Anne Mccaffrey_ Dragonriders of Pern 20 (23 page)

“Hints,” Kindan said. “Fragments. The Records just stop and don’t start until months later, usually written by someone else.”

“Harper?”

Kindan shook his head. “No.”

“They died trying, then,” Kilti guessed, his voice a mix of scorn and praise. He glanced to Kindan once more. “So are they still looking in the Records?”

“No,” Kindan confessed.

“They’ve stopped?” Kilti barked in surprise. “They can’t! That’s our only hope.”

“There was a fire,” Kindan told him with a sinking feeling in his gut.

“A fire?” Kilti repeated, aghast. “The Records, how are they?”

“We lost as much as a quarter, no less than a tenth,” Kindan told him.

“A quarter?” Kilti gasped. “What happened? Who started it?”

“I did,” Kindan said.

Without warning, the healer took two quick steps and slapped Kindan hard across the face. “Do you know how many you’ve killed?” Kilti roared at him.

“It was not his fault,” Vaxoram called from his position nearby. “I started the fire.”

“So they sent you here,” Bemin said sourly.

Kindan hung his head in shame.

Kilti started to say something more in his anger, his hand still poised for another blow, but then he shook himself and lowered his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was uncalled for.”

“I don’t think so,” Kindan said. “Millions will die because of me.”

“Millions will die,” Kilti agreed. “But you don’t own all the blame by yourself.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have hit you, it was wrong.”

“I deserved it.”

“No,” Kilti said with a sigh. “No, you didn’t. You made a mistake, right?” Kindan nodded. “Mistakes shouldn’t be punished, shouldn’t be condemned.”

“But there’s nothing I can do that will make up for it,” Kindan protested.

“Yes, there is,” Kilti corrected him. “You can live.” He gestured to the listless holders in their cots. “You can live and save them.”

“We need more spaces,” Bemin announced, carefully not looking at Kindan. Kindan glanced briefly toward Koriana, but she was not looking at him.

“At once, my lord,” Kindan said, bowing his head.

At some point the day turned to night, but Kindan never knew it. At some point he had food, but he didn’t taste it; water, but he wasn’t thirsty. At some point he found himself lying against a cot; he pushed himself upright, checked the forehead of the occupant, found it cold, and worked with Vaxoram to haul the body away and find a new occupant.

As the night grew darkest and then lightened with the first light of morning, Kindan realized that there were other people amongst the ill, more people than just himself, Kilti, Koriana, and Lord Bemin. But their numbers were few, maybe four or six more.

Death was all around him. Coughing filled the air, masking the moaning and other sounds of pain as the fevered sick slowly lost their battle with death.

The living fought on. Whenever Kindan’s energy flagged, Kilti or Vaxoram or, once, Koriana, would seem to appear and give him a brief nod or a ghost smile, and then Kindan would find the strength to go on.

Valla and Koriss were a strong presence throughout. The two fire-lizards seemed to quickly learn how to check on the ill, how to get attention when it was needed. Their company seemed to cheer all but the most fevered.

But by morning, their energy had lagged and Kindan had sternly ordered his bronze fire-lizard to rest. Valla made it plain by his reaction that he felt Kindan should do the same.

“I can’t,” Kindan explained. He gestured to the cots. “They need me.”

He looked around for the others and, in one panicked moment, found himself totally alone. Had the plague taken everyone? Was he the only healthy person in a room full of the desperately ill?

He spotted a slumped body leaning against a cot. It was Vaxoram. Kindan trotted over to him, the closest he could come to a run. He knelt down, felt the other’s forehead, and was thrilled to discover that it was neither stone cold nor boiling.

“Vaxoram,” Kindan called gently but urgently. “Come on, you’ve got to get up, you’ll get all cramped like this.”

Blearily, Vaxoram opened his eyes. “What happened?”

“You fell asleep.”

“I’m sorry.” The older harper rose unsteadily on his feet.

“You need rest,” Kindan told him.

“Can’t stop,” Vaxoram muttered in response. His eyes grew more focused as he looked at Kindan. “Any more’n you.” He looked around the Great Hall. “Where are the others?”

Kindan shook his head. “I’ll look in the kitchen,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“No,” Vaxoram replied glumly. Kindan understood, it was hard to be hungry in such a depressing place. “I’ll check on the patients.”

Kindan nodded.

“It’d help if we could know their temperature without touching them,” Vaxoram grumbled as he moved off.

Kindan nodded once more and shambled off to the kitchen and the laundry. He paused at the exit, looking back to the bed where they’d put the little girl who’d been stirring the boiling sheets. With relief he saw that she was still there.

There was fresh
klah
in the kitchen and the smell of baking bread, which surprised Kindan as he saw no other signs of activity. In the laundry, he found that someone had stoked the fires under the boiling tub and a few sheets were roiling desultorily. Remembering the little girl, he grabbed the stick and poked the sheets further down into the pot. He went to the laundry line, found the driest sheets, quickly folded them, then brought them back with him to the Great Hall and laid them on one of the huge tables that had been pushed against the wall to make room for the cots.

His thoughts came back to Vaxoram’s idea. Could there be some way to measure temperature? Of course! he thought, remembering some remark of Conar’s in what seemed an age ago: moodstone.

The thin flaky crystal changed color with temperature. But where to get it? And how to get it to stick to people’s foreheads, even when they were sweating?

“Moodstone!” Kindan called to Vaxoram across the hall. “And glue!”

“What?” Vaxoram asked, looking up from the patient he was checking.

“What do you want with moodstone?” another voice, Kilti’s, called from the other end of the hall. Kindan was both surprised and relieved to hear the healer’s voice; he guessed now that the healer had been off tending the sick in other parts of the Hold.

