Dragon's Fire

by Anne McCaffrey

  Cristov spied some rocks not far from Hurth’s new hole. He walked over and picked one of them up.

  “This is more like it,” he said, hefting the rock judiciously.

  “It looks like sandstone,” D’vin said, picking up another one from the pile.

  Cristov nodded and threw his rock down hard on a larger rock. His specimen cracked, revealing a blue-green crystal.

  “Is that firestone?” D’vin asked.

  “It could be,” Cristov replied.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” J’trel said, picking up the other half of Cristov’s specimen. “Talith, if you’d be so kind?”

  The blue dragon opened its mouth and J’trel threw the rock into it. Shortly there came the grinding sound of a dragon chewing and then Talith swallowed, visibly and audibly.

  “Now, we wait,” J’trel said. The three found it impossible to wait patiently. Cristov found himself examining the promontory for more signs of sandstone or blue-green rock; D’vin found more of the sandstone rocks and started cracking them, throwing the ones that were pure sandstone into one pile and the ones with hints of the blue-green rock into another pile; J’trel merely spent his time nervously pacing in front of his dragon.

  “So how do you feel?” J’trel asked out loud. “Does it feel like firestone?” Before he could get a response, he jumped away, arms outstretched, crying, “Stand back!”

  Talith opened his mouth and burped. A tiny flicker of flame erupted.

  “That took longer than regular firestone,” D’vin said.

  “Talith says that it didn’t burn, and he’d like to try some more,” J’trel reported, gathering up some of the rocks that D’vin had sorted and feeding them to his dragon. D’vin started doing the same with Hurth.

  In a few short moments, both dragons produced a decent flame, and both pronounced it much less stressful than the firestone they were used to.

  “Does it look like they can sustain flame longer?” D’vin asked J’trel.

  “Yes, it seems like this firestone produces the fire gas more slowly,” J’trel agreed. He looked up at Talith again. “Is that how it feels to you?”

  Cristov understood Talith’s response merely from the blue’s emphatic nod. He picked up a specimen and walked with it to the sea.

  “Cristov, what are you doing?” D’vin asked his voice tinged with equal parts curiosity and alarm.

  Cristov threw his rock, with its exposed blue-green crystal, into the surf and watched carefully. Nothing. No explosion, no puff of gas, nothing.

  “I just wanted to be sure,” he said, turning around and walking back to the others. He picked up several specimens and stuffed them into his pouch. “This firestone doesn’t explode on contact with water.”

  “There must be something extra in the dragons’ stomachs to make the flame,” D’vin suggested, hefting a rock in his palm. “If this were the old firestone, the sweat from my palms alone would produce some gas.”

  “If this were the old firestone, all the sea air would have combusted it long ago,” Cristov remarked.

  “Well, now that we’ve got the right firestone, what do we do next?” J’trel asked.

  “We find it in the north, if we can, and mine it,” Cristov replied. He turned to D’vin. “I’d like to start immediately.”

  “If not sooner,” D’vin agreed, looking very thoughtfully at his sample. It was a long moment before Cristov’s agitated movements attracted D’vin’s attention. The dragonrider smiled at him but did not apologize, merely gesturing for Cristov to mount Hurth.

  “I do not understand,” Halla cried to Pellar in exasperation.

  Pellar started to write again, but Halla pulled the stick out of his hand and snapped it in two, throwing it to the ground.

  “Our traps are here, our food is here—why do you want to go north?”

  Pellar sighed and picked up the thicker piece of his broken stick. Bending down, he wrote, “Dragonriders.”

  “That’s what you said before!” Halla exclaimed, her frustration evident. “We can avoid them. The woods are too thick for them to land, and we can hide.” She looked up entreatingly into Pellar’s eyes. “We’re safe here,” she said in a small voice. “We don’t have to run anymore.”

  Pellar nodded, but still he smoothed out the patch of dirt he’d written on and bent down to write again. “We help.”

