Dragon’s Time: Dragonriders of Pern

by Anne; Todd J. Mccaffrey Mccaffrey

  “I’ve nearly thirty Turns now,” Kindan said. “Aren’t I too old for this? Shouldn’t someone younger have the honor?”

  “The dragons will decide,” Fiona said.

  “And you’ll keep your word?”

  “Yes, if you are not chosen this time, I won’t ask you again,” Fiona said. They’d talked about this ever since the mating flights. At first, Kindan had refused outright, but when Lorana had merely suggested it was probably moot, the harper had relented on the condition that he would not be asked again.

  “Otherwise, I’ll be as old as Zist and standing on the sands!”

  “Well, we have some time to find Candidates,” Fiona said. “No one’s clutched and it will be at least five weeks from then to a Hatching.”

  “If they hatch,” T’mar said grimly. “No one’s tried such cool sands before.”

  “We do what we can,” Fiona said with a shrug. “We expose them to the sun when it’s shining and protect them from the elements when it’s not.”

  “But day to day they’ll be hardly more than warm,” T’mar groused.

  “I think that any additions to our strength would be worthwile,” Fiona reminded him.

  “True,” T’mar agreed. “But I wonder if we wouldn’t be wiser having Talenth and the other queens return to their Weyrs.”

  “Or maybe we can find a proper Weyr on the west side of the island,” Kindan added.

  Fiona shrugged. “It’s worth considering, but we’d better be quick.”

  “Six queens, four greens; how many Candidates will we need?” T’mar said again. “And where will you find them?”

  Fiona shrugged once more. She, Lorana, and the other queen riders had discussed the issue with no more resolution than now. Terin had done the numbers: At the best, there would be nearly a whole Weyr’s worth of eggs looking to Impress. Even at the most conservative estimate, the ten clutches could see over a hundred eggs on the sands—nearly a quarter of the total strength they had in the camp now that they’d brought the injured riders back in time with them to heal and recover.

  That decision had not been taken lightly but, as Fiona pointed out, the right time was before the queens clutched and before the eggs hatched; when the Eastern Weyr—she had given up arguing against the name—had fewer dragons to feed and enough trained bodies on hand to tend to the needs of the injured riders and dragons.

  The addition of over four hundred mouths to feed—half human, half dragon—had put a huge burden on the existing population that was only met by having the now-mature weyrlings and their riders spend most of their time providing sustenance or succor but, as Fiona and T’mar had agreed, the fighting Weyrs would be able to more easily integrate the suddenly grown weyrlings into their wings if they had also trained with the soon-to-be-healed riders and dragons with nearly a Turn of Thread-fighting experience behind them.

  What neither Fiona nor Lorana could explain was the strange lack of concern expressed by the queens. Fiona had only her experience of Talenth’s first Hatching, but she found it odd that the queens weren’t more anxious to provide for their offspring.

  It will be all right, Talenth had assured her calmly.

  “We’ve got some in the camp who can stand as Candidates,” Fiona said now, “and we can probably find some from the traders and the wherhold who’d be willing to stand.”

  “We’re near enough to our proper time that we would not arouse too much concern if we rode a proper Search,” T’mar reminded her.

  Fiona made a face; they’d been through this before. “Let’s wait until they clutch.”

  “Would you look at that,” Shaneese said as she shook her head in admiration at the ranks of eggs of all sizes and shapes dotting the sands before them. The dragon females had all clutched within a sevenday of each other, digging, burrowing, and otherwise arranging their own individual nests out of the oversized Hatching Ground that had been made. She turned to Terin. “How many?”

  “Kurinth laid twenty-three,” the weyrwoman told her proudly. “And one’s a queen!”

  “Yes, but how many altogether?” Javissa asked, gesturing toward the nesting queens and protective greens.

  “Oh.” Terin sounded less concerned. “Between them all, we have two hundred and fifty-three eggs, including five queen eggs.”

  “The green eggs look smaller; will they hatch?”

  “They’re about the right size for green or blue eggs,” Terin replied, shrugging. “We’ll know soon enough if they’ll hatch.”

