Dragonsblood

TWENTY-THREE

There’s no way we can be sure that our future student will be able to tell us which vec-” Tieran halted midword and cocked his head to listen.

“It’s just thunder,” Emorra chided him irritably. “You can’t use that as an excuse to get out of this argument.”

“Kassa said the weather would be clear tonight,” Tieran replied, still puzzled.

“And Kassa is always right,” Emorra observed tartly.

“About the weather, she is,” Tieran said. He started toward the door. Grenn met him, chittering wildly.

“Where are you going?” Emorra demanded.

“I’m going to check on your mother,” Tieran replied, following Grenn as the little fire-lizard scouted ahead. “Something’s not right.”

“I’ll come with you,” Emorra said.

“She’s not been looking well recently, has she?”

Emorra frowned. “She’s been pushing herself too hard.”

“It’s not like she’s still young,” the two said in unison and then stared at each other in surprise. Tieran broke the moment with a chuckle and they started up the stairs toward Wind Blossom’s quarters.

“Air!” Wind Blossom shrieked.

How Tieran covered the remaining distance to Wind Blossom’s room, he could never recall, but he was in the room and at her side instantly. Emorra arrived only a fraction later.

Wind Blossom looked up at them, panting for breath.

“It must be a seizure!” Tieran declared.

“No, a heart attack,” Emorra said.

Wind Blossom pierced them with her gaze. “I heard her,” she told them. “I heard her, she said air!”

“Who said air, Mother?” Emorra asked.

“The girl from the future,” Wind Blossom said. “She found me. She was so strong. I have never felt such power. She must have harnessed all the dragons of her time.” She glanced at them, eyes saddened. “She was looking for missing dragons. A lot of missing dragons-”

“A thousand?” Emorra asked fearfully.

Wind Blossom ignored the question, concentrating her strength on asking, “She knew, somehow she knew that I had a question-how did she?”

Tieran and Emorra exchanged looks.

“I’ll write a song, Mother,” Emorra said. “I’ll write a song to ask the question.”

Wind Blossom brightened. “Yes, a song!” she agreed. She smiled up at her daughter. “Write a good one, love.”

The breath left Wind Blossom’s lungs and she fell back to her bed with a surprised look on her face. Feebly she beckoned Emorra toward her.

“Mother?” Emorra cried, arching forward, her ear close to Wind Blossom’s lips.

“And then you’ll be free,” Wind Blossom whispered. Her last flickering thought was triumphant: There, Mother! I have freed them from you and the Eridani curse.

For a long while afterward, Emorra stood over her mother’s bed, eyes streaming with tears.

Then, without saying a word, she moved to her mother’s dresser, opened the top drawer, searched quickly, and pulled out the yellow tunic. She returned to her mother’s side and gently lifted the lifeless body, deftly maneuvering it until she had exchanged the yellow tunic for the white one in which Wind Blossom had died.

“I did notice,” Emorra whispered, tears streaming down her face. Tieran laid a hand on her shoulder, and she grabbed it tightly with her own.

“I don’t understand. Why did Wind Blossom need this clue?” Seamus asked M’hall. Everyone from the College and the Hold had gathered to mourn Wind Blossom’s passing, and Seamus had joined his brother, Torene, Tieran, and Emorra to find out what was going on with their research.

“The gene mappers can only store so much information,” M’hall explained. “In order to eliminate unnecessary information, it was necessary to know whether the disease is spread by air, food, or water.”

“And how do we know that this future rider understood the question correctly?” Holder Mendin, who had wandered over in time to hear the conversation, asked with a smirk.

“We don’t,” Tieran answered. “If we find more dragons or fire-lizards dropping in on us, then we’ll find out that we’re wrong.”

“If we do nothing,” M’hall added, “then we’ll only find out when our dragons become infected.”

Mendin smiled, waving a hand toward Tieran and Emorra. “Well, surely these two marvelous youngsters will be able to whip up a cure in no time.”

“No,” Tieran said. “We’d have to relearn what the future rider already knows-and we don’t know how long it’s taken her-”

“Her?”

“She rode a queen, Holder Mendin,” Emorra reminded him.

“So our only hope for the dragons of Pern is to trust that you two”-Mendin gestured to Tieran and Emorra-“can complete the work that Wind Blossom had only just begun before her untimely demise.”

“I’d say that they are the only hope for all of Pern,” Torene replied.

Mendin quirked an eyebrow in amazement. “Indeed? And have they got the training that Wind Blossom did not?”

“Wind Blossom had started on a line of inquiry which is proving quite fruitful,” Tieran said. “And, as always, she had a fallback plan prepared.”

