Dragongirl

by Todd J. McCaffrey

  “Enough dragons for what?” asked Lorana, standing at the entrance to the Dining Cavern, a desperate Bekka following her in train.

  “My lady, you need rest!” Bekka said.

  Lorana turned back to her and smiled gently, reaching a hand down toward the younger girl who took it shyly, as Lorana told her, “As do you.”

  Bekka glanced apologetically in Fiona’s direction, saying, “I fell asleep, Weyrwoman.”

  “Well, that’s a first!” Fiona said, waving off Bekka’s anxiety and asking solicitously, “Are you still tired? I’d like someone with weyrwoman Jeila when she wakes.”

  “Terin’s with her,” Bekka said, trying her best to stifle a yawn.

  “Terin asked me if you’d mentioned anything about the box,” Lorana said. She smiled shyly as she added, with her glance sliding toward Kindan before returning to Fiona, “She showed me her note and offered me her dragon.”

  “She would,” Fiona said, as moved by Terin’s offer as by Lorana’s obvious refusal. “If you’re not tired, we were eating, and Kindan was filling us in on events at Benden Weyr—”

  “And you’d just discovered that we don’t have enough dragons,” Lorana said, stepping toward them. Bekka glanced at Lorana, then at Fiona for direction and when Fiona nodded for her to join them, she followed beside Lorana, her grip on the older woman’s hand tightening just a bit.

  “You’ll think of something,” Bekka told her confidently. “You saved the dragons of Pern; there’s nothing you can’t do.”

  Lorana kept her gaze on Fiona and only she shared the great pain in her eyes as they both recognized the error in Bekka’s statement.

  “I’ll get some klah,” Shaneese said hastily, putting actions to words with the air of one grateful for an excuse to avoid an awkward exchange.

  “It needs warming,” Fiona agreed.

  At Kindan’s beckoning, Lorana sat next to him and he drew her head to his shoulder and rested his against hers for a moment.

  “Terin told me that you met Mother Karina when you were back in time at Igen Weyr,” Lorana said, even as Kindan pushed a roll toward her suggestively.

  “We did,” Fiona said. “I learned a lot from her.”

  Lorana glanced at Kindan. “One of the traders had the gift of the Sight, they said.” His eyebrows went up in surprise but he said nothing. “He left notes for Fiona and Terin here.”

  “Did he?” Kindan asked, impressed.

  Lorana nodded and continued, but Fiona was sure she felt anxiety growing in the other Weyrwoman. “Yes, he left Terin a harness fitting made of gold in the shape of a soaring dragon.”

  Fiona suddenly stared at the twin of her own brooch gleaming on Kindan’s breast. Tenniz had said, “It will all turn out right.” What had he meant by that? Why had he arranged for her to get a brooch identical to Kindan’s?

  “Tenniz’s note to Terin said: ‘This is yours and no other’s,’” Fiona quoted. She glanced toward Kindan. “The queens will be rising soon.”

  “You think perhaps your friend Terin will Impress?” M’tal asked.

  “She’s got the makings,” Lorana said. “Her heart is in the right place.”

  Kindan turned toward Lorana, glanced quickly toward Fiona, then back at Lorana with a question forming on his lips.

  Fiona beat him to it. “Will you stand on the Hatching Grounds again, Lorana?”

  Lorana held her breath for a long moment before letting it out again to say, “Perhaps I should see what Tenniz wanted to say to me.”

  Fiona turned to Kindan. She knew that he’d been left on the Hatching Grounds for over ten Turns and that he was far too old for tradition, but all the same she felt a sense of rightness in his riding a dragon and she could feel M’tal steeling himself to say the same.

  Lorana beat them to it. “No matter whether I do or not, Kindan of Pern, you will be a Candidate.”

  Fiona met her eyes and they exchanged a look of firm agreement.

  “No queen of my Weyr—” Fiona began only to be interrupted by Lorana who declared, “No queen of Pern will keep you from the Hatching Grounds.”

  “And for what you’ve done, they would be glad to see you ride bronze,” M’tal added solemnly.

  Kindan sighed heavily, signaling his defeat.

  Fiona, however, ignored him; her attention was focused on Lorana. Her voice when making that declaration had sounded so startlingly familiar.

