Nerilka's Story (10 page)

I knew then why Alessan’s incredible eyes had been shining the day I arrived. I certainly didn’t know how Moreta and Alessan had contrived to be lovers. They could not have had much time together at all. On that afternoon, the six had been gone from Ruatha only an hour. Alessan’s sanction of Oklina and B’lerion was now more comprehensible if he and Moreta were involved. I was glad that the Weyrwoman had had some joy, for I hadn’t liked Sh’gall on those few times I had encountered him. He wasn’t likable, whereas Moreta was. Poor Moreta. Poor, poor Alessan. What could possibly comfort him in this new trial?

Desdra had an answer. She waited until Alessan’s sobbing had subsided to shudderings. Then she and Tuero lifted him from my lap. I could not move immediately, so cramped were my legs. But I could and did cushion him against my body as Desdra gently tipped a cup to his lips and told him to drink.

The look in his eyes will always haunt me: lost, totally lost, incredulous of his loss—and so, so sad. He had taken all the draught Desdra had given him, and it was merciful to him as well as to those about him that his eyelids lowered over his ghastly expression as the fellis took instant effect.

There were willing arms to transport him to his quarters, and I willing to sit by him, though Desdra assured me that she had given him enough fellis to keep him asleep until the next day.

“What can we do for him then, Desdra?” I asked, still shaken by his grief. Tears would not stop coursing down my cheeks.

“My dear Lady Nerilka, if I knew the answer to that, I would be Masterhealer.” She shook her head from side to side, expressing the utter helplessness that I, too, felt to my core. “It will depend in every degree on what he will allow us to do for him. How cruel this new loss. How horribly, wastefully cruel!”

We undressed him and covered him with the fur. His face was prematurely aged, his eyes shrunken in his head, his lips drawn down, his complexion waxy-white. Desdra felt his pulse and nodded with relief. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed, wearily propping her back against the stead, her hands palms up and limp in her lap.

“He loved Moreta?” I was bold enough to ask.

Desdra nodded. “When we collected the needlethorn. What a glorious day that was!” She sighed, the faintest of smiles touching her usually austere face. “I’m glad they had that much. And perhaps, in a strange, unjust way, it is for the best. That is, if Ruatha is to endure.”

“Because Alessan must secure his Bloodline?” In all of Pern’s history, no Weyrwoman had become a Lady Holder, though many Lady Holders had become Weyrwomen. Moreta had been nearly to the end of safe childbearing, but Alessan could have taken a wife as well. A Lord Holder could make his own laws within his Hold, especially to secure his Bloodline. Hold girls were raised with that precept firmly implanted in their brains and hearts.

“Oklina’s children were to be fostered here,” Desdra said.

“But that’s not enough with all his losses.”

“You must tell him who you are, Lady Nerilka.”

I shook my head even as I grasped firmly at the thought, at that utterly impossible possibility. He needed someone pretty and appealing, clever and charming, who could rouse him from all the grief he had endured.

She left me then, murmuring something about bringing food when it was ready. It took too much energy to tell her that I doubted I could choke anything down.

Chapter X

3.24.43–4.23.43

I’
M NOT SURE
how any of us got through the next few days. B’lerion stayed with Oklina. It was more obvious than ever to me that her destiny would be the Weyr. She had heard the outcry from the dragons, which was unusual enough for someone not of the Weyr or dragon-linked. Alessan’s knowledge of Moreta’s death was shatteringly unexpected to all but Desdra and Oklina. I pieced together some parts of their story, aided by a growing intuition that seemed to be sensitive to anything concerning Alessan.

All the dragonriders and most Weyrfolk had been instantly aware of the two deaths, Moreta’s and Holth’s. Later B’lerion told us of the reinforced rules and disciplines imposed on all riders to prevent a recurrence of this type of tragedy.

