Dragon Harper

CHAPTER 10

Kindan didn’t pause as he cleared the archways of the Harper Hall. He didn’t glance back. He didn’t cry, although that took an extreme effort of will.

Gone. All his dreams were gone.

Banished. “And never come back!” Resler had shouted, still hoarse with rage.

Doomed. “You’re to go to the Hold, help as you may,” Resler had said, pointing toward the Harper Hall’s arching entrance.

“But Master Lenner—”

“Doesn’t need your sort of help,” Resler replied. He shook his head furiously. “For almost five hundred Turns we’ve preserved the Records and in ten minutes you’ve destroyed a quarter of them. Never in the history of Pern has there been greater treachery.”

Any words of protest died on Kindan’s lips. He could not tell if, among the lost Records, there was a remedy for the illness that now affected all of Pern. His mistake could have cost the lives of millions.

“You’ve got to keep going,” Vaxoram said quietly, nudging Kindan in the shoulders. Kindan turned back angrily, but Vaxoram ignored his look, nodding toward the ramp up to Fort Hold. “Keep going.”

“How?” Kindan asked in misery.

“One foot after the other, one day after the next,” the older apprentice replied. “It will get better.”

Kindan stopped, turning to face Vaxoram bitterly, demanding, “How do you know?”

“Because you taught me.” The answer was so simple, so sincere, that Kindan could not doubt it. Vaxoram bent his head and added, “That fire was my fault, not yours.”

“I could have stopped you,” Kindan said.

“Then it was our fault,” Vaxoram replied. He nudged Kindan gently, turning him toward Fort Hold. “And that’s our destiny.”

“To die in Fort Hold?”

“Maybe,” Vaxoram answered. “But at least your girlfriend’s there.”

Kindan said nothing, he could think of no response. But, unconsciously, he picked up his pace. Behind him, Vaxoram’s face lit with a brief smile.

“What are you doing here?” the Fort Hold guard demanded suspiciously as he looked out through the speaking port in the great doors. “There’s quarantine.”

“We were sent by Master Resler, to help Master Kilti,” Kindan explained.

“Are you healers?” the guard asked hopefully.

“Harpers,” Kindan confessed.

“All that can be spared,” Vaxoram added.

The guard nodded, closed the speaking port. A moment later, one of the double doors opened just enough to admit the two of them and closed again. Kindan glanced around, surprised that only one door was used, only to discover that there was only the one guard at the gate.

The guard turned away hastily, coughing, then turned back to them. “Had this cough for a sevenday now,” he told them. “One of the younger lads didn’t last that long.”

“Younger, you say?” Kindan asked, in surprise.

“Not twenty Turns yet,” the guard agreed. “And I’ve nearly forty.” He shrugged. “I thought the young ones were sturdier.”

“Me too,” Vaxoram agreed, glancing warily at the guard and then at Kindan.

“The Lord Holder will be pleased to see you,” the guard said, waving them on to the entrance to the Great Hall. “You’ll have to go on your own, I’m the only one still here.”

“Out of how many?” Kindan asked.

“Twenty,” the guard answered quickly. He turned away again to cough, then back to them, adding bleakly, “Seven are already dead.”

The doors to the Great Hall stood slightly ajar. Before Kindan approached them, Valla darted forward and through, returning a moment later with an encouraging chirp. Vaxoram gave Kindan a quizzical look, gesturing for him to go first.

Inside, Kindan was shocked to see that the floor of the Great Hall was filled with cots. And the cots, crammed so close together that it was difficult to navigate through them, were filled with people.

“Must be hundreds here,” Vaxoram remarked as they proceeded toward the great hearth at the top of the Hall.

Kindan gazed at the listless bodies and nodded in bleak agreement. But Fort Hold was home to over ten thousand; where were the rest?

He glanced around, looking for anyone upright in the filled room. It was a moment before he spotted movement, a white-haired, balding man who looked like a scarecrow and—Kindan drew a sharp breath—Koriana. They rose from one bed and went quickly to another.