  “Did you bring us back in time?” Fiona asked her suddenly.

  “Me?” Lorana repeated in surprise. “Lorana?” M’tal said at the same time, giving Fiona an odd look. “She was at Benden the whole time.”

  “The whole time,” Fiona repeated. Lorana looked no less confused and Fiona dropped the notion with a frown, explaining by way of apology, “Someone brought Talenth and me back in time to Igen—a gold rider.”

  “You mean a weyrwoman,” Kindan corrected absently, his attention directed toward Lorana.

  I don’t know, Fiona said to herself with some surprise. Why is it that I always say “queen rider” or “gold rider” but never “weyrwoman”?

  “We wouldn’t have gone if she hadn’t urged us,” she said. “If she hadn’t made it sound like we’d already done it.” She glanced toward Lorana. “Her voice sounded something like yours.”

  “Arith was too young to go between,” Lorana told her sadly.

  “I’m not so sure,” Fiona replied. “Talenth was not much older than Arith and she went.”

  Kindan shot her an angry look that Fiona understood all too well: The loss of Lorana’s queen weighed heavily on the both of them.

  “Would you,” Fiona said softly to Lorana, “at least consider standing on the Hatching Grounds again?”

  “I might,” Lorana said with a small smile. “It would be good to hear the hatchlings; I’ve never tried that.”

  “She hears all dragons,” M’tal explained.

  “She feels them,” Kindan corrected him, his hand unconsciously rising to pat Lorana’s shoulder in comfort.

  “Before you have a Hatching, you’ve got to have a mating flight,” M’tal said, his gaze leveled at Fiona.

  Fiona felt herself reddening and she ducked her head in embarrassment before answering, “Talenth is old enough to rise any day now.”

  “Who will be the lucky dragon to catch her?” Fiona shook her head.

  “The first queen to rise here will be senior, won’t she?” Kindan asked with a quick, apologetic glance toward Lorana.

  “Jeila’s Tolarth is just as ready,” M’tal said.

  “But she’ll be going back to Benden, won’t she?” Fiona asked.

  “Not if she’s any sense,” M’tal said with a chuckle. Fiona looked at him, confused, and he explained. “Tullea can be … a little difficult.”

  “I imagine she’ll be better now,” Lorana opined diplomatically. She told Fiona, “She’d been timing it back at High Reaches Weyr so her temper was difficult.”

  “But you weren’t like that, were you, Weyrwoman?” Bekka asked Fiona, bristling with loyalty.

  “No, I felt different,” Fiona said. She glanced toward M’tal and Lorana. “I wasn’t the only one. T’mar and several of the weyrlings felt much the same way. We were tired even before we went to Igen—all except Terin.”

  “Hmm,” M’tal murmured thoughtfully. He glanced inquiringly toward Kindan.

  The harper shook his head, lips pursed in a frown. “I recall nothing like that in the Records.”

  “But there wasn’t much mention of timing,” Lorana said. She glanced toward Fiona as she added, “I think the Weyrs were trying to keep it a secret.”

  “With good reason, if Tullea is anything to go by!” M’tal agreed.

  “Speaking of secrets,” Lorana said, glancing toward Kindan and M’tal, “when were you going to tell me that we don’t have enough dragons?”

  “Lorana, that’s not fair,” Fiona rebuked her gently. “You’ve only just discovered the cure! Before that there was no poi
nt in worrying about our numbers.”

  Lorana ducked her head in acknowledgment.

  “So how many do we have?” Kindan asked.

  “We’ve forty plus two here,” Fiona said, looking around for a slate and, not finding one, gesturing for Bekka to get one. The young girl grinned at her, glad to be involved in the discussion, and raced off and back with the first slate she found. Fiona handed it back, saying, “This one has a recipe on it; I don’t think Shaneese will thank you if it’s erased.”

  Bekka’s next sojourn was longer but more productive: She returned followed by a small procession of weyrkids towing a large teaching slate.

  “Much better!” Fiona agreed as she erased the board with the duster and wrote down the names of the weyrs with columns for fighting strength and queens. She filled in Telgar first with 40 and 2.

