Dragongirl

by Todd J. McCaffrey

  “Terin will be along with food and klah,” she told them.

  H’nez cleared his throat, then asked Lorana, “Did I hear you say that the dragons will be tired—even the healthy ones?”

  Lorana glanced warily at M’tal.

  “The cure usually makes them very tired for a day or so,” the bronze rider responded. He saw H’nez’s troubled look and was startled by it until, with a groan, he realized, “You’ve Threadfall tomorrow!”

  “Yes,” H’nez replied shortly.

  Fiona looked at Lorana. “Will we be able to fly tomorrow?”

  “We’ll have to be,” H’nez declared. He stood, his thoughts surrounding him like a dark cloud, before he turned swiftly, saying, “Your pardon, but I’ve got to be certain that my riders rest their dragons immediately.”

  “Of course,” M’tal called after him. After a moment he added, “If you’d like, I’ll fly with you.”

  H’nez paused mid-stride and turned back, eyeing M’tal carefully before replying, “If you wish.”

  “What about F’jian’s Ladirth?” Fiona asked, glancing among the three Benden weyrfolk. “If the healthy dragons will be tired from the cure, will Ladirth be well enough to fly tomorrow? He’s been coughing.”

  Kindan frowned and glanced at Lorana, who shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Perhaps M’tal could lead F’jian’s wing,” Fiona suggested to H’nez.

  H’nez frowned and turned away. “I’ll be back.”

  “Don’t hurry,” Fiona called after him. “You need rest, too.”

  H’nez waved a hand over his shoulder in acknowledgment, but Fiona got the distinct impression that the prickly bronze rider was surprised at her concern.

  As he moved out of sight, Terin and Xhinna arrived, each bearing a well-laden tray.

  “She’ll be okay?” Xhinna demanded, gesturing toward Talenth. “You’ve found a cure?”

  “Yes,” M’tal told her, casting a sidelong look toward Fiona. Fiona felt that the old rider was amused by the possessiveness in Xhinna’s reaction.

  “Oh, thank you!” Xhinna cried. She placed her tray on the table and turned away for a moment. Fiona rose from her seat and went to hug her.

  “We’ve all been so worried about Talenth,” Terin explained apologetically as she served the Benden weyrfolk. She glanced toward Jeila lying in Fiona’s bed and frowned. “Is she all right?” she said to Fiona. “Should I send for Bekka?”

  “She’s just tired,” Fiona assured her, still comforting Xhinna and trying to absorb her own feelings. Now that she could set aside her worry for Talenth, she realized how discomfited she was by Kindan’s presence. She’d felt both glad and angry that he had mistaken her for Koriana, and she was surprised that at a time like this, she even thought of it.

  Shyly, Xhinna pulled away and began bustling about the room, searching out blankets for Jeila, arranging the pillows for the young weyrwoman’s comfort, and generally busying herself.

  Fiona returned to her seat, even as Terin chided her, “You’ve not eaten yet yourself, Weyrwoman.”

  Fiona smiled at Terin and beckoned to her. When Terin gave her a look of alarm, Fiona overrode her concerns, explaining to the others, “Terin was my headwoman at Igen.”

  “I recall,” M’tal said.

  Kindan frowned in Fiona’s direction, fingering the brooch on his chest before turning toward Lorana and forcing a roll into her hand. “You’ve got to eat, love.”

  Fiona gave the older woman a careful look, then declared, “You need to rest. You haven’t slept in at least a sevenday, have you?”

  Lorana gave her a startled look, and a moment later, Kindan did the same.

  “Terin, get with Shaneese and have the other weyrs prepared,” Fiona said. “Jeila and her Tolarth can have one, Lorana and Kindan the other.” She glanced toward M’tal, who was eyeing her with interest, then added to Terin, “And ask H’nez where M’tal and Gaminth should settle.”

  Terin gave her an amused look and, with a grin at the others, nodded and sprinted off.

  Xhinna looked ready to follow her but Fiona forestalled her with a raised hand. “Can you get Bekka? I want her to look at the weyrwoman, just to be safe.”

  Xhinna nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

  M’tal chuckled as Xhinna raced out of the room into Talenth’s weyr, paused to give the sleeping queen a quick pat, and sped off on her mission.

