“A good point,” Kindan conceded. “But watch-whers have been around fire-lizards as much as the dragons have, and I’ve not heard of any watch-wher getting sick.”
“Could they be immune?” Lorana wondered. The idea surprised her—everyone knew that watch-whers and dragons were related.
K’tan had zeroed in on the group and joined it just in time to hear the last exchange between Kindan and Lorana. “If the watch-whers are immune, could they fight Thread?” he asked.
Kindan considered the idea for only a moment before shaking his head. “Watch-whers are nocturnal, and Thread falls during the day.”
“It sometimes falls at night, as well,” K’tan disagreed. Something about his comment troubled Lorana, but she couldn’t determine what.
M’tal’s next comment drove the thought from her mind. “Watch-whers might well be immune, but that might not stop them from carrying the illness. Bringing a watch-wher here might bring more illness, too.”
Kindan nodded in agreement. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He turned to M’tal. “You’re right, Weyrleader, this doesn’t seem to be a good time.”
“A pity,” K’tan murmured.
M’tal’s brows creased in thought. “Perhaps we can use Nuella after all.” The others looked at him questioningly. “She met Lorana at the Hatching, so perhaps she and Nuella could share images with the other watch-whers,” M’tal said. He shrugged. “It wouldn’t mean that Lorana could contact individual watch-whers, but they might be able to contact her.”
“That’s a great idea,” Kindan exclaimed. “We’ll get right on it.” He grabbed Lorana by the arm. “Come on, Lorana, let’s get out of this crowd.”
M’tal waved them away with a look that was nearly cheerful. “That’s one more thing off of my mind,” he said to K’tan.
“It is, Weyrleader,” K’tan agreed dubiously.
M’tal shot him a look.
“It’s another thing on Lorana’s mind,” K’tan explained.
“Is she overworked?”
“We’re all overworked,” K’tan said. “You more than most, particularly with Breth gone. But there’s a mating flight soon, and Tullea rides the senior queen.”
M’tal gave the healer an encouraging gesture.
“And I worry,” K’tan continued, “that Tullea might not appreciate having Lorana’s abilities become so necessary to the success of the Weyr.”
M’tal’s lips thinned as he slowly nodded in agreement. “She hasn’t been the same since High Reaches closed their Weyr, three Turns ago.”
“Perhaps she had a lover there,” K’tan mused.
M’tal snorted. “If she did, I’d never heard of it.” He shook his head. “From what I’ve heard, they still take their tithes, but that’s all.”
K’tan cocked his head at the Weyrleader. “Do you suppose they guessed about the illness?”
M’tal frowned thoughtfully, then shook his head. “I can’t see how,” he said. “D’vin and Sonia were always a bit odd, maybe they just got . . . odder.”
K’tan shrugged in turn. “Well, I need to get back to the Records,” he said, turning toward the First Stairs.
“Speaking of overwork,” M’tal quipped. The Weyr healer flashed a smile over his shoulder, and the Weyrleader waved him away genially.
“And there are no fire-lizards left at all?” Masterharper Zist asked Harper Jofri. The harper nodded.
“I’d heard that the Weyrs have banned them,” said Bemin, Lord Holder of Fort Hold. “But I don’t think any were left by then.”
He had lost his marvelous brown Jokester. After the Plague had carried off his wife and his sons, the loss of his fire-lizard had been easier to bear, if still painful, but his real distress had come in comforting his young only surviving child, Fiona, on her loss of her gold fire-lizard, Fire.
“I’ve heard some people say that the dragonriders were jealous and bothered by the fire-lizards,” Nonala, the Harper Hall’s voice craftmaster added.
“I think it’s mostly grumbling,” Jofri said. “When people are upset and worried, some like to complain.”
“Nonetheless, it is a very real concern,” Bemin said. The others looked at him. “Holders and crafters pay their tithes to the Weyrs and wonder what they get for it.”
He drew another breath to continue, but the Masterharper suddenly raised his hand and the others cocked their heads, listening.
“Dragons? Dead?” Nonala gasped as the drum message rolled in.