With a jerk of his head, Kindan caught Vaxoram’s attention and they moved toward the two.

“Master Kilti?” Kindan guessed as they approached.

“Kindan,” Koriana said, her voice subdued but her eyes still bright when she spotted him. “What are you doing here?”

“I was sent to help,” Kindan said. “By Master Resler.”

“Resler’s an idiot,” the white-haired man muttered before turning his attention to the body in the cot below him. He felt the man’s forehead, bent forward, grabbed a wrist, and stood up again, shaking his head. “This one’s dead,” he said sadly. He glanced up to Vaxoram. “Take his body.”

Vaxoram paled.

“Where?” Kindan asked, dropping down to the dead man’s cot.

“Ask the guard,” Kilti replied dismissively. “You stay, your friend goes.”

“He’s not big enough—” Kindan began in protest.

“You’re to clear the cot and find another to fill it,” Kilti ordered. He jerked his head toward Koriana. “Next bed,” he told her.

Kindan had just a moment to shake his head in apology to Vaxoram.

“It’s all right,” the older lad said, bending down to pick up the body.

“I’ll help,” Kindan offered.

“No,” Vaxoram replied, going down to his knees. He grabbed the body at the waist and rolled it onto his shoulder. With a grunt he stood up, staggered for a moment, and began to hobble off slowly toward the front door.

Kindan eyed the mess left behind. The sheets were soiled, they’d have to be replaced. He bundled them up and looked for some place to put them.

“Soiled sheets?” Kindan called toward Kilti. The old healer didn’t look up.

“Dump them out in the necessary,” Koriana called back. “Then drop them in the great tub in the laundry.” She made a face. “There should be someone there.”

She sounded like she wasn’t sure if there still was. Kindan nodded mutely and headed off on his task, partly familiar with the layout of the Hold from the several events he had attended in the past as a harper.

A small girl met him at the laundry. He dropped the dirtied sheets into the great tub and she tamped them down into the boiling water with a long stick.

“Clean sheets?” he asked. She gestured outside. Kindan found long lines of sheets drying in the cold air. He felt for the driest and pulled them off, returning to the Great Hall through the laundry.

“Are you all right?” he asked the girl as he went back.

She shook her head wordlessly, stamping the boiling clothes down into the tub angrily.

How could anyone be all right, Kindan wondered.

Back in the Great Hall he made the bed carefully, then looked around for another patient. At the far end of the Great Hall, he spied Vaxoram and Bemin carrying two small people over their backs. One was a young woman, the other was a young man.

“Over here,” Kindan called, gesturing for Vaxoram to put one of them on his cot. To Bemin he said, “I don’t see any others free.”

“This one!” Kilti called, looking up mournfully from another full cot.

Kindan helped Vaxoram position the fevered young woman on the cot. As they did, the woman broke into a coughing fit, spraying them in an ugly greenish-yellow mist.

“Now you’ve caught it,” Bemin told them, his voice dead. “Just like Semin.” He gestured to the young man on his shoulders.

“Your son?” Kindan asked in surprise. He glanced to the fevered woman, now covered in a fine mist of sputum. “And she is?”

“I don’t know,” Bemin said, shaking his head. “A holder of mine.” His face softened as he implored Kindan bleakly, “Do what you can for her, please?”

“Of course, my lord,” Kindan replied, covering the woman’s body with a sheet and the blanket. He felt her forehead—it was blistering hot. “I should get her some water.”

“No time!” Kilti shouted. “Get this corpse out of here!”

Kindan shook his head and started to obey, but Bemin blocked him. “You get the water, you’re the smallest,” he said to Kindan. “Just hurry back.”

Kindan nodded and raced out of the room. He went back in the kitchen and found a large bucket. While it was filling, he had time to check on the laundry girl. She had collapsed beside the tub. He pulled her away hurriedly and felt her forehead—boiling. His throat choked up in sorrow and his eyes were spangled with tears as he hauled her up and lifted her in the crook of his arm, staggering back to the kitchen to grab the bucket in the other.