  She had arranged the chart from northeast to southwest, so Telgar was in the middle. With Lorana’s aid they soon had it filled out:

  High Reaches 328 2

  Fort 156 1

  Telgar 40 2

  Igen 0 0

  Ista 307 2

  Benden 197 1

  Total 1028 8

  “We should have three thousand fighting dragons for a Pass,” Kindan said sourly. “And as many as thirty queens.”

  He turned to M’tal. “As soon as possible, I’d like to visit Master Zist and Verilan.”

  “This distribution is very uneven,” M’tal agreed. “We should have more dragons at Telgar; it’s central to Pern and has the extra burden of the Falls it inherited when Igen was abandoned.”

  “Fort’s weak, as well,” Fiona added in fairness to her old Weyr.

  “Perhaps we can get the Weyrleaders to meet soon and discuss this,” M’tal said thoughtfully.

  “I think that would be an excellent idea,” H’nez said. They turned to see him approaching from the Weyr Bowl, pulling off his wher-hide gloves and scarf. Behind him, in the Bowl, other riders returned from drill were dismounting and sending their dragons to their weyrs. He gave the group a tight smile as he continued, “I was thinking much the same thing myself.”

  He found a seat opposite M’tal and examined the chart silently for a long while.

  “Harper Kindan, Norik, am I right in recalling that the queens can be expected to rise twice a Turn and produce an average of twenty-eight eggs?” H’nez said, steepling his hands thoughtfully.

  “That sounds right from Records I’ve read,” Fiona told him, glancing at Norik and Kindan for any disagreement.

  “So this Turn we can expect—” H’nez paused as he did the sum in his head. “—the queens to produce at most four hundred and thirty-two weyrlings.”

  “I think—” Bekka piped up hesitantly, then spoke with greater speed as H’nez nodded for her to continue. “I think it’s four hundred and forty-eight, my lord.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” H’nez said after a moment’s thought. “Well summed.”

  “I did a lot of sums for my mother,” Bekka explained.

  “Four hundred and forty-eight,” H’nez repeated, absently waving Bekka back to silence.

  “And at least two Turns before they’re large enough to fight,” Fiona added warningly.

  “We could send them back to the past,” H’nez countered.

  “Where?” Fiona asked. “We’ve already used all the time at Igen.”

  H’nez frowned. “Well, couldn’t we just send them again?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” M’tal told him. “If we would do it, then it would already have happened at Igen back in time and we’d know that we’d done it already.”

  H’nez’s eyes widened in confusion.

  “It could only happen in a place where we wouldn’t have seen it already, H’nez,” Fiona told him. “It didn’t happen at Igen, or I would have met those riders from the future.” She added, “There’s only one past to go to.”

  “So we didn’t do it at Igen,” H’nez conceded with a mild irritation. “Where else could we do it?”

  “It’s not just location, it’s supplies,” Fiona said. H’nez gave her an inquiring look. “Three Turns, four hundred and forty-eight dragonets, riders, and there’d have to be others to care for them—that adds up to a lot of supplies. Where would they come from?”

  “You managed.”

  “That’s my point,” Fiona said. “We did manage and we were noticeable. Another group, nearly three times as large, would be even more noticeable. The only decent place to hide them would be a Weyr.”

  “Tullea hid at High Reaches,” H’nez pointed out.

  “Which means they couldn’t be there,” Fiona said. “Nor could they be at Benden, nor Fort, nor Igen, nor Telgar.”

  “That leaves Ista?”

  “I think that we can safely discount Ista, too,” M’tal said. “The island can only support so much, and Ista Weyr’s never been all that shorthanded. The difference would be observed, particularly by the traders.”

  “Traders can keep secrets,” H’nez pointed out, with a nod toward Shaneese and another for Fiona.

  “We could just ask them,” Lorana said. “If they’d done so, now’s the right time to tell us.”

  “Good point,” M’tal agreed, his face taking on the abstracted look of a rider communing with his dragon. “C’rion’s Nidanth tells me no.”

  He shrugged and said to H’nez, “Well, never mind, it was a good thought.”

  H’nez frowned. “Even with those extra four hundred fighting dragons, we’d still have only about half the dragons we’d need.”

