Dragonsblood

by Todd McCaffrey

  V’gin accepted the correction with a shrug. “Counting them, you’ll have three hundred and thirty-eight fighting dragons and two queens.”

  “The queens will stay behind,” D’gan said. “A proper queen’s wing is three or more.” His tone failed to hide how much it galled him that Garoth had not been able to provide the Weyr with another queen dragon. Well, perhaps on the next mating flight, he thought to himself.

  “I think you’re right,” Lina, Telgar’s Weyrwoman, agreed. She was older than D’gan, and he often wondered how much of her affections were for him, D’gan, and how much for Telgar’s Weyrleader, even though they had sired a child between them.

  “D’lin did well today,” D’gan commented. The youngster was really too young to be hauling firestone, but he had insisted and T’rin, the Weyrlingmaster, had allowed him. Still, it had been a surprise to recognize his own son throwing him a sack of firestone as Thread fell all around them.

  Lina smiled, although her eyes were still weary. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “He so wants to live up to your example, you know.”

  Unconsciously, D’gan felt stung by the comment, even though he knew it had been kindly meant. He was determined to set a standard no other could attain.

  C’rion stopped, pulling his back straight and forcing a pleasant expression onto his face before he stepped out onto Ista Weyr’s Bowl. All above him, from one side of the Bowl to the other, the Weyr was full of the sounds of dragons coughing, snorting, and sneezing.

  Directly above him, he heard a dragonrider call out, “Valorth! Valorth, no!”

  A dragon dived out from its weyr and winked between, leaving behind T’lerin—no, C’rion grimaced, Telerin; the honorific contraction for a dragonrider lasted as long as his dragon. C’rion turned to head toward the ex-dragonrider, to console him as he had consoled so many others in the past three sevendays.

  “I’ll do it,” a voice behind him said. C’rion whirled, swaying slightly from fatigue, as he caught sight of J’lantir.

  Wearily, C’rion nodded. “Get Giren,” he said, “he’ll know what to do.”

  J’lantir shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, just now. T’lerin spent too much time comforting Giren when Kamenth went between.”

  C’rion gave him a blank look.

  “T’ler—Telerin might blame Giren,” J’lantir explained.

  “Then G’trial—I mean, Gatrial—” The look on J’lantir’s face stopped him.

  “I’m sorry,” J’lantir said, tears welling up in his eyes. “I was coming to tell you—”

  C’rion bowed his head and nodded. He had feared that the Weyr healer would not survive the loss of his dragon, especially after experiencing all the pain and suffering of watching over thirty other dragons succumb.

  “It was fellis juice, laced with wine and something else, I couldn’t identify,” J’lantir said. “Dalia said she’ll look after him.”

  C’rion shook his head, biting his lips. “No, no, I’ll do it, it’s my duty.”

  J’lantir touched his shoulder gently. “You’ve too many duties, Weyrleader. Thread is falling—”

  “The Weyr must be led,” C’rion finished, swallowing hard. “How many have we lost so far?”

  “Thirty-six,” a new voice answered. Dalia joined them. “I’ve got weyrfolk looking after Telerin,” she said. “We’ve got another thirty or more that don’t look well.”

  “Thread falls nine days from now,” C’rion responded.

  Dalia smiled grimly, walked wearily up to him and hugged him. “You’ll do all right,” she told him.

  TWELVE

  “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This is as true in ecosystems as it is in physics. Any new species will incite a reaction from the ecosystem.

  —Fundamental Principles of Ecosystem Design, 11th Edition

  Fort Hold, End of First Pass, Year 50, AL 58

  M’hall leaned back on Brianth and gazed up into the darkening sky. Nothing. Some stars had started twinkling and the Red Star, which had been invisible for months in daylight, was definitely fading in intensity.

  Torene wants to know if that’s it, Brianth relayed, adding an echoing rumble of his own.

  We haven’t seen any more signs of Thread for the past hour, M’hall replied. I think that’s it. Have Torene assign a watch rider and tell the rest to go back to the Weyr.

  Torene wants to know if you’re coming, too, Brianth said.

