Dragonsblood (22 page)

fire-lizard’s mouth. Then Valla snorted indignantly and, with a red-eyed

glare, blinked
between.

“I don’t think he liked it,” K’tan observed dryly.

“It doesn’t taste
that
bad,” Lorana said defensively. “I tried a drop myself!”

“The trick now is to get him back,” Kindan said with a sigh.

“So he can finish the medicine,” K’tan added.

Kindan twitched a frown. “I had better go after him.”

“I could stay with Lorana,” K’tan offered.

“No,” Lorana said. “I’m fine. If I need anything, I’ll tell Drith.”

K’tan’s eyes widened, and Kindan turned to her in surprise.

“You spoke to Drith?” the healer asked. “He told me I was needed—that

was
you
?”

Lorana nodded.

“I’d better go,” Kindan repeated, clearly torn.

“Go, find your fire-lizard,” K’tan said, passing the mug of brew to him. “See

if you can convince him to try some more.”

Kindan took the mug and trotted away.

As Kindan’s footsteps faded away, K’tan looked back to Lorana and chose

his next words carefully. “Can you speak to
any
dragon?”

“I think so,” Lorana said. “I could talk with Talith.”

“There’s a Hatching soon,” K’tan began. “And a queen egg—”

“J’trel thought I should be a weyrwoman,” Lorana said, shaking her head. “I

don’t know if I’d be any good,” she admitted. “But I’d like to see a

Hatching.”

K’tan gave her a searching look and then nodded.

“Right now, you need your sleep.” He gestured for her to lie back down. “I’ll

turn the glows down on the way out.”

After K’tan left, Lorana tried to get back to sleep. She couldn’t. She kept

mulling over the events in her life. She felt sorry for Kindan and his sick

fire-lizard. She felt responsible.

She knew, from her work with her father, how some herdbeasts would get

sick and pass the sickness on to others. She knew from bitter experience

that people could also pass sickness from one to another.

Her father had taught her that the best cure for sickness among herdbeasts

was isolating the whole herd if one became ill.

“Even the healthy ones?” young Lorana had asked in amazement.

Her father had nodded. “They might be healthy today and sick tomorrow.

That’s why the quarantine. We keep the sick from the healthy.”

“And if they don’t get sick?”

“Well, we leave the herd isolated long enough to be sure no more beasts

are getting ill,” he’d told her.

When the first incidents of Plague had been reported, and worried rumors

were flying thick amongst holders and crafters, Sannel had said confidently,

“This is a human illness. It may affect the herdbeasts, but it won’t affect the

dragons or fire-lizards.”

Lorana knew that had something to do with the differences between native

organisms and those transplanted from Earth. Could it be, though, that

humans or herdbeasts could
carry
an illness that would affect fire-lizards?

She tried to shake the worrying thoughts away, tried to find sleep, but she

couldn’t. To distract herself, she tried searching once more for Garth and

Grenn. The effort left her sweating; her failure left her crying.

Her tears were still wet on her cheeks when she caught sight of a light

above, toward the entrance to her room. It was multifaceted, like a

fire-lizard’s eye.

“Garth?” she called out. “Grenn?”

No answer. The light in the room was growing, and Lorana saw another

glittering jewel in the room beyond.

The shapes were wrong for fire-lizard eyes. She frowned in concentration.

Slowly the light grew and she realized that the faceted lights were always

brighter than the light in the rest of the room.

She turned on her side, propped herself up on an elbow, and pushed

herself upright in the bed, legs dangling over the floor.

She felt light-headed but not quite faint. The room threatened to twist

drunkenly away from her, but she forced herself to concentrate on the

faceted light and find the horizon above her.

Lips tightened in determination, she pushed herself to her feet.

She was shaky.

I should be resting, she told herself. But the lights tempted her.

Her first step was awkward and ungainly, but she found her feet and slowly

walked toward the door.

