Moreta (22 page)

“It’s hard enough to get weyrfolk to tend them,” S’peren remarked.

“Hmm! Ask the laggards who will tend
them
in their hour of need?” Leri rolled up the rider lists and stowed them carefully on the shelf beside her. “So, old friend, you’ll bring the good news from the Healer Hall to the Lower Caverns and
then
tell off the wings which are rising to Fall tomorrow!”

Healer Hall, 3.15.43

The light of the many glows that Capiam had ordered to illuminate the tight and fading script of the old ledgers shone harshly on the handsome countenance of Tirone, Masterharper of Pern, who had drawn a chair up to Capiam’s wide writing desk. Tirone was scowling at the healer, a totally uncharacteristic expression on a man renowned for his geniality and expansive good humor. The epidemic—no, one had to state its true proportions,
pan
demic—had marked everyone, including those lucky enough not to have contracted it.

Many believed that Tirone bore a charmed life in the pursuit of his duties across the continent. The Harper had been detained on the border between Tillek and the High Reaches on a disputation over mines, which had prevented him from attending the Ruathan Gather. Once the drums had sounded the quarantine, Tirone made his way back to the Hall by runner relays, past holds where the plague had not penetrated and some where the news had not spread. He had a fine old row with Tolocamp to be permitted within the Hold proper, but Tirone’s logic and the fact that he had not entered any infected areas had prevailed. Or had one of the guards told the Masterharper how it was that Lord Tolocamp had returned from Ruatha?

Tirone had also prevailed on Desdra to permit him to visit the Master Healer.

“If I don’t get details from you, Capiam, I shall be forced to rely on hearsay and that is not a proper source for a Masterharper.”

“Tirone, I am not about to die. While I laud your zealous desire for a true and accurate account, I have a more pressing duty!” Capiam raised the ledger. “I may have recovered but I have to find out how to cure or stop this wretched disease before it kills further thousands.”

“I’m under strict orders not to tire you or Desdra will have my gizzard to grill,” Tirone replied with a jocular smile. “But the facts are that I was woefully out of touch with the Hall at this most critical time. I can’t even get a decent account from the drummaster though I quite appreciate that neither he nor his journeymen had the time to log the messages which came in and out of the tower at such a rate. Tolocamp won’t talk to me though it’s five days since Ruatha Gather . . . and he shows no signs of the illness. So I must have something to go on besides incoherent and confused versions. The perceptions of a trained observer such as yourself are invaluable to the chronicler. I am given to understand that you talked with Talpan at Ista?” Tirone poised his pen above the clean squared sheet of hide.

“Talpan . . . now there’s the man you should talk to when this is over.”

“That won’t be possible. Shards! Weren’t you told?” The Harper half-rose from his chair, hand outstretched in sympathy.

“I’m all right. No, I didn’t know.” Capiam closed his eyes for a moment to absorb that shock. “I suspect they thought it would depress me. It does. He was a fine man, with a quick, clever mind. Herdmaster potential.” Capiam heard another swift intake of breath from Tirone and opened his eyes. “Master Herdsman Trume as well?” And when Tirone nodded confirmation, Capiam steeled himself. So that was why Tirone had been allowed to see him: to break the news. “I think you’d better tell me the rest of the bad news that neither Desdra nor Fortine voiced. It won’t hurt half as much now. I’m numb.”

“There have been terrible losses, you realize—”

“Any figures?”

“At Keroon, nine out of every ten who fell ill have died! At Igen Sea Hold, fifteen were weak but alive when the relief ship from Nerat reached them. We have no totals from surrounding holds in Igen, nor do we know the extent of the epidemic’s spread in Igen, Keroon, or Ruatha. You can be very proud of your Craftsmen and women, Capiam. They did all that was humanly possible to succor the ill . . .

“And they died, too?” Capiam asked when Tirone’s voice trailed off.

“They brought honor to your hail.”

