Moreta (23 page)

“Get me my notes. The oldest ones, there on the left-hand side of the top shelf.” He sat down abruptly in the chair, shaking with weakness. “I must be right. I have to be right. ‘The blood of a recovered patient prevents others from contracting the disease.’ ”

“Your blood, my fine feeble friend,” Desdra said tartly, dusting off the records before she handed them to him, “is very thin and very weak, and you’re going back to your bed.”

“Yes, yes, in a minute.” Capiam was riffling through the thin hide pages, trying in his haste not to crack the brittle fabric, forcing himself to recall exactly when Master Gallardy had delivered those lectures on “unusual techniques.” Spring. It was spring. He turned to the last third of his notes. Spring, because he had allowed his mind to dwell more on normal springtime urges than ancient procedures. He felt Desdra tugging at his shoulder.

“You have me spend two hours fixing glowbaskets just to illuminate you in bed and now you read in the darkest corner of your room. Get back into bed! I haven’t nursed you this far out of that plague to have you die on me from a chill caught prancing about in the dark like a broody dragon.”

“And hand me my kit . . . please.” He kept reading as he allowed himself to be escorted back to bed. Desdra tugged the furs so tightly in at the foot that he couldn’t bend his knees to prop up the notes. With a tug and a kick, he undid her handiwork.

“Capiam!” Returning with his kit, she was furious at his renewed disarray. She grabbed his shoulder and laid her hand across his forehead. He pushed it away, trying not to show the irritation he felt at her interruptions.

“I’m all right. I’m all right.”

“Tirone thought you’d had a relapse the way you’re acting. It’s not like you, you know, to cry ‘blood, blood, it’s in their blood.’ Or in yours, for that matter.”

He only half heard her for he had found the series of lectures that he had copied that spring, thirty Turns gone, when he was far more interested in urgent problems like Threadscore, infection, preventive doses, and nutrition.

“It is in my blood. That’s what it says here,” Capiam cried in triumph. “The clear serum which rises to the top of the vessel after the blood has clotted produces the essential globulins which will inhibit the disease. Injected intravenously, the blood serum gives protection for at least fourteen days, which is ordinarily sufficient time for an epidemic disease to run its course.” Capiam read on avidly. He could separate the blood components by centrifugal force. Master Gallardy had said that the Ancients had special apparatus to achieve separation, but he could suggest a homely expedient. “The serum introduces the disease into the body in such a weakened state as to awaken the body’s own defenses and thus prevent such a disease in its more virulent form.”

Capiam lay back on his pillows, closing his eyes against a momentary weakness that was compounded of relief as well as triumph. He even recalled how he had rebelled against the tedious jotting down of a technique that might now save thousands of people. And the dragonriders!

Desdra regarded him with a curious expression on her face. “But that’s homeopathic! Except for injecting directly into the vein.”

“Quickly absorbed by the body, thus more effective. And we need an
effective
treatment. Desdra, how
many
dragonriders are sick?”

“We don’t know, Capiam. They stopped reporting numbers. The drums did say that twelve wings flew Thread at Igen, but the last report I had, from K’lon actually, was that one hundred and seventy-five riders were ill, including one of the queen riders. L’bol lost two sons in the first deaths.”

“A hundred and seventy-five ill? Any secondary infections?”

“They haven’t said. But then we haven’t asked . . .”

“At Telgar? Fort Weyr?”

“We have been thinking more of the thousands dying than the dragonriders,” Desdra admitted in a bleak voice, her hands locked so tightly the knuckles were white.

“Yes, well, we
depend
on those two-thousand-odd dragonriders. So nag me no more and get what I need to make the serum. And when K’lon comes, I’ll want to see him immediately. Is there anyone else here in the Halls or the Hold who has recovered from this disease?”

“Not recovered.”

“Never mind. K’Ion will be here soon?”

“We expect him. He’s been conveying medicines and healers.”