He staggered back to the Great Hall.

“What about cups?” Kilti croaked. “And who’s she?”

“She was boiling the sheets,” Kindan explained, anxiously looking around for a spare cot.

“Alerilla,” Bemin said. “She’s barely turned ten.”

“Fever?” Kilti asked, rising unsteadily to his feet and slowly moving toward Kindan and the girl. Behind him, Vaxoram was lifting the dead body off the cot and Koriana was rolling up the soiled sheets.

“Like a fire,” Kindan replied.

“Good,” Kilti said, much to Kindan’s surprise. The healer noticed his look and explained, “Fever’s a body’s way of fighting.”

Kindan gestured helplessly around the room at all the fevered people lying in cots.

“The worst seems to be the cough,” Kilti said. “Fever without cough seems to survive.” He put his hand gently around the underside of the girl’s jaw and felt. “Glands are swollen, that can be good or bad.”

He nodded toward Kindan. “If she starts coughing in the next day or two…”

Kindan nodded. “How long after that?”

“It varies,” Kilti said with a shrug. “Sometimes a day, sometimes four. Never more than four.”

“After four?”

“I don’t know,” Kilti said. “Some recover, some get worse and die.” The healer shook his head sadly. “I’ve never seen the like.” He glanced up at Kindan. “Have they found anything in the Records?”

“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.

Kindan found Koriana at the entrance.

“Come with me, it’s Father,” she cried, grabbing his hand and tugging him.

“Hurry back as soon as you can, boy,” Kilti croaked from the far end of the Hall.

Koriana led him out of the Hall and up the great stairs. At the top landing, Kindan stopped, suddenly nervous. They were in the Lord Holder’s private quarters. The wall-hangings were opulent, the floor carpeted. Kindan had never seen carpeted floor before.

“Come on,” Koriana urged, pulling him into a bedroom. It had the largest bed he’d ever seen. Nearby was a crib and in it a small child was crying feebly. It was Fiona.

Kindan rushed to her and picked her up. Her forehead was roasting.

“How long since she’s eaten anything?” Kindan asked Koriana. He noticed a pungent smell and wondered when Fiona’s clothing had last been checked.

“Over here,” Koriana called, ignoring Kindan’s question.

Kindan tucked Fiona in the crook of his arm and trotted over to Koriana.

Lord Bemin was kneeling at the side of the bed, crouched over a hand and weeping.

Wordlessly, Kindan pushed Fiona into Koriana’s arms and sat down beside the Lord Holder. Gently, he put his hand beside Bemin’s, feeling the cold flesh of the hand that he was holding.

He stood up and looked at the still face of Lady Sannora. It was rigid, waxlike. He reached under her jaw and felt beside her throat for a pulse. The skin was cold. There hadn’t been a pulse for a very long time, Kindan decided.

“He won’t move, he won’t listen,” Koriana told him anxiously. With a tone bordering on hysteria, she added, “He’s the Lord Holder, he’s got to move!”

Kindan noticed that Koriana’s eyes constantly darted away from Sannora’s body, as if denying its existence.

He knelt down beside the Lord Holder, fumbling in his mind for the right words. He draped his arms over the Lord Holder’s large shoulders and clasped them softly.

“My lord,” Kindan said uncertainly. “You must come away, your holders need you.” Gently he pulled Bemin away from Sannora’s body. Bemin resisted passively, too bereft to struggle.

“Your daughters need you,” Kindan continued softly, pulling Bemin farther away from his wife’s body. Koriana took his words for a cue and moved up against her father.

“Take Fiona, Father,” she said, gently pushing the toddler into his arms. Reluctantly, Bemin cradled his youngest and then with a sob, clenched her tightly against his body and kissed her forehead. He felt the heat there and looked up in alarm, tears flowing freely, saying to Kindan, “She’s so hot!”

