Dragonsblood (46 page)

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 grin. “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.

Lorana straightened and turned to the tabletop where the four vials were

placed. Did the four patterns match the four vials somehow?

Were the patterns supposed to tell someone which vial to use? Could it be

that the knowledge represented by those drawings had been so common

when they were first drawn that no one had ever considered that the

method of reading them might be forgotten and that was why there were

only the vials and the drawings? Read the drawings and pick the vial?

But Lorana couldn’t read the drawings. And Arith was dying. She knew it,

she tried to deny it, and she would never think it while Arith was awake and

might hear her thought, but it was so. No dragon who had gotten the

sickness had survived.

Four vials. Four drawings. Four illnesses? Was one of the vials the one that

could cure the dragons?

Lorana felt Arith stir, could sense which cough was hers among the several

that punctuated the deep night.

I’ll be right there,
Lorana told her dragon, racing from the room. Time is

running out, she thought fleetingly as she left the room that held Arith’s only

hope.

She stopped in the doorway and turned back to the four vials.
Arith?

I’m all right,
the young queen lied valiantly.

Lorana’s response was not spoken or thought, but just as clearly as if she

had spoken aloud, Arith knew that Lorana had seen through the lie and had