It had begun as a logical expedient for injured riders to ask their flightworthy dragons if they would fly a sound dragonman to make up Wing strength at Threadfall. Each dragon had his own peculiarities of flight that his impressed rider understood. But, generally speaking, any dragon-rider was capable of riding another’s dragon. No blame could be attached to Leri for adopting that custom and allowing Moreta to ride Holth in the several emergencies that had arisen. The courtesy was by then customary Weyr practice. But tired dragons and tired riders make mistakes, and that late afternoon, Moreta and Holth had been pushed beyond mere exhaustion to the point where habit only had carried them through the motions of landing and taking off. I remembered then how Holth had gone
between
a wingspan above the Court that afternoon.

“Yes,” B’lerion said, his voice a broken whisper. “Holth had lost a lot of natural spring in her hindquarters. She’d have leaped up and gone
between
before Moreta could have told her where to fly—they stayed, lost,
between
.”

Later, when Master Tirone began to write a celebratory ballad about Moreta’s courageous ride, Desdra told me that, at the insistence of all Weyrleaders, Moreta was to be properly mounted on her own queen, not Holth. To broadcast the truth behind that tragedy could have done incalculable harm. Most of Pern never knew the truth. I’m not so certain I was all that glad to be in the minority. Not that it diminished Moreta’s heroism in my estimation, but because so simple a mistake was causing so much anguish.

Desdra also told me, since she knew me to be discreet and trustworthy, how the dragonriders had managed to make so many deliveries. This had contributed to their total exhaustion, a major factor in the tragedy: Dragons could go as easily
between
one time and another as one place to another. Moreta and Holth had overtaxed their strength in this way. For only by stretching time in this bizarre fashion, or rather doubling back on themselves, could Moreta and Holth manage to deliver serum to all the holds on the Keroon plains. Moreta had been the only one of the riders available that fateful day sufficiently familiar with Keroon’s many half-hidden holds to have succeeded in that task.

Telgar Weyr was to suffer disciplinary action from the other Weyrs, led by Weyrwomen. They were unalterably convinced that had M’tani not been so intransigent and permitted his riders to fly, Moreta’s life would not have been lost. I never did learn what was done against Telgar Weyr. If Oklina ever knew, she never mentioned it.

I also was now in a far better way of understanding how the six people—Alessan, Moreta, Capiam, Desdra, Oklina, and B’lerion—had spent that hour preceding my arrival at Ruatha I had previously assumed that supplies of needlethorn had been available, not that these six courageous people had dared to spend a whole day in the future harvesting the thorns on far Ista.

I understood a great deal—yet it was not enough to help Alessan. I knew only that I wondered how he would find the courage to continue after this latest brutal tragedy.

He came back to consciousness, and awareness of this new sorrow, twenty-four hours later. I had been dozing, and roused at the slight sound his restlessness occasioned. I had to look away from his haunted, almost wild eyes.

“Desdra drugged me?” When I nodded, my own eyes downcast, he cursed her. “It won’t help. Nothing will help. Does anyone know what happened?”

So I told him, somehow able to keep my voice level and calm though my throat kept closing up. The waves of grief that rolled from the man were palpable. He stared at me when I had finished, eyes burning in his drained white face.

“But Leri and Orlith could go together!” His resentment and fury were compressed into that accusation.

“The eggs. Orlith stays until they hatch, Leri with her.”

“Brave Leri! Gallant Orlith !” His sarcasm made me flinch, but the agony in his rigid body, his clenched fists, told me that a different struggle was being fought. “Dragons and riders have many advantages denied us! Would that my father had released me on that Search! When I consider how much different my life would have been . . .” He turned away from me, his face toward the window. Then, because I knew his view included the burial mounds, I knew why he turned back, his shadowed eyes closed in the taut skin of his tormented face.

“So you have watched me while I slept, loyal Rill. And I shall have a new guardian, no doubt, whenever I wake, to keep me living a life I have no wish to live.”

