Moreta

by Anne McCaffrey

  Leri comes. Relief marked Orlith’s manner. She knows.

  “Leri comes here?” Moreta tried to sit up, but gasped at the dizziness the sudden movement occasioned. She lay where she had flopped as she listened to the approach of shuffling steps and the tap of Leri’s cane. “Leri, you shouldn’t—”

  “Why not?” Leri projected her voice from the larger weyr. “Good morning, Orlith. I’m one of the brave. I’ve lived my life so I’m not afraid of this ‘viral influence,’ as the Healers have styled it.” Leri pushed back the bright door curtain, peering brightly at the younger woman. “Ah, there—you have color in your face today.” A covered pot and the thong of a flask swung from her left hand. Two more containers had been stuck in her belt to allow her to use her right hand for her stick. As Leri entered the room, Moreta noticed that the old woman’s gait seemed more fluid. She deposited her oddments on the chest that was now drawn to Moreta’s bedside and then allowed herself to drop onto the space by Moreta’s feet. “There now!” she said with great satisfaction, tucking her gnarled stick beside her. “Yes, you should do very well.”

  “Something smells good,” Moreta said, inhaling the aroma from the pot.

  “A special porridge I concocted. Made them bring me supplies and a brazier so I could nurse you myself. Nesso’s finally down with it and out of my hair for a bit. Gorta’s taken charge—rather well, I might add, in case you’re interested.” Leri looked slyly at Moreta as she spooned porridge in two bowls. “I’ll join you since it’s my breakfast time as well, and this stuff is as good for me as it is for you. By the way, I made Orlith eat this morning before she wasted away to nothing but the egg-shells. She had four fat bucks and a wherry. She was very hungry! Now, don’t look dismayed. You’ve scarcely been able to do for yourself, let alone her. She didn’t feel neglected. She minds me very well, Orlith does, since she knows me so well. After all, Holth laid her! So she did as we told her and she’s feeling better. She had to eat, Moreta. Her next stop is the Hatching Ground, and we had to wait till you recovered for that. Won’t be long now.”

  Moreta did some swift adding. “She’s early. She shouldn’t clutch for another five or six days.”

  “There has been some stress. Don’t fuss. Eat. The sooner you’ve got your strength back, the better all round.”

  “I’m much stronger today. Yesterday . . .” Moreta smiled ruefully. “How have you managed?”

  “Very easily.” Leri was serenely smug. “As I said, I had them bring me a brazier and supplies. I made your potions myself, I’ll have you know! With Orlith listening to every breath you made and relaying the information to Holth, I’ll wager you couldn’t have been better cared for if Master Capiam had been at your bedside.”

  “Orlith says he’s discovered a cure?”

  “A vaccine, he calls it. But I’ll not have him after your blood.”

  “Why should he be?” Moreta was startled and Orlith gave a bellow at Leri’s protectiveness.

  “He takes the blood of people who have recovered and makes a serum to prevent it in others. Says it’s an ancient remedy. Can’t say I like the notion at all!” Leri’s short upright figure shuddered. “He practically attacked K’lon when he reported for conveying.” Leri gave a chuckle and smiled with bland satisfaction. “K’lon was doing too much flitting between on Healer Hall errands. I’ve appointed weyrlings to the duty. Didn’t like to but . . . they’ve followed orders well. Oh, there’s been so much happening I hardly know where to begin!”

  Beneath Leri’s glib manner, Moreta could discern worry and fatigue, but the older Weyrwoman seemed to be thriving on the crisis.

  “Have there been more . . . Weyr deaths?” Moreta asked, bracing herself for the answer.

  “No!” Leri gave a defiant nod of her head and another pleased smile. “There shouldn’t have been any! People weren’t using the wits they were born with. You know how greens and blues panic? Well, they did just that when their riders got so sick and weak, instead of supporting them. In fact, there might be something to Jallora’s theory that the one caused the other. . . .” Leri stared off for a moment in deep thought. “Jallora’s the journeywoman healer sent with two apprentices from the Healer Hall. So we keep in touch with the sick riders. You were very ill, you know. Exhausted, I think, after the Gather—no sleep, all the excitement, then Fall and that repair on Dilenth. He’s fine, but Orlith is so strong and her need of you so great that you hadn’t a chance of dying! You and Orlith as a healing team were the inspiration”—Leri fixed Moreta with a mock stern gaze—“so we just told the other Weyrwomen to have their queen dragons keep watch on the sick and not let the riders die. It isn’t as if the Weyrs had the crowding that’s causing so much concern in the Holds and Halls. It’s ridiculous for dragon-riders to die of this vicious viral influence.”

