Dragonsblood (27 page)

more bacteria on a dragon before the infection manifested itself.”

“And that gives the dragon’s immune system more time to build

antibodies,” Emorra pointed out. “So maybe this infection wouldn’t affect

dragons or watch-whers.”

“Perhaps,” Wind Blossom allowed. “But would you risk all of Pern on a

possibility?”

Kassa worked on the question. The answer left her horrified. “Are you

saying that if the dragons got infected, they could all die—and leave Pern

defenseless against Thread?”

“We hope it won’t come to that,” Emorra said fervently.

“But that is why we must know more about this fire-lizard and its owner,”

Wind Blossom declared.

“Why not look at its harness,” Tieran suggested sleepily. The others all

jumped.

“I didn’t meant to disturb you,” Wind Blossom apologized.

“Fine,” Tieran replied grumpily, “then stop talking and let me get back to

sleep.” He turned over and then turned back again, looking at Wind

Blossom. “I thought I heard you say that the fire-lizard’s illness was

bacterial.”

“I did.”

Tieran gave her a surprised look. “I can’t see why you say that. What if the

bacteria infection was only opportunistic?”

Wind Blossom’s eyes widened as she considered his question. “That is

certainly a possibility,” she admitted.

“You were the one who told me to know what you’re talking about before

you open your mouth,” he observed grumpily, rolling back in his bed again.

Kassa regarded Wind Blossom with wide eyes, waiting for the older woman

to flay the young man with her tongue. She was disappointed. Wind

Blossom raised an eyebrow at Tieran, shrugged, and lay back down in her

cot.

Emorra and Kassa exchanged amazed looks and then Emorra, too, closed

her eyes.

Presently, it was quiet once more in the tent. In her memory, the whole

conversation began to assume an unreal air as Kassa waited for dawn to

properly wake them all.

“Food’s here!”

Moira’s shout woke them several hours later. Tieran and the fire-lizard were

the first out of the tent.

“How are you today, Tieran?” Moira asked.

She had volunteered to bring their food every day since the quarantine had

started, rain or shine—and it was mostly rain. Tieran was very grateful for

her dedication.

“What’s the news?” he asked, carefully taking the basket of food from

where Moira had left it and carrying it toward the tent.

“The weather is supposed to break in three days,” Moira said. “Maybe if

Wind Blossom says—”

“If the fire-lizard is still well, that would be a good time,” Wind Blossom

said, slipping out of the tent. “Please tell Janir.”

“I will,” Moira replied with a bob of her head. “Janir sends his apologies and

says that he’ll be along later in the day.”

“Janir is always busy,” Wind Blossom said. Tieran gave her a look, not quite

certain how to take her statement. “Please tell him he must make a

stockpile of nitric acid—”

Moira looked confused.

“My mother means HNO ,” Emorra said, stepping out of the tent to stand

3

beside Wind Blossom. She looked at her mother. “Why should he do

that?”

“Precaution,” Wind Blossom said. She looked back to Moira. “Tell him to

get at least thirty barrels.”

“Thirty barrels,” Moira repeated with a nod.

“Quickly,” Wind Blossom added.

“Very well, I’ll tell him,” Moira answered. She turned to leave. “I must get

back to the College, to start the next meal.”

“Someone wake Kassa,” Emorra said, “or Tieran will eat her breakfast,

too.”

Janir came by that afternoon, stopping a good ten paces upwind of the tent.

Tieran was on watch and called to the others.

It was raining, a cold, steady drizzle. Emorra carried an umbrella to cover

their group; Janir protected himself with an umbrella of his own.

“Moira said that you wanted thirty barrels of nitric acid, is that right?” Janir

began.

“Yes,” Wind Blossom answered simply.

“Why?” Janir asked. “I thought burning the tent and its contents would

sterilize the area enough.”

“Not for the tent, for emergencies,” Wind Blossom corrected.

“For other fire-lizards,” Emorra said.

“Or dragons,” Wind Blossom added. “Have we heard any news?”

“About other fire-lizards getting sick?” Janir asked. At Wind Blossom’s nod

he replied, “No.”

