Dragonsblood

by Todd McCaffrey

  Kindan nodded, then broke into a grin. “I remember ages back when Nuella said, ‘I know who he’s sweet on.’ ”

  Renna blushed and laughed as Dalor, Head Miner at Mine Natalon, clumped up beside them. He shook Kindan’s hand, then clapped him firmly on the back.

  “Thank you for coming,” Kindan told Dalor.

  “For a chance to see a Weyr close up, it’s I who should be thanking you,” Dalor responded with a snort. He took in the sight of the great Bowl with a whistle. “Not to mention a chance to do some clean mining.” Hastily, he added, “Not that coal hasn’t been good to us, nor that we don’t need it. But it—”

  “—gets everywhere!” Renna joined him in chorus. She turned to him and kissed his cheek.

  “But you clean up nice, love,” she said. Dalor blushed and looked down at the ground, smiling.

  Three other miners drew up beside him, waiting for orders.

  “I’ll show you the spot,” Kindan said, leading the way toward the Hatching Grounds.

  As he had planned, Kindan gave them a quick tour of the Grounds and a chance to recover from the impressive view before leading them down the corridor toward the cave-in. They were followed by a group of weyrfolk, mostly young boys, who were just as interested in the miners as the miners were in them. Kindan sent some of the youngsters back to the Bowl to haul down the miners’ gear.

  “You’re right when you say this is Oldtimer work,” Dalor commented, running his hands appreciatively along the smooth walls. He took a closer look at the rock. “It looks like they melted their way through.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Kindan agreed.

  “Ah, but they weren’t so smart, were they?” Dalor went on, pausing to glance carefully at a part of the smooth wall.

  Kindan looked at him questioningly.

  “Look here,” Dalor said, pointing. “You can see where the rock faces are formed. They must have hoped that the two layers would never slip over each other, or they must not have realized what they were dealing with.”

  “Slip?” M’tal, who had been following along, asked.

  “Aye, my lord,” Dalor said with a nod. “There are two different layers here, see?” He pointed to the spot where the different colors were close to each other. “You can tell by the color. The layers can slip over each other, which happens when there’s an earth shake.”

  M’tal examined the spot with renewed interest.

  “Can you get through to the other side?” Kindan asked.

  “Well, we don’t know how far it is, do we?” Dalor replied.

  “It can’t be too far,” M’tal said. “This section can only go so far before it comes out the far side of the Bowl.”

  “There’s that,” Dalor agreed, nodding. “That’d be about five or six meters, right?”

  M’tal frowned in thought. “About,” he said. “Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less.”

  “Might not take so long, Dalor,” another miner said. “If the rock gave at the layers, there’d only be a meter or two falling from the roof.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, Regellan,” Dalor said. In an aside to Kindan, he added, “It turns out our Regellan here is quite the thinker. I brought him along in part to see what he would learn from looking over the Weyr.”

  “He’s welcome to look all he wants,” Kindan told him. He remembered Regellan as one of the new apprentices assigned to Mine Natalon just before he’d left for the Harper Hall.

  Dalor smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that,” he replied. Then he gestured at the cave-in. “We’ll get this sorted out first.”

  Having said that, Dalor immediately began organizing the men for digging. He politely waved away M’tal and Kindan—“You’ve no miner’s hats; we’ll call you when we’re done”—and swiftly got his crew started on the work.

  Kindan led Renna and M’tal back to his quarters. While Renna looked around appreciatively at Kindan’s musical instruments, Kindan explained to M’tal, “A good crew can mine about a meter of rock a shift.”

  “I’d say they’ll be faster with that loose rock,” Renna put in.

  Kindan made a face and waggled his hand. “It might be harder, and they’ll have to do some shoring.”

  Renna nodded. “That’s so, but I don’t think Dalor plans to be here too long.”

  “It was good of him to come,” M’tal said.