  “We can’t even feed a thousand!” Fiona complained when T’mar trotted out his suggested number for Candidates. “Much less find them.”

  “But with that number we’d have less than four Candidates for each egg, we really should have more,” T’mar objected.

  “Well, we can’t get more than twenty right now,” Fiona said. “And if you take a wing off in Search, how will we feed everyone here and still keep training?”

  “Which is more important?” T’mar demanded of her with an angry shrug.

  “Yes, which?” Fiona replied with nearly as much force.

  “Could we time it?” Kindan asked. The others looked at him. “When we find out how many are hatching, we time it to find enough Candidates.”

  T’mar and Fiona exchanged speculative looks.

  “That sounds too much like breaking time,” T’mar said finally, glancing toward Lorana for confirmation.

  “I’m afraid so,” the queen rider agreed. “What you’re saying is that we’d know before we know, as it were.”

  Kindan blew out a sigh of resignation. “If we can go forward in time to provide help, why can’t we go forward in time to get help?”

  “It didn’t work for Lorana,” Fiona reminded him grimly.

  “It seems we can only know what we thought to ask,” T’mar said. “And now that we’ve thought to ask, why can’t we find out?”

  “Fine, you try it,” Fiona told him, gesturing toward the outside and Zirenth in the distance. “Let me know when you get tired.”

  “You’ve already tried?” T’mar asked in surprise. Fiona and Lorana both nodded.

  “Perhaps you can go, but neither of us could,” Fiona told him.

  “It’s like J’trel said, there’s no there,” Lorana added.

  “Does this have anything to do with your voices?” T’mar asked Lorana. She had told them all about her encounters with the strange voices going forward in time. No one had any satisfactory explanation.

  “I’d be happier if we could find answers instead of more unanswered questions,” Fiona said resignedly.

  “Well, in the meantime, we should at least arrange to get as many Candidates as we can and have them ready at a moment’s notice,” T’mar said.

  “But that won’t be near a thousand,” Fiona said. “Perhaps a hundred at most.”

  “It would be a terrible tragedy to have all these hatchlings and not enough riders to Impress them,” T’mar said.

  “There are a lot more girls in the Caverns back in Telgar than boys,” Terin said. “They keep secrets better, too.”

  T’mar gave her a doubting look that he hastily abandoned when both Fiona and Lorana chimed in unison, “She’s right.”

  “We could probably contact the other girls,” Terin said. Bekka beside her nodded. “I know some at Fort would love the chance.”

  “Nerra’s been taking in so many orphans since the Plague that Crom’s practically bursting at the seams,” Kindan said. “You’ll find more girls than boys there, too, but you’ll still find plenty of boys.”

  “And we can tell the traders,” Fiona said, glancing at Shaneese, who returned her look with a grateful nod. She smiled at the headwoman as she added, “They seem to be rife with rider blood.”

  “Or riders are rife with trader blood,” Shaneese countered mildly. Fiona shrugged, willing to cede the point.

  “We should check with the other Weyrs, beyond Telgar and Fort,” Kindan said. “Mixing blood from the Weyrs, Holds,
and Crafts has always been the custom, but with dragons and riders from all five Weyrs, we can really exchange customs and ideas.”

  “So that’s settled,” Bekka declared, cocking an eye at Fiona. “Are you ready for our rounds, Weyrwoman?”

  Fiona nodded, turning toward Shaneese, who assured her of the babies’ safety. “I’ve got my eye on them, Jinara’s got her eye on them, and we’ve dragooned Jeriz to keep his eye on them, too—they’ll not escape this time.”

  “Actually, perhaps we should take one with us,” Fiona said. Shaneese gave her a surprised look. “Well, you know how much everyone loves a baby, I was thinking if Shanar would accompany us, he could be poked and admired while we got on with the business of tending to wounds and being stern.”

  “And it’s good for morale,” Shaneese guessed before Fiona could open her mouth to continue her pitch. She chuckled, shaking her head. “Very well, Weyrwoman, he’s yours.”