  “Help?” Halla repeated. “We don’t need help, we can get along just fine on our own.”

  “Thread,” Pellar wrote in response.

  “Thread won’t come for Turns, you said so,” Halla replied irritably. What was wrong with him?

  Pellar wrote the word “fight” just above “Thread.”

  “Fight Thread?” Halla shook her head. “Why should we worry about that? That’s dragonriders’ work!”

  Pellar nodded, then wrote another word above “fight.” The word was “firestone.”

  “Firestone fight Thread,” Halla repeated. She paused to digest the meaning. “The dragonriders need firestone to fight Thread and you want to help them?”

  Pellar nodded, smiling.

  Halla shrieked at him, “You’ll get killed!”

  He shook his head.

  “Then you’ll get burned just like your friend,” she said. She pushed him away from her, tears streaming down her face.

  “Go on then, get killed. See if I care,” she cried, and ran away from him into the dense underbrush. She didn’t go far and crumpled into a small heap when she failed to hear Pellar coming after her.

  I don’t need him, she thought. I can survive on my own.

  After a moment she asked herself, then why do I hurt so much?

  Pellar sat in silent thought for a long time after Halla had run off. Then, with a sigh, he stood and walked off purposefully in the opposite direction.

  “There!” Moran pointed below them as they flew over the vast barren country north of Keogh.

  Zist peered down, following his arm, and saw faint marks on the dusty ground below.

  “It could be traders,” he said.

  “This far north?” Moran asked, shaking his head. To P’lel he said, “Put me down somewhere in front of them.”

  Moments later, they were on the ground and Moran was hefting his pack onto his back.

  “You’ll stay in touch?” Zist asked.

  Moran nodded. “I will.”

  “And be careful?” Zist asked.

  “More than last time.”

  “If I don’t hear from you in a month…”

  “You’ll hear from me,” Moran promised, turning toward the oncoming wagon. “Probably sooner than that!”

  Halla awoke, angry with herself for having fallen asleep and cold from the chilly, late afternoon breeze. She peered blearily around for Pellar and then remembered their last conversation and how she’d pushed him away.

  People always leave, she thought bitterly. Why should Pellar be any different?

  Something caught her eye, fanned by the breeze. Halla turned her attention to it, then pounced on it eagerly.

  It was a pair of yellowtops, their stalks twined together. Halla picked them up and held them gingerly in her hands, impressed at how deftly Pellar had woven them together. A smile wobbled on her lips.

  In the distance she saw another bright bundle. Intrigued, she went toward it and discovered another pair of yellowtops. She picked them up, too, just as she noticed a third pair. A trail.

  Halla’s earlier thought echoed: People always leave. But no one had ever left her a trail.

  It was dark by the time Halla caught up with him. She would have missed the last bundle of yellowtops if Pellar’s trail hadn’t continued unerringly north.

  He was camped in the open, which surprised Halla. Clearly he wasn’t worried about intruders, but his lack of precaution increased the danger of attack from night animals. Pellar slept like someone who was under a nighttime watch.

  Who?

  The answer brought a smile to her lips: her.
She dropped her armload of yellowtops on the ground beside him—she stuffed them into her pack where they would create a great pillow—and lowered herself to the ground, dropping her pack under her head. She lifted his blanket. Pellar shivered in the night air until she bunched herself up, scooched against him, and lowered the blanket. For a moment, Pellar was awake. He wrapped an arm possessively over her, drawing her tight against his stomach; then he fell asleep once more.

  Though her back was against him she knew he was smiling. She smiled, too, and closed her eyes peacefully, a feeling she hadn’t felt in Turns overflowing in her heart. She had only one name for it: home.

  Cristov was depressed. They’d been searching the shoreline of High Reaches for three days and they’d nothing to show for it but a nasty collection of cuts, bruises, and sore muscles. Except, now, Alarra had broken her leg as she ran from a rockslide they’d caused with their digging.

  She’d been quickly evacuated to the Weyr, where the healer had set her leg and ordered her to rest until the bone knitted together once more—at least six sevendays.