My own anguish spoke then, not the sensible, patient, dutiful, plain member of the Fort Hold Horde, but Suriana’s friend, Alessan’s newest holder, and someone who valued him far more than she should. Any sorrow may be borne. Time will heal the deepest hurt of heart—but time must be won.

“You may not want to live, Lord Holder of Ruatha, but you don’t have the right to die!”

“Ruatha is no longer sufficient reason for me to live!” he told me in a bitter, intense, angry voice. “It’s tried to kill me once already.”

“And you have fought to save it. No one else could have done so much, with so much honor and dignity.”

“Honor and dignity mean nothing in the grave!” He flung his arm up, toward the window and the graves of so many.

“You still breathe, and you are Ruatha.” I spoke sharply, wondering if anything I said could jolt him out of the course he had tacitly announced. Duty and honor and tradition were such cold substitutes for a beautiful woman and her love. “As your holder, Lord Alessan, I require that you have an heir of your Blood to leave behind you.” I surprised myself with the vehemence in my voice, and he frowned as he looked up at me. “Unless you want Fort or Tillek or Crom Blood to hold Ruatha at your defection. Then I’ll mix the fellis for you myself and you can quit!”

“A bargain, then.” With a quickness I hadn’t expected from a man lying abed so wracked and spent with grief, he was upright, extending an implacable hand to me. “When you are with child, Nerilka, I’ll drink that cup.”

I stared back at him, aghast that my rallying words had evoked such a response from him, stunned that he misconstrued what I had said and applied it personally to me. Then I realized that he knew my name.

“Your parents have always favored an alliance . . .” His words were derisive, sneering.

“Not me, Alessan, not me.”

“Why not you, Nerilka? You’ve shown all the qualities of the perfectly trained Lady Holder. Why else are you so fortuitously at Ruatha? Or did you think to revenge those deaths on me?”

“Oh, no! No! I could no longer endure Fort. Tolocamp sunk himself beneath contempt. How could I remain there when he denied the healers medicine and help. Coming here was chance. I was at Bestrum’s when M’barak came and asked for help. How can you know who I am?”

“Suriana.” Then, more irritably, he said, “You fostered with her, Rill. You know how endlessly she sketched. Your face appeared in many drawings. How could I not know Nerilka when we finally meet? What I didn’t know was why you’d come, so I let you have your anonymity.” Then he snapped his fingers impatiently. “Come, girl, it is not so bad a bargain, to be undisputed Lady Holder of Ruatha, and no Lord to abuse you forever. You can’t be afraid of me? I never beat Suriana. Surely she told you that I was a good husband to her.”

She had told me that, not in so many words, but implying much more than goodness, but the thought of her now dead, and of his so palpable grief for Moreta, made the tears flow down my cheeks again.

“You are kind and good and brave, and do not deserve to be so ill used by circumstance.”

“I seem unable to avoid misfortunes, Nerilka.” His voice was harsh, his face coldly set. “Spare me your pity. I have no use for it. Give me instead the child to carry on Ruathan Blood? And the cup?”

How I could have agreed to either part of the bizarre bargain I now wonder, but at the time I thought that surely when the worst of his grief had passed, Alessan would reconsider taking the cup even if I could find the courage to mix it. I would have said anything at that moment.

“Then let us begin the first now.” His hand compelled me to the bed, but I broke his grip, horrified, not entirely by his precipitous behavior.

“No, I will not imitate Anella.”

Alessan regarded me with angry incomprehension.

“Tolocamp had Anella in his bed an hour after he knew my mother was dead.”

“Our circumstances are vastly different, Nerilka.” His expression was terrible, his eyes now burning.

“You loved Moreta.”

A muscle in his cheek twitched and his eyes stared coldly at me, glittering with something so akin to hatred that I recoiled.

“Is that what holds you back, Lady Nerilka? I’d liefer it be maidenly modesty. I never knew a Fortian to go back on his word.”