“Ista, Benden, Telgar,” Jofri added in a whisper.
“Benden’s queen,” Zist said, with a pained look on his face.
Bemin looked from one to the other as they spoke. It was a moment before he could find his voice. But when he did, it was to declare with the heartfelt pain of a father who has lost children, of a husband who has lost a wife, of someone who knew something of the pain the bereft riders must be feeling, and—last of all—as the Lord Holder of Pern’s oldest Hold. “Whatever I can do, or my Hold, you—or the Weyrs—have only to ask.”
At lunch the next day, Kindan bounded into the Records Room to tell Lorana breathlessly, “Fort Weyr has reported black dust!”
Lorana was up on her Records enough to realize that black dust was what happened when the weather was too cold and Thread froze on the way to the ground.
“When?” she asked.
“M’tal says that K’lior’s watch riders noticed it just around dinnertime—that would make it around lunchtime here,” Kindan said. “M’tal says we can expect Thread to fall from the shoreline over the Weyr and on to Bitra nine days from now.”
Lorana stifled a groan and buried herself back in her Records.
The morning bustle was louder than usual nine days later as the Weyr waited for its first Threadfall. Lorana had just managed to get Salina back into a fellis-laced, troubled sleep when the alert came: Thread falls! Thread falls at the shoreline!
The alert woke Arith out of a fretful sleep and Lorana spent precious moments calming her beloved dragon before she could race down the stairs to help.
“Go back to your rest,” M’tal said when he saw her. “Tullea will handle this.”
Lorana’s eyes widened in surprise at the suggestion, for Tullea was nowhere to be seen. She waited until a disheveled B’nik appeared beside an even more disheveled Tullea, whose mouth smirked at the expressions of the other dragonriders. As their faces remain fixed in disapproval, Tullea’s smirk changed to a pout.
“We were just getting to bed,” she said defensively.
“Thread falls at Upper Bitra,” M’tal told her. He looked past her to B’nik, “Is your wing ready?”
J’tol, B’nik’s wingsecond, appeared beside him. “Just ready now, Weyrleader,” the sturdy brown rider said, his gaze focused directly between the elder M’tal and the younger B’nik, as if casting doubt on whom the title should be conferred.
M’tal chose to ignore the taunt. “Good, good,” he said, moving toward Gaminth as the bronze glided to a landing beside him. “We’ll form up at the Star Stones and go between on my coordinates.”
K’tan says that there are thirty-one dragons with the illness, Lorana heard Drith say to Gaminth. And they are spread throughout the wings.
Tell him that it can’t be helped, we’ll sort it out later, was the reply Gaminth relayed from M’tal.
Kindan, who had started laying out the healer’s medical supplies, saw Lorana wince and approached her. “What is it?”
“The sick dragons are flying, too,” she reported dully.
Far above them, over Benden’s Bowl, wings formed into Flights, and Flights arrayed themselves in attack formation. And then, in one instant, three hundred and fifty-eight dragons disappeared—between.
For over twenty Turns M’tal had led Benden Weyr. In all that time, he had had just one thought: to prepare for Thread. This day—now—was the culmination of all he had worked toward.
It was a disaster.
Three dragons failed to come out of between. The
ir loss cast an immediate pall on the fight.
Worse, it threw off the organization of the wings.
The teamwork that M’tal had drilled his riders so assiduously in maintaining fell apart before the first of the Thread arrived. Ruefully, M’tal reflected that he had not considered training his dragonriders in sustaining losses.
M’tal’s own wing had lost blue Carianth and his rider, G’niall.
“Close up!” he shouted. “Gaminth, tell them to close up.”
M’tal cast a glance ahead and up, toward where Thread should be falling momentarily, and then another at the dragons in his wing as they re-formed without the blue. M’tal had had the Weyr arrayed in a line of multiple V formations. Now, with Carianth gone, the V of his wing was shorter on the left than on the right.
