Dragonsblood (60 page)

“Well, we know what to use for the key to the lab,” Emorra said.

“What?” The others asked in chorus.

“ ‘Air,’ ” Emorra replied. “The only one who should know that answer will be

our queen rider.”

“Ex-queen rider,” Torene corrected sadly. M’hall met her eyes and they

both shuddered in sympathy for that future rider.

“She must be quite something,” Seamus agreed.

“We can’t let her down,” Emorra declared. She turned to Tieran. “Let’s get

to work.”

TWENTY-FOUR

It’s all that I can give you,

To save both Weyr and Hold.

It’s little I can offer you,

Who paid with dragon gold.

Upper Crom Hold, Third Pass, 28th Day, AL 508

The sun was well past noon but the air above Upper Crom Hold was cold

with winter winds blowing from the mountains to the north. Thin wisps of

cloud were visible high up in the sky.

A moment later, the wisps of cloud were smeared with other shapes. The

shapes slowly resolved themselves as they descended. Thread.

The air was not so cold that Thread froze. Slowly, silently, Thread streamed

from the sky, floating on the winds and down toward the unsuspecting

ground below. Once there, it would burrow, sucking all the life out of the

land and spreading voraciously across the continent.

The holders were all in their holds, well barred against Thread, waiting for

the all-clear from the dragonriders of Telgar Weyr, sworn to protect them.

There were no dragons.

Those dragons had gone
between
and would never come back.

Thread fell lower, into warmer bands of air near the ground. Soon they

would touch and—

A gout of flame licked the sky, then another, and another. Suddenly, the air

was filled with flaming dragons and charred Thread.

“Take a wing low!” D’vin ordered as the riders of High Reaches Weyr

fanned out, weary from their jump a day into the future. Hurth roared, adding

his own emphasis, and D’vin slapped his bronze dragon affectionately.

“You tell them!” he roared out loud, grinning from ear to ear. She was right,

he thought to himself.

She is a queen rider,
Hurth said, as though that were all that needed

saying.

D’vin nodded and turned his attention to the Thread in front of him. He was

a dragonman, and this was his duty.

No Thread would fall on Crom Hold while there were still dragons left at

High Reaches Weyr, D’vin swore to himself.

“Lorana?”

Lorana opened her eyes. Kindan’s anxious face swam into view. She was

lying on her back on something hard. Cold, too.

“Are you all right?” Ketan asked, leaning over her.

Lorana rolled to her side and raised herself on her arm.

“No, no, stay put!” Kindan ordered.

Lorana ignored him with a shake of her head—a move she regretted as the

room swirled before her eyes. She closed them for a moment, opened

them again and stood up.

“Lorana!” Kindan begged, looking at her anxiously. “You need to rest. You

passed out!”

Lorana shook her head in disagreement. She reached out with her senses,

touching Minith. She felt Caranth sleeping fitfully.

“No,” Lorana said feebly. “No, I’ve got to work.”

“No, you’re too ill,” Kindan said.

“I’m not ill,” Lorana replied testily. She quickly explained what had

happened, how she’d grabbed for Minith and Caranth, using the dragons of

the Weyr, and then, when she felt the dragons of Telgar Weyr being lost,

had tried to grab them, too—and had failed only to discover herself

connected to a distant someone, the Oldtimer she’d felt before, and how

she’d answered the Oldtimer’s question.

“I’m not ill,” Lorana repeated when she had finished. Without giving him a

chance to answer, she moved past him, through the doorway that her word

had opened and into the room beyond.

Lights came up in the new room as she came in, but no voice greeted her.

She looked around the room and her eyes lit up with wonder.

“Kindan, come look!” she cried excitedly, heading toward the benches

placed on one side of the room.

Kindan followed her, with Ketan trailing behind. Salina paused in the

doorway, taking in every part of the room in silent wonder.

“Look, there’s the other door!” Ketan declared, pointing to a door on the far

wall. “And it’s got the same press plate as the others.”