Capiam’s heart thumped slowly in his anguish. All dead? Mibbut, gentle Kylos, the earthy Loreana, earnest Rapal, the bone-setter Sneel, Galnish? All of them? Could it really be only
seven
days ago that he had first had word of the dreadful sickness? And those he had attended at Keroon and Igen already sick to their deaths with it? Though he was now positive that the plague itself didn’t kill, the living had to face another sort of death, the death of hopes and friendships and what might have been in the futures of those whose lives were abruptly ended. And so near to the promise and freedom of an Interval! Capiam felt tears sliding down his cheeks but they eased the tight constriction in his chest. He let them flow, breathing slowly in and out until his emotions were in hand again. He couldn’t think emotionally; he must think professionally. “Igen Sea Hold held nearly a thousand people; only fifty were ill when I attended them at Burdion’s summons.”

“Burdion is one of the survivors.”

“I trust he kept notes for you.” Capiam could not prevent his tone from being savage.

“I believe he did,” Tirone went on, impervious to the invalid’s bad temper. “The log of the
Windtoss
is also available.”

“The captain was dead when I reached the Sea Hold.”

“Did you
see
the animal?” Tirone leaned forward slightly, his eyes glinting with the avid curiosity he did not voice.

“Yes, I saw it!” That image was now seared in Capiam’s memory. The feline had paced restlessly and vividly through his fever dreams and his restless nightmares. Capiam would never forget its snarling face, the white and black whiskers that sprang from its thick muzzle, the brown stains on its tusks, the nicks in its laid-back tufted ears, the dark-brown medallions of its markings that were so fancifully ringed with black and set off in the tawny, shining coat. He could remember its fierce defiance and had even then, when he’d first seen it, conceived the notion that the creature knew perfectly well that it would take revenge on the beings who had restricted it to a cage, who had stared at it in every hold and hail. “Yes, Tirone, I actually saw it. Like hundreds of other people attending Ista Gather. Only I’ve lived to tell the tale. Talpan and I spent twenty minutes observing it while he told me why he thought it had to die. In twenty minutes it probably infected many people even though Talpan was making the gawkers stand well back from the cage. In fact, I probably contracted my dose of the plague there. From the source. Instead of secondhand.” That conclusion afforded Capiam some relief. Made more vulnerable by fatigue, he’d come down with the plague a bare twenty-four hours later. That was better than believing that he had been negligent of hygiene at Igen and Keroon. “Talpan deduced that the animal had to be the cause of the disease already affecting runners from Igen to Keroon. I’d been called to Keroon, too, you see, because so many of their folk were falling ill. I was tracing human contagion, Talpan was tracing runner. We both reached the same conclusion at Ista Gather. The creature was terrified of dragons, you know.”

“Really?”

“So I was informed. But K’dall is among the dead at Telgar Weyr and so is his blue dragon.”

Tirone murmured, all the while writing furiously. “How, then, did the disease get to Southern Boll if the creature was killed at Ista Gather?”

“You’ve forgotten the weather.”

“Weather?”

“Yes, the weather was so mild Keroon Runnerhold started shipping early this winter, the tides and winds being favorable. So Lord Ratoshigan got his breeding stock early and an unexpected bounty. As did several other notable breeders, some of whom attended Ruatha Gather.”

“Well, that is interesting. Such a devastating concatenation of so many small events.”

“We should be grateful that Tillek breeds its own and supplies the High Reaches, Crom, and Nabol. That the Keroon-bred runners destined for Benden, Lemos, Bitra, and Nerat either died of the plague or were not herded overland.”

“The Weyrleaders have issued an interdiction against any travel to the Southern Continent!” Tirone said. “The Ancients had excellent reason for abandoning that place. Too many threats to life.”

“Get your facts straight, Tirone,” Capiam said, irritated. “Most life
here
was created and nutured
there!
”

“Now, I have never seen that proved to—”

“Life and its maintenance are
my
province, Masterharper.” Capiam held up the ancient ledger and waggled it at Tirone. “As the creation and development of life was once the province of our ancestors. The Ancients brought with them from the Southern Continent all the animals we have here with us today, including the dragons which they genetically engineered for their unique purpose.”

Tirone’s lower jaw jutted slightly, about to dispute.