“I know, my lord,” Kindan replied. “We must get her downstairs to Master Kilti.” He gestured toward the door. “Come on, we must hurry.”

“You will save her?” Bemin asked, looking down at his daughter and back to Kindan. A fierce light burned in his eyes. “Promise me you will save her?”

“I will do what I can,” Kindan said.

“No,” Bemin cried, “I need you to promise me that you’ll save her.”

Kindan locked eyes with the taller man for a long moment. This was the man who said that Kindan had besmirched his honor, that his word was meaningless to him. And here, now, in this moment, the Lord Holder of Fort Hold was asking for a promise to do the impossible.

“I will save her, my lord,” Kindan promised. “Or die trying.”

“Don’t you dare die!” Koriana cried fiercely. “Don’t you dare!”

“I will save her,” Kindan repeated. He gestured to the door. “But we must get down to Master Kilti.”

Slowly, in a shambling gait, the Lord Holder of Fort Hold followed the young harper down to the Great Hall.

How they made it to the next day, Kindan could never recall. Only willpower kept him moving; he slept only when he collapsed, ate only when he thought of it, drank only when his throat was parched.

Little Fiona worsened through the night and Kindan was beside her at her merest whimper. He kept a bucket and a cloth and gently dribbled cool water on her forehead, having been forbidden to touch her by Master Kilti.

“Touch her and you’ll get it yourself,” Kilti had warned with a wheeze.

“I’ve already touched her,” Kindan replied.

“And maybe you caught it, maybe you didn’t,” Kilti rasped. “Take enough chances, and you’ll get it for certain.”

Something about the healer’s voice alarmed Kindan but he was too tired to dwell on it.

At Kindan’s urging, they cleared one cot next to Fiona and Bemin, Koriana, Vaxoram, Kilti, and any others of those still standing took turns catching naps of a half hour, an hour, never more.

Night blurred into day. Kindan carried some dim glows out to the laundry line, brought fresher ones back. He thought once more of the brave little girl who had stirred the boiling pot and looked for her cot when he returned to the Great Hall. It was empty.

“She died awhile back,” was all Vaxoram could say when Kindan asked him.

Kindan shook his head sadly and was depressed to realize that he could dredge up no deeper emotion—his tears had all dried up long ago.

He went back to the kitchen to drain the fellis decoction and let it cool, dragging more soiled sheets with him.

He was about to return when Valla appeared in front of him, chittering excitedly.

“What is it?” Kindan asking, surprised at how much the small fire-lizard buoyed his spirits. Valla chirped again and bobbed his head smugly, then gestured to his harness with his forelimbs. There was a message: Moodpaste ready. Will drop in courtyard.

Ready? Moodpaste? Kindan thought muzzily. Oh! They had figured out how to make moodstone into a paste!

Kindan ran out through the Great Hall, ignoring the cries of the others, and went through the front doors, looking for any sign of a delivery, all the while worrying that the dragonriders might come in contact with the contagion.

A dark shadow crossed over him and he glanced up in time to see a bronze dragon fly overhead. He waved and the rider waved back—it was M’tal, he was sure of it. M’tal threw something over Gaminth’s neck and Kindan stood rooted in horrified fear that the object would break and shatter when it hit the flagstones of the courtyard. Instead, a piece of fabric sprang open and slowed the object’s fall. Kindan groped for the name, he recalled reading about it a long time ago—a parachute. How simple, how elegant. A piece of cloth tied at its four corners and attached to the bundle.

The bundle drifted down to the courtyard and Kindan raced to retrieve it. The parcel was just bigger than his two fists. As he untied the parachute, his mind suggested that the shape was somehow significant but he ignored the thought, his attention directed at the bundle. Inside was a set of bottles, all carefully cushioned. None were broken.

He stood up and waved to M’tal who was still above. The dragonrider waved back and soared away, blinking between back to Benden Weyr. Belatedly, Kindan wondered why he’d sent Valla to Benden and not to the Fort Weyrleader. Probably it was because he and M’tal knew each other, because the Benden Weyrleader trusted him.