  “We’re happy to help the dragonriders,” Renna said in a tone that made it clear to the other two that the decision to help out was as much hers as Dalor’s. Kindan and M’tal shared a fond smile for Renna’s spirit, no different from their memories of her as a youngster, back when Kindan had first met the Weyrleader over ten Turns earlier at Camp Natalon. Ignoring it, Renna asked Kindan, “You say you hope to find some Oldtimer rooms beyond the rubble? And somehow what’s in them will cure the dragons of their sickness?”

  “That’s our hope,” M’tal answered. Kindan nodded fervently.

  It took the miners until lunchtime the next day to break through the cave-in.

  “It’s remarkably clean,” Dalor said admiringly as he ran his hand along the smooth walls. “Only the ceiling above gave way.”

  “Your men did a great job,” M’tal commented approvingly.

  “Thank you, Weyrleader,” Dalor replied, then blushed when M’tal cleared his throat and jerked his head toward B’nik.

  “I’m sure that Wingleader M’tal is appreciative,” Tullea said bitingly, “as am I, the Weyrwoman.”

  B’nik chose to smooth things over. “Indeed, a remarkable job, Miner Dalor,” he said.

  Tullea marched past the others and up through the newly cleared corridor, a glow held in her hand. Suddenly, she stopped, scanning one side of the corridor intently.

  “This looks like a door,” she exclaimed. She hunkered down, peering to either side of it. “What’s this?” she asked, seeing a square plate to the left of the door. She pressed it just as Dalor, who had been watching her actions with growing alarm, shouted, “Don’t touch it!”

  Too late.

  With a rumbling groan, the wall began to slide open and light flooded in from the other side.

  Dalor raced to Tullea and pulled her back away from the door. Even as he did, she slumped toward the floor so that B’nik had to catch her other side to prevent her from falling.

  “What is it?” B’nik asked as they hastily withdrew toward the Hatching Ground.

  “Bad air,” Kindan said, looking intently at Tullea. “She’s breathing, and not in any distress.”

  Gently the miner and Weyrleader laid Tullea on the ground, and Kindan examined her more carefully.

  “Yes, I’d say that the air was stale,” he declared finally. He looked up to B’nik. “She’ll be all right. Just let her breathe and wake up slowly.”

  Kindan frowned thoughtfully and asked Dalor, “How long do you think before the air will be replaced?”

  “I’d give it an hour, at least,” Dalor said. “And then I’d move cautiously.” He glanced around the Hatching Grounds as though searching for something. “I don’t suppose you have any watch-whers?”

  Kindan shook his head. “Nor fire-lizards.”

  “I’d heard they’d been banished,” Dalor said, his tone carefully neutral.

  Kindan shook his head sadly. “I think most of them died before that anyway.” He composed himself and straightened up. “Let’s get Tullea to softer ground,” he suggested.

  The moment her eyes fluttered open again, Tullea protested loudly and demanded to go see the Oldtimer Rooms. To Kindan, she sounded as if she wanted revenge on the rooms for causing her embarrassment. But B’nik was firm and insisted that someone else go in first once the rooms finished airing.

  “I’ll go,” Kindan volunteered when they reassembled in the Hatching Grounds.

  “I will go,” Regellan declared, shaking his head. “I’ve no family,” he added by way of explanation.

  “I’m not so sure that Melena would agree,” Dalor said with a gri
n. “But you’ve earned the right.”

  He glanced at B’nik and Tullea. “If that’s all right with you, Weyrleader?”

  “Absolutely,” B’nik replied.

  In the end, Regellan was fine. He peered inside the open corridor, blinked several times, purposefully drew great, deep breaths, and then walked through the doorway and out of sight. The rest of the party waited tensely outside until he returned again, his eyes wide.

  “The room is full of the most amazing things,” he declared, beckoning them inside.

  Tullea elbowed her way past the others and raced to be second into the rooms. She paused just past the threshold, not so much for fear of bad air but in amazement at what she saw. Most of the far wall was covered from floor to ceiling with a drawing of several ladderlike columns composed of weird interconnected varicolored rods and balls.