“It’s hard to believe that this infection is an isolated incident,” Wind

Blossom said.

“Maybe we were lucky,” Emorra suggested.

“How much luck can we have?” Wind Blossom asked. “Do you want to bet

on luck when one of the fire-lizards is dead and all our antibiotics are

gone?”

“Has anyone asked which Holds are beading their fire-lizards?” Tieran

wondered suddenly, holding up the bead harness that the fire-lizard had

worn. The little brown saw it and gave a chirp of recognition.

“We’ll get it back on you soon enough, little one,” Tieran told him

apologetically. The fire-lizard made a small noise and rubbed his head

affectionately against Tieran’s hand.

Janir shook his head. “We’ve heard nothing so far.”

“It’s been nearly three weeks,” Emorra said with a touch of heat in her

voice. “How long can it take?”

“The holders aren’t being as responsive as we’d like,” Janir confessed.

Wind Blossom quirked an eyebrow.

“There’s some feeling that this is a bit of a tempest in a teapot,” he

explained. “There have been no reports of holders even considering

putting bead harnesses on the fire-lizards. There just aren’t all that many of

them, and everyone pretty much recognizes each fire-lizard.”

“Then where did he come from?” Wind Blossom demanded. “Are there

others like him? Other sick fire-lizards?”

“Wouldn’t they all have died or recovered from the infection by now?” Janir

asked her.

“What if the infection can be passed to dragons?” Emorra demanded.

“What then?”

Janir raised his hands. “No dragon has gotten sick like this—”

“Before now,” Wind Blossom interrupted him, “I have never seen a

fire-lizard sick like this. Ever.”

“But he recovered, didn’t he?” Janir protested. “I’m sorry, Wind Blossom,

but you know the backlash we got from Mendin over what will happen to his

best festival tent—”

“Not important,” Wind Blossom cut him off. “We must find out where this

fire-lizard came from. We must know more about this infection. We must

know how it spreads, what its symptoms are, and how fatal it is.”

“Right now you have a baseline of fifty percent mortality,” Janir pointed out.

“And this one survived only with the last of the antibiotics,” Emorra added.

“We don’t know if a fire-lizard could survive unaided.”

Wind Blossom raised her hands and said, “We know how hard the human

population was hit by the Fever Year forty-two years ago. Can you imagine

what would happen to the dragons if half of them died?”

Janir’s face slowly drained of all color.

ELEVEN

Bronze for golds,

Brown, blue, for greens,

So do the dragons

Follow their queens.

Telgar Weyr, End of Second Interval, AL 507

And you’re sure, D’nal, that the watch dragon has her orders right this

time?” D’gan sneered. They were up high at the top of Telgar Weyr, where

the watch dragon was posted.

“Yes, I’m sure,” D’nal, the object of Weyrleader D’gan’s derision, replied.

“No more fire-lizards will come into the Bowl.”

“No!”
D’gan shouted. “No more fire-lizards are to come
anywhere
near the

Weyr!”

D’nal nodded, his fists clenched tightly to his side. D’gan stared at him, jaw

clenched, until the shorter rider took a backward step involuntarily.

“How will the holders communicate with us if they can’t send their

fire-lizards?” L’rat, leader of the second wing at Telgar, asked.

D’gan raised an eyebrow at L’rat’s question and saw the other dip his eyes,

unwilling to match D’gan’s look. He snorted. “They’ll light beacons and raise

the call flags,” he replied. “The useless flitters were no good with

messages anyway.”

“No one really knows, D’gan, if the fire-lizards brought the illness,” K’rem,

the healer, said.

“Well, then, we’ll find out, won’t we?” D’gan returned sourly.

Fifteen. Fifteen dragons had died in the past sevenday, three of them so

sick that they could not even go
between
but expired in their weyrs.

“They were useful for communicating with the Masterhealer,” K’rem added.

D’gan vetoed the idea with a shake of his head. “The Masterhealer

concerns himself with people, not dragons.”

“We should tell the other Weyrs—” L’rat began.

“We will tell them
nothing
!” D’gan roared. He turned away, facing east,

away from the Weyr Bowl behind him, away from his Wingleaders, his face

into the wind.