  M’hall pursed his lips in thought. Might as well, between won’t get any warmer while I’m waiting.

  It was hard to imagine that Thread would not return. That he would not be called upon to fight them day after day, again and again. That finally, he and all his surviving dragonriders could rest.

  Rest, M’hall thought with a snort of amusement, I wonder what that’s like. He patted his hardworking bronze partner on the neck and thought, Come on, Brianth, let’s go home.

  Brianth had obligingly dropped M’hall off near the Caverns before retiring to his weyr. M’hall waited for his Wingleaders to assemble, patting them on the back or exchanging words as they arrived. Ghosts of lost riders ringed them: M’hall could bring up many faces, scarred or young, bitter or thrilled, that were no longer seen in the Weyr.

  I wonder how Father would have handled this, he mused. Or Mother.

  “So that’s the last of it, M’hall?” G’len called out.

  “As far as I can tell,” M’hall replied. “And right on schedule.”

  “Well that’s something to be grateful for,” young M’san said.

  “Wine all around!” a voice bellowed from the background. M’hall roared in hearty agreement. The cold of between filled the air as another dragon returned. Without looking, M’hall knew it was Torene and Alaranth.

  “Mugs tonight,” Torene declared. “You’ll all just break the glasses.”

  They waited patiently while the wine was passed around. Soon the Cavern was filled to overflowing with riders and weyrfolk.

  “I didn’t know we had this many mugs,” Torene remarked in surprise.

  “I didn’t realize we had this many people,” M’hall returned with a smile. He looked out at the people of Benden Weyr, survivors of the First Pass of the Red Star, and bellowed in a voice so loud that the dragons roared, “To absent friends!”

  “Absent friends!” The shouted response shook the very rocks of the Weyr.

  “Come down and join the celebration,” Emorra called to the drummers on the tower.

  “We can’t, we’re on duty.”

  “Suit yourselves, then,” she called back to them. She was drunk and she knew it. She hadn’t been drunk in—she couldn’t remember how long. She must have been drunk once before, or she wouldn’t have recognized it now.

  She turned back to the College, watching her feet to keep from stumbling. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the tower behind her, realizing that the voice that had answered her wasn’t Tieran’s. Where was he? She hadn’t seen him for a while. Emorra pursed her lips, wondering exactly why she cared.

  The celebrants in the courtyard of the College had dispersed, some going back to their rooms and others settling down for quieter revelries right there. Emorra startled when her ears picked out Tieran’s voice. He was in one of the classrooms. She headed toward it.

  Partway there, Emorra paused. She heard a woman’s voice talking to him. Well, maybe I should leave them alone, she thought sadly to herself. The voice spoke again, passionately, and Emorra recognized it.

  She charged into the room, yelling, “Just what do you think you’re doing? You’re old enough to be his grandmother!”

  Her agitation took her all the way into the room. Tieran was seated at one of the tables. No one was seated in his lap. No one was muttering sweet nothings into his ear.

  Instead, Wind Blossom was in front of the chalkboard, scribbling genetic coding sequences on it. Of course, Emorra thought to herself with slowly dawning comprehension,
I’ve never heard her use that tone unless she was talking genetics.

  Tieran and Wind Blossom were startled by her bold entrance. Wind Blossom recovered more quickly, giving her daughter an inscrutable—even to Emorra—look. Tieran just looked puzzled. The brown fire-lizard had leapt into the air, but did not go between.

  “I was explaining the sequencing differences between the dragons and the fire-lizards,” Wind Blossom told her daughter calmly. After a pause, she added with only the slightest hint of a purr in her voice, “Were you enjoying the end of Pass festivities?”

  Emorra thought that over before responding. “I’m drunk,” she declared.

  “So I had gathered,” Wind Blossom said frostily.

  “What’s it like?” Tieran asked, eyes wide with interest. “I’ve never been drunk,” he admitted. Hastily, he added, “Yet.”

  “I think it’ll hurt in the morning,” Emorra admitted, her face still red. Why in the world would I ever have thought that my mother and Tieran were . . . ardent about anything, Emorra berated herself. “Why worry about the sequencing?” she asked, trying to sound normal.