“We have lost the skills that the Ancients possessed even though we can refine runners and the herdbeasts for specific qualities. And . . .” Capiam paused, struck by an awful consideration. “And I’m suddenly aware that we are in a double peril right now.” He thought of Talpan and all his bright promise lost, of Master Herdsman Trume, of the captain of the
Windtoss,
his own dead craftsmen, each with his or her special qualities lost to a swift, mortal illness. “We may have lost a lot more than a coherent account of the progress of a plague, Tirone. And that should worry you far more. It is knowledge as well as life that is being lost all over Pern. What you should be jotting down as fast as you can push your fist is the knowledge, the techniques that are dying in men’s minds and cannot be recovered.” Capiam waved the Record about, Tirone eyeing it with alarm. “As we can’t recover from all the ledgers and Records of the Ancients exactly how they performed the miracles they did. And it’s not the miracles so much as the working, the day-to-day routine which the Ancients didn’t bother to record because it was
common knowledge.
A common knowledge that is no longer common. That’s what we’re missing. And we may have lost a lot more of that common knowledge over the past seven days! More than we can ever replace!”

Capiam lay back, exhausted by his outburst, the Records a heavy weight on his guts. That sense of loss, the pressure of that anxiety, had been growing inside him. That morning, when the lethargy had passed, he had been disquietingly aware of the many facts, practices, and intuitions he had never written down, had never thought to elaborate in his private notes. Ordinarily he would have passed them on to his journeymen as they grasped the complexities of their craft. Some matters he had been told by his masters, which they had gleaned from their tutors or from their working experiences, but the transfer of information and its interpretation had been verbal in all too many instances, passed on to those who would need to know.

Capiam became aware that Tirone was staring at him. He had not meant to harangue; that was generally Tirone’s function.

“I could not agree with you more, Capiam,” Tirone began tentatively, pausing to clear his throat. “But people of all ranks and Crafts tend to keep some secrets which—”

“Shells! Not the drum again!” Capiam buried his head in his hands, pressing his thumbs tightly into his earholes, trying to block the sound.

Tirone’s expression brightened and he half-rose from the chair, gesturing for Capiam to unplug his ears. “It’s good news. From Igen. Threadfall has been met and all is clear. Twelve wings flew!”

“Twelve?” Capiam pulled himself up, calculating Igen’s crushing losses and the numbers of its sick riders. “Igen couldn’t have put twelve wings in the air today.”

“ ‘Dragonmen must fly, when Thread is in the sky!’ ” Tirone’s resonant voice rang with pride and exultation.

Capiam stared at him, aware only of profound dismay. How had he failed to catch the significance of Tirone’s mention of the Weyrleaders’ joint interdiction of the Southern Continent? They’d had to consolidate Weyrs to meet Fall.

“ ‘To fight Thread is in their blood! Despite their cruel losses, they rise, as always, to defend the continent . . .’ ”

Tirone was off in what Capiam had derisively termed his lyric trance. It was not the time to be composing sagas and ballads! Yet the ringing phrases plucked at a long forgotten memory.

“Do be quiet, Tirone. I must think! Or there won’t be
any
dragonriders left to fight Thread. Get out!”

Blood! That’s what Tirone had said. It’s in their blood! Blood! Capiam hit his temples with the heels of his hands as if he could jolt the vagrant memory into recall. He could almost hear the creaky old voice of old Master Gallardy. Yes, he’d been preparing for his journeyman’s examinations and old Gallardy had been droning on and on about unusual and obsolescent techniques. Something to do with blood. Gallardy had been talking about the curative properties of blood—blood what? Blood serum! That was it!

Blood serum as an extreme remedy for contagious or virulent disease.

“Capiam?” It was Desdra, her voice hesitant. “Are you all right? Tirone said—”

“I’m fine! I’m fine! What was that you kept telling me? What can’t be cured must be endured. Well, there’s another way.
Inuring
to cure. Immunizing. And it’s in the blood! It’s not a bark, a powder, a leaf, it’s blood. And the deterrant is in my blood right now! Because I’ve survived the plague.”

“Master Capiam!” Desdra stepped forward, hesitant, mindful of the precautions of the last five days.

“I do not think I am contagious any longer, my brave Desdra. I’m the cure! At least I believe I am.” In his excitement, Capiam had crawled out of bed, flinging sleeping rugs away from him in an effort to reach the case that held his apprentice and journeyman’s texts.

“Capiam! You’ll fall!”

Capiam was tottering and he grasped at the chair Tirone had vacated to prevent the collapse. He couldn’t summon the strength to reach to the shelves.