Nerilka's Story (6 page)

“Nah, then, Master Capiam,” Theng was saying as I made good my escape, “you know I can’t allow you close contact with any of your craftsmen.”

I was immensely relieved that Theng intervened at that point. It was presumptuous of me, perhaps, but I felt that Master Capiam ought to remain where he was accessible to drum messages and councils with other Masters, particularly when he and the Masterharper had just pulled their Craftsmen from Fort Hold. As devoted a Craftsman as he was, it was not right that Master Capiam put himself at risk in this wretched camp. Perhaps now that the vaccine was being processed, the internment camp would be dispersed in only a matter of days. It would be a long time, however, before Hold, Hall, and Weyr could pick up the skein of routine and unravel the tangle in which the plague had left us.

I had a very selfish reason for being glad that Master Capiam had elected to stay above. I wished to change my identity as well as my Hold. One or two harpers or healers might recognize me from their attendance at the Hold, but they wouldn’t be looking for Lady Nerilka here in the internment camp, surrounded by infection and vulnerable to discomfort as well as death.

Although she had not said so, Desdra undoubtedly had refused my offers of assistance because she knew that young ladies of Hold Blood did not engage in such activities on a public basis. She probably considered me a feckless, trivial person and perhaps I was: Some of my recent thoughts and decisions could have been considered petty. But I did not consider that I was sacrificing my high rank and position. I thought, rather, that I was putting myself in the way of being useful, instead of immured in a Hold, protected and unproductive, wasting my energy on trivia like sewing for my stepmother. Such a “suitable occupation” for a girl of my rank could so easily be undertaken by the least drudge from the linen rooms.

These thoughts fleeted through my head as I kept up the awkward gait I had assumed—ironic, as Hold girls were taught to take such tiny steps that they appeared to float across the floor. I had never quite mastered that skill. I followed the men and women who had brought the baskets to the perimeter. Now I could see that most of them wore harper knots. One man wore the colors of the River Hold, and another of the Sea Hold. Travelers trapped on their way to seek help from Tolocamp? The path turned off into the copse, where I could now see that rude shelters had been erected. We had been indeed fortunate that the weather had been so clement, for the third month was generally blustery, often blizzardy, and freezing cold. Each open fire in its ring of stones wore either spit or kettle iron. Was this where my restorative soups had gone? Then I realized that those huddled in blankets or hides about each fire had the gray complexions and lackluster expressions of convalescents.

One larger shelter, its sides made of an odd assortment of materials, was set to one edge of the copse, and from it issued a chorus of rasping coughs and groans that labeled it the main infirmary. It was toward this that the demijohn of fellis was being taken. Those carrying the baskets of food were beginning to distribute bread to those at the fires. Three women began to sort the vegetables and meat scraps into kettles. The silence was the worst of the scene.

I hastened to the infirmary and was met at the door by a tall, unshaven healer. “Fellis, herbs—what have you?” he asked eagerly.

“Tussilago. Lady Nerilka made it fresh last night.”

He grimaced and took the demijohn from me. “It’s heartening to know not everyone there agrees with the Lord Holder.”

“He’s a hypocritical coward.”

The healer raised eyebrows in surprise. “Young woman, it is unwise to speak of your Lord Holder in that fashion, no matter what the provocation.”

“He is not my Lord Holder,” I replied, meeting his stare unflinchingly. “I have come to help. I have a firm grounding of the properties of herbs and their preparation. I . . . helped Lady Nerilka brew the tussilago. She taught me all I know, she and her lady mother now dead at Ruatha. I can nurse and I am not afraid of the plague. All I loved is dead now anyway.”

He put a comforting hand on my shoulder. No one would dare such a familiarity toward the Lady Nerilka, yet I did not find it offensive to be handled. It proved I was a human being.

“You are not alone in that.” He paused for me to fill in my name. “All right, Rill, I’ll take any volunteers right now. My best nurse just succumbed . . .” He nodded to a woman, still and white on a pallet of boughs. “There isn’t all that much we can do except relieve the symptoms—” he affectionately patted the container of tussilago “—and hope there are no secondary infections. It is that which causes death, not the plague itself.”

“There will soon be enough vaccine.” I said it to cheer him, for patently he did not like to be so helpless in the face of this epidemic.

“Where did you hear that, Rill?” He had lowered his voice, and now held my upper arm in a painful grip. All handling is not reassuring.

“It is known. Yesterday the Bloods were inoculated against the disease. More of the serum is being made. You are nearby . . .”

The man shrugged in bitter acceptance of his situation. “Nearby, but scarcely a priority.”