  “Look at this!” Regellan called out, pointing to the drawing, as the others flooded into the room.

  Tullea glanced at the wall drawing, made a hasty scan of the room, and then headed unerringly for something glittering on an open shelf at the other end of the room.

  Kindan entered the room and stared wide-eyed at the drawing. Then a flash of movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention and he turned just in time to see Tullea pocket a small, silvery object. Before he could move to intervene, she was picking something else up from the counter.

  “What are these?” she asked, holding up a crystal clear glass vial. She shook it, examining the powder-like substance inside, then casually placed it back on the counter and picked up another.

  There were four vials in all, Kindan noticed. The countertop bore not only dust-free spots where the vials had been placed. Each clear spot was centered over a colored mark: red, green, blue, and yellow.

  His eyes widened as Tullea negligently put the fourth vial back on the countertop, well away from any of the colored marks.

  “Do you remember which vial went where?” he asked her shortly, trying to see if he could guess the original position of the last vial she had picked up.

  “No,” Tullea replied with a shrug.

  “I think it’s important,” Kindan told her. B’nik came up beside him and frowned at the misplaced vials.

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it all out,” Tullea replied with a dismissive wave of her hand, turning to explore a set of cabinets. After some fiddling, she discovered that they were magnetically locked and spent several moments opening and closing them before she noticed what was inside.

  “I wonder what this is,” she said, reaching in to pull the object out.

  B’nik caught K’tan’s and Kindan’s horrified looks and quickly intervened. “I think we should leave this for our harper and healer to examine,” he said. “They can report when they’ve had a chance to inventory everything.”

  “And I think I should get Miner Dalor and his good crew back to their homes before dark,” M’tal added. Dalor and the other miners looked both eager to be going and disappointed not to be staying to learn more about the mysterious room.

  “We’ve kept you from your work too long,” B’nik agreed.

  Dalor waved this aside. “We’re glad to help,” he said. “Didn’t you say there was another rockslide up above?”

  “There is,” Kindan agreed. “But I think we’ll find enough here to keep us occupied for a while.”

  “We’ll be glad to help again,” Renna said. Dalor nodded firmly in agreement.

  “When we’re ready, we’ll be happy to have you back,” B’nik said. “You’ve been a great help.”

  M’tal’s Gaminth and K’tan’s Drith were waiting in the Bowl as they emerged from the Hatching Grounds. Kindan helped the miners climb up on the dragons’ backs.

  “I’ll get started while you’re gone,” he told K’tan when all the miners were settled a-dragonback.

  “I’ll expect you to be done by the time I get back,” K’tan called down. Kindan grinned and tossed the dragonrider a sloppy salute.

  With a leap and a few great sweeps of their wings, the two dragons were airborne and then gone between.

  “There’s got to be something more,” Kindan said to K’tan hours later.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because, aside from those four glass vials and whatever’s in them,” Kindan replied, “there isn’t anything there.”

  “There are these,” K’tan said, pulling open a drawer and pointing at some long, thin clear objects with strange handles on the top. “They have to be syringes for injections.”

  “Injections?”

  K’tan nodded. “Sometimes the herders use syringes when there’s a particularly nasty spread of infection going around. They take the blood from one of the recovered herdbeasts and inject it into the others, spreading the immunity.”

  Kindan gave the healer a dubious look.

  “Lorana would know about it,” K’tan added. He looked at the vial. “I suspect that this is supposed to be liquefied and injected.”

  “Liquefied?”

  “Probably with sterile water,” K’tan said.

  “For what purpose?” Kindan asked.

  “I don’t know. I’d be a whole lot happier if there was a sign that said this was the cure we were looking for,” K’tan agreed.

  “Do you see any sign?” Kindan asked, pivoting to look all around the room.

  “The marks on the walls,” K’tan pointed out, gesturing.

  “Which don’t serve any purpose that I can make out,” Kindan said, making a sour face.

  “What about that song of yours—doesn’t it offer any suggestions?”