“Good. Now, I’ll need a lot of sterile, two liter glass containers with screw tops, stout cord, fresh reeds span-length—I’ve got needlethorns—redwort and oh, boil me that syringe the cooks use to baste meats. I do have some glass ones Master Clargesh had blown for me, but I can’t
think
where I stored them. Now, away with you. Oh, and Desdra, I’ll want some double-distilled spirits and more of that restorative soup of yours.”

“I can understand the need for spirits,” she said at the door, her expression sardonic, “but more of the soup you dislike so?”

He flourished a pillow and she laughed as she closed the door behind her.

Capiam turned the pages to the beginning of Master Gallardy’s lecture.

In the event of an outbreak of a communicable disease, the use of a serum prepared from the blood of a recovered victim of the same disease has proved efficacious. Where the populace is healthy, an injection of the blood serum prevents the disease. Administered to a sufferer, the blood serum mitigates the virulence. Long before the Crossings, such plagues as varicella, diphtheria, influenza, rubella, epidemic roseola, morbilli, scarlatina, variola, typhoid, typhus, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, hepatitis, cytomegalovirus herpes, and gonococcal were eliminated by vaccination . . .

Typhus and typhoid were familiar to Capiam, for there had been outbreaks of each as the result of ineffective hygiene. He and the other healers had feared they would result from the current overcrowding. Diphtheria and scarlatina had flared up occasionally over the past several hundred Turns, at least often enough so that the symptoms and the treatment were part of his training. The other diseases he didn’t know except from the root words, which were very very old. He would have to look them up in the Harper Hall’s etymological dictionary.

He read on farther in Master Gallardy’s advice. A liter and a half of blood could be taken from each recovered victim of the disease and that, separated, would give fifty mils of serum for immunization. The injectable amount varied from one mil to ten, according to Gallardy, but he wasn’t very specific as to which amount for which disease. Capiam thought ruefully of the impassioned words he had poured at Tirone concerning the loss of techniques. Was he himself at fault for not attending more closely to Master Gallardy’s full lecture?

No great calculation was needed for Capiam to see the enormity of the task of producing the desirable immunity even for the vital few thousand dragonriders, the Lords Holder, and Mastercraftsmen, let alone the healers who must care for the ill and prepare and administer the vaccine.

The door swung before Desdra, who looked flustered for the first time that Capiam could remember. She carried a rush basket and closed the door with a deft hook of her foot.

“I have your requirements and I have found the glass syringes that Master Clargesh blew for you. Three were broken, but I have boiled the remainder.”

Desdra carefully deposited the wicker basket by his bed. She pulled his bedside table to its customary place and, on it, she put the jar of redwort in its strongest solution, a parcel of reeds, the leaf-bound needlethorns, a steaming steel tray that had covered the kettle in which he could see a small glass jar, a stopper, and the Clargesh syringes. From her pocket, Desdra drew a length of stout, well-twisted cord. “There!”

“That is not a two-liter jar.”

“No, but you are not strong enough to be reduced by two liters of blood. Half a liter is all you can lose. K’lon will be here soon enough.”

Desdra briskly scrubbed his arm with the redwort then tied the cord about his upper arm while he clenched his fist to raise the artery. It was ropy and blue beneath flesh that seemed too white to him. With tongs, she took the glass container from the boiled water. She opened the packet of reeds, then the needlethorns, took one of each and fitted the needlethorn to one end of the reed. “I know the technique but I haven’t done this often.”

“You’ll have to! My hand shakes!”

