“How? Who? When?” Capiam’s terse questions to Moreta were hoarse whispers but so intense was his voice that it caused a hush and Desdra whirled to face him.
Shrugging off discretion with a nervous laugh, Moreta answered him. “How is walking down the roadway. Who is us, for I can count on your silence and that is as essential as needlethorn, and when has to be now, before I have time to reconsider this aberration.” She grinned in reckless glee. Knowing it was a dramatic gesture, but unable to resist, she pointed to the entrance just as B’lerion and Oklina entered. “Are you badly injured, B’lerion?” she said, hailing the bronze rider cheerfully and, in a lower voice to Capiam, “He can’t be that bad or he wouldn’t have risked between.”
“No, my shoulder was only dislocated,” the bronze rider replied diffidently, “but I can’t stand seeing the wings form without me. Pressen needed someone to bring Ruatha what we can spare from our stores, so I volunteered.” B’lerion did not look at Oklina, who was standing breathlessly beside him, but bowed with tacit sympathy to Alessan. “I have wanted to express—“ He broke off, sensing Alessan’s distress.
“There is something you can do to help, now that you’re handy,” Moreta said, and B’lerion gave her a startled look. She drew him to one side and explained the situation and made her audacious request.
“I concede,” he said, darting quick glances at Capiam and Alessan, “that the matter is urgent, even overwhelmingly so”—he spread the fingers of his uninjured hand in appeal—“but it is quite one thing, Moreta, to add a few more hours to a day, and a completely different matter to flit across months. You know very well that it’s damn dangerous!” He kept his reply low while trying to argue sense into her. Though B’lerion might often behave with apparent disregard for proprieties, he was far from careless and irresponsible.
“B’lerion, I know where we need to go, in both Ista and Nerat. I know when needlethorn is ripe to be harvested. The ging tree is always in bloom. I have seen the rainforest resemble a green face with a thousand dark-rimmed eyes—”
“Highly poetic, Moreta, but not exactly the guide I’d need.”
“But it is a when. And to get the proper coordinates we’ve only to check the autumnal position of the Red Star. Alessan would have the charts. It’s rising farther and farther west. One only has to calculate the autumnal degree.” She could see that that argument did much to reassure B’lerion.
“I had not really expected to spend my free afternoon harvesting needlethorn . . .” His protest was halfhearted as he came to a conclusion that Moreta hastily reinforced.
“We can spend as much time as we need there, B’lerion, and still harvest what is so desperately needed now. But we must go now. I have to be back at the Weyr for the end of Fall. Nabeth is equal to the feat.”
“Of course he is. But they’d know”—he jerked his thumb at the waiting group—“that we had traveled forward in time, Moreta.”
“Capiam and Desdra already know it’s possible.” She grinned at the expression on his face. “After all, the Healer Hall bred dragons.”
“So they did.” B’lerion recovered from his astonishment.
“We will also have to use the ability on the day the vaccine is distributed.”
B’lerion blinked wildly, glancing about him, but his gaze fell more regularly on Oklina’s figure and Moreta began to relax. “I could, actually, see the Weyrs condoning that application, Moreta.”
“They do not need to know we have taken time today. Who knows you’ve been here?”
“Pressen and that lad out there.”
“I’ll send M’barak off on an errand. Surely we can expect silence from Oklina, so that gives us a working party of six. We must make the time, and take it, B’lerion. Weyr, hold, and hall cannot sustain a second epidemic.”
“I have to concede that, Moreta.” B’lerion looked out over the debris strewn in the roadway and fields. “The change here is staggering.” He grasped her hands tightly, his grin giving her the assent she required. “I’ll have Nabeth speak to Orlith. If she agrees, what difference would a few moments make among friends?”
“Tell Orlith it’s for the runners. They deserve our help.”
“You and your runners!”
When Moreta outlined her plan to Capiam, Desdra, and Alessan, she received startled demurrals from each one that they didn’t have the time to join the expedition.