  “I congratulate you, Weyrwoman,” M’tal said with a nod toward her. Fiona looked at him in surprise. “You not only did amazing things when you were at Igen, but you’ve produced a miracle here as well.” He gestured toward the weyr where Terin and Xhinna had been. “It is not everyone who can command such loyalty.”

  Fiona caught Kindan giving her an appraising look, but he turned away the moment he realized she saw him.

  They ate in silence until Bekka arrived, breathless and eager-eyed.

  “The dragons are cured?” she piped excitedly, her gaze going over everyone in the room. Her eyes locked on Lorana and she rushed over, embracing the larger woman’s shoulders and resting her head on her back. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  Lorana was nonplussed.

  “I know it was too late for your dragon or my father’s, but at least no more dragons have to die!” Bekka explained.

  “Your father’s …?” M’tal repeated in surprise but his words were lost as Lorana gave a heartfelt sob and began to cry. Everyone’s attention went to her, and Fiona was already out of her chair and moving to her side.

  “You heard her, Lorana,” Fiona said, feeling her own tears overflow as she grabbed for Lorana’s limp hand. She could tell that the dark-haired woman hadn’t, until this moment, fully allowed herself to grasp that fact: Lorana, so overwhelmed with dragons dying, could only now consider that dragons might live. Because of her. “No more dragons have to die. You did it—you saved the dragons of Pern!”

  TEN

  With my life and my dragon’s

  I pledge ever to learn,

  I pledge Thread to burn,

  I pledge to guard all Pern.

  Telgar Weyr, later, AL 508.2.10

  Bekka prescribed fellis juice and a long rest as it became clear that fatigue and sorrow had overwhelmed Lorana—she did not stop crying for ten minutes, after which, wracked with exhaustion and coaxed to lie next to the resting Jeila, she curled up into a ball and fell asleep. Kindan held her close while M’tal and Fiona looked on helplessly.

  “I’ll stay with them,” Bekka declared, pushing at Fiona and gesturing to M’tal. “You two should go to the Dining Cavern and see Shaneese.”

  “Terin—”

  “I’ll handle her,” Bekka declared firmly, pulling a chair close to Fiona’s bed and settling herself in as guard. M’tal glanced at her and then at Fiona in surprise. Fiona smiled at him and shook her head, gesturing for him to follow her toward the Dining Cavern.

  “She doesn’t sleep,” Fiona explained as they walked across the Bowl. “They’ll be in good hands.”

  “But what if she needs help?”

  “I’ll ask Talenth to check in with her periodically,” Fiona told him.

  “Does your queen talk to everyone?” M’tal asked.

  “That’s not normal?” Fiona shook her head, frowning as she admitted, “I know so little about being a proper Weyrwoman—”

  M’tal grabbed her hand and laid it on his arm, bowing toward her with a flourish. “No, Weyrwoman, you are an example to us all!”

  Fiona felt her face flush and looked away hurriedly. She maintained her silence until she and M’tal sat themselves at the high table and Shaneese bustled over to them.

  “So?” she demanded of Fiona, “have you got everything the way you like it once more? All jumbled, rattled, and running just your way?”

  Fiona grinned and she nodded in agreement. “Next, I’ll send you back in time to Igen: It needs a good cleaning.”

  M’tal, who seemed torn between rising to Fi
ona’s defense and jumping in on Shaneese’s side, choked on his klah. Fiona gestured to him. “This is M’tal. He’s been to Igen, so he knows how dirty it is.”

  “My lord,” Shaneese said, inclining her head, her manner sobering abruptly, her next words directed equally to M’tal and Fiona, “I hope you’ll forgive my banter. You brought news we never expected to hear.”

  “And wouldn’t have, if it were not for D’gan,” M’tal said, raising his mug in a half-salute to the late Weyrleader.

  “How is that?” Fiona and Shaneese asked, nearly in unison. Fiona cocked her head firmly toward a vacant chair, ordering the headwoman to be seated. Shaneese glanced around the Dining Cavern and, deciding that nothing needed her immediate attention, complied with her Weyrwoman’s demand.

  “It’s a sad story,” M’tal said with a shake of his head, “and I don’t know if we’ll ever hear the full of it.”