Desdra pressed her lips in a firm line, dipped her fingers in redwort, put the glass container on the floor by his bed, tilted the reed end into it, and picked up the needlethorn. The tip of a needlethorn is so fine that the tiny opening in the point is almost invisible. Desdra punctured his skin and, with only a little force, entered the engorged vein then flipped loose the tourniquet. Capiam closed his eyes against the slight dizziness he felt when his blood pressure lowered as the blood began to flow through the needlethorn and down the reed into the container. When the spell had passed, he opened his eyes and was objectively fascinated by his blood dripping into the glass. He pumped his fist and the drip increased to a thin flow. In a curious, detached way, he seemed to feel the fluid leaving his body, being gathered from his other limbs, even from his torso, that the draining was a totally corporeal affair, not just from the fluid in one artery. He really could feel his heart beating more strongly, accommodating the flow. But that was absurd. He was beginning to feel a trifle nauseated when Desdra’s fingers pressed a redwort-stained swab over the needlethorn, then removed it with a deft tweak.

“That is quite enough, Master Capiam. Almost three quarters of a liter. You’ve gone white. Here. Press hard and hold. Drink the spirits.”

She placed the drink in his left hand and he automatically held the compress with his right. The powerful spirit seemed to take up the space left by the release of his blood. But that was a highly fanciful notion for a healer who knew very well the route taken by anything ingested.

“Now what do we do?” she asked, holding up the closed glass jar of his blood.

“That top firmly screwed on?” And when she demonstrated that it was: “Then wrap the cord tightly around the neck and knot it firmly. Good. Hand it here.”

“What do you think you’re going to do now?” Her face was stern and her gaze stubborn. For a woman who had often preached detachment, she was suddenly very intense.

“Gallardy says that centrifugal force, that is, whirling the jar around, will separate the components of the blood and produce the useful serum.”

“Very well.” Desdra stood back from the bed, made sure she had sufficient clear space to accomplish the operation, and began to swing the jar around her head.

Capiam, observing her exertions, was glad she had volunteered. He doubted that he could have managed it. “We could rig something similar with the spit canines, couldn’t we? Have to prod the beasts to maintain speed. One needs a constant speed. Or perhaps a smaller arrangement, with a handle so one could control the rotational velocity?”

“Why? Do we . . . need . . . to do this . . . often?”

“If my theory is correct, we’ll need rather a lot of serum. You did leave word that K’lon is to be shown here as soon as he arrives?”

“I did. How . . . much . . . longer?”

Capiam could not have her desist too soon, yet Master Gallardy had said “in a very short time” or—and Capiam looked more closely at his own handwriting—had
he
erred in transcribing? A concerned healer with thirty Turns of Craft life behind him, he silently cursed the diffidence of the spring-struck young apprentice he had been. “That ought to suffice, Desdra. Thank you!”

Breathless, Desdra slowed the swing of the jar and caught it, placing it on the table. Capiam hunched forward on the bed while Desdra examined the various layers with astonishment.

“That”—Desdra pointed dubiously to the straw-colored fluid in the top level—“is your cure?”

“Not a cure, exactly. An immunization.” Capiam enunciated the word carefully.

“One has to drink it?” Desdra’s voice was neutral with distaste.

“No, though I daresay it wouldn’t taste any worse than some of the concoctions you’ve insisted I swallow. No, this must be injected into the vein.”

She gave him a long thoughtful look. “So that’s why you needed the syringes.” She gave her head a little shake. “We don’t have enough of them. And I think you better see Master Fortine.”

“Don’t you trust me?” Capiam was hurt by her response.

“Completely. That’s why I suggest you go to Master Fortine. With your serum. He has been too frequent a visitor at our cautious Lord Holder’s internment camp. He’s coming down with the plague.”

CHAPTER X

Fort Weyr and Ruatha Hold, Present Pass, 3.16.43

W
HEN
M
ORETA WOKE
, she felt Orlith’s joyful presence in her mind.

You are better. The worst is over!

“I’m better?” Moreta was annoyed by the quaver in her voice, too much a remnant of the terrible lassitude that had enervated her the day before.

You are much better. Today you will get stronger every minute.

“How much of that is wishful thinking, my love?”