“Master Capiam, it takes no time from now, today, this hour, to do what I have in mind,” she replied to their protests with vexed severity. “Alessan, you can surely arrange matters in your Hold for an hour’s absence. It will take longer than that for the cart to collect Dag and the men to herd the mares and foals down. What will you do? Watch bottles spin? The risk I fear is a breach of discretion about the entire project. Capiam and Desdra already know about the dragons’ ability, and they earnestly require the needlethorn. I know I can count on Ruathan honor to respect dragonrider privacy. B’lerion is fortuitously here, willing and able. Nabeth is well able to carry six of us and, in a day’s hard harvesting, we will accomplish what is necessary to insure the plague does not spread across the continent again. No one else will be the wiser. And that is also essential!”
“Six?” Alessan asked into the thoughtful pause.
“It is your sister’s company B’lerion seeks.”
Desdra chuckled. Capiam grinned after he considered that development. Alessan reacted in surprise and then with dour amusement.
“You mentioned time paradox, Moreta,” Capiam began.
“That would not apply to us in this venture, so long as none of us return to Ista on the day the ging trees flower.”
“Highly unlikely,” Capiam agreed with a humorous grimace.
“The ravines I have in mind can only be reached from a high cliff. I harvested there many Turns while I was still at Ista.”
Alessan hesitated a moment longer, his eyes straying from Follen to the men waiting outside with saddled runners and the beast in the cart shafts.
“Another minor but extremely important detail, Alessan,” Desdra said. “Your beasthold is well kept, but not exactly the proper environment if one is producing quantities of a serum which must be free of contamination.” She indicated the droppings of the lame beast.
“A wise precaution,” Alessan agreed, then smiled wryly as he added. “The removal should take not much more than an hour. What supplies should we bring with us?”
“Carry-nets,” Moreta replied quickly. “The rainforests will provide everything else we’re likely to need.”
B’lerion came striding back, a grin wide on his face.
“Nabeth found it unusual to talk to two queens at once but you have permission to go and not be long about it. I sent M’barak off to High Reaches Hold for more of Master Clargesh’s apprentice bottles. And there’ll be more at every major hold in the west, I shouldn’t wonder. Clargesh was so proud of them. That will keep him busy.”
“Good, B’lerion, now find a jacket for Oklina to wear.”
“She is rather special in an understated way, isn’t she. Clever of Arith to notice. No wonder I’ve been attracted to her.”
“Wait till the egg has hardened, my dear friend. Each one splits in its own way.”
Capiam and Desdra were directing Follen and Tuero to reposition the vaccine manufactory. When Alessan returned from dispatching the men to collect Dag and the runnerherds, he suggested the vaccine apparatus be moved to the main Hall of the Hold since most of its patients could safely be moved to the upper storeys or their own cotholds. Moreta helped Alessan secure all the carry-nets hanging from the walls of the beasthold, lashing them into one large bundle. By the time B’lerion and Oklina returned from the Hold, the other four were impatient with the delay.
“Had to find the charts, my dear Moreta. I am not jumping without a more positive coordinate than ‘a green face with a thousand dark-rimmed eyes.’ We’ll have to arrive at dawn to be perfectly certain, for the moons will both be v
isible then.” He brandished his fist to signal success and readiness.
As they began to mount the stalwart Nabeth, Moreta turned to Alessan.
“Tuero’s watching us. Has he any idea?”
Alessan moved his hands about her waist more than was strictly required to heave her toward B’lerion, who was already seated on Nabeth’s neck.
“One can’t keep a harper from having ideas, but he should be under the impression that we are going to see Master Balfor at the Beasthold about the animal vaccine. Moving everything up to the main Hall presently will occupy even his active mind.”
Then all were aboard. B’lerion had insisted that Oklina ride before him, where he could secure her with his fighting straps. Moreta he positioned behind him to help direct Nabeth. Alessan rode behind Moreta, then Desdra and, finally, Capiam as the most experienced of the other passengers.
Orlith. I shan’t be long but I must go, Moreta said.
So Nabeth has told me. Orlith sounded unconcerned.