  Cristov had insisted on continuing the search, and D’vin, after consulting with B’ralar, had reluctantly returned Cristov to the mountains south and east of their previous location.

  “Hurth will be listening if you need help,” D’vin told him. “Otherwise, I’ll send someone by next sevenday.”

  When Cristov looked curious, wondering why D’vin hadn’t promised to return himself, the wingleader said, “The Hatching will be any day now. Seeing as we want to present as many suitable candidates as possible, I’ll be riding in Search.”

  Cristov promised himself that he would not call the bronze dragon except to announce success.

  On the first day he had no luck at all. He wasn’t sure if his technique was right anyway: He would stop at a spot that caught his fancy, usually a place where the rock had been bared already, and dig around it, looking for signs of sandstone in the layers. If he found any, he’d dig around, looking for loose rock; failing that, he’d use his pick to break some rock free.

  He worked for no more than an hour and then moved northward again, looking for a new spot. In this way he covered two kilometers and had made five excavations by nightfall.

  The next day, though sore, he repeated this method. He was pretty certain that he’d found a vein of sandstone, but he couldn’t be sure—he’d never learned this sort of minecraft from his father, or even from Toldur.

  On the third day, Cristov changed his tactics, deciding to dig deep into the sandstone vein he’d located the night before.

  It was a hot day and Cristov was all the hotter, digging into the moist cliff in front of him. He liked sandstone because it was soft; he disliked it because it was crumbly—not a good supporting material. He had dislodged a fair amount of the soft stone and was making amazing progress digging into the side of the mountain when it happened: From one blow to the next, the whole nature of the vein changed, and instead of a trickle of loose rock, Cristov suddenly found himself facing a flow, then a rush, and finally a torrent of sandstone that threw him backward and engulfed him.

  For the past two days Pellar had been traveling due north, and Halla had followed. They were tired, irritable, and hungry, but they were together, and Halla found that Pellar’s mute companionship more than made up for his annoying determination.

  Thirst, however, was something neither could ignore, and so they were drinking at a stream when Halla heard it: a distant rumble that quickly died away. A glance at Pellar confirmed that he’d heard it, too.

  “Come on!” Halla shouted, racing off in the direction of the sound.

  When they reached a clearing, they spotted a cloud of dust rising about a kilometer north of them. Wordlessly they broke into a steady, ground-eating trot.

  Pellar lengthened his stride, his long legs quickly widening the gap.

  “Go on,” Halla called, waving him onward. “I’ll catch up.”

  When Halla arrived at the site, she found Pellar inspecting the remains of a mine. She quickly toured the immediate area and found a campsite. The footprints around it belonged to one person, someone bigger than her but not by all that much. She returned to Pellar and the disaster.

  “Only one person,” she told him between ragged breaths. She knelt over, filling her lungs with cooler air and forcing herself to take slow deep breaths.

  Pellar nodded and began to pull armloads of the rocks away.

  “You think he’s there?” Halla asked as soon as she’d recovered. She stepped up opposite him and began to throw stones away. She stopped when she caught sight of something shiny among the coarse, red rock. Thinking it was odd, she quickly pocketed it, then returned to her work.

  A little while later, Pellar encountered hair. He rapped two rocks together to get Halla’s attention and pointed. Wordlessly she came around to where he was and began to help.

  In moments they uncovered a head.

  “I know him!” Halla cried. “That’s Cristov.”

  Pellar nodded and bent over the face, clearing the smallest dirt away. He pressed his ear close to Cristov’s mouth and then looked up at Halla, alarmed. Then, to her surprise, he leaned over again and parted Cristov’s lips, put his own mouth over Cristov’s and blew a death breath.

  “Pellar!” Halla exclaimed disgustedly. “Eww.”

  Pellar paid her no attention, looking instead at Cristov. He repeated the movement. This time Cristov coughed and sputtered.

  “Stay still!” Halla ordered. “You’re in a landslide.”

