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Authors: Todd McCaffrey

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BOOK: Dragonsblood
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nodded.

“And if we caught them, would you give us a drawing of that?” another

asked. Before Lorana could answer, the third seaman guffawed, “As if

you’d ever catch anything Minet! You and that old rod of yours!”

“Aye, a net’s the only proper way to catch fish!”

“There are no nets aboard
Wind Rider,
you git!” Minet replied. Lorana

could tell that there was no real rancor among the three.


Wind Rider
is a schooner, Baror,” Tanner said. “She’s built for speed, not

trawling.”

The seaman named Baror looked away from Tanner, face clouded. Lorana

wasn’t sure she liked that look.

“They say it’s bad luck to have a woman aboard a ship,” Baror muttered.

Beside him Minet nodded.

“I’d say it’s worse luck to travel without a healer,” J’trel observed. Captain

Tanner nodded.

“Did you say the
Wind Rider
was built for speed?” Lorana asked, looking at

the other ships in the harbor for comparison.

“Aye,” Minet told her, “Lord Holder Tillek—the Masterfisher himself—had

her built here special, for fast runs between Thread.”

“If it ever comes,” the third seaman growled.

“It’ll come, Colfet, it’ll come,” Captain Tanner replied, casting an apologetic

look toward J’trel.

Colfet seemed to realize his gaffe. “I meant no disrespect, dragon-rider.”

J’trel didn’t hear much apology in the northerner’s tone but let it go. “Then

I’ll take none, seaman.”

Tanner decided to change the subject. “J’trel says you’ve also got a way

with beasts.”

“My father worked with them, yes,” Lorana replied.

“Do you suppose you could splint an arm or tend a scrape for a person?”

Lorana shrugged. “It’s not much different. More than a scrape or a break

and you’d want to get a proper healer.”

The seamen all nodded in agreement.

“None of the lads are likely to get themselves hurt on a milk run like this,”

Colfet growled. “Just down to that new sea hold and back here.”

Captain Tanner told Lorana, “I’m only captain for
Wind Rider
’s shakedown

cruise. After these three get the feel of her rigging, they’ll be taking her on

up to Tillek.”

“But I’d like to go to Tillek,” Lorana said.

Colfet glanced at the other Tillek men, then said, “For that you’ll have to get

my approval.” He took a long thoughtful breath. “Let’s see how you are on

this run down to this new Hold, first.”

“We’d better be moving then,” Tanner said, turning to the others. “The tide

doesn’t wait.”

J’trel shook her hand and then grabbed her in a hug. “You watch out for

yourself, youngster. I’ll want to know how you get along.”

Lorana gave him a smile. “I’ll do that, J’trel.”

The
Wind Rider
was everything Captain Tanner had said it would be.

Lorana stowed her gear in the healer’s cabin and then joined the crew on

deck as the ship was nimbly warped out of Ista Harbor. The schooner

heeled as the wind caught her quarter, and the helmsman cursed as he

struggled to control the wheel.

As the ship heeled into a new wave and burst through the other side,

Captain Tanner said to Colfet, “What do you think of her now, Mister

Colfet? Is she fit for your Master’s fleet?”

“She grabs the wind well, Captain Tanner,” Colfet admitted. “But it’s early

days, early days. I’d like to see her in a blow.”

Tanner laughed and pointed to the confused seamen above in the rigging.

“Not before this lot get themselves sorted out, I hope.”

Colfet gave him a sour grin. “No, not before.” He glanced at the setting sun

over the taffrail. “And tomorrow will be too fair for a strong wind.”

“What makes you say that?” Lorana asked.

“Bad weather coming, probably a blow,” Colfet answered, as if that were all

the explanation needed.

Captain Tanner raised his monocular to his eye. “Lorana, look there! It

seems we’re getting a send-off!”

Lorana looked where Tanner pointed and could see a dragon and rider in

the distance waving at them. She laughed and waved back.

J’trel says safe voyage, Lorana,
Talith told her.

Thank him please, Talith.