Standing in the doorway, she could see the next room clearly. In the ceiling

were more of the bright jewels. Lines of light stretched from jewel to jewel.

One line of light seemed to be coming toward the jewel in her doorway

from the jewel in the center of the room.

She gasped in amazement.

The jewels were some sort of glass, she realized, placed to mirror light into

the rooms. The whole effect was beautiful.

She followed the line of light from her ceiling jewel to the one in the center

of the room, pivoting around to see all the rays reflected from it to still more

jewels.

Wind Rider
had had something like these jewels to bring light from the

deck down to the lower deck, but that glass had been fogged and green.

The glass in these jewels practically shone with glistening clarity.

Tottering slightly, Lorana turned back to her own room to retrieve the paper

and stylus Kindan had left behind for her.

Quickly she drew a sketch of the bejeweled ceiling. When she was done,

she walked into the hallway, intent on following the line of jewels to their

outside source. The hallway was anticlimactic, as the jewels and light path

disappeared into the ceiling above.

Still, she followed the line of white light above her until she came out into

the great Weyr Bowl and the warm morning light.

“Oh!” she gasped, looking up into the sky. “Oh!” Her eyes locked on the

scene above her, she fell to her knees, laid the paper on them, and, fingers

flying, tried to capture the images she was seeing.

The sky was full of dragons and fire-lizards cavorting like clouds of light

brought to life in the early morning softness. Blue, green, bronze, brown,

and gold. The fire-lizards flitted like swarms of dutiful attendants around the

soaring dragons, who took in the attentions of their smaller cousins with the

pleasure of elders for infants.

The chitters of the fire-lizards and bugles of the dragons were reflected in

her head by the deep mental voices of the dragons and the flighty feelings

of the fire-lizards—and Lorana thought that never had she seen a more

beautiful dawn chorus or had a more enjoyable moment in her life.

The moment was shattered, horribly, in an instant as from somewhere in the

swarm, Lorana heard an unmistakable cough. It was echoed, moments

later, by another.

Dragons don’t get sick.
J’trel’s words resounded horribly in Lorana’s mind.

It seemed that as Lorana’s strength grew, Valla’s strength ebbed. In a

sevenday, Lorana was nearly back to her full health, while the little fire-lizard

had become listless and nearly lifeless.

Lorana did everything she could to help Kindan and his fire-lizard. She and

K’tan conferred often on herbal remedies, and K’tan even visited the Healer

Hall at Fort Weyr in search of more suggestions, but nothing seemed to

help.

At K’tan’s request, Lorana remained sequestered in her room, even though

she was much mended.

“We don’t want you to wear yourself out and relapse,” K’tan had said with a

wag of his finger.

But Lorana, recalling her father’s words about quarantine, suspected that

was not his only reason for the injunction.

A hoarse, wracking cough woke her in the middle of the night. Sounds

came from the large room outside her quarters. A shadow approached

her.

“I brought you some colored pencils,” Kindan called out. “I was hoping

you’d draw . . .”

Lorana sat up, found the glowbasket, and quickly turned it. The glow did not

light the room brightly, but it was enough to see Kindan’s worried face and

the limp fire-lizard he cradled in one arm.

He extended a bundle of colored pencils to her with his other arm.

“I’d be happy to draw Valla, Kindan,” Lorana told him.

“It’s not that—” Kindan began, but just then Valla coughed a long, rasping

cough and spat out a gob of green, slimy mucus. Kindan made a face and

pointed at the mucus. “It’s
that.
”

Lorana peered at the discharge for a moment and then took Kindan’s

bundle, picked up her new sketchbook—a gift from K’tan—from the

bedside table beside, and drew rapidly.

“I’ve seen that sort of discharge from sick herdbeasts,” she said as she

finished her sketch and held it up to Kindan.

“Did they survive?” Kindan asked, looking down fondly at his fire-lizard.

Lorana quirked her lips. “Some of them.”

“K’tan’s still asleep and I’d hate to wake him. He was up all hours last night

with a sick child,” Kindan said after a moment. He gestured to her drawing.