“Moreta!” B’lerion’s voice and a hard nudge of his right elbow interrupted her private communication. “I’ve got the moons and the Red Star visualized. Facing northwest, the Red Star is horizon, Belior half full ascending, and the quarter horn of Timor mid-heaven. You will please concentrate on how Ista looks with those ging trees in bloom. Think of them as now and in Ista, and the heat of autumn and the smell of those rotting rainforests.”
Nabeth was excited but his launch had the smooth precision of the experienced dragon and did not even sway his passengers as he took off.
Moreta had become accustomed to two dragon presences in her mind; now a third one, a lighter one but by no means weaker, added itself. She conjured the image of Ista’s southern palisades in their autumnal finery, the Red Star balefully glowering above the western sea, Belior half full and rising, and the quarter horn of the smaller Timor demurely above. She held that vision locked in her mind as she felt Nabeth take them between. She wanted to make use of her usual litany, but the blossom eyes of the ging tree and the heaven-held guides were sufficient comfort. Then, fearfulness mounting to an incredible pressure in heart and lungs, they were suddenly in the warm air, high over Ista’s rocky coast, the creamy eyes of the ging tree blossoms seeking the early-morning sun just rising in the east. B’lerion let out a whoop and Oklina a tiny scream. This time it was Alessan who clung to Moreta for reassurance.
Nabeth immediately noticed the rocky ledge where Moreta had often landed Orlith to harvest needlethorn. It was high above the incoming tide that battered diligently at the rock palisade. Nabeth landed as competently as he had taken off, his wing strokes flattening the thick brush that clung to the very edge of the cliff.
“Needlethorn will be down that slope,” Moreta called as they prepared to dismount.
B’lerion made an ostentatious descent from Nabeth, causing the dragon to turn his head with a startled exclamation.
“You could have broken your other arm, B’lerion,” Moreta said, but she had to laugh because he’d succeeded. She explained to Oklina the proper and safer way of dismounting a tall dragon, and Nabeth obediently lifted his foreleg.
“Are we really in the future?” Capiam asked as Alessan handed out the cargo nets. He looked about him with an expression of awe.
“We’d better be,” B’lerion said, glowering with mock ferocity at Moreta before taking another speculative glance at the three guides in the lightening sky.
“We are,” she replied as calmly as she could, for she was becoming increasingly aware of a curious sense of disorientation within her—a sensation of weightlessness and a growing euphoria, neither of which she had ever experienced before. Action would dispel such contradictory agitations. She pointed down the slope. “We’ll go this way and we’ll know soon enough if we find needlethorn. I harvested here myself last year, with Ista’s permission since they gather on more accessible slopes.” And she led the way.
The ravine was ten or more dragon-lengths from the cliff edge, and Moreta was suddenly filled with apprehension. She hadn’t cleared the bushes completely last autumn, but then the moons had been in a different conjunction and the Red Star was higher in the west. No one was more relieved than she to break onto the lip of the ravine and see needlebushes thick with brown spikes. Above them the rainforest closed over the sky. The ravine, winding away to the north and the south, had been caused by an ancient earthquake, and the shallow soil over solid rock could not support many of the lush rainforest plants though creepers draped its sides, keeping well clear of needlethorn bushes. Alessan commented on that.
“The needlethorn is omnivorous,” she said. “The spines are poisonous through spring and summer. They’ll suck the juice from anything that comes near them until the autumn when the thick stem of the plant has stored enough moisture and food, vegetable or animal. The vine grows during the winter and has to shed its old corona or leave too many unprotected gaps. I understand that the flesh is tasty.”
Oklina shuddered, but Desdra went down on one knee by the specimen they were examining.
“During spring and summer the bush has an odor to attract snakes and insects. The hollow spines suck essential juices from the creatures the plant impales, and also rainwater. See, on that one there, the top is scarred. Some animal broke off the spines. That’ll make it easier to harvest.”
“You said the spines are poisonous.” B’lerion was not too keen to start picking.