Even as Moreta spoke in her usual affectionate way, she realized that Orlith would know. During Moreta’s illness, the queen had been as close in her mind as if the dragon had changed mental residence. Orlith had shared every moment of Moreta’s discomfort, as if, by sharing, the dragon could diminish the effects of the plague on her rider. They, who had been partners in so much, had achieved a new peak of awareness, the one in the other. Orlith had dampened the pain of the fierce headache, she had eased the stress of fever and depressed the hard, racking cough. All she could do was comfort Moreta during the fourth day of physical and mental exhaustion. But by then the dragon queen had every right to rejoice.

Holth says there is other good news! Master Capiam has a serum which prevents the plague.

“Prevents it? Can he cure it?” Moreta had not been so detached in the course of her illness that she had not known that others in Fort had sickened—or that dragons and riders had died in other Weyrs. She was aware as well that two Fort Weyr wings had risen the day before to meet the Fall on Igen’s behalf. That Berchar and Tellani’s new babe had died. She knew as well that the epidemic had extended its insidious grip on the continent. It was time and enough for the healers to have found some specific means to control it.

The plague has a name. It is an ancient disease.

“What name do they give it then?”

I can’t remember,
Orlith said apologetically.

Moreta sighed. Naming was a dragon failing. Yet Orlith remembered quite a few, Moreta thought fondly.

Holth asks are you hungry yet?

“My greetings to our good Holth and our gracious Leri, and I think I am hungry.” Moreta said with some surprise. For four days any thought of food had caused nausea. Thirst she had suffered, as well as the hard throat-searing cough, and a weakness so deep she feared at moments that she would never shake it. That was when Orlith had been closest to her mind. Had there been space enough, the queen would have forced her swollen body into Moreta’s quarters to be physically near.

“How’s Sh’gall?” Moreta inquired. She had been feverishly ill by morning when Kadith had mournfully roused Orlith and Holth with the news of his rider’s collapse.

He is weak. He doesn’t feel at all well.

Moreta grinned. Orlith’s tone was tinged with scorn as if the queen felt her own rider had been more valiant.

“Do remember, Orlith, that Sh’gall has never been ill. This must come as a terrible shock to his self-esteem.”

Orlith said nothing.

“What news from Ruatha Hold? You’d better tell me,” Moreta added when she felt Orlith’s resistance.

Leri comes.
Relief marked Orlith’s manner.
She knows.

“Leri comes here?” Moreta tried to sit up, but gasped at the dizziness the sudden movement occasioned. She lay where she had flopped as she listened to the approach of shuffling steps and the tap of Leri’s cane. “Leri, you shouldn’t—”

“Why not?” Leri projected her voice from the larger weyr. “Good morning, Orlith. I’m one of the brave. I’ve lived my life so I’m not afraid of this ‘viral influence,’ as the Healers have styled it.” Leri pushed back the bright door curtain, peering brightly at the younger woman. “Ah, there—you have color in your face today.” A covered pot and the thong of a flask swung from her left hand. Two more containers had been stuck in her belt to allow her to use her right hand for her stick. As Leri entered the room, Moreta noticed that the old woman’s gait seemed more fluid. She deposited her oddments on the chest that was now drawn to Moreta’s bedside and then allowed herself to drop onto the space by Moreta’s feet. “There now!” she said with great satisfaction, tucking her gnarled stick beside her. “Yes, you should do very well.”

“Something smells good,” Moreta said, inhaling the aroma from the pot.

“A special porridge I concocted. Made them bring me supplies and a brazier so I could nurse you myself. Nesso’s finally down with it and out of my hair for a bit. Gorta’s taken charge—rather well, I might add, in case you’re interested.” Leri looked slyly at Moreta as she spooned porridge in two bowls. “I’ll join you since it’s my breakfast time as well, and this stuff is as good for me as it is for you. By the way, I made Orlith eat this morning before she wasted away to nothing but the egg-shells. She had four fat bucks and a wherry. She was very hungry! Now, don’t look dismayed. You’ve scarcely been able to do for yourself, let alone her. She didn’t feel neglected. She minds me very well, Orlith does, since she knows me so well. After all, Holth laid her! So she did as we told her and
she’s
feeling better. She
had
to eat, Moreta. Her next stop is the Hatching Ground, and we had to wait till you recovered for that. Won’t be long now.”