He ran across the room and pressed the plate. The door slid open,

revealing the first room they’d discovered.

“We couldn’t open this door from the other side,” he said.

“I think we were supposed to come
this
way,” Salina remarked. “I think the

first door we came through was just for emergencies.”

“So the rockslide activated it?” Ketan asked.

“Well, we might as well get working,” Lorana said. “M’tal will be back from

the Fall soon enough.” She looked at Ketan. “There are some injured

dragons coming back now.”

Ketan was surprised. “So soon?”

“Everyone was disturbed when Telgar was lost,” Lorana replied.

“Those who could still hear dragons,” Ketan said, his eyes full of sorrow.

He saw Lorana’s look and hastily added, “I would not have wanted to have

been you just then.”

Lorana managed a small, sour smile and shrugged. “If I hadn’t been—”

“Our ancestors would never have known our peril,” Kindan finished briskly.

He gestured around the room. “Where should we start first?”

“I’ll go tend the dragons,” Ketan said, turning to leave.

“You’ll be quicker going through that door,” Lorana said, pointing to the door

leading to the Hatching Grounds.

“So I will,” Ketan agreed in pleasant surprise. As he headed off, he called

back over his shoulder, “I’ll send for you if we need help.”

Salina waved acknowledgment and sauntered over toward Lorana.

Lorana gravitated toward the cabinets on the left wall. There were three, just

as in the first room. The nearest was also marked A. She opened it and

drew back in awe.

On the middle shelf of the cabinet was an ungainly object.

“I know what that is,” Kindan declared.

“It’s a microscope,” Lorana said, gently cradling it in her arms and placing it

on the countertop behind her. She looked it over carefully, angled the

reflecting mirror at the bottom to catch the light from overhead. She

frowned for a moment, turned back to the cabinet, and then murmured

happily as she found what she was looking for. “Here are the specimen

slides!”

“What have they got?” Salina asked.

“What sort of magnification does that microscope have?” Kindan added.

“Sixteen hundred,” Lorana answered, peering at the different lenses at the

base of the barrel. She looked back at the slides, selected one, and slid it

under the calipers on the microscope’s table, firmly holding it in place.

She bent down over the eyepiece and very carefully adjusted the focus.

With a gasp of surprise, she drew back.

“What is it?” Salina asked.

“A human hair,” Lorana replied, gesturing for the older woman to look.

Kindan was next and just as impressed.

They spent hours working with the microscope, examining the prepared

specimens and commenting to each other about their findings.

“So what we need now is a sample from one of the sick dragons,” Kindan

said finally, looking up from the last of the bacteria specimen slides.

Lorana looked ready to agree and then her face took on a distant look.

“That will have to wait,” she told the others. “M’tal is back and Ketan needs

help.”

Salina gave Lorana a nervous look. “No,” Lorana assured her, “he and

Gaminth are just fine. But there were many injured in the Fall.”

“I think we can leave everything where it is,” Salina said as they left the

room and headed toward the Hatching Grounds. “But should we shut this

door?”

“I’d advise against it,” Kindan said. “We don’t know how much power it

takes to open it again.”

Salina and Lorana nodded in agreement.

As they entered the Bowl from the Hatching Grounds, two sounds came to

their ears simultaneously. One was Tullea calling imperiously for Lorana.

The other was a dragon’s cough—Minith’s.

Kindan was surprised to see Lorana’s face light up in excitement: He would

never have considered her spiteful. Her words immediately erased his

unease and left him feeling chagrined. “Minith must have just come down

with the illness,” she said. “If we can get a sample from her—”

“We could identify the disease,” Salina finished excitedly.

Then Lorana’s shoulders drooped. “Or maybe not,” she said. “It’s also

possible that Minith has been sick for quite some time and is only now at

the stage where we notice it.”

“So the beasties we find might not be the culprit?” Kindan asked.

“Perhaps just some secondary infections,” Lorana agreed.