“Thread!” M’tal heard W’ren cry from behind him. He turned, following W’ren’s arm, and saw them—up high, silvery, shimmery wisps floating in the morning sun. Gaminth let out a bellow, echoed triumphantly in challenge by all the dragons of Benden Weyr, and craned his neck back to M’tal for a mouthful of firestone. M’tal found that he already had some in his hands, not remembering when he pulled it out of his firestone sack, and fed it to the bronze without thinking. That much of the training worked, he thought with bitter satisfaction.
As one, the dragons and riders of Benden Weyr rose to meet the incoming Thread. In unison, the dragons belched their fiery breath into the sky. Gouts of flame met clumps of silvery Thread, and the Thread wilted, charred, and fell harmlessly to the ground below.
The ease of the destruction of the Thread elated M’tal and all the riders. The dragons roared and charged to assault the next wave of Thread.
And then everything unraveled. The first cry of a Thread-scored dragon seared M’tal’s ears like a hot poker, thankfully cut off as the dragon went between where the freezing cold would destroy the Thread.
Then another dragon went between, and another—and that one did not return.
M’tal issued sharp orders to his wingleaders to regroup, but try as they might, the increasing casualties meant that they never quite recovered from the initial disorder.
The battle against Thread turned more dangerous, desperate. Worse, Gaminth informed him that many of the dragons going between and not returning to the Fall had not returned to the Weyr, either.
The pain of that additional loss weighed heavily on the remaining riders. Those riding ill dragons responded by doing their best to avoid going between—often with worse results. Four, then five dragons were Threaded at once and went between so terribly Thread scored that M’tal knew nothing could be done to save them.
And then it was over. The Thread tapered off until there were no more in the sky.
M’tal, struggling to create a tally of dead, injured, and able dragons found himself trembling with relief, rage, sorrow, and overexertion.
Have L’tor send out sweepriders, order K’tan back to the Weyr, and let’s go home, M’tal said to his dragon.
He knew that Thread had got through their flight and had burrowed into the grounds of Upper Bitra, where great stands of trees grew up toward the snow line on the mountains. He wished that Salina’s Breth was still alive. With two queens—and no danger from strange illnesses—they could have a small queen’s wing battling any missed clumps of Thread before they reached the ground. The queens, with their greater wingspan, could easily handle flying low to the ground for the length of a Fall. But Breth’s death meant that it was not to be and, because of it, the number of burrows would be higher than normal. It was too dangerous to risk Benden’s remaining adult queen dragon flying alone, let alone the distraction it would give the other dragons.
M’tal took a deep breath, surveyed the area one last time, then put the image of Benden’s Star Stones firmly in his mind and gave Gaminth the word to go home.
Mikkala, the headwoman at Benden Weyr, a stout, bustling woman who said little and kept her eyes open, tutted in disapproval of Kindan’s work.
“Never met a man who’s not happy the minute he’s done the least bit of work,” she said, sending a hard look toward the harper, who raised his hands in mock defense. Her look softened and she shook her head wryly. “Other people will be needing to find these bandages, not just you and the healer!”
“If you’re complaining about a man’s work, then you’ll need to ask Lorana,” Kindan told her.
So Lorana found herself in charge of laying out the medicine and bandages in preparation for injured riders and dragons.
Kiyary was detailed to help, and Lorana found herself so engrossed in setting up first aid trays and assigning tasks to the weyrlings that she didn’t have time to notice that Kindan had disappeared.
She heard the reports from Gaminth of the three dragons that failed to come between from the Weyr to Upper Bitra. She chided herself for not noticing their loss sooner, only to realize that she had felt a momentary worsening of the general pall that hung over her and everyone else in the Weyr, but had put it down to mere nerves.
It was only when Lorana had everything in order and sought to feed Arith that she noticed that the Weyr harper was nowhere in sight. She dismissed the issue in favor of ensuring that Arith was well fed and well oiled. She smiled proprietarily as she realized that her queen was nearly as big as some of the fully-grown smaller green dragons. Still, it would be years before Arith was ready to fly—or to mate, a thought that caused Lorana some vague discomfort.
In the meantime Arith was just as comforting, loving, considerate, confounding, wretched, ill-tempered, and fractious as any youngster could and should be. All of which meant that Lorana was glad to be able to see her marvelous friend happily ensconced on her freshly built bed of warm sand, curling up for a good after-food and after-grooming nap.
