Dragonsblood (24 page)

“K’tan and I would like you to work with us,” Kindan told her. “Your drawings

alone would be a great help.”

“My drawings?” Lorana asked in surprise.

“Yes,” Kindan agreed. He held up the drawing she’d made of the green

sputum Valla had coughed up. “K’tan said we dare not keep samples of the

actual infection, but with your drawings we can compare differences, and

track changes in the sick.

“Which is not to say that your understanding of herdbeasts won’t also be a

great help,” he added.

“Dragons aren’t herdbeasts,” Lorana protested.

“No,” Kindan agreed with a nod. “They’re not. But you’d be surprised at how

similar illnesses can be between man, beast, and dragon.”

Behind Lorana, Arith stirred in her slumber. Kindan noticed.

“I didn’t mean to disturb her,” he said. “In fact, I should leave you to

yourself. I’m sure you’ll want to wash up.”

Lorana forced herself to relax. “Yes, the ground was harder than I’d

thought,” she said.

“Have your dragon bespeak Drith, K’tan’s dragon,” Kindan said as he made

to leave.

Lorana nodded. “Is there a good time?”

He chuckled. “I suspect that your time will be more constrained than ours,”

he said, gesturing toward the sleeping hatchling. “Whenever you’re ready

and your dragon is asleep.”

“Which won’t be much longer,” Lorana said as Arith shifted position again.

“No it won’t,” Kindan said, agreeably shaking his head. “I’ve kept you too

long, I’m sorry. It’s just—”

“I understand,” Lorana replied.

Kindan made a half-bow and departed.

Arith awoke faint with hunger. Again. It had been three sevendays since

she’d hatched. In all those sevendays, Arith had eaten scraps brought by

the Weyrlingmaster. Lorana had been amazed at the dragonet’s appetite,

which rapidly grew from one large bucket, to two, then three, and finally

five.

Arith’s sleep was as erratic as any newborn’s, which slowed Lorana’s own

recovery from her exposure and exhaustion. It was all Lorana could do to

keep Arith fed, feed herself, and keep up with the constant oiling necessary

to keep the dragonet’s growing skin from cracking. She would wake up

bleary-eyed and go back to bed bleary-eyed, never quite sure what hour of

the day it was.

Fortunately, Arith’s newborn growth spurt was finally smoothing out and her

sleep pattern normalizing.

“She’s growing very fast,” P’gul, the Weyrlingmaster, had exclaimed the last

time he had come to check on her. “She’ll be ready for the Feeding

Grounds soon.”

He shook his head in amazement. “Catch her own food, too, I don’t doubt.”

Now, as Lorana guided the increasingly irritable dragonet out of their

quarters on the lowest level of the Weyr, she realized that she did not know

where the Feeding Grounds were. She stopped in confusion and stood in

the great Bowl of the Weyr, looking around desperately.

“Are you going to wait until she dies from hunger, or were you perhaps

hoping that her keening would disturb the whole Weyr?” a voice from

behind her demanded caustically.

Lorana spun around to come face-to-face with a woman not all that much

older than herself. The woman’s face had a pinched look, as if she had

been caught in a perpetual sneer. Her blue eyes were pallid and her lips

were pursed tight in a thin line. Blond hair was pulled together behind her

neck.

“I don’t know where the Feeding Grounds are,” Lorana said apologetically.

“Peh! Some Weyrwoman you’ll make!” the other returned. “Didn’t bother to

listen to the orientation, did you? Too high and mighty. Expect the rest of us

to look after you, do you?”

“No, I—”

“It’s not as though we all don’t have our own dragons to look after—” At this

point a large queen burst into air above them, hovering near the other

woman.

Arith took one fearful look up at the full-grown queen, gave a wistful chirp,

was answered by an encouraging bellow, and promptly disappeared

herself.

In a moment, Lorana could feel Arith’s pleasure as she made her first kill,

and she saw an image of the Feeding Grounds in her mind’s eye. She

looked up at the large queen, certain that she was the source of Arith’s

inspiration, and said with relief, “Thank you.”