  “Perhaps I should get Norik?” Shaneese suggested to Fiona. The Weyrwoman frowned, then relayed the request to Talenth.

  He comes, her queen replied drowsily, in a tone that made Fiona resolve not to disturb her again.

  “I’ve asked for him,” Fiona said.

  “And your dragon scolded you for waking her,” M’tal said. “My Gaminth did the same with me, the day he got the injection.”

  Oddly, Fiona found his words a relief. Gaminth seemed completely healthy.

  “Anyway,” M’tal said, “as I understand it from Kindan, Lorana needed a word to open the door to the Teaching Rooms.”

  “The Ancient Rooms at Benden?” Fiona asked.

  The bronze rider nodded, but Shaneese looked perplexed. “We’ve heard nothing of this here,” she said.

  “When the illness first started affecting dragons, we started examining the Records,” M’tal said.

  “I think Lina did that,” Shaneese said in the late Weyrwoman’s defense.

  “We found nothing and so Lorana decided that we should check the Records at Fort Weyr.”

  Shaneese nodded. “It’s the oldest—most likely to have ancient Records.”

  “The only reference found was to Ancient Rooms at Benden Weyr,” M’tal continued. Shaneese raised her eyebrows in surprise and M’tal nodded in agreement. “We all thought it odd but discovered a section of corridor off the Hatching Grounds—an Ancient corridor—that was blocked by a rockslide.

  “We got help from miners to dig the fall out and found a room, but it was the wrong room.”

  “Wrong room?”

  “We didn’t know it at first,” M’tal said, his eyes going bleak with sadness, “and by then Lorana’s Arith had caught the illness.” He took a deep breath before he continued. “We found four glass vials, each filled with different colored powders.

  “Lorana was desperate, her Arith was near to death, she thought to mix some of each of the vials and inject it into her.”

  “She killed her dragon?” Shaneese asked anxiously.

  M’tal nodded.

  “The mix was wrong—we only discovered that much later,” he said. “Arith went between. It wasn’t until Lorana recovered that we realized there were other rooms and she thought that perhaps the answer lay in them.”

  “She lost her dragon and she didn’t give up,” Shaneese said in awe. She sniffed once, dabbed at her eyes, then motioned politely for M’tal to continue.

  “The miners returned and excavated another section above the rooms that led to a different entrance,” M’tal said. “This was the entrance we should have found first, because when we entered, we were greeted by a voice.”

  “A voice?” Fiona asked, thinking of the voice that she’d been hearing in her head. “Did you recognize it?”

  “More than that: It introduced itself to us,” M’tal said. “It said it was a recording—almost like playing music on an instrument from a written score—and the voice was Wind Blossom’s.”

  “Wind Blossom?” Shaneese repeated. “Two people? Or one person with two names?”

  “Two names,” Fiona told her. She glanced at M’tal as she continued, “I learned about her from Kindan. He’d been trying to find the words to a song that he’d read just before—”

  “Just before the fire at the Harper Hall,” M’tal interrupted her quietly. “He found the title; he remembered the song.”

  “It was important,” Fiona said, recalling how often Kindan had striven to remember the song when she was growing up, how much it had driven him.

  “The song saved Pern,” M’tal said. He saw a man in harper’s blue approach and waved him to a seat. “You must be Norik.”

  Norik nodded but said nothing.

  “I was just saying that a song saved Pern,” M’tal explained. “It is called ‘Wind Blossom’s Song’ and it contained a question that Lorana had to answer to open the door to the final Teaching Room, the one where we learned how to defeat the illness.”

  He paused, silent for a moment, turning his head toward the queens’ quarters. “But it wasn’t enough to cure just one dragon. So Minith and Tullea went back in time to High Reaches Weyr, where she clutched and her dragonets grew to full size. With them—including Jeila’s Tolarth—we had enough serum to cure all the dragons. And now, with Telgar here, we have done so.”

  “So that’s why High Reaches was being so aloof!” Fiona exclaimed. “I remember Cisca talking about it, saying that they’d not had any contact for three Turns.”

  “They couldn’t let anyone know,” M’tal said with a grimace, “because no one did know.”