“We could use moodstone to measure temperature,” Kindan replied.

“How’d you get it to stick?”

“Use glue,” Kindan replied. “Soft glue, not hard.”

“Might work,” Kilti agreed. “But we’ve no time to try,” he said, gesturing to all the sick patients laid out around them.

Kindan dropped his head in acknowledgment and despair. Then he raised it again triumphantly. “We’ve no time, but the dragonriders do!”

“How would you get a message to them?” Vaxoram asked.

“Valla,” Kindan replied, sending a mental summons to the sleeping fire-lizard. The bronze fire-lizard must have been only dozing, for he looked up from his place among a bundle of blankets and chirped inquiringly. In a moment he was hovering in front of Kindan.

Kindan held out his arm so that Valla could land.

“I’ve got a message for you to take,” he said. He looked around and called to Kilti, “Where can I find a stylus and paper?”

“My office,” Kilti replied, gesturing vaguely toward the farther of the two Great Hall exits. “Down the circular staircase to the landing, then over to the broad stair and my dispensary. Take some glows, I haven’t been there in days.”

“Should I bring anything else back?” Kindan asked.

“Anything you think of,” Kilti said. “More fellis, although I don’t know when we can make more juice. Numbweed, if you see it.”

“Numbweed?” Kindan asked in surprise. Numbweed was great in numbing the pain of cuts or bruises but he couldn’t imagine how it would be useful for fever.

“Just get it,” Kilti barked.

Kindan shrugged and took off, following Kilti’s instructions. He could only find one dim glow in the kitchen, so he collected a bunch of others and put them out with the drying linen. The sunlight, even the feeble light of early winter, would recharge them by nightfall.

He took his dim glow and retraced his steps to the large circular stairway. He moved cautiously down it, came to the landing and stopped—was he supposed to turn left or right? He went left and walked for a long while before he decided that he’d gone the wrong way and retraced his steps. The passageway widened and he spotted the broad stairs just before he stepped down on them. Moments later he was in Kilti’s office. He found stylus and paper, searched through the cupboards and found some dried fellis leaves—he took the whole drawer and put the stylus and paper on top. He found a bottle of ink, sealed it tightly, and laid it on top of the bundle. Then he looked around and found a jar of numbweed. Still confused as to why Kilti would want it, he grouped it with the other things, took one last look around the dimly lit room, and left.

Back in the Great Hall, Kindan wrote his message carefully in tiny, neat block letters. He didn’t want to overburden his tired fire-lizard—Valla had been his constant companion and had slept no more than Kindan—but he also needed to be sure that the message was understood. Satisfied, he put the message in the little holder that was attached to Valla’s bead harness.

“Take this to the Star Stones at Benden,” Kindan said, staring into Valla’s softly whirling faceted eyes. “Drop it at the Star Stones and let the dragons know.”

Valla chirped and bobbed his head.

“Come back as soon as you can,” Kindan told the fire-lizard affectionately.

Valla chirped once, rubbed his head against Kindan’s jaw, jumped up, and vanished
between.

Just as Kindan had collected himself to go back to his patrolling of the sick, the sounds of a drum reverberated through the Great Hall.

Report,
the message said.

“You handle it,” Kilti said, looking up from the bedside of a feverish young holder girl.

“Where’s a drum?” Kindan asked, glancing around the hall.

“I don’t know,” Kilti snapped, “figure something out. You’re wasting time.”

Stung, Kindan glanced around the hall and then went back to the kitchen. He paused long enough to find a covered pot, fill it with water, and throw in the fellis leaves he’d collected, setting the pot to warm near the flames; he knew they’d soon be out of fellis juice.

He went to the laundry, looked around, and then returned to the kitchen. He found the largest pot he could carry and went back through the laundry to the linen line.

He squatted with the pot cradled upended between his legs and rapped out,
Kindan reports.

There was a long moment before a reply came.
Status?

Kindan furrowed his brow. What did that mean? Whoever was on the drums wasn’t all that good.

Many ill, many dead,
Kindan rapped back.

Kilti, Bemin?

Alive,
Kindan responded only to pause—he hadn’t seen the Lord Holder all morning. So he added,
Healer.

Holder?
Came the question.

Unknown,
he replied.
Sender?

Kelsa,
came the reply. Kelsa was the worst on drums, Kindan recalled. The others must all be sick if she was the only drummer.

Masters?
Kindan rapped back.

All sick,
came the response.
Murenny dead.

“Dead?” Kindan said aloud and was startled to hear his own voice. Tears streaked down his face. The Masterharper of Pern was dead, what could they do?

Lenner?
Kindan rapped out slowly, his heart pounding.

Sick,
Kelsa responded. There was a pause.
Help?

Was that a request or a question, Kindan wondered.

Coming soon,
Kindan replied after a moment’s deliberation.
Dragonriders.

Dragonriders must stay away!
Kelsa drummed back, her drumming loud in emphasis.

Air drop,
Kindan replied.

??
Kelsa responded, using a code Kindan had never heard before. Was she getting sick or just being brilliant in asking for clarification?

Drop supplies by air,
Kindan responded. Wait a minute! Why hadn’t he thought of that? The dragonriders could drop supplies by air to all the holders. Kindan was elated, a huge grin on his face.

Just as suddenly as his heart soared, it crashed again as Kindan thought: What supplies? Vaguely he recalled a similar conversation with M’tal and Koriana
…when
was it?

The question was driven out of his mind as he heard an anguished cry, “Kindan!”

It was Koriana.

“Kindan, help!” she wailed.

Kindan jumped up and rushed back to the Great Hall.