  “We’re looking for common immune system limitations,” Tieran explained.

  Emorra blinked, thinking. “The infection?”

  “I was hoping we could prove that it couldn’t cross to dragons,” Tieran said.

  Emorra cocked her head, questioningly.

  “We are still working on it,” Wind Blossom added pointedly.

  “It’s the end of the Pass—haven’t you got anything better to do?” Emorra blurted. “Alcohol blunts inhibitions and slows reasoning,” she remembered as her brain processed the words her mouth had just uttered.

  “Like what?” Wind Blossom asked.

  “Like—like . . . well, you’re too old!” Emorra said. Clasping her hand to her head in frustration at her own stupidity, she turned around and stomped away.

  “Alcohol reduces sexual function,” Emorra recalled with infuriating clarity as she strode away. Hmmph!

  “It was bacterial in nature,” Wind Blossom repeated. “The general spectrum antibiotic knocked it out.”

  “Didn’t you teach me not to jump to conclusions?” Janir asked. “Isn’t it also possible that the bacterial infection was a secondary infection that took advantage of the compromised immune system, just like Tieran said?”

  “So you’re arguing that we only knocked out the secondary infection, giving the fire-lizard’s immune system a chance to handle the primary infection,” Emorra suggested. They were gathered in one of the classrooms at Wind Blossom’s invitation.

  “Exactly,” Janir agreed.

  “Wind Blossom and I agree that it really can’t be proved either way,” Tieran said, with an apologetic look toward the old geneticist. “But what can be proved is that the antibiotics saved Grenn’s life.” The little brown fire-lizard gave Tieran an approving chirp.

  “Grenn?” Janir asked.

  “That’s what he’s named the fire-lizard,” Wind Blossom explained, waving a hand toward Tieran.

  “No, that’s the name that was on his bead harness,” Tieran corrected. “It’s the name he was given by his original owner.”

  Emorra’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have that harness?”

  Tieran nodded. He drew it out of the pouch he had hanging over his shoulder. “Right here.”

  “May I see it?” she asked, extending a hand. Tieran handed it over, not without misgivings. He didn’t know if he was more afraid that Emorra would be immediately able to identify Grenn’s owner by the beads, or that she wouldn’t. Emorra was studying the beadwork carefully.

  “This symbol here—do you see it?” she asked, holding the harness up to the others. “What do you make of it?”

  “There’s the caduceus of Aesculapius,” Janir said. “The standard symbol for medicine—”

  “Or a doctor,” Emorra interjected. She peered more closely at the beadwork. “But what’s beneath it?”

  “It looks like some sort of animal,” Tieran suggested tentatively.

  “But it’s hard to tell,” Janir complained.

  Emorra looked at them all. “I just received a message from Igen, detailing a plan to begin a beadworks,” she told them. “To my knowledge, there were no beads brought over from Landing, nor any that landed with the original settlers.”

  She fingered the small beads sewn into the fire-lizard’s harness.

  “These beads should not exist.”

  “Really, Mother,” Emorra said, “you and that boy!”

  “He is not a boy,” Wind Blossom countered. “He is nineteen!”

  Emorra tossed the correction off with a wave of her hand. “Are you so desperate to make amends with him that you’d deprive someone else of their fire-lizard?” she sniffed. “That’s beneath you, you know.”

  “Emorra, it’s been two months since the fire-lizard appeared,” Wind Blossom replied. “I would have thought that if anyone was missing a fire-lizard, we would have heard of it at the College by now.

  “You can’t deny that the fire-lizard was sick with an illness we haven’t seen before,” she continued.

  Emorra grimaced. The fire-lizard had been ill. Both fire-lizards had been ill. Clearly they had caught the disease somewhere. If they could get it, so could other fire-lizards. If the fire-lizards could get it, then perhaps the dragons. Possibly the day of planet-wide disaster she had been fearing was just around the corner. Although, it could be that the disease was rare, or propagated slowly, or its method of transmission . . .

  “Were you asking people if they’d lost one or two fire-lizards?” she asked abruptly.