  “How many are ill, if the Weyrs must consolidate to fly Fall?”

  Leri grimaced. “Steel yourself! Nearly two thirds of every Weyr except High Reaches is out of action. Between the plague and injuries, we can only just manage to send our two wings to cover Fall.”

  “But you said Master Capiam had a cure?”

  “A preventive. And not enough of this vaccine yet.” Leri spoke with an angry regret. “So the Weyrwomen decided that the High Reaches’ riders must be vaccinated”—she stumbled over the unfamiliar term—“since we must all look to S’ligar and Falga. As more of the serum is prepared, other Weyrs will be vaccinated. Right now Capiam has the drums burning to find more people who have recovered from this viral influence. First dragonriders”—Leri ticked off each name on a finger—“then Healers, then Lords Holder and other Craftsmasters, except for Tirone, which, I think no matter how Tolocamp objects, is sensible.”

  “Tolocamp hasn’t been ill?”

  “Tolocamp won’t leave his apartment.”

  “You know a great deal about what’s happening for a woman who stays in her own weyr most of the time!”

  Leri chuckled. “K’lon reports to me! Whenever, that is, Capiam hasn’t his exclusive services. Fortunately blues have good appetites and, although Capiam maintains that dragons, wherries, and watchwhers can’t contract the plague, dragons had best eat from stock isolated in their own weyrs. So K’lon brings Rogeth home to eat. Daily.”

  “Dragons don’t eat daily.”

  “Blue dragons who must flit between twice hourly do.” Leri gave Moreta a stern glance. “I had a note from Capjam, could barely read his script, lauding K’lon’s dedication—”

  “A’murry?”

  “Recovering. Very close thing but Holth was in constant touch with Granth once I realized how vital dragon support could be. L’bol lost both his sons and he grieves constantly. M’tani’s impossible, but then he has fought Thread longer than most and sees this incident as a personal affront. If it weren’t for K’dren and S’ligar, I think we’d have had trouble with F’gal: He’s lost heart, too.”

  “Leri, there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “Yes, dear girl” Leri patted Moreta’s arm gently before she filled a glass from one of her flasks. “Take a sip of this,” she said peremptorily, handing it to her.

  Obediently Moreta did, and she was about to ask what on earth Leri had concocted, when she felt Orlith’s presence in her mind, like a buffer.

  “Your family’s hold . . .” Leri’s voice thickened and she avoided Moreta’s gaze, staring instead at the bright central design of the door curtain. “. . . was very hard hit.”

  Leri’s voice habitually broke but that time it was pronounced, and Moreta peered at the older woman’s averted face. Tears were running unheeded down the round cheek nearest her.

  “There’d been no drum message in two days. The harper at Keroon heights made the trip downriver . . .” Leri’s fingers tightened on Moreta’s arm. “There was no one alive.”

  “No one?” Moreta was stunned. Her father’s hold had supported nearly three hundred people, and another ten families had cots nearby on the river bluffs
.

  “Drink that down!”

  Numbly Moreta complied. “No one alive? Not even someone out with the bloodstock?”

  Leri shook her head slowly. “Not even the bloodstock!” Her admission was almost a whisper. Moreta could barely grasp the staggering tragedy. Obscurely, it was the deaths of the bloodstock that she regretted the most. Twenty Turns ago she had acquiesced to her family’s wish that she respond to Search. She regretted their deaths, certainly, for she had been fond of her mother, and several of her brothers and sisters, and one paternal uncle; she had enormous respect for her father. The runnerbeasts—all the bloodstock that had been so carefully bred for the eight generations her family had the runnerhold—that loss cut more deeply.

  Orlith crooned gently, and her dragon’s compassion was subtly reinforced by a second pressure. Moreta felt the terrible weight of her grief being eased by an anodyne of love and affection, of total understanding for the complexities of her sorrow, of a commitment to share and ease the multiple pressures of bereavement.