  “And that’s ignoring casualties,” Norik added glumly. He looked at Kindan. “I don’t suppose you’ve determined the sort of casualties we can expect?”

  “I’ve an idea,” Kindan replied, “but most of our experience has been with the added danger of the illness.” He turned to M’tal. “I’d like to get with Verilan and see what the Records say.”

  “We have Records here,” Fiona reminded him. “And, in fact, I suspect our Records are more complete with regards to Weyr details—”

  “You’d be surprised, Fiona,” Kindan interrupted her with a grin. It was a moment before he noticed the reproachful looks of both M’tal and H’nez, and even then, it took him longer to realize their cause.

  “I mean, Weyrwoman,” he corrected himself, flushing in surprise. To Fiona, he apologized, “I’m sorry, but I still remember you as someone whose diapers I changed.”

  Fiona’s eyes flashed angrily even as the warmth seemed to vanish from the room.

  “Thank you, harper,” she told him coldly. “I still remember you as the one who couldn’t save my sister’s life.”

  But she was instantly contrite, even before M’tal’s exclamation: “By the First Egg, Kindan, it still surprises me that you can be such a dull-glow at times!”

  Fiona made a face and placed a hand on Kindan’s arm. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for,” she said even as she flinched at the anguish in his eyes. “I will never forget that I owe you my life.”

  “You’ve grown up,” Kindan said after a long, thoughtful silence. “I guess I haven’t adjusted to it, Weyrwoman.”

  “I’ve lived three Turns that you don’t know,” Fiona said, hoping to put the incident behind them. “I’ve not just thirteen Turns, I’ve nearer seventeen.”

  “I’ll try to remember,” Kindan said. He pursed his lips tightly in consideration before adding, “And I’ll try to remember that you’re not your sister.”

  “Again, I’m sorry,” Fiona said. “I can only guess how much you loved her.”

  “Perhaps,” H’nez suggested diplomatically, “we should examine the Records?”

  Fiona could almost kiss the man for his tact.

  They were surprised to hear voices as they climbed up the queens’ ledge and past the sleeping Talenth.

  “So you were the only girl?” Jeila’s voice could be heard clearly.

  “Fiona was there, too,” Terin said. “After a while, we had the traders s
taying with us—”

  “Really? In the Weyr?” Jeila sounded surprised and impressed. “You know, I’ve trader blood.”

  “Hush! Someone’s coming!”

  “It’s just us,” Fiona called as they entered her quarters. “We didn’t mean to interrupt. We’re going to the Records Room.”

  Terin groaned and explained to Jeila. “Anytime she goes into the Records Room it means trouble.”

  “Can I come?” Jeila asked, throwing off her blankets and sitting up.

  “Bekka?” Fiona said, cocking her head to the young weyrgirl. Bekka examined the older woman’s forehead for heat, took her pulse, and checked her eyes.

  “How do you feel?” she asked the young weyrwoman.

  “I feel tired but otherwise fine and a bit fidgety,” Jeila confessed. Fiona glanced at her sharply: She felt fidgety herself.

  “Well, you’re definitely not pregnant,” Bekka declared. Everyone turned to her in surprise. “It’s really all I know, now.”

  “Whether someone’s pregnant?”

  “My mother’s a midwife,” Bekka explained nonchalantly. “After a while, you just know.”

  Fiona saw the way Bekka’s eyes lingered on Lorana and how the older woman’s lips tightened in surprise. Fiona glanced toward M’tal and the bronze rider met her eyes with a slight, confirming nod of his own. The air went out of Fiona’s lungs with a finality that surprised her. He’d told her that Kindan and Lorana had formed a bond; why did it bother her so much now to see the truth?

  “Are the Rooms over there?” M’tal asked Fiona politely, rescuing her from another awkward moment.

  “Yes,” she said. “I haven’t had a chance to—”

  “Shaneese had them cleaned the other day, my lady,” Terin told her.

  “Perhaps I should stay here with Terin,” Lorana said. She glanced at Fiona. “I could see this box that your Tenniz left.”

  “Why don’t you go on,” Fiona called to the others. “I’d like to see this as well.”

  Kindan and Lorana exchanged a quick glance, after which Kindan nodded and followed the two bronze riders to the Records Room.