  “Tieran’s drum message asked if anyone was missing a gold or brown fire-lizard,” Wind Blossom answered.

  “Did you mention the illness?” Emorra asked, trying to recall the drum messages that had been sent while they were in quarantine.

  “Not in connection with the fire-lizards,” Wind Blossom said. “But we had to have a reason for the quarantine. It’s a wonder that more people haven’t been asking, putting two and two together. In fact, I’m rather surprised that—”

  The sound of a dragon arriving cut her short.

  “I would have expected him sooner,” Wind Blossom said, glancing out the window to confirm the arrival of M’hall from Benden Weyr.

  “Maybe he had better things to do,” Emorra said waspishly.

  “Maybe he didn’t wish to infect his dragon,” Wind Blossom returned imperturbably. She started out to greet the bronze rider, then turned back to ask Emorra, “Did you want to come along?”

  Emorra shook her head. “No, I’ve got a class to teach.”

  Wind Blossom met M’hall just inside the archway of the College.

  “I was hoping to meet you,” M’hall said as he caught sight of her.

  “And I had been expecting you,” Wind Blossom answered with a courteous nod. She gestured toward the kitchen. “Shall we see if Moira has anything for a Weyrleader fresh from between?”

  M’hall smiled. “Yes, please!”

  Moira did, indeed, have a fresh pot of klah and some scones still warm from the oven. “There’s butter, too,” she said. “Alandro’s gone to fetch it.”

  “Many thanks!” M’hall replied, taking the tray and finding a quiet alcove. Once seated, he poured for both of them and waited until Alandro arrived with the butter. They each had a hot buttered scone. That done, M’hall got right to it: “Tell me about these fire-lizards and your medical emergency.”

  Wind Blossom repeated the events as best she could. When she was done, M’hall leaned back slowly on his bench and sighed. Then he straightened again, buttered another scone, and ate in thoughtful silence.

  “And the beadwork? No one on Pern now could have made it?” he asked at last.

  “So Emorra informs me,” Wind Blossom said. She waved a hand in a throwaway gesture. “Of course, beads are such tiny things that they may have come across from Landing uninventoried.”

  M’hall sno
rted. “Not from what I’ve heard of Joel Lilienkamp! Rumor has it that he hand-counted each nail that he came across. I can’t see how he’d miss beads.”

  “But it is possible,” Wind Blossom reiterated without conviction.

  M’hall nodded in understanding. “It’s particularly possible for those to whom the other explanation is too incredible.”

  “Or uncomfortable,” Wind Blossom added.

  “And not too many people know about all the capabilities of fire-lizards,” M’hall said. In a lower voice, he added, “Or dragons.”

  After a moment of silent reflection, he continued. “So, if they came from the future, what then?”

  Wind Blossom shrugged. “Perhaps it was a minor outbreak, and these two were the only ones who succumbed to it.”

  “That’s the best-case scenario,” M’hall agreed. His voice hardened. “What about the worst-case?”

  Wind Blossom pursed her lips tightly before responding. “In the worst case, the disease could be transmitted to others.”

  “Including the dragons?”

  Wind Blossom nodded.

  “What about the watch-whers?” M’hall pressed.

  “Those, too, in the worst case,” Wind Blossom agreed solemnly. “Although I would have greater hopes for them.”

  “Why?” M’hall asked.

  “I made an effort to differentiate them somewhat more from the original genome than we did with the dragons,” she answered.

  “I always knew that dragons were fire-lizards writ large,” M’hall said. “What were watch-whers, then?”

  “Dragons ‘writ’ differently,” Wind Blossom told him.

  “Could you differentiate the dragons from the ‘original genome,’ too?” M’hall asked.

  “Perhaps,” Wind Blossom responded. “But whether it would be enough, I don’t know.”

  “Why not work on a cure for all three—fire-lizards, dragons, and watch-whers?”

  “Because if I did that,” Wind Blossom responded, “then, judging by those two fire-lizards, I failed.”

  M’hall stroked his chin thoughtfully. “How long do you think it would be before someone comes up with those beads and uses them to make harnesses?”