“I can show him this drawing when he wakes. In the meantime, could you

make some more of that herbal for Valla?”

“K’tan wants me to stay here,” Lorana protested.

“It’s just a short trip to the Kitchen Cavern and no one’s there—I checked,”

Kindan said, his eyes pleading with her. “We’ll be back in no time.”

Reluctantly Lorana nodded, unable to tell him that no herdbeast needing a

second dose of herbal had survived.

They walked out into the Weyr Bowl. Lorana looked up at the dim rows of

lights that stretched up from the basin of the Bowl to its rim.

“Are those dragons?” she asked Kindan.

“Mostly they’re glows,” Kindan told her. “You can just make them out during

the day, but at night . . .”

He gestured and led her into another large cavern.

“This is the Living Cavern,” Kindan told her, gesturing around at the trestle

tables laid out in neat, long rows. One wall glowed with banked fires. He led

her toward the brightest fire.

“This is the night hearth,” he explained. “If ever you’re hungry, you’ll find

something—including
klah
—here.”

He gestured to a sideboard. “The cooks usually leave some bread and

butter here, as well as fruit.”

“Where do they store the herbs?” she asked.

Kindan gave her a puzzled look as he tried to remember, then brightened,

pointing to a large cupboard at the far end of the cavern. “I believe the

spices are there. Do you need any special herbs?”

“If the cooks keep the usual supply, I should be fine,” Lorana said, heading

across the room. She opened the doors and took a deep lungful of the

tantalizing smells that came from the stored herbs. With the help of a glow

Kindan held up for her, she quickly collected the herbs she required and

walked back to the night hearth. In a few short minutes, she had the herbs

simmering in a pot of water over the open flames.

“Not much longer,” she said. Kindan nodded and gestured to the nearest

chairs.

“Oh, let me!” Lorana said when she saw him trying to seat himself while not

disturbing Valla. She pulled the chair at the head of the table out for him and

pushed it back in a bit as he sat.

“Thank you.”

Lorana sat herself nearby, angled so she could watch the fire.

An awkward, slightly sleepy silence, descended between them. Lorana

found herself concentrating on the wheezy sound of Valla’s breathing and

dividing her gaze between the sick fire-lizard and his owner.

“I’ve never seen him like this,” Kindan said after a long while, shaking his

head sadly. “I’ve seen others, though.”

“Fire-lizards?” Lorana asked in surprise.

“People,” Kindan replied, eyes bleak.

“All my family, except my father, died in the Plague,” Lorana said,

shuddering at the memory.

Kindan gave her an encouraging look and Lorana found herself recounting

how the illness had taken her family, how the holders had been afraid that

with their wandering ways, they might have brought the Plague with them,

how—

“I was at the Harper Hall, to start,” Kindan said when Lorana broke off with a

sob. He explained how he had been sent to Fort Hold in disgrace after

being accused of starting a fire in the Archives room. How he had worked

with the healer at Fort as the first few Plague victims fell ill and then, as

more and more succumbed, how the healer himself had taken ill and died,

leaving Kindan alone, at just fourteen Turns, to carry on as best he could.

“You must have been very brave,” Lorana said in awe.

“I was very tired,” Kindan said with a shake of his head. “I was too tired to

be brave.”

“Very brave,” Lorana insisted.

“They needed me,” he said simply, his voice full of emotion. “I couldn’t

leave them.”

“What about your family?” Lorana asked, trying to change the subject to

something less painful for the harper.

“I have a sister still alive,” he told her. “My father and all my brothers are

dead.” He grimaced. “Most died in a cave-in; the last died of the Plague.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My story’s not that different from many others,” Kindan replied with a shrug.

“And better than some.”

Not sure what else to say, Lorana went to check the herbal brew. Satisfied,

she poured some into a tall glass.

“We’ll have to let that cool,” she said. She sniffed it. “It smells right.”