High up in the sky, Talith relayed Lorana’s reply to J’trel.

“You’re welcome, lass,” J’trel said to himself. “Did you hear that, Talith?

How many can speak to other dragons? How many Weyrwomen can do

that? Not one, I’m telling you. She’ll ride gold, and she’ll be the best

Weyrwoman Pern’s ever seen.”

TWO

-ome (suffix): (i) the biological portion of an ecosystem. (ii) the material

and genetic information required to re-create the biological portion of an

ecosystem. Examples: the “terrome” refers to the biological portion of the

Terran ecosystem; the “cetome” refers to the biological portion of the

Cetus III ecosystem; the “eridanome” refers to the biological portion of

the Eridani ecosystem.


Glossary of terms
, Ecosystems: From -ome to Planet, 24th Edition

Fort Hold, First Pass year 42, AL 50

With another wordless cry, Wind Blossom rolled out of her dreams into the

new day. It was always the same dream. Only—different this time.

Something had woken her early.

Even with the dream interrupted, as if against her will, Wind Blossom

remembered her mother’s last words: “Always a disappointment you were

to me. Now you hold the family honor. Fail not, Wind Blossom.”

Wind Blossom had had the same dreams for the last forty years.

The sound repeated itself: a dragon bugling in the sky above.

Her mother, Kitti Ping, had created the dragons. Kitti Ping, famed Eridani

Adept, who had saved Cetus III from the ravages of the Nathi War was also

Pern’s savior with the creation of the great, fire-breathing, telepathic

dragons.

Wind Blossom was credited with—blamed for—the creation, through

similar genetic manipulation, of the photophobic watch-whers. On the

starships’ manifests Kitti Ping and Wind Blossom had been listed as

geneticists. That title conveyed only a small portion of the full Eridani

training Kitti Ping had received and had passed on to her daughter, Wind

Blossom.

“Always a disappointment you were to me,” her mother’s calm, controlled

voice came to Wind Blossom’s mind—a memory over forty years old.

They had come to Pern fifty years earlier, thousands of war-weary people

seeking an idyllic world beyond the knowledge of human and Nathi alike.

They had been led by such luminaries as Emily Boll, famed Governor of

Tau Ceti and heroic leader of Cetus III, and Admiral Paul Benden, the victor

of the Nathi Wars.

Instead of finding rest and a pastoral, agricultural world, they discovered

that their lush planet Pern had an evil stepsister—the Red Star. Its orbit was

wildly erratic, coming through the solar system on a cometary 250-year

cycle, dragging with it the mysterious peril of Thread.

Eight years after the colonists landed on Pern, the Red Star came close

enough to unload its burden on its sister-planet. The Thread, mindless,

voracious, space-traveling spores, ate anything organic—plastics, woods,

flesh. The first Threadfall on the unsuspecting colony was devastating.

Galvanized by this new threat, Kitti Ping, Wind Blossom, and all the

biologists on Pern dropped their work in adapting terran life-forms to life on

Pern to concentrate instead on creating a defense against Thread.

From the native flying fire-lizards, barely longer from nose to tail than a

person’s arm, Kitti Ping created the huge fire-breathing dragons, able to

carry a rider, telepathically bound to his mount, into a flaming battle against

Thread. And so humankind on Pern was saved.

It was the sound of a dragon’s bugle that had disturbed Wind Blossom’s

dreams. Through the unshuttered windows, she could make out the beat of

the dragon’s wings and heard it land in the courtyard outside the College.

Shouts and cries reached her window with emotions intact but words

incomprehensible. The dragon alone was indication enough of something

extraordinary, and the voices confirmed that there was some sort of

emergency.

The voices in the courtyard moved inside.

Her room smelled of lavender. Wind Blossom took a long, deep lungful of

the smell and turned to look at the fresh cutting on her bedside table. Her

mother’s room had always smelled of cedar. Sometimes of apple

blossoms, too, but always of cedar.

Perhaps some arnica would help, Wind Blossom thought as she

summoned the strength to ignore the pain in her old joints and the

weakness of her muscles as she sat up in bed and slid her feet into her

slippers. Arnica was good for bruises and aches.