“Really?” Mendin asked. “And why not just use this fallback plan and save yourselves more trouble?”

“Because the fallback is a method to make a watch-wher into a dragon,” Tieran replied. From the looks of the dragonriders, and Mendin himself, Tieran regretted his impulsiveness. “And that assumes that the watch-whers prove immune to whatever is attacking the dragons.”

“So why would she do that?” Mendin asked. “If the watch-whers could succumb to the same illness?”

“Well, they might not,” Emorra said. “Mother made some alterations to the watch-whers to make them somewhat more self-sufficient than the dragons.”

“In case something happened to the dragonriders?” Torene murmured.

Emorra nodded glumly.

“Wise,” Torene decided with a firm nod.

“So, as you can see,” Tieran said, “we still have to provide a cure for the dragons.”

“Hmm,” was all Mendin said in response, his eyes flickering darkly as he wandered away.

M’hall waited until Mendin was out of earshot before he turned back to Tieran and Emorra. “Can you do it?”

“Well…” Emorra began, temporizing.

“We can do it,” Tieran declared. Emorra gave him a surprised look, which he quelled with a firm look of his own.

“Good,” M’hall said, even though the byplay was not lost on him.

“I’ve been thinking of some things that might help,” Seamus interjected.

“We’d be glad of anything,” Tieran replied.

“Help how?” Emorra asked.

“Well, there are several things,” Seamus expanded. “I’ve got one of the old RTG’s stored away. It’s not much use by itself because it’s low-powered, but there is one storage array still working, so I think I can couple the two of them-”

“Excuse me, what’s an RTG?” Tieran interrupted.

“Radio Thermal Generator,” Emorra replied. When she saw Tieran’s confused look reflected in the faces of M’hall and Torene, she added, “It’s a power generator with a long-lasting supply.”

“But the overall power’s not that great,” Seamus said. “So it’s not much use for most things. I think it’ll be ideal as a power source for these Training Rooms, however.”

“Then we can run lights, right?” Tieran exclaimed happily.

Seamus nodded and opened his mouth to say more, but Emorra cut him off.

“You said there are several things-what else?” she asked.

“Well… I’ve managed to save some of the old powered doors,” Seamus replied. “And I noticed that your mother recovered a voice recorder. I’ve been thinking of ways we could hook that up to a loudspeaker-”

“Why would you want to do that?” Tieran asked.

“So that we could speak to our students,” Emorra answered immediately.

“I got Wind Blossom to show me how to use it,” Seamus added. He pulled from his pocket a small object that fit in the palm of his large hand. “She agreed that it would be an excellent idea, and she even recorded a short introduction.”

He pressed a button on the object’s side.

“Welcome,” it said in Wind Blossom’s voice. “I am Wind Blossom. If you have come to these rooms for an emergency involving the dragons, then please step inside. If not, please leave immediately.”

“Will that do?” Seamus asked, looking up at the others.

Tears streamed from Emorra’s eyes.

“That will do fine,” Tieran said emphatically.

“Can you make three rooms for us?” Emorra asked through her tears. “We’ll have one for the lectures, one for lab work, and the final one for constructing the cure.”

“How big do you need the rooms to be?” Seamus asked, pulling on his chin thoughtfully.

Emorra and Tieran exchanged looks.

“How many people would you say?” M’hall asked them.

“I doubt more than fifteen,” Emorra said. “Any more would be too many.”

“Fifteen’s a lot,” Tieran said dubiously. He pursed his lips for a moment and then nodded. “Fifteen’s the upper limit, then.”

“No one’s used the stonecutters in a decade,” Seamus said, temporizing his answer. “But all the same, I think we can do that.”

“Excellent,” M’hall replied, clapping his younger brother on the shoulder. “When can you start?”

“Those doors,” Tieran interjected suddenly. “Can you control when they open?”

Seamus frowned. “I could, but there’s always the danger that the controls would freeze,” he replied warily. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to let our students into the lab or the workroom until they know what they’re doing,” Tieran replied.

“So you want some way to test them before they get in?” Emorra asked.

Tieran nodded. “Exactly.”

“Well, we know what to use for the key to the lab,” Emorra said.

“What?” The others asked in chorus.

“ ‘Air,’ ” Emorra replied. “The only one who should know that answer will be our queen rider.”

“Ex-queen rider,” Torene corrected sadly. M’hall met her eyes and they both shuddered in sympathy for that future rider.

“She must be quite something,” Seamus agreed.

“We can’t let her down,” Emorra declared. She turned to Tieran. “Let’s get to work.”