Kindan tottered back into the Great Hall, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer light. He opened one of the bottles and peered at the paste inside. He turned to one of the nearer patients and gently dabbed a bit on her forehead, careful not to let his fingers touch her directly. She moaned in her sleep but made no other motion. In a moment the moodpaste had turned bright yellow, indicating high fever. Kindan moved on, pasting all the foreheads he could before the first bottle was empty.

“What have you got there, boy?” Kilti croaked as he passed near the healer.

“Moodpaste,” Kindan replied. “Dab it on a forehead and you’ll know if they’ve got fever.” He put some on the forehead of Kilti’s patient and stood back. The paste turned from green to blue and Kindan’s spirits sank. “I think this one is dead.”

Kilti turned back to the patient, searched for signs of life, found none and leaned back with a deep sigh. The old healer closed his eyes for a long moment, dealing with his grief. When he opened his eyes again, he said to Kindan, “What are the colors, then?”

“Green for healthy,” Kindan told him. “Red for hot, yellow for feverish, blue for—”

“Dead,” Kilti finished. He held out his hand for one of the bottles. “I’ll finish up this row, you get the next.”

Kindan checked Fiona next: The moodpaste turned an ugly yellow.

“Let me try you,” Koriana said. She dipped her finger in the paste and dabbed it on Kindan, who reciprocated with a dab on her forehead. But he knew, even as he touched her, what color the moodpaste would turn: bright red, verging on orange.

“I’ll be all right,” Koriana declared as she caught Kindan’s changing expression. “I’ve been taking some fellis juice.”

“It doesn’t help,” Kindan told her. “It just makes you feel better.”

“I’ll be all right,” Koriana repeated firmly. She gestured to the sick people in their cots. “I have to be, for them.”

“Your mother—” Kindan began worriedly.

“She was never very strong,” Koriana assured him. “She had no constitution and she was always weak after Fiona was born.” She touched him gently on the forearm and smiled shyly. “Don’t worry about me, Kindan, I’ll be fine.”

“I need some help over here,” Vaxoram called. Kindan rushed off and shortly found himself lost once more in a never-ending field of feverish faces, tormented bodies, and cold death.

The days passed on blearily, one into the next. Kindan could no longer imagine what it was like to wake refreshed, to not have the constant fatigue-induced itching under his eyes, to see anyone smile.

Slowly, however, he began to detect some pattern, some noise, like a music of bodies, in all the suffering. He couldn’t say when he noticed it and it took him a long time to identify the feeling but something was nagging at him.

His notion crystallized when he asked sourly about Bemin’s elder sons. “Where are they? Why are they not helping?” Kindan demanded of Koriana after he and Vaxoram had labored to haul a particularly large holder’s body out of the Great Hall.

“Upstairs,” Koriana said in a choked voice. “They died before Mother.”

“Both of them?” Kindan asked in surprise.

Koriana nodded, turning back to her little sister and gently dripping some water on her forehead. The moodpaste was still bright yellow. Kindan had lost hope for Fiona the day before. Somewhere around the Great Hall was Bemin, tending to one of the many feverish.

Bannor and Semin had been in the prime of youth, some of the healthiest men in all Fort Hold, and yet they had been among the first to fall victim to this plague. Why?

Kindan looked at Fiona. The child should have succumbed two days ago, or at best a day ago and yet she was still hanging on, hot, fevered, unable to eat, yet still clinging to life. Why?

This flu seemed to attack the healthiest, the strongest, harder than it did the older and infirm. It made no sense.

A cough distracted him. It came from one of the helpers. He followed the noise as it continued and his eyes locked on Vaxoram. The older apprentice looked up and nodded his head slightly before returning to the bed where he knelt, rolled a corpse over his shoulders, and staggered once more upright to carry the body out of the Great Hall.

Vaxoram had the flu. Vaxoram was nearly Bannor’s age—and just a little older than Koriana. Would he be the next to die?