  Quickly Pellar and Halla dug Cristov’s chest out from under the loose rock. It took more effort and more care to extract his legs.

  Finally, Pellar motioned for Halla to stand back and gestured that he would pull Cristov out.

  “No, I won’t,” she declared firmly, eyeing the rocks above them. “We’ll do this together.”

  Pellar pursed his lips angrily in response, and Halla stuck her hands on her hips and glared in return. Pellar gave her one last angry look, sighed, shook his head regretfully, and gestured for her to come help.

  Together, slowly, they pulled Cristov out from the landslide. When he was far enough out, Halla moved to his legs and picked them up. Cristov groaned painfully.

  “I’m sorry,” Halla told him, “but we’ve got to get you away from here.”

  “My rock,” Cristov cried through clenched teeth.

  “Shh,” Halla told him soothingly. “We can find you plenty of rocks.”

  Cristov was in too much pain to argue. They went about twenty meters before Pellar gestured to Halla to set the boy back down.

  “I’ll get some water,” Halla said, moving quickly to the campsite.

  Pellar was kneeling beside Cristov when she returned.

  “Am I dead?” Cristov asked Halla.

  “No,” Halla replied testily.

  “But he’s dead,” Cristov said, pointing to Pellar.

  Halla shook her head and opened the flask. “Here, drink this.” When Cristov complied, spluttering a bit on the water, she looked at him and said, “There, do you think dead people cough when drinking?”

  Cristov thought for a moment and shook his head. He winced at the movement. Pellar laid a hand on his head and glanced up to Halla, shaking his own head.

  “Pellar says that you shouldn’t move your head,” Halla told him, her tone implying that she expected that Cristov had already figured that out himself.

  “You can talk to him?” Cristov asked in wonder.

  Halla shook her head. “No, but it’s easy to guess what he means.”

  Pellar shot her a penetrating look and broke into a huge grin.

  “My rock,” Cristov said. “We must find it.”

  “There are plenty of rocks,” Halla repeated soothingly. “We can look when you’re better.”

  “No, we’ve got to find it,” Cristov responded, his face twisted in irritation. “If not, we’ll have to go back to the Southern Continent to get another.”<
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  “What sort of rock is it?” Halla asked in surprise. “And what were you doing in the Southern Continent?”

  “Looking for firestone,” Cristov explained.

  “But you’ve found it already,” Halla said. Her brows drew close. “You weren’t hoping to find it in that sandstone, were you?”

  “Yes,” Cristov said. “That’s where we found it before.”

  “Sandstone?” Halla repeated dubiously. “But firestone explodes in water.”

  “Not this firestone,” Cristov replied. “It doesn’t burn in water. It’s what the fire-lizards eat, and they find it on the shore in the Southern Continent.” He frowned. “I’ve got to find that sample.”

  “What’s it look like?” Halla asked.

  “It’s a blue-green crystal,” Cristov told her. “There’s usually some sandstone around it.”

  Halla fished in her pocket. “Like this?”

  “That’s it!” Cristov cried, reaching for it. Halla gave it to him readily.

  “But there’s loads up there,” she said, waving her hand back up toward the landslide. “That was just the smallest piece.”

  Cristov’s eyes widened and he looked at Pellar for confirmation. The young harper nodded. A mixture of joy, relief, and impatience crossed Cristov’s face.

  “We’ve got to tell the Weyr,” he exclaimed. Of Halla he demanded, “How much was there? How quickly can we get it?”

  Pellar shook his head and pointed at Cristov’s legs. Halla guessed his meaning and said, “We’ve got to take care of you first.”

  “No,” Cristov cried, “we’ve got to tell the Weyrs! Until we prove this is the right firestone and there’s enough, they’ll still try to mine the old firestone.”

  Pellar and Halla exchanged worried looks.

  “All we have to do is find the blue-green rock?” Halla asked, an idea forming in her mind.

  “Yes,” Cristov agreed.