“But surely they will have the same problems,” D’nal said.

“Listen, all of you,” D’gan said angrily, whirling around, jabbing a finger at

each of them. “Telgar Weyr will take care of itself,” he declared, pointing at

D’nal. He turned to L’rat, saying, “I will not have that addled M’tal or that

cretin C’rion making fun of us, telling us what to do.

“Remember how they chided when we brought the two Weyrs together?

How jealous they were that they hadn’t thought to absorb poor Igen when

our last queen died? How envious they were once we started winning the

Games, Turn after Turn?

“We are the largest Weyr, the strongest Weyr, the best-trained Weyr,” he

said, emphasizing each point by slapping a clenched fist into the palm of

his other hand. “We will be the best at fighting Thread,” he declared. He

turned eastward toward Benden Weyr, then south toward Ista Weyr. “And

then
they
will come asking us for advice.”

To the healer he said, “If you can figure out a way to defeat this illness,

then
we’ll have something to talk to the other Weyrs about.”

K’rem pursed his lips tightly. L’rat and D’nal exchanged troubled looks.

“K’rem, have you isolated the sick dragons?” D’gan asked.

“There are thirty dragons that are very sick,” K’rem said with a shake of his

head. “I don’t think they should be moved. Another dozen or so are only

showing the first signs of a cough—”

“Move them! Move them all,” D’gan commanded. “I told you that

already—why did you delay?”

“Do you want to lose more dragons?” K’rem asked. When D’gan’s brows

stormed together he continued quickly, “If we move them, they may die. Do

you want their deaths on your hands?”

“Do you?” D’gan replied. The healer dropped his gaze and D’gan snorted.

“I didn’t think so. Move the sick ones!”

“You will have to break up the wings,” D’nal pointed out.

“Then do it,” D’gan said. He looked at K’rem. “Isn’t this the way the herders

isolate sick beasts and save their herds?”

“But these are
dragons,
D’gan,” L’rat protested. “We don’t know how they

are getting sick, how the illness spreads.”

“And we won’t begin to find out until we isolate the sick ones,” D’gan

responded with a pointed look at K’rem.

Reluctantly, K’rem nodded. “If we isolate them, who will look after them?”

he asked. “My Darth is not ill.”

“Hmm. Good point,” D’gan agreed. He bent his head to his hand in thought.

Finally he looked up, decisive. “Have some of the weyrfolk help them.”

He gestured to the others.

“Let’s go to the Star Stones and see how much time we have before the

Fall starts,” he said in a suddenly cheerful voice. “Things will sort

themselves out when Thread comes, you’ll see.”

M’tal stood back from his observation at the Star Stones of Benden Weyr,

grim-faced.

“The Eye Rock has bracketed the Red Star,” he told K’tan and Kindan,

gesturing for them to look for themselves.

Kindan told the Weyr healer to go first. K’tan stepped forward and looked

through the Eye Rock, aligning his view with the Finger Rock beyond.

There, just above the Finger Rock, as the Records had warned, was the

Red Star.

They were all warmly bundled against the morning chill, M’tal and K’tan in

their riding gear, and even Kindan in a thick wher-hide jacket. M’tal’s

Gaminth and K’tan’s Drith lounged on a ledge near the plateau that held the

Star Stones, unperturbed by the chill in the air. As the sun rose further into

the sky, Kindan could see patches of fog along the coastline to the east. He

turned around, looking down into the darkened Bowl far below. When his

eyes adjusted to the gloom, he found he could spot a fog-diffused glow at

the entrance to the Kitchen Cavern, but nothing more.

“How much time do we have before the first Threadfall?” he asked, turning

back to the other two. He had been invited to the morning gathering by the

Weyrleader himself.

M’tal shook his head. His face was gaunt with fatigue. “Less than a month,

I’d guess.”

“We’ll be flying wing light,” K’tan said, stepping back from the Star Stones.

His breath fogged in the chilly air.

Another three dragons had started coughing just that morning, bringing the

total to eighteen. Twelve had died in the fortnight since Breth had gone