The woman struggled in the grip of the fever and flung herself out of her coverings. I went immediately to her side. And that began my first twenty-hour day as a nurse. There were three of us and Macabir, the journeyman healer, to tend the sixty stricken people in that rude infirmary. I never did know how many more the camp held, for the population shifted. Some had arrived on foot as well as by runner, hoping to claim Hold at Fort or assistance from the Halls or the Hold, and left when they realized that they were not permitted to reach their objective. I often wondered how many people actually had obeyed the full quarantine. But we are more populous here in the west than the eastern half of the continent. And the territory under Fort’s jurisdiction suffered nowhere near the casualties that Ruatha did. We heard that only Master Capiam’s early attendance at South Boll kept the disease from ravaging that province as well. There were those who said that Ratoshigan would have deserved the fate that was dropped on Ruatha and young Lord Alessan.

He was still alive, I learned. But he and his youngest sister were the only survivors of that Bloodline. His losses were more grievous than mine, then. Would his gains be as great?

Though harried, anxious, overworked, underfed, and certainly sleep-deprived, I had never been so happy. Happy? That is a very odd word to use in conjunction with my occupation in the camp, for that day and the next, we lost twelve of the sixty lying in the tent, and acquired fifteen in their places. But I was being useful for the first time in my life, and needed, and I was the amazed recipient of the mute gratitude of those I tended. For someone raised as I had been, the experience was a revelation in some rather personal and unpleasant ways as well, for I had never coped with the intimate bodily functions of either man or woman, and now had to attend both. I suppressed my initial revulsion and nausea, cropped my hair even shorter, rolled up my sleeves, and got on with the job. If this was part of it, then it would not be shirked.

I had the added assurance of knowing I was buffered against catching the disease that I nursed, so sometimes Macabir’s praise of my courage on this count embarrassed me. Then a journeyman healer walked boldly into the camp bearing sufficient serum to inoculate everyone, and announced that the camp was being struck. The sick would be transported to the Harper Hall, where the apprentice barracks were being cleared to accommodate them. The transients also would find overnight shelter before being sped on their way in the morning. And if they’d be good enough to take along some supplies.

I volunteered, although Macabir repeated his wish for me to take formal training at the Hall. “You’ve a natural gift for the profession, Rill.”

“I’m far too old to be an apprentice, Macabir.”

“How old is old when you’ve a right knack with the sick? A Turn and you’ve done the initial training. Three, and there wouldn’t be a healer who’d not be pleased to have you assist him.”

“I’m free now to see more of this continent than one Hold, Macabir.”

He sighed, scrubbing at his lined and weary face. “Well, keep it in mind if you find travel pails.”

Chapter VII

3.19.43–3.20.43

I
LEFT IN
the early evening light, with a rough map to show me the way to three northern holds, quite close to the Ruathan border, where serum and other urgent medicinal supplies were needed. Macabir tried to persuade me to wait until the morning, but I reminded him that there was light enough with the full moon to travel those open roads, and the need was immediate. I wanted to take no chance that Desdra or someone from the Hold might recognize Lady Nerilka, disheveled and worn though she was.

I rode past Fort Hold, without so much as a glance to see if Tolocamp was at his window, past the cot ranks and the beastholds, and wondered if any one of the many people with whom I had spent my life up until two days ago saw me pass. Had anyone, indeed, with the exception of Anella and my sisters, missed me?

My folly was that I was more fatigued than I had suspected before the routine of nursing was stripped from me. I dozed half a dozen times in the saddle. Fortunately the runner was an honest beast, and once set on the track, continued for lack of other instruction. Reaching the first hold by midnight, I managed to inject the household before I collapsed. They let me sleep myself out, for which I berated the good lady when she fed me a huge breakfast at dawn, but she merely replied that the other holds knew I was coming and that was certainly better than wondering if they’d been totally forgotten.

So I rode on, arriving at the second hold by midmorning. They insisted that I stay for a meal, for I looked so tired and worn. They knew that there was no sickness at my final stop, and they were anxious for all the news I could give them. Until my arrival, they had been kept informed only by drum messages from my next stop, High Hill Hold, right on the border of Ruatha.

I finally admitted to myself that I was on my way to Ruatha. I had been unconsciously drawn toward that destination for many Turns, but had been thwarted so often by circumstance. Now, I reasoned to myself as I continued on the next leg of my journey, I had a skill to bring to that most tragic of Holds. Only dragonriders had been in to Ruatha Main Hold and rumors of the devastation were horrific. Well, I could nurse the sick, manage any area of Hold activity, and do what I could to expiate the guilt I still carried for the untimely deaths of my mother and sisters.

