.

  Arith! She called out desperately in her mind, groping to find her way back. She heard no answer. Frantically, she thrashed, lost in an aloneness more vast than between. Then, at the edge of her being, she felt some “other.” She grabbed at it, was rebuffed by it, and felt no more.

  TEN

  All life functions are the product of the interaction between thermodynamics and chemistry.

  —Introduction, Elementary Biological Systems, 18th Edition

  Fort Hold, First Pass, Year 50, AL 58

  Wind Blossom woke with a start. There was danger. Danger to dragons. No, she told herself, pus
hing herself upright on her cot with one arm, I was dreaming. She dropped her feet off the bed and sat up, her bare feet resting on the cold wooden slats that lined the tent floor. Her body complained more fiercely than usual; she was still aching from the cold and the rain.

  I’m just extrapolating from the fire-lizard to the dragons, she told herself. Which is logical.

  She thought back over the past several weeks.

  The fight to save Tieran’s precious fire-lizard had taken over seventeen days, even with the last of the antibiotics.

  The infection was so severe that Wind Blossom was tempted to destroy the specimen of green ooze she’d collected for fear of infecting others with it. As it was, she ordered the dead fire-lizard’s carcass dissolved in boiling nitric acid—and she seriously considered ordering the same for the living fire-lizard.

  In the end she’d destroyed neither the surviving fire-lizard nor the specimen. Under the microscope, she’d managed to identify a vast array of antibodies in the green sputum. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to go much further than that. If the technicians had still been alive to operate the equipment, she could have dried samples sufficiently to put them under an electron microscope, if there’d been one still working.

  Better yet, if even more advanced technology were still available, and they’d managed to complete their microbial survey, Wind Blossom could have employed computerized micro-arrays to assay the genetic material of the microbes found in the sputum and search for one matching previously known infectious bacteria with similar characteristics. But the sad truth was that the first Threadfall had occurred at Landing long before they had acquired an understanding of Pernese ecosystems.

  As it was, Wind Blossom got more useful information by observing the living fire-lizard’s response to the general-purpose antibiotic.

  It took more than four days, using a maximum body-weight dose, for the fire-lizard’s lungs to stop showing signs of distress. She continued the antibiotic until it ran out—still not certain that she’d managed to knock out all of the infection.

  She had only a vague idea of what had caused the fire-lizard’s infection. Repeated but guarded requests for any signs of unusual behaviors in fire-lizards had turned up nothing. Unbelievably, it seemed that only these two fire-lizards had acquired the new illness.