My pleasure,
the queen responded, settling gently on the ground beside

her rider.
Your little one was quite agitated.

I’m sorry,
Lorana apologized.
I hadn’t expected to Impress her.
She got a

feeling of amused tolerance from the queen.
I’m Lorana.

I know,
the queen responded.
I am Minith.

“You talk to other dragons?” Minith’s rider asked, shocked.

“Oh, yes,” Lorana said, forgetting that this was not a common trait among

the weyrfolk. The look on the other rider’s face quickly disabused her.

Trying to be civil—after all, the queen
had
helped Arith to the Feeding

Grounds—Lorana stretched out her hand and said, “I’m Lorana.”

The other eyed her hand dubiously but did not take it. “Tullea, Weyrwoman

second,” she said, still looking like she’d just bitten into a bitterfruit. “Salina

asked me to check on you,” she added in a tone that made it clear what she

thought of that imposition.

“That was very kind of Salina,” Lorana replied, desperately trying to place

the name but failing. She knew she’d heard it before, but she was too

groggy to dredge up the memory.

“You don’t know who she is, do you?” Tullea asked accusingly.

“Her Breth is Arith’s dam,” Lorana temporized, feeling overwhelmed by the

other woman’s manner.

“Salina is the
senior
Weyrwoman,” Tullea snapped. “Don’t you know

anything?” She didn’t give Lorana time to respond before continuing, “Well,

obviously you don’t. I can’t see what sort of help you’ll ever be. Perhaps it

would be best if—”

Minith erupted in a loud disapproving roar, cutting Tullea off. Tullea looked

up at her dragon, her eyes softening somewhat.

“Now look what you’ve done, you’ve upset her.”

“I’m sorry,” Lorana muttered. Silently, she said to Minith,
My apologies,

gold dragon.

Minith gave Lorana a pert nod, eyes whirling red-green.

Lorana turned her attention to Arith, partly out of desperation.
Are you all

done?

One more, please!
The dragonet pleaded.

Lorana couldn’t help smiling. “Very well, silly,” she said aloud.

“If your dragon gorges, don’t come to me!” Tullea said, climbing up to

Minith’s neck. “I’ve better things to deal with.”

With a great bound of her hind legs, Minith leaped into the air and beat her

way up out of the Bowl. Once clear she blinked out of existence
between.

Lorana watched the maneuver with her eyes wide. The adult queen was so

graceful and her movements so beautiful.

Soon I’ll be able to do that, Lorana marveled to herself, her thoughts going

back to her splendid Arith. She had discovered with her fire-lizards that they

knew how to go
between
from the moment they were born. Training them

to come back, to go where she wanted, had taken many months of hard

work. She knew from the Teaching Ballads that Arith had the same innate

talent—in fact, she had just demonstrated it by going
between
to the

Feeding Grounds—but it would take careful training over several Turns for

Lorana to be able to ride her precious gold
between
to places of her own

choosing.

Still, she entertained visions of rising into the air, blinking into the cold

between
and out again—anywhere on Pern.

Her heart gave a lurch as she realized the vistas her newfound freedom

offered. She reached out with her mind to
her
dragon and made her

presence tenderly felt. A rebounding wave of affection swept back to her

from Arith. Lorana’s vision suddenly misted as her eyes brimmed with joyful

tears.

A moment later, she felt Arith quench her thirst with the hot blood of a

herdbeast, felt her dragonet rend the flesh of the small beast, and felt her

swallow without so much as a bite.

Chew!
Lorana told her sternly.

I’m hungry,
Arith complained. Lorana could feel the little gold’s hunger,

lessened by the two other herdbeasts she had consumed.

Greedy guts!
Lorana thought back. She felt Arith’s amusement and

self-satisfaction.
That’s your last one.

Lorana felt Arith tense up in nascent disobedience.

I
mean
it,
she warned the dragonet with the same fierce intensity she’d

used to her fire-lizards. Biting back a pang of grief over their loss, she sent

a second firm order to Arith.

All right,
Arith allowed.