“In spring and summer, but right now the poison has dried up. See where new thorn buds are capping the scarred one? It’s the new growth that forces the spines off. So all you do is—” With a sweep of her hand starting in the scar, she cleared a swath of needlethorns, holding the handful for all to see. “Very simple, but don’t get too ambitious. Clear a small area first to give your hand room. You don’t want to tick off the point and you want to avoid the fine hairs on the skin of the plant. They can cause an irritation and possibly an inflammation that would be rather difficult for us to explain.”
“We can’t transport them like that,” Capiam said, looking at Moreta’s handful.
“No. We have to wrap them in the fronds of the ging tree. Slice the edge, and sap from the frond provides its own glue. Very handy, and the fronds are thick and spongy enough to cushion and protect the needlethorn. It takes only a moment to strip a bush, so it might be more efficient if we paired off, one to pick and the other to pack.”
“I’ll pack for you, Moreta,” Alessan suggested, and, taking his belt knife out of its sheath, went off to hack down the nearest ging frond.
“A grand idea,” B’lerion said, his eyes dancing as he laid a possessive hand on Oklina’s shoulder. “If you don’t mind working with a one-handed man?”
“My dear journeywoman, pick or pack?” Capiam asked in high good humor as he bowed to Desdra. “Though we can switch off as the whim takes us.”
“I daresay I’ve picked more often than you, good Master Capiam.” She laughed as she led Capiam off down the ravine. “You’d best see how it’s done.”
“Take the tenderer fronds, Alessan,” Moreta cautioned. “They’ve more sap and suppleness.”
He had cut several, muttering about doing hatchet work with a table knife, when Moreta showed him how to break the frond off at the stem of the tree with a quick downward jerk. She laid the needlethorns on the petiole that was sufficiently concave to form a bed, and, deftly cutting away the excess leaf, she closed the needlethorns in a tough, tight little envelope, sealing the ends with the sap of the severed frond.
“No wonder you said we’d have everything in the rainforest. It’s easy once you get the trick of it.”
“That’s all there is to it. Just a knack.” She grinned up at him. “That package has roughly two hundred needlethorns. I tried to count as I picked but my concentration is abominable. Time distortion, I expect. Some of the bigger bushes will have thousands of spikes, each big enough for the largest runners on the continent.”
Alessan caught her hand
and she stopped her babbling, suddenly shy. They were alone, even though Desdra’s amiable taunting of Capiam for his timorous dexterity and B’lerion’s cheerful encouragement of Oklina were audible.
“You said that we could remain here as long as it took to complete the harvest,” Alessan said quietly. He was kneeling beside her now. “And return with no more than an hour elapsed there . . .” His eyes searched her averted face, and his hands captured hers before she could reach for more needlethorns. “Can we not make a little time for ourselves?”
Oklina’s delighted laugh rang out, followed by B’lerion’s startled curse.
“Damn things bite!”
Moreta grinned at the outrage in the bronze rider’s voice and her eyes met Alessan’s, saw his amused reaction. She lifted her hands to Alessan’s face, her fingers tracing the lines that tension and anxiety had etched on a young man’s countenance. Merely touching him in light intimacy evoked a response in her body, and she swayed quite willingly into his arms as they kissed. The resurgence of her own sensuality dispelled the last vestige of restraint and she slid one arm about his neck, the other clasping his strong hard body against hers as they knelt together by the needlethorn bush they had been stripping.
“What more can you expect of a one-handed man?” B’lerion demanded in a loud complaint.
Moreta and Alessan broke apart, but the bronze rider was still out of sight, if audible. Alessan grinned for their discomfiture, expressing regret at the parting.
“It will be far too hot to work midday, Alessan, and I have no doubts that we can find some privacy then.”
“Clever of you to bring mixed pairs, wasn’t it?”
“One is always more sorry for the things one didn’t do than the things one has done.” Moreta spoke with mock severity, and Alessan quickly silenced her the most effective way.
“Personally, I don’t like it when it’s too hot,” Alessan was saying, releasing her lips to give her eyes and cheeks and ears and throat equal attention. An injudicious movement brought his arm in contact with the needlethorn bush and he spun away, dragging Moreta with him. “They really do bite, don’t they?” He rubbed his arm where a fine row of bloody beads rose on the skin.
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