  Tears streamed down Moreta’s cheeks until she felt drained but curiously detached from her body and mind, floating in an unusual sensation of remoteness. Leri had put something very powerful in that wine of hers, she thought with an odd clarity. Then she noticed that Leri was watching her intently, her eyes incredibly sad and tired, every line of her many Turns etched in her round small face.

  “No stock at all?” Moreta asked finally.

  “Would young runners have been wintering on the plains? The harper couldn’t check. Didn’t know where and there hasn’t been time to send a sweeprider.”

  “No, no. Of course there wouldn’t be time . . .” Moreta could quite see that impossibility with the present demands on available riders but she accepted the hopeful suggestion. “Yearlings and gravid runners would be in the winter pasture. Somebody of the Hold will have been tending them and survive.”

  The comforting presences in her mind wrapped her with love and reassurances. We are here!

  Is Holth with you, Orlith? Moreta asked.

  Of course, was the reply from two, now distinct to her, sources.

  Oh! How kind! Moreta’s mind drifted, oddly divorced from her body, until she became aware of Leri’s anxious expression. “I’m all right. As Holth will tell you. Did you know she speaks to me?”

  “Yes, she’s got rather used to checking in on you,” Leri said with a kind and serene smile.

  “What did you put in that wine? I feel . . . disembodied.”

  “That was rather the effect I hoped to achieve. Fellis juice, numbweed, and one of the euphorics. Just to cushion the shock.”

  “Are there more?” From the wavering of Leri’s smile, Moreta knew that there were. “You might as well give me the whole round tale now while I’m so remote. My family’s hold . . . cannot have been unique.” Leri shook her head. “Ruatha Hold?” That would follow the line of catastrophe, Moreta thought.

  “They have been badly hit . . .”

  “Alessan?” She asked about him first because his would be the worst loss there, before he’d even had time to enjoy being a Lord Holder.

  “No, he’s recovering, but the decimation among the Gather guests—his brothers, almost all the racers—”

  “Dag?”

  “I don’t have many names. Igen Weyr and Hold have been shockingly depleted. Lord Fitatric, his Lady, half their children . . .”

  “By the Egg, isn’t there any place spared?”

  “Yes, in fact, Bitra, Lemos, Nerat, Benden, and Tillek have had relatively few cases, and those were isolated promptly to avoid contagion. Those Holds have been magnificent in sending people to the stricken.”

  “Why?” Moreta clenched her fists, hunching herself together in a sudden convulsion that was more mental than physical. “Why? When we’re so near the end of the Pass? It’s not fair so close to an Interval. Did you know”—Moreta’s voice was hard and intense—“that my family started out after the end of the last Pass? My bloodline started then? And now—just before the next Interval—it’s wiped out!”

  “That isn’t known for certain, if what you say of wintering stock applies. Do consider that possibility. That probability.” The dragons reinforced Leri’s optimism.

  Moreta’s outburst passed almost as swiftly as it had consumed her. She lay back, limp, her eyelids suddenly heavy, her body flaccid. Leri seemed to be retreating from her though she was conscious that the Weyrwoman still sat on the bed.

  “That’s right. You sleep now,” Leri said in a gentle croon echoed by two dragon voices.

  “I can’t stay awake!” Moreta mumbled and, sighing, relaxed into a potion-induced sleep.

  Ruatha Hold, Present Pass, 3.16.43

  K’lon was intensly relieved when Journeyman Healer Follen, his lips pulled down in a sorrowful line, emerged from Lord Alessan’s apartment. The death-stench of the cold corridor bothered K’lon, inured though he was to plague-ridden holds.

  “I’ve vaccinated the sister and the harper and did that other poor fellow as well. Lord Alessan says that more patients may be found along this corridor, but they did manage to clear the upper levels. I don’t know how the man has managed. I’d no idea it would be so bad or I’d’ve insisted that Master Capiam give us more serum.”

  “There isn’t that much to distribute, you know.”

  “Don’t I just!”

