Authors: Anne McCaffrey
M’barak returned Alessan and Tuero to Ruatha Hold, landing in the forecourt. The speed with which Oklina emerged from the Hold suggested she had been anxiously awaiting her brother’s return. She paused on the top steps, her face turned up to him. As he slid down the blue dragon’s side, Alessan let out a joyful whoop and her expression turned to relief as she rushed to meet him. Exuberantly Alessan swooped her up in his arms, achingly aware of the difference between his sister’s slight body and Moreta’s. He gave Oklina a gentle kiss on her cheek. There had been scant time for affection between brother and sister lately, and, during her illness, Alessan had come to know how much he valued Oklina. A kiss, he had good reason to know, was a kind gesture!
“Moreta said the serum idea is valid. We’re going to try it! Now!” Alessan told her. “If it does work, then Ruatha is open again and my holders cannot deny me their labor. If it doesn’t work, we’re no worse off than we have been.”
“It
has
to work!” Oklina cried fervently.
Alessan shouted for Follen. “We’ll need his help, his implements, and that old brood mare. I know she caught the plague and I can’t risk any of the team animals.”
“Arith! Behave yourself. That’s Lady Oklina!” M’barak called. The blue dragon had turned his head round toward brother and sister, and was now wiffling closer and closer to Oklina, his eyes whirling. By no means afraid of such attentions, Oklina didn’t know what to do and clung to Alessan.
At his rider’s reprimand, Arith made a tiny little noise, a disappointed snort, and turned his head away while M’barak apologized profusely.
“I really don’t know what came over him. Arith is usually very well behaved. But it is late, he is tired, and we’d better get back to the Weyr.” Arith snorted audibly and M’barak looked startled. “
I’d
best be back at the Weyr.”
Thanking M’barak and Arith for their convey, Alessan guided Oklina out of the way, a bemused Tuero following.
“Blue dragons are not usually fascinated by the opposite sex,” the harper remarked dryly to Alessan.
“Really?” Alessan’s reply was polite for his mind was on the mechanics of turning runner blood into serum vaccine.
“There
is
a queen egg on the Fort Weyr Hatching Ground.”
“And?” Alessan’s courtesy turned crisp. He had a lot to do before he could see what Dag had salvaged of the Ruathan herds.
Tuero’s grin broadened. “As I recall it, Ruatha has quite a few bloodties with dragonriders.”
Alessan stared from Oklina to the dragon already airborne, and remembered K’lon’s remark the day he had brought the vaccine to Ruatha Hold. “It couldn’t be!”
At that point, Follen rushed out of the Hold, his expression hopeful, and Alessan devoted his full attention to putting vaccine theory to test.
Tuero brought the brood mare in from the field; she was quiet enough to be led by her forelock. Follen, Oklina, Deefer, and the trustworthy fosterlings bore the medical equipment to the beasthold. The momentum of exhilaration was briefly checked when they discovered that they didn’t have large enough glass containers for the quantity of animal blood. Then Oklina remembered that Lady Oma had put away huge ornamental glass bottles long ago presented by Master Clargesh to Lords Holder as samples of apprentice industry and design. To spin such large bottles, Alessan, Tuero, and Deefer contrived a big centrifuge from a spare wagonwheel attached to spitcogs and a crank.
The runner mare stood quietly impassive since the bloodtaking caused no discomfort.
“Strange,” Follen said as the first batch was completed and the straw-colored fluid drawn off. “It’s the same color as human serum.”
“It’s only dragons who have green blood,” Oklina said.
“We’ll try the vaccine on the lame runner,” Alessan said, wondering which blue rider was harassing his sister and why. All the time the wheel was turning, Alessan fidgeted. Since he’d no other option, he had been patient, but now that he could search out Dag, he was fretting to be gone. “If there’s no ill effect on that creature, we can assume—we have to assume—that the serum works, since the same principle is efficacious for humans.”
“It’s too late to do more tonight anyhow,” Follen said with a vast yawn when he had injected the serum in the lame beast.
“No one at the Harper Hall will think kindly of a message at this hour,” Tuero agreed, knuckling his eyes.
“I think I’ll just stay here tonight, in case there’s a reaction.” Alessan nodded toward the lame runner.