  Kindan shook his head, his jaw clenched. “I can’t remember any more of it.” He slammed his fist onto the countertop in anger. Then he tapped his head. “It’s in here, I know it is, but I can’t remember it—even just after the fire in the Archives, I couldn’t remember—and I’m the last one who read that dratted song.”

  “Certainly the last one left alive,” K’tan agreed grimly. He had heard the story from both Kindan and M’tal, although their accounts differed: a playfight in the Harper Hall’s Archives had caused a fire that had burned countless old Records to ashes. He remembered hearing how Kindan had been banished to Fort Hold until his fate was decided, how the Plague had interrupted everything, how Kindan’s efforts had saved the survivors of Fort Hold, and how the grateful Lord Holder had seen to Kindan’s reinstatement in the Harper Hall.

  K’tan’s expression grew grim. “If we don’t find a cure soon . . .”

  Dejectedly, Kindan turned toward the exit. “I have to report to B’nik.”

  It was Arith’s coughing that drove Lorana down to the newly opened Oldtimer room. She waited until her dragon was sleeping as well as could be expected, waited until she felt hopeful that Arith might not have another coughing episode—which meant that she didn’t leave until late in the night.

  Softly she made her way across the Bowl and into the Hatching Ground. She searched in the dim light until she found the new opening, visible by the faint light coming from it. Her steps grew surer as she got closer and the light from the room grew brighter. She paused for a moment at the doorway, stifling a gasp of wonder at the drawing on the other side of the room, and then entered.

  Salina and Kiyary had both given her good descriptions of the room, but she needed to see with her own eyes. Kindan was sitting behind the tabletop that held the four vials. When she entered the room, he started, wiping the fatigue from his eyes.

  “I must have dozed off,” he muttered when he saw her. He straightened up and asked, “How is Arith?”

  “Her cough is getting worse,” Lorana said, striving to keep her composure. She gestured at the vials. “Is that all there is?”

  Kindan nodded resignedly. “These cabinets are empty. There’s another doorway,” he said, pointing to the wall with the drawings, “but it won’t open.”

  “Is it blocked? The rockslide?”

  “No,” Kindan replied, “I don’t
think so. We got an echo when we knocked on it.” He shook his head. “Either the mechanism’s broken or . . .”

  Lorana waved away his explanation and strode over to the drawings. “So we’ve got these, and those vials?”

  “That’s it,” Kindan said.

  Lorana bent to peer closely at the drawings. “These are very detailed.” She traced the spiraling patterns of one, bending down and peering closer. “This must mean something—someone went to an awful lot of trouble to make these.”

  “Mmm.” Kindan’s response sounded more like the noise of someone falling asleep than the noise of someone listening attentively. Lorana turned around just in time to catch him nodding off; he woke up again just as his head bobbed down to his chest.

  “You should get some sleep,” she told him. “You’re no good here.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be up most of the night anyway,” Lorana said morosely. “Arith’s not sleeping well.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kindan said miserably.

  Lorana shook her head. “You can’t help if you’re asleep on your feet.” She pointed to the door. “Go.”

  Kindan entertained a rebellious look for a moment before sighing resignedly and shuffling toward the door. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

  Lorana had already turned back to the drawing and was examining it intently, so her only response was a negligent wave of her hand over her shoulder.

  When she had finished examining the first drawing, Lorana repeated her inspection on the next. She stopped as she noticed some patterns in the new drawing and went back to look at the first. She sighed. There were not only similar patterns between the two drawings but also similar patterns within each drawing. It reminded her of some strange beadwork. For a while she entertained the notion of getting some colored beads and stringing them in the spiraling triangles that were represented by the drawings. The beadwork would be pretty enough, she mused, but she couldn’t see how it could help the dragons.

  She shook her head to clear the thought and turned to the third drawing. Again she found similar patterns and repeated patterns in the drawing. She turned her efforts to the fourth drawing—and stopped dead in her tracks. Four drawings, four vials.