  Follen gave K’lon a thin smile. The previous evening the blue rider had conveyed the journeyman to South Boll Hold when the drums had reported survivors of the plague. As Capiam’s timely visit to South Boll and his recommendations to its healers had in fact prevented the plague from spreading as insidiously as it had in midcontinent, it was only just that all the survivors donate blood for serum. Lord Ratoshigan had been a donor though the ever-irascible Lord Holder had been under the distinct impression—adroitly fostered by blue rider and journeyman—that the blood-taking was part of the prescribed treatment.

  “Donations can be taken here,” Follen went on, combing his hair with his fingers. “I’ll give them some of Desdra’s brew first, but judging from Lord Alessan’s tally, the Hold will be able”—Follen gave a dour snort—“to supply those left here. Do ask Lord Shadder if he can find a few more volunteers. I’m sure we can save many of those with secondary infections if we just have enough nurses. We’ve got to try. This Hold has been devastated.”

  K’lon acknowledged that with a slow nod of his head. The desolation and ruin of Ruatha Hall had appalled the relief party. K’lon and three Benden green dragons had conveyed Follen, an apprentice healer, and six volunteers from Benden Hold. The spectacle that greeted the party emerging from between over the Hold was the worst K’lon had seen. The monstrous burial mounds in the river field, the wide circle of charnel fires near the race flats, the abandoned tents built on Gather-stall frames had indicated the magnitude of Ruatha’s attempt to survive. The sad tatters of the gaudy Gather flags, hanging from the upper tiers of the closely shuttered windows, had struck K’lon as grotesque, a mockery of the gaiety that was Gathering in the midst of the tragedy that had befallen the Hold. Bits and pieces of trash skittered across the forlorn dancing square and the roadway while a kettle swung noisily on its tripod over a long-dead fire, its ladle banging in time to gusts of the bitter-cold wind.

  “Lady Pendra?” K’lon began.

  A quick shake of Follen’s head made it unnecessary for K’lon to continue. “No, nor any of the daughters he brought to Ruatha Gather. At that, Lord Tolocamp comes out better than Lord Alessan. He’s got but the one sister left.”

  “Of all Leef’s get?”

  “Lord Alessan frets about her. And his runners. More of them survived than guests, I think. You speak to him,” Follen suggested, clapping the blue rider on the shoulder before making off up the dark corridor to the next room.

  K’lon squared his shoulders. In the last few days, he had learned how to keep his face from showing his emotions, how to sound not exactly cheerful, which would ha
ve been offensive, but certainly positive and encouraging. After all, with the vaccine, there was the hope of mitigating the plague and preventing the disease in those not yet infected. He knocked politely at the heavy door but entered without waiting for an acknowledgment.

  Lord Alessan was kneeling by a toss-mattress, bathing the face of the occupant. There was another makeshift bed along the wall leading into the sleeping quarters. K’lon suppressed an inadvertent exclamation at the change in the young Lord Holder. Alessan might regain lost weight and his skin its healthy color, but his face would always bear the prematurely deep lines and the resigned expression that he turned toward the blue rider.

  “You are many times welcome, K’lon, rider of Rogeth.” Alessan inclined his head in gratitude and then folded the dampened cloth before placing it on the forehead of the man he was tending. “You may tell Master Tirone that, without the invaluable assistance and ingenuity of his harpers, we would be worse off at Ruatha than we are. Tuero here was magnificent. The journeyman healer—what was his name?” Alessan drew a shaky hand across his forehead as if to coax the identity back.

  “Follen.”

  “Strange, I can remember so many names . . .” Alessan broke off and stared out the window. K’lon knew the Lord Holder could see the burial mounds and wondered if the distraught man meant the names of those who lay beneath the tumbled soil of the mass graves. “It takes you that way, lying in bed, waiting to . . .” Alessan gave himself a shake and, gripping the top of the table, pulled himself slowly to his feet. “You have brought relief. Follen says that Tuero here, Deefer”—he gestured wearily toward the other bed—“and my sister will recover. He even apologized that he hadn’t more . . . vaccine? Is that what it’s called? Yes, well—”

  “Sit down, Lord Alessan—”

  “Before I fall down?” Alessan gave a slight smile with his bloodless lips, but he eased himself into the chair, sighing heavily, from a weariness that went beyond any physical fatigue.