He taunted me and, exerting pressure on my hand, drew me inexorably to him. I tried to put in words any one of the many reasons why I resisted him then, the main of which was that this was such an inauspicious moment for a proceeding that was reputed to delight the participants.

“A man who has tasted death needs loving to remind him of life, Nerilka.” Now his voice was persuasive, and I was very close to capitulation when we both heard the scrape of the outer door and quiet footfalls.

“You are reprieved, Nerilka, but not for long,” he said in a swift, low, intense tone. “We have made a bargain—Lord and holder—and it will be consummated, the sooner the better. I long for that cup.”

Tuero entered quietly, relief on his kind, long face when he saw that Alessan was awake and talking to me. “Were you wanting anything, Alessan?”

“My clothes,” Alessan said, holding out his hand for them. I got clean ones from the press, and Tuero handed him his boots. He dressed quickly, then led us from his room.

If his appearance was a surprise to those in the Hall, his manner was even more of a shock. He collected Deefer, sent a fosterling for Dag, wanted to know where Oklina was, and did not question Dresdra’s continued presence when she and Oklina arrived together. But he turned sharply away when Oklina reached to embrace him, and sharply requested that Tuero and I join the others in his office. Then, in a low, controlled, but uninflected voice, he told us what must now be accomplished as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Everyone was so grateful to see him plunge into activity that no one but I knew that he was setting Ruatha Hold in order for his death. Not content with physical labor, he spent long hours at night with Tuero, sending out messages, some by drum but others in sealed letters conveyed by mounted messengers. I could hear the first—requests for brood mares for his stallions, requests for any holdless families with good reputations to apply to him. Some of the messages were reminders of marks owed Ruatha Hold; I saw those entries in the Records. He sent everyone able to walk or ride out to check on the condition of the empty holds, to tally what stock remained in the fields and in what condition, to discover what crops had been sown and their progress.

I, for one, found no joy in the work, colored as it was by his cheerlessness and dispassionate industry. We had worked harder making the serum, but a strong and good spirit had imbued us then. Now there was no animation in any of us, as if Alessan’s emotionlessness drained us as well. There was even scant satisfaction in seeing Ruatha refurbished and clean, every removable evidence of the epidemic cleared away. Oklina put spring flowering plants about the Hall, hoping to cheer us up. Some of them withered and died immediately, as if they, too, could not survive in this atmosphere. I worried constantly that what I had said to Alessan had been wrong, that I had brought about this fearful change in him by appearing to condone his desired suicide.

Ten days after Moreta’s death, at our somber evening meal, Alessan got to his feet, commanding our instant attention. He took a thin roll from his belt.

“Lord Tolocamp permits me to take his daughter, Lady Nerilka, as my wife,” he announced in his blunt, uninflected way.

Much later, I came across that roll, wedged in the back of a coffer. Tolocamp’s actual words were: “If she is there, take her. She is no longer kin of mine.” Alessan need not have spared my feelings; but it proved in yet another way that an essential goodness of spirit was imprisoned behind that emotionless facade.

That evening there was a ripple of surprise, but no one looked at me. Not even Tuero. Desdra had returned to the Healer Hall five days before.

“Lady Nerilka?” Oklina asked timidly, staring with wide eyes at her brother.

“The Ruathan Bloodline must continue,” Alessan went on, and then gave a mirthless snort. “Rill agrees to that.”

Everyone looked at me then as I stared straight ahead.

“I remember now where I’ve seen you before,” Tuero began. He smiled, the first smile I had seen in the ten days. “Lady Nerilka” He rose, bowing to me amid the scattered gasps of surprise.

Oklina stared only one moment longer, and then she was around the table, her arms about me, crying and trying not to cry. “Oh, Rill. Is it really you?”

“I have received permission from her Lord Holder. We have a harper present and sufficient witnesses, so the agreement can be formalized.”

“Surely not just like that?” Oklina protested, snapping her fingers.