I was also beginning to realize that the plague had struck with a fine disregard for rank, health, age, and usefulness. It is true that the very young and the very old were more vulnerable, but the epidemic had claimed so many in the prime of life with so much living left to be done. If it suited me to clothe my action in the fine garb of sacrifice or expedience, as long as I performed the services required what matter the motives, hidden or open?

Arriving at High Hill Hold in the early afternoon, I was set immediately to work to stitch a long gash sustained by one of the holder’s sons, despite my protestations that I was only a messenger. Their healer had gone down to Fort Hold when the news had been drummed out of Ruatha. Since I could tell them nothing of a man named Trelbin, they sadly realized that he, too, must be dead. Lady Gana said she was capable of dealing with minor cuts, but treating this wound was beyond her ability. Well, I had assisted at sufficient surgeries of this nature, so that I felt more confident in this instance than she obviously was.

Stitching a seam on fabric, which does not complain and cannot squirm, is quite a different matter from repairing ragged and uneven flesh. I had sufficient fellis and numbweed among the supplies I carried to ease the boy’s discomfort and I sincerely hoped that my stitches held. Lady Gana announced herself impressed when I had finished.

Later I explained about the serum, then injected everyone except their high hold shepherds, who never came near enough to populated areas to catch an infection. Lady Gana was still not quite sure that the wind did not carry the disease, so she insisted that I tell her exactly how to cope with it. I know she did not believe me when I told her that death was not caused by the disease itself, but by secondary infections occurring in a patient already weakened. That is why I couldn’t really admit that I was not a trained healer. I would undo all the good I had done. Whether I was trained or not, my information was accurate.

Bestrum and Gana then sadly related that a son and daughter accompanied by a servant had gone to the Ruathan Gather and they had had no word from them. They obviously hoped that I was bound for Ruatha.

Bestrum was laboriously sketching a map for me to follow when we were interrupted by excited shouts and cheers. Leaning out the windows we saw a blue dragon, curiously laden, settle to the ground. All of us rushed out to greet him.

“My name is M’barak, Arith’s rider, of Fort Weyr. I come in search of more apprentice-blown glass bottles.” The lad grinned engagingly as he pointed to the dragon’s burdens. “Have you any you can spare Ruatha?”

However young, he had to be given the courtesies due a dragonrider, so over ldah and some of Lady Gana’s excellent wine cake, he told us that runnerbeasts also were dying of the plague, and needed to be inoculated. Bestrum and Gana took some pride in remarking that they had received their injections only that morning, and indicated me. I almost laughed as M’barak blinked, for I know he had assumed I was of this hold. Although I still wore coarse trousers and felt boots, Macabir had given me healer tunic and surcoat against the rigors of travel I didn’t look like a proper healer and I at least knew it, if the kind holders did not.

“Were you just going back to the Healer Hall now?” M’barak began. “Because if you happened to be handy with runnerbeasts, you’d be of tremendous use right now at Ruatha. I can take you—” his eyes twinkled with mischievous delight “—and save you a long and tedious journey. Tuero could drum the Hall to tell ’em where you are. It’s just getting people up to Ruatha right now, people who’ve been injected and aren’t afraid of the plague. You’re not afraid, are you?”

I only shook my head, a bit shocked at the way my pulses had leaped and my heart skipped at this unexpected invitation to go where I desperately wanted to be. During Suriana’s lifetime, Ruatha had been the lodestone for my only chance of some happiness and freedom. I had freed myself of Fort Hold’s Blood yoke and was now equally free to go to Ruatha, especially now that I had been given what was tantamount to an invitation. It would be a Ruatha sadly changed from the Hold Suriana had described, but I would be of more use there now, especially going as Rill, not as Lady Nerilka. It was employment and purpose I sought, wasn’t it?

“If it’s someone good with runners you need, I’ve two men here spending their waking hours carving scrimshaw for lack of something to do till spring comes in earnest,” Bestrum said expansively. “Rill jabbed ’em with the rest of us this morning, so they’ve no call to fear going to Ruatha.”

So it was arranged. As the two beasthandlers, brothers sharing the same phlegmatic temperament and solid builds, collected their necessaries, Gana kindly fetched out a heavy cloak against the biting cold of
between.
She bustled about with her drudges, organizing provisions for three more mouths as well as collecting three great apprentice-blown glass jars, which M’barak and I had to arrange so as not to crack together on Arith.

This was by no means my first contact with a dragon, but certainly it was the most extended and personal. Dragons have a warm, very smooth soft hide, which leaves a spicy smell on your hands. Arith rumbled a lot, though M’barak assured me that it didn’t mean he was annoyed with his unusual burden. We padded the great glass bottles; Fort had more than its share of these apprentice efforts, although I cannot remember what Mother did with them.