“It’s better than nothing,” Salina said. She stopped as she looked at the

injured dragons and riders covering the Weyr Bowl floor. She turned to

Kindan. “You get the sample while Lorana and I help Ketan.”

Kindan bit back saying, “Me?” Instead, he mutely nodded and headed up to

the Weyrleaders’ quarters.

It was past dinner when Lorana and Salina finally made their way back to the

Learning Rooms. There they found Kindan and B’nik peering over the

microscope.

“Look,” Kindan said, gesturing. “I made up a slide. There are thousands of

them!”

Lorana and Salina both took long looks through the microscope.

“I made out about ten different bacteria before I gave up,” Kindan said. He

gestured to a pad beside the microscope. “I did my best to draw them.”

Lorana looked at them and nodded. “Yes, very good, Kindan,” she said.

She flipped to a clean page and grabbed the pencil, leaning back over the

microscope. In moments she had drawn three more shapes. Then she,

too, stopped and relinquished the microscope.

“Those little things are killing our dragons?” B’nik asked, both amazed and

angered at the size of the dragons’ attackers.

“There are many such small things,” Lorana said. “Most of them are

beneficial—they help to protect the dragons. We have similar bacteria

ourselves.”

“But these bacteria have turned nasty,” Kindan added. “Or they always

were, and the dragons’ natural defenses have been overcome.”

“They caught this from the fire-lizards,” B’nik said, looking at the others for

confirmation.

“We’re pretty certain of it,” Kindan agreed.

“Although it could be something that the dragons gave to the fire-lizards,”

Lorana added. “They’re so closely related it could go either way.”

“It’s a pity the dragons are so much like the fire-lizards,” B’nik remarked, his

lips tight. “They seem so big, I would have thought that difference alone

would have protected them.”

“If anything, their size works against them,” Lorana said, shaking her head.

“Their lungs are so much bigger than the fire-lizards’ that there’s that much

greater a chance of an infection taking hold.”

“And this,” B’nik gestured around the room. “With this you’ll be able to find a

cure?”

“We’ll try,” Kindan promised.

Lorana caught the nub of B’nik’s question. She met the Weyrleader’s gaze

squarely. “Weyrleader, I’ll do all in my power to make sure that not another

dragon of Pern dies from this illness.”

B’nik returned her gaze. He nodded gratefully, then smiled ruefully. “Just

make sure you get enough sleep,” he ordered, wagging a finger at her.

“I can sleep when we’ve got a cure,” Lorana protested.

“I think we could all do with a night’s sleep, given the day’s events,” Salina

said. She quelled Lorana’s rebellion with an admonishing look. “We’ll start

again first thing in the morning.”

The next morning Salina was not surprised to find Lorana already in the

Learning Rooms, engrossed in her studies. Salina placed the tray she’d

brought with her on the countertop far from the microscope and Lorana’s

work, carefully poured a mug of
klah,
and deftly interposed it in Lorana’s

hand when the younger woman absently searched for a pencil.

Lorana gave a squeak of surprise and looked up from the microscope to

smile sheepishly at Salina.

“Where’s Kindan?” Salina asked, taking the sketchbook from Lorana and

looking it over.

“He was asleep when I left him,” Lorana replied.

Salina noticed that there was another, smaller piece of equipment on the

table, beside the miscroscope.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“This is a sequencer,” Lorana said. “I’ve managed to confirm the presence

of several likely bacteria.” She made a face. “I think, in the old days, they

would have used something else instead of the sequencer to identify

bacteria.”

“Perhaps that’s all they had left,” Salina suggested, eyeing the small device

carefully. It looked sturdy enough, just small—a bit smaller than her jewelry

case.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Lorana agreed. Her frown deepened. Salina

gave her a questioning look. In answer, Lorana said, “It’s just that if this is all

they had left, will it be sufficient?”

The little unit chimed softly and Salina noticed that a yellow light had gone

out, to be replaced by a green light.