“And you’ll be off first thing in the morning, won’t you?”—Oklina leaned toward her brother, her dark soft eyes on his, her comment for him alone—“to find Dag and Squealer?”
He nodded and gave her shoulders an affectionate squeeze before he sent her off after the healer and the harper. Alessan watched the three until the glowbaskets they carried were out of sight in a dip of the roadway. Then he fixed himself a bed of straw in the stall next to the runner. Despite his good intention to remain alert enough to check on the beast, he slept soundly until first light. The injected runner was still lame but it exhibited no signs of a distress, no mark of sweat, and had eaten a good deal of the clean bedding with which it had been furnished.
Reassured, Alessan saddled the runner that Tuero had nicknamed Skinny—not a mount he would have chosen for anyone, but beggars couldn’t be choosers at Ruatha those days. Alessan carefully packed the serums, needlethorns, and Follen’s glass syringe into the saddlebag, cushioning them with clean straw, then mounted and urged Skinny onto the roadway.
The night before, he had had many doubts as they waited for the serum to be produced: doubts about many things, including Moreta’s unexpected response to him. He thought of kindness and the kiss he had given his sister. Had Moreta only meant to be kind? Today, in the dawn of a bright fresh spring morning, he knew it had not been mere kindness in Moreta. He and the Weyrwoman had been of one mind in that brief instant. And the dragon queen had trilled in concord.
Skinny shied at some imaginary bogey in the greening bushes by the track. Alessan swayed to the motion, checking the animal’s sideway plunge with a firm pressure of that leg, while he made sure that the flaps on the saddlebags were secure. Alessan liked an active mover but he couldn’t risk the precious fluid or pause to school a fractious beast. He must concentrate on riding and not be diverted by visions of the impossible. Moreta was the Fort Weyrwoman. Although she might, just might, enjoy a discreet relationship with him, might even allow a pregnancy—and suddenly Alessan longed for a child as he had not with Suriana—Alessan was still Lord of a severely depleted bloodline. He had to have an acknowledged wife, and others to bear his children, as many as he could beget.
Old Runel was dead, he thought with a flash of regret. Old Runel and all the Ruathan begets as well as the bloodlines of runners back to the Crossing. He’d never thought he would rue the loss of that man.
Skinny trotted, its hocks well under it and with a fine forward extension. Too bad the creature was gelded. Ruatha had once had far better specimens to propagate. Alessan inhaled against the hope at the end of this track. He tried to keep from wondering which animals Dag had seen fit to take with him. If only Dag had included one breeding pair of the Lord Leef’s heavy carters . . . The records of animals destroyed that Norman had started to keep had been lost when the race-flats temporary hospital had been abandoned. Alessan wished futilely that he had made time to look in on the beasthold that frantic morning before he had taken ill.
Alessan came to the fork in the track, each direction leading to nursery fields. Dag would have taken the less accessible one, he decided, but he paused long enough to see if there had been a message left at the division. Not a rag, a bone, or an unnatural formation of the pebbles. Nine days had passed since Dag left with Fergal. Fear burrowed from the trap in his mind to which Alessan had banished it.
He dug his heels into Skinny, and the beast responded instantly, skittering at a good rate up the track, high breathing as it caught the excitement generated in its rider. Runners were considered stupid, had few ways to communicate with riders, and yet occasionally one seemed to know exactly what was going on in the human it bore. Alessan laid a soothing hand on Skinny’s arched neck and brought the animal to a more sensible pace.
Then they were at the rise that led to the pasture and, for a heartbreaking moment, Alessan could see nothing of man or beast in the rolling fields. But the barrier had been man-made, with prickly hedge and stone, high enough to contain docile beasts. He rose in his stirrups, numb with the fear that Dag had brought the plague with him and died with all the animals. Then he saw the thin column of smoke to his right, saw the flapping of a shirt drying on a branch. He heard a piercing whistle.