And some peppermint tea for my thinking, she added with a bittersweet

twinkle in her eyes.

She walked to her dresser and looked impassively at her face reflected in

the still water of the wash basin. Her hair was still dark—it would always be

dark—as were her eyes. They stared impassively back at her as she

examined her face. Her skin had the same yellowish tinge of her Asian

ancestors; her eyes had the Asian almond shape.

Wind Blossom completed her inspection, noting once again that the

muscles around her face, which had slackened thirty years before, pulled

the corners of her lips downward.

Opening her dresser, she saw the yellow tunic at the bottom of her drawer

and sighed imperceptibly as she had done at the sight of it every day for

the past twenty years. Once, an accident at the laundry had left one of her

white tunics with a distinctly yellowish tinge. No one had remarked on it.

When the day was over, Wind Blossom had carefully put the yellow tunic

away in her drawers. She had worn it again, years later—and no one had

noticed. Now, as always, she carefully pulled out one of her scrupulously

white tunics. From the lower drawer she pulled out a fresh pair of black

pants.

Dressed, Wind Blossom turned her attention back to the noises that had

awoken her. From the sounds outside, she suspected—

“My lady, my lady!” a girl’s voice called. Wind Blossom didn’t recognize the

voice. It was probably one of the new medical trainees. “Please come

quickly, there’s been an accident!”

Although there was no one in the room to see, Wind Blossom did not let

her face show her amusement at being called “my lady.”

“What is it?” she asked, rising and moving toward the door.

“Weyrleader M’hall from Benden has brought in a boy,” the trainee

answered, opening the door as she heard Wind Blossom reach for the

latch. “He was attacked.”

Wind Blossom’s heart sank. Her face remained calm, but inwardly she

quailed. The look on the girl’s face was all she needed to identify the

attacker. The youngster continued resolutely, “It was a watch-wher.”

Wind Blossom passed through the door and marched past the apprentice

who, though much younger, towered over her. “Bring my bag.”

The trainee paused, torn between guiding the frail old woman down the

steps and obeying her orders.

“My bones are not so worn that I cannot walk unaided,” Wind Blossom told

her. “Get my bag.”

There was only one clean room in the infirmary. It was too primitive to be

considered anything like a proper operating room but it was well scrubbed.

Wind Blossom registered how the people outside it were grouped: Her

daughter and a musician were in one group, M’hall and a man she thought

she should know were in another group, and two interns were in a third.

The interns looked up when she arrived, but M’hall spoke first. “My lady

Wind Blossom, my mother told me that you are the most skilled in

sutures.”

When had everyone started with the “my lady” ’s? Wind Blossom thought

acidly.

“How is the patient?” she asked Latrel, the nearest intern.

“The patient has severe lacerations on the face, neck, and abdomen,” he

answered quickly. Wind Blossom noted but did not comment on his ashen

appearance and the way he licked his lips. Latrel had attended a number of

major injuries—clearly this was worse. “He is a ten-year-old boy. He’s been

dosed with numbweed and fellis juice, and was suitably wrapped against

between
during the journey from Benden Hold. His pulse is thready and

weak; he shows signs of shock and blood loss. Janir is attempting to

stabilize—”

Wind Blossom interrupted him with an upheld hand and walked over to the

large basin outside the clean room. She pulled back her sleeves. “Gown

me, then scrub.”

Latrel nodded, pulling sanitized gowns out of a special closet. Once she

was robed, Wind Blossom started carefully scrubbing her arms and hands

to clean off as many germs as she could. She motioned for Latrel to

continue his report.

“We cannot type his blood—”

“It’s O positive,” the man beside M’hall interjected.

Wind Blossom turned to face him, her expression showing interest.

“I’ve been keeping track of our bloodlines; it can only be O positive,” he

repeated.

Wind Blossom matched his face to her memory of a young boy she had

spoken with long ago. “Peter Tubberman.”

BOOK: Dragonsblood
10.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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