  “Always was, always will be,” Fiona said, going to the relocated nursery on the far side of the center pavilion and calling for Shanar. The dark-eyed boy, whose skin favored his mother’s but whose features favored his father’s, trotted over readily enough and jumped up excitedly when Fiona made her offer. In a moment he was squirming in her arms, in another he was on the ground, in a third back in her arms again—all before Fiona returned to the group.

  “Very well, let’s go!”

  The “morning tour,” as Fiona liked to call it, of the injured dragons and riders had quickly become a ritual; it had taken only the once before Fiona and the rest had recognized how much good the sight of one of the toddlers was for the morale and emotions of the injured, rider or dragon.

  Dragons loved the gentle emotions and pure honesty of the very young, their riders loved seeing proof that Pern would continue, that their great efforts were not without reward, and—most of all—everyone secretly loved seeing Fiona struggle to teach the squirmy infants manners.

  Fiona was quick enough, particularly with her breeding as a Lord Holder’s daughter, to pick up on that, and she capitalized on it shamelessly, being certain always to bring with her a change of clothes, particularly diapers, and a bag for the soiled clothes. Sometimes she would change the child herself, other times she would spend minutes moaning and murmuring to wheedle a rider into doing the deed for her.

  Lorana and Kindan both were privately amazed at her ability to judge emotions correctly; Fiona seemed to know which rider most needed to see that the Weyrwoman wasn’t above getting her hands—and even her clothes—dirty, and which riders wanted to prove to themselves that their fingers weren’t so clumsy, their voices weren’t so hard, their fears weren’t so great that they couldn’t change the diaper of a crying baby and return it laughing merrily.

  For Fiona, it was as easy as breathing; she was never certain, but she always had an inkling of another’s emotions. This morning M’del, the grizzled old rider from High Reaches Weyr, was too sore to do more than gaze at Shanar while he gritted his teeth as Bekka gently changed the bandages on his hand.

  He’d taken a scoring on the left side, his hand and thigh. Fiona learned from his brown Oranth that the rider had actually tried to push the Thread away from his dragon with his hand. Wind and motion had pushed it onto his leg before they had gone between and it had frozen off.

  The hand was not much more than bone and seared muscle on the outside, which made matters worse as the muscles on the palm were still vigorous, making recovery all the more difficult. Bekka, Lorana, and Fiona all feared that he’d never regain full use of his hand, but they were determined to do the best by him.

  “There,” Bekka said lightly as she finished replacing the bandages. She cast a meaningful look toward Fiona: They were almost out of bandages. Ever since they’d brought in the injured riders, they’d been plagued by one shortage after another. Work had slowed as grown weyrlings were drawn off the mines and fields to tend to the injured while still maintaining their drill.

  Jeriz, now having nearly thirteen Turns, had been dragooned into everything. Fiona noticed that it was easier to get the best out of him when he was around her or Terin and suspected that the young lad, who had started to draw more attention as he reached his maturity, harbored feelings for the two of them. Terin seemed both flattered and amused.

  Fiona wasn’t certain how she felt. She understood about crushes; she’d managed to turn hers on Kindan into a solid reality, so she could hardly fault the lad for hoping for the same.

  Terin was much nearer him in age. Still, Terin was enlivened with the knowledge that F’jian had come when she’d needed him most and that he would come again when she needed.

  Fiona and Lorana had spoken, again in private, about what the queen rider had done to arrange this, and Fiona had promised Lorana that she would honor Lorana’s vow as her own. That Lorana had said nothing, had unconsciously expected Fiona to do just that, was another sign to Fiona of how much they loved each other. More than sisters, lovers of the same man, heart bound to the same queen, intent on the same destiny. There was a place, Fiona knew with certainty, where they drew upon each other’s strength just as they replenished each other. She had something similar though less secure with Shaneese; their partnership was based more on words spoken than on emotions shared, but it was still much the same partnership.

  “We should send Bekka to Nerra,” Fiona said now quietly to Lorana as they moved on toward their next charge. The dark-haired, almond-eyed woman smiled softly in response and Fiona snorted. “You were waiting for me to say that!”

  “I thought it was a good idea,” Lorana said. “And if it was, I was sure that it would come to you.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Can I go now?” Bekka asked. “I might be able to get Nerra to spare some of her stores.”