From the slope down to the stream, runners trooped obediently in answer to the summons. Alessan felt tears prick his eyes. He hauled Skinny smartly back down the road, turned, set his heels to the bony ribs, and Skinny charged the barrier, sailing nobly over it, clacking with surprise when they landed on the far side. Alessan hauled the delighted animal to a more sedate pace, remembering his mission. It was only then that he saw, among the beasts jogging up the slope, the wobbly-legged awkward infantile bodies, the waddling pace of the gravid. Alessan let out a whoop of jubilation and it reverberated from the hills. Had Dag taken
all
the pregnant mares with him? Alessan had bleakly had to assume that all the anticipated foals had died of the plague or been aborted, for all he found in the fields of the Hold proper had been gelded males and barren mares.
His whoop was answered from the rude shelter dug into the high side of the slope. The small figure standing at its entrance waved both arms. One small figure! Inadvertently Alessan checked Skinny and then urged it forward. One small black-haired figure, now with impudent arms cocked against ragged pants. Fergal!
“You took your time, Lord Alessan!” The boy’s expression was as impertinent as his words were resentful and unforgiving.
“Dag?” Alessan’s voice broke in consternation. He could not move from the saddle. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how much he had looked forward to seeing the old handler, how sorely he needed Dag’s knowledgeable advice if Ruathan runners were ever to regain their former prestige.
Annoyingly, Fergal shrugged and then cocked his head up at Alessan.
“I thought you’d
forgotten
us!” He stepped to one side and gestured toward the shelter.
“He
broke his leg. I took care of all the runners, even the ones who birthed. Didn’t I do a good job?”
Alessan would have swatted him for impudence had he been able to catch him but Fergal, grinning with positive malice at his little hoax, had slipped neatly out of range into the shelter of his charges.
“Alessan?” Dag’s summons came from the shelter and Alessan put aside any thought of discipline to rush in to his old ally. “I saved all I could for you, Alessan. I saved all I could.”
“You have also saved Ruatha!”
“I do apologize for intruding on the Hatching Ground, Moreta,” Capiam said, peering cautiously around the entrance.
“Come in. Come in!” Moreta beckoned him eagerly to join her in her temporary accommodation in the first tier.
Capiam looked back over his shoulder a moment and then entered, keeping an anxious eye on Orlith among her eggs.
“She does seem quite serene, doesn’t she?”
“Oh, she is!”
“M’barak, who conveyed Desdra and me here, said that she will even show off that splendid queen egg she clutched.” With due respect for the hot volcanic sands, Capiam walked quickly to Moreta.
“Desdra’s here? I’ve heard a great deal about her from M’barak and K’lon.”
“She’s chatting with Jallora so I could have a private word with you.” Capiam cleared his throat in an uncharacteristic show of nervousness.
Moreta thought he was wary of Orlith and extended her hands to him. She supposed she must get used to the changes wrought in people by the plague. Capiam appeared only to have lost weight, for his eyes sparkled out of a craggy face that would become more attractive with age. His hair was thinning at the temples and she fancied that the gray had encroached farther into the black, but there was no diminution in the force of his personality, or in his grip as he clasped her hands.
“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” she asked.
His eyes twinkled. “An unexpected . . . challenge is what I told Master Tirone.”
Alerted by his geniality, Moreta searched his face. “What sort of a challenge?”
“I’ll come to that in a moment, if I may. First, would you know if runnerbeasts would respond favorably to a serum vaccine against the plague they also suffer?”
Moreta stared at him a moment, surprised to be asked the same question twice in a short space of time, and surprised that the question had to be asked at all. She was angry that no one had taken steps to safeguard the runnerbeasts, which were such valuable assets of the Northern Continent. She had tried to appreciate that saving human life had been the priority, but surely someone must have been rational enough in one of the runnerholds to apply the principal to the beasts. She had been complimented and touched that Alessan had sought her advice yesterday evening and, despite her varied irritations, slightly amused that she, Weyrwoman of Fort, was now being approached by the Masterhealer.
“I answered that same question for Alessan last night.”
“Oh!” Capiam blinked with surprise. “Oh, and how did you answer Lord Alessan?”
“Affirmatively.”
“He contacted Master Balfor?”
“It was too late to drum up the Keroon Beasthold. Is Balfor the new Masterherdsman?’
“He is acting in that capacity. Someone must.”
“Alessan ought to have informed you, or at least the Harper Hall . . .” Moreta frowned. Tuero should have done it if Alessan was too busy. Perhaps Alessan had not had enough time to produce a serum? No. She had the impression that he wouldn’t have wasted any time.