Lorana had just decided that Arith was fully asleep when she heard the piteous cries of dragons being Thread scored in the Fall at Upper Bitra. Their pain came to her thankfully dulled, like the remnant soreness of a wound not quite healed.
Arith picked up her unease and an echo of the pain she felt through their link and looked over at her, eyes blinking sleepily.
“I’m sorry,” Lorana cried aloud. “I can’t help it. Try to sleep, little one.”
There is no need to apologize, Arith said. I am glad that you can hear the other dragons. It is a gift.
“A gift?” Lorana repeated.
Yes, the queen replied. You hear us the way we hear each other. It’s special. I like that.
Lorana hadn’t considered her ability in that light. She winced as she heard another dragon bellow in great pain and go between—and then she winced in greater pain when the dragon did not return. She tried to find it between, could feel herself going—
Don’t! Arith cried. Don’t leave me.
Lorana opened her eyes and thrust her arm against the wall for support.
I didn’t mean to, she apologized. I was trying to get Minerth.
Minerth is gone, Arith said firmly. You cannot save her.
Lorana found herself comforted by Arith’s assurance, but deep down she felt that she almost could have brought Minerth and C’len back from wherever they had gone between. But both had been scored by Thread, Minerth fatally so.
Salina comes down with the harper, Arith told her. You should go meet them.
“Are you keeping watch on Salina?” Lorana asked, surprised.
Yes, Arith said. She was the rider of my mother. And she is very sad. I would like to cheer her up.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Lorana said, standing upright once more. “If you get some sleep.”
I’ll try, the queen promised.
Lorana spotted the harper and Weyrwoman easily as she made her way across the Bowl toward the aid station. Kindan was talking animatedly, and Salina—well, Salina looked like one of the dead.
Lorana joined them, adding whatever cheerful comments she could until she managed to get close to Kindan’s ear while Mikkala was offering Salina some spe
cial sweets. “I don’t think this is the best thing for her,” she whispered.
“I can’t leave her by herself,” Kindan responded in equally hushed tones. “So many don’t survive the loss of their dragon, you know.”
Lorana pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Maybe—maybe it would be a mercy,” she said carefully.
“But not the best for Benden, not now,” Kindan replied. “Think of what would happen to M’tal. And the Weyr.”
Lorana shuddered. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she confessed.
Around the Weyr, hatchlings bugled fearfully. Lorana and Kindan looked up in time to see a badly scored dragon plummeting down toward them.
Get away! Lorana shouted. The hatchlings veered away from the falling dragon bare moments before it landed—hard—on the floor of the Bowl.
“Get some numbweed!” Lorana shouted over her shoulder as she ran toward the wounded dragon and rider.
The beast was horribly injured—she could see that immediately. Both wings were in tatters, scored repeatedly by Thread. Ichor oozed from hundreds of sharp wounds.
It’s all right, it’s all right, Lorana called soothingly to the dragon.
Kindan leaped up and grabbed the rider, throwing him over his shoulder and carrying him to a clear spot not far from his dragon. Gently, he laid the rider out on the ground. Lorana rushed over to him and knelt on the opposite side of the injured man. Kindan felt the rider’s neck for a pulse and then looked up at Lorana, his eyes bleak.
With an anguished bellow, the dragon rose clumsily to its legs and jumped into the air—gone between.
Lorana rose and spotted Salina approaching in the distance. The Weyrwoman took one look at Lorana and her hand went to her mouth in sorrow.
Another dragon bugled in the sky above them, falling, with just barely more control than the first dragon.
The next several hours were a horrid blur of scored dragons and riders, hasty bandages, numbweed, fellis juice, and, all too often, the forlorn keen of a dragon going between on the death of its rider.
Lorana only vaguely noticed when M’tal and the rest of the Weyr returned. When M’tal asked, “Where’s Tullea?” she could only shake her head and turn back to the injury she was working on. Only later, much later, did it occur to Lorana that Tullea should have been helping tend the injured.
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