  “By the First Egg, I don’t think I’ll ever understand all the twitchiness in timing it!”

  “And yet, timing it saved Pern,” M’tal replied. A moment later he added, “And High Reaches’ isolation, and Tullea’s pluck.”

  He shook his head, with a sad look, before saying to Norik, “You’ll have to ask Kindan for the full words, but as I was saying, the song recalled the loss of Telgar—”

  “Recalled?” Norik interrupted. When M’tal nodded in confirmation, the harper persisted, “Was not the song written before the event?”

  “Hundred of Turns before and yet after,” M’tal replied. “It seems that the loss of Telgar opened a bridge back in time, a bridge across which Lorana could send one word—”

  “A word?” Norik asked in disbelief.

  “Why don’t you let Lord M’tal finish, then you can ask questions,” Fiona said firmly to the harper. Norik spared her a glance, then lowered his eyes as Fiona out-glared him. She turned back to M’tal. “My lord?”

  “The words were clearly written by a harper—”

  “A Masterharper, I think,” Kindan spoke up from the entrance.

  “Kindan, are you all right?” Fiona asked, rising from her chair.

  Kindan gave her a smile and a nod. “I’m so well, in fact, that your Bekka sent me here.”

  Fiona laughed at the image his words invoked. She gestured for him to join them.

  “You found the words to the song!” she exclaimed in delight.

  “I did,” Kindan replied gravely as he sat down. He turned to Norik and began to sing softly in a minor chord:

  A thousand voices keen at night,

  A thousand voices wail,

  A thousand voices cry in fright,

  A thousand voices fail.

  You followed them, young healer lass,

  Till they could not be seen;

  A thousand dragons made their loss

  A bridge ’tween you and me.

  And in the cold and darkest night,

  A single voice is heard,

  A single voice both clear and bright,

  It says a single word.

  That word is what you now must say

  To open up the door

  In Benden Weyr, to find the way

  To all my healing lore.

  It’s all that I can give to you,

  To save both Weyr and Hold.

  It’s little I can offer you

  Who paid with dragon gold.
<
br />   Kindan spared nothing of his craft in his singing and when he was done, Norik had dropped his head in his hands, tears falling freely. Shaneese, Fiona, and M’tal were no better.

  It was a long time before the Telgar harper recovered and when he did, he lifted his head to be met by Shaneese’s bright eyes as she assured him, “Their loss was not in vain.”

  “Please sing this song again, Kindan,” Norik said. “I must teach it to the Weyr.”

  “If you like, we could sing it tonight, together,” Kindan offered.

  “It would be an honor.”

  Softly, with all the strength he could still muster, tears rolling down his cheeks, Kindan began once more to sing “Wind Blossom’s Song.”

  He was surprised and relieved to feel warm hands on his back, massaging him, comforting him as he relived the grief of the moments still fresh and bitter in his memory. It was only when he’d repeated the last, heartfelt phrase—“Who paid with dragon gold”—that he realized the hands were Fiona’s.

  “I knew you’d remember it when you needed,” she whispered to him as she wrapped her arms around him and buried her head against his shoulder. “I just knew it.”

  She felt his gratitude at her praise, and was filled with a special warmth. She knew that she was the only person who truly understood what it meant to him.

  “Vaxoram would be proud of you,” she told him, hugging him tightly. “You didn’t give up … again!”

  “As you see, Kindan,” M’tal spoke up approvingly, “I’m not the only one to acknowledge your virtues.”

  Fiona glanced up at the older dragonrider and smiled. The look in his eyes left her feeling a bit awkward and she released Kindan and, resuming her seat, sought out a new topic. “With the illness cured, how long do you think it will be before things return to normal?”

  M’tal pursed his lips in a frown. “I’m not sure that normal has much meaning, Weyrwoman, during a Pass.”

  “I want to meet with Master Archivist Verilan soon and check the Records,” Kindan said, glancing toward M’tal first, then Fiona. “We have less than three Flights of dragons at Benden—”

  “Not even two wings here,” Fiona added, her brows meeting in a frown as she followed the thrust of his words. “None at Igen, only five wings at Fort …” Her words trailed off and she bit her lip before looking up at Kindan once more. “We don’t have enough dragons, do we?”