  I am ready, Talenth said. The queen was still clearly besotted with the blond healer.

  “All right,” Fiona said. Bekka glanced over at her, eyes narrowed.

  “I know you’ll be careful.”

  “Extra careful,” Bekka assured her, in response to Fiona’s evident worry. “Should I not go?”

  “I’m just worried about those voices of Lorana’s,” Fiona said.

  “Maybe I should bring Lorana.”

  “No,” Fiona said, “none of the weyrlings here seem to have any problems going between and she only noticed it going through time as well.”

  “So I’ll stay in the same time,” Bekka promised. She caught Fiona’s look and added, “And I’ll check in when I get there and before I leave.”

  Fiona and Lorana both kept an “ear” open for the queen, who duly reported each step of their journey. Bekka was greeted warmly by Nerra and Fiona got the impression that their offer through Bekka was met with much relief—even Nerra had found it difficult to house all the orphans that had come to Crom Hold.

  Everything went well, but Fiona was truly relieved only when she stood beside Talenth herself, scratching the queen’s eye ridges and joining her in looking out over the sea of hardened dragon eggs.

  Kurinth and Talenth had determined to clutch together, as if in compensation for their lust-driven fracas, and they took turns watching over the combined clutches and communicating with each other, to the amusement of Lorana and the surprise of Fiona. Terin had apologized profusely over the mating flight; Fiona had waved the issue aside. The only change that surprised them was the pleasant discovery that Terin was pregnant.

  Lorana had remained noncommittal on whether F’jian would be available for the delivery, explaining when Fiona asked that, “There were only so many nights before F’jian took his final flight. If we use them too quickly …”

  Bekka’s success with Nerra had prompted Lin and Jassi to make equally furtive forays to their home holds and, at Fiona’s connivance, they had arranged to have Candidates gather at locations for pickup at the end of a sevenday.

  “A sevenday?” T’mar said in surprise when Fiona told him. “You’re taking a risk, aren’t you? We don’t k
now if they’ll hatch tomorrow or a fortnight from now.”

  “We’ll time it if we have to,” Fiona told him. “As it is, a sevenday is the best guess we’ve got.”

  “And if they don’t hatch soon, we’ll have to leave them while the rest of us go back to our Weyrs,” Shaneese observed. “Our herdbeasts are getting very thin.”

  “Another reason to visit our home continent.”

  “Well, perhaps we can feed from strays when we go back to our continent for flaming drill,” T’mar said thoughtfully. Inderra, the young queen rider of Morurth, had been greeted with cheers when she’d reported from her mission to the holds of High Reaches Weyr that not only would Pellar and Halla send their daughter, Jepara, for the Hatching, but that they’d agreed to the dispatch of miners to help clear the firestone mine near Igen.

  A mixed wing of older recovered riders and those with the now-mature weyrlings of the nearly three Turns past were dispatched under the leadership of J’keran to open the old mine that they’d found near Igen Weyr when a much younger Fiona had gone back in time from her old Fort Weyr. Back then, they’d found the mine already opened and worked, little realizing that their mysterious benefactors would be themselves from Eastern Weyr—Turns older, but still living in the same time. Fiona had insisted on taking enough time when they were done to write the note her younger self had seen at the opening of the mine so many Turns before, finding a perverse pleasure in remembering how the note had so confused her so many Turns ago in her own life.

  “When can we start drilling with the firestone?” Taria asked. She’d grown to become quite a competent rider in her own right, matching Xhinna in everything except leadership; where Xhinna was competent and had the natural inclinations of a good leader, Taria was content to follow—not that she did not speak her mind or stand her own ground when she felt it necessary, but always from the position of a wingsecond at best, never more.

  “Tomorrow, I hope,” T’mar told her.

  “If the eggs don’t hatch,” Fiona reminded him. He shrugged off the question.

  Lorana woke in the middle of the night, alarmed. Something had disturbed her and she came awake with the instant alarm of a mother adopted. She listened first only to hear the sounds of the three sleeping children, the calm slow sounds of Kindan’s heavy breathing, and the sweet, softer sound of Fiona’s breath coming somewhat quicker.