I made a final check on the boy’s wound, but it looked unchanged and he was fast asleep, a smile on his face from the fellis. Then I took my farewell of Bestrum and Gana, who, though I had known them only a few hours, were profuse in their good wishes. I told them that I would ask about their children and the servant, and send back word. Gana knew there was slight hope, but the offer gave her comfort.

When Bestrum gave me a heave to the dragon’s back, I thumped into place behind M’barak’s slight but straight body and hoped I didn’t hurt Arith. The two brothers got aboard with less fuss, and it was comforting to know that there were two behind me to fall off before I would be in danger.

Arith executed a little run before he jumped skyward, then his fragile-looking, transparent wings took the first mighty sweep downward. It was the most exhilarating experience I had ever had, and I envied dragonriders anew as Arith’s strong wings carried us further aloft. I needed the cloak as well as the buffer of warm bodies in front and behind me.

M’barak must have known how I was feeling, for he turned his head and gave me a wide pleased grin. “Hold on now, Rill, we’re going
between
,” he yelled. At least, that’s what I thought he must have said as the wind tore his voice away.

If flying dragonback is exhilarating, going
between
is the essence of terror. Blackness, nothingness, a cold so intense my extremities ached, and only the knowledge that riders and dragons experienced the same thing daily with no ill effect kept me from screaming in fear. Just as I was sure I would suffocate, we were sunstruck again as Arith brought us by that unique draconic instinct to our destination. Then I had far more to concern me than that fleeting passage through black
between.

I had never been to Ruatha Hold, but Suriana had sent me innumerable sketches of the establishment and had described its amenities time and again. The great Hold, carved from the living rock of the cliff face, could not be altered physically, but somehow it was completely unlike Suriana’s drawings. She had told me of the pleasant air about the Hold, of the hospitality and warmth and friendliness so different from the cool, detached formality of Fort. She had explained how many people, family and otherwise, were constantly in and out of the Hold. She had described the meadows, the racing flats, the lovely fields down to the river. She had not lived to describe the huge burial mounds or the charnel circle of blackened earth, the litter of broken travel wagons and personal effects that were scattered up the roadstead that had once been graced by Gather stalls, bright with banners and people and barter.

I was stunned, and only peripherally aware that the phlegmatic brothers were also shocked by the view. Mercifully, M’barak was a tactful young man and said nothing as Arith glided past the desolate Hold. I did see one encouraging sight: five people seated in the court, obviously soaking up the afternoon sun.

“Two dragons now, Brother,” the man directly behind me said with great satisfaction.

Looking ahead, I could see that a great bronze dragon was depositing passengers at the wide entrance to the beasthold. The bronze took off as Arith hurtled across the plowed fields. We could see sun gleaming on his hide and wings, and then he just disappeared. Arith settled down in exactly the same spot the bronze had occupied.

“Moreta,” M’barak called, gesturing eagerly. The tall woman with short, curly blond hair turned back to him. The Fort Weyrwoman was the last person I expected to encounter at Ruatha.

I shall always remember that I had that opportunity to see Moreta again and at that particular moment in her life, when her face was tinged with sun and an inner serenity that I was not to understand until much later. She had, of course, been at Fort Hold in her capacity of Weyrwoman since she had assumed that responsibility on Leri’s retirement. But these were infrequent visits—on state occasions—so although I had been in the same Hall with her, we had never actually spoken together. I had had the impression that she was shy or reticent, but then Tolocamp did so much talking in that ponderous way of his that I doubt she’d have had a chance to speak.

“Hurry up!” M’barak’s voice hauled me away from my impressions of that moment. “I need help with these silly bottles and I’ve people here who say they can handle runners. And we’ve got to hurry because I have to prepare for the Fall. F’neldril will skin me if I’m late!”

Two other men and a slim, dark-haired girl moved out of the shadows to help. I knew Alessan on the instant and supposed the girl must be his surviving sister, Oklina. The other man wore Harper blue. The brothers dismounted quickly, and M’barak and I handed down first the provisions and then the great bottles, none of which had suffered any travel damage.

“If you’ll slip down, Moreta can mount,” M’barak suggested, with a grin of apology for his haste.

So, for the first time, I traded places with Moreta. I would have liked to have sustained the contact then, for she had a manner about her that made one want to get to know her better. She appeared considerably less aloof than she had seemed in the Hold. As Arith began his preparatory little run, Moreta did look back over her shoulder. But it couldn’t have been at me.

I turned and saw that Alessan had shaded his eyes to watch until the dragon went
between.
Then he smiled, his welcome taking me in along with the two brothers, and held out his hand in the friendliest way. “You’ve come to help us with the runners? Was M’barak frank about what is needed in ruined Ruatha?”