A burst of cold above Lorana heralded the hatchling’s return through

between.

Arith landed quickly, stumbled just a bit, and immediately proceeded to

stroll nonchalantly up to Lorana with a very obvious I-meant-to-do-that

swagger. Lorana laughed at her, reaching down indulgently to scratch the

dragonet’s eye ridges.

Ah, that’s better,
Arith sighed.

“They’re not really supposed to go
between
until they’re much older,” a

voice said beside her. It was K’tan.

Lorana smiled fondly at her little queen and stood up to face the Weyr

healer.

“It’s all right, I knew where she was,” Lorana said.

“Even
between
?” he asked, eyebrows arched in surprise.

Still smarting from her encounter with Tullea, Lorana bit back her immediate

irritated response and settled for, “Well . . . yes.”

“Impressive,” K’tan remarked.

“Kindan told me that you needed to talk with me several sevendays ago,”

Lorana said hastily, “but I’m afraid with Arith—”

K’tan held up a hand, shaking his head. “No need to apologize.” He turned

toward Arith, then turned back inquiringly to Lorana. “May I look at her?”

Lorana nodded.

K’tan’s inspection was swift and gentle. He ran his hands from her head

down her neck, to her forelegs, across her distended belly, and on to her

withers and tail.

“She’s making her own kills already?” he asked, his face showing surprise.

“That’s not normal?” Lorana asked in response. “The fire-lizards usually

need several sevendays of hand-feeding, but I thought dragons—”

“Dragons are not so different,” he said. He stood up, backed away from the

young queen, and shook his head admiringly.

“She’s beautifully proportioned,” he announced at last, adding with a grin,

“barring her stomach.”

Lorana felt herself grinning back in relief. She arched her neck to scan the

weyrs around the Bowl, spotted one brown head looking down at them, and

waved at the dragon she knew was Drith. Drith twitched, startled that she

had recognized him, and nodded back at her.

“He’s quite a beauty,” Lorana said.

K’tan, who had followed her gaze, laughed. “Indeed he is,” he agreed, his

voice full of fondness for his dragon. Then he changed the subject back:

“You say you knew where she was?”

Lorana nodded.

“How do you do that?”

Lorana thought for a moment, then shrugged apologetically. “I don’t know

how; I just do,” she said.

“There she is!”

Lorana looked up. A tall, graceful, older woman was striding quickly toward

them, accompanied by M’tal, the Weyrleader.

“Is it true that you can talk to any dragon?” M’tal asked when they arrived.

Lorana nodded. “Yes, Weyrleader.”

“Excellent!” M’tal said.

“What is it like?” the woman asked. Lorana realized that this was Salina

herself, Breth’s rider and Benden’s Weyrwoman.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” she began slowly. “I could talk to my

fire-lizards of course—” She made a sad face at their mention, but

continued on. “—so I guess I just didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be able

to talk to all dragons.”

Salina nodded encouragingly. Lorana groped for words, and found them.

“It’s like being in a room full of your best friends.”

Her eyes lit as she peered up at all the weyrs above and the dragons

looking back down at her.

“Sometimes I hear individual conversations, sometimes I don’t,” she said.

“I don’t pry,” she added hastily, “and would never eavesdrop. But most of

the time the dragons talk amongst themselves, you know.”

“They do?” Salina’s eyes widened in surprise. She glanced up to where her

Breth lay. “Well, I suppose I’d never thought about it, but they
do
have a lot

of time on their hands.”

“At least until Thread falls,” M’tal said. He asked Lorana, “Can you talk to

watch-whers, too?”

“Watch-whers?” Lorana repeated. She shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve never

tried.”

“Hmm,” M’tal murmured thoughtfully.

“If she can talk to all dragons, I would be surprised if she couldn’t talk to all

watch-whers, too,” K’tan put in.

“ ‘A room full of your best friends,’ ” Salina repeated, mulling over Lorana’s

words. “Why are they your best friends?”

“Maybe they aren’t,” Lorana admitted with a frown. “But they seem like it.

They’re all so nice and courteous and always asking about me and Arith.”