Moreta did some swift adding. “She’s early. She shouldn’t clutch for another five or six days.”

“There has been some stress. Don’t fuss. Eat. The sooner you’ve got your strength back, the better all round.”

“I’m much stronger today. Yesterday . . .” Moreta smiled ruefully.
“How
have you managed?”

“Very easily.” Leri was serenely smug. “As I said, I had them bring me a brazier and supplies. I made your potions myself, I’ll have you know! With Orlith listening to every breath you made and relaying the information to Holth, I’ll wager you couldn’t have been better cared for if Master Capiam had been at your bedside.”

“Orlith says he’s discovered a cure?”

“A vaccine, he calls it. But I’ll not have him after your blood.”

“Why should he be?” Moreta was startled and Orlith gave a bellow at Leri’s protectiveness.

“He takes the blood of people who have recovered and makes a
serum
to prevent it in others. Says it’s an ancient remedy. Can’t say I like the notion at all!” Leri’s short upright figure shuddered. “He practically attacked K’lon when he reported for conveying.” Leri gave a chuckle and smiled with bland satisfaction. “K’lon was doing too much flitting
between
on Healer Hall errands. I’ve appointed weyrlings to the duty. Didn’t like to but . . . they’ve followed orders well. Oh, there’s been so much happening I hardly know where to begin!”

Beneath Leri’s glib manner, Moreta could discern worry and fatigue, but the older Weyrwoman seemed to be thriving on the crisis.

“Have there been more . . . Weyr deaths?” Moreta asked, bracing herself for the answer.

“No!” Leri gave a defiant nod of her head and another pleased smile. “There shouldn’t have been any! People weren’t using the wits they were born with. You know how greens and blues panic? Well, they did just that when their riders got so sick and weak,
instead
of supporting them. In fact, there might be something to Jallora’s theory that the one caused the other. . . .” Leri stared off for a moment in deep thought. “Jallora’s the journeywoman healer sent with two apprentices from the Healer Hall. So we keep in touch with the sick riders. You were very ill, you know. Exhausted, I think, after the Gather—no sleep, all the excitement, then Fall and that repair on Dilenth. He’s fine, but Orlith is so strong and her need of you so great that
you
hadn’t a chance of dying! You and Orlith as a healing team were the inspiration”—Leri fixed Moreta with a mock stern gaze—“so we just told the other Weyrwomen to have their queen dragons keep watch on the sick and not
let
the riders die. It isn’t as if the Weyrs had the crowding that’s causing so much concern in the Holds and Halls. It’s ridiculous for dragon-riders to die of this vicious viral influence.”

“How many
are
ill, if the Weyrs must consolidate to fly Fall?”

Leri grimaced. “Steel yourself! Nearly two thirds of every Weyr except High Reaches is out of action. Between the plague and injuries, we can only just manage to send our two wings to cover Fall.”

“But you said Master Capiam had a cure?”

“A preventive. And not enough of this vaccine yet.” Leri spoke with an angry regret. “So the Weyrwomen decided that the High Reaches’ riders must be vaccinated”—she stumbled over the unfamiliar term—“since we must all look to S’ligar and Falga. As more of the serum is prepared, other Weyrs will be vaccinated. Right now Capiam has the drums burning to find more people who have recovered from this viral influence. First dragonriders”—Leri ticked off each name on a finger—“then Healers,
then
Lords Holder and other Craftsmasters, except for Tirone, which, I think no matter how Tolocamp objects, is sensible.”

“Tolocamp hasn’t been ill?”

“Tolocamp won’t leave his apartment.”

“You know a great deal about what’s happening for a woman who stays in her own weyr most of the time!”

Leri chuckled. “K’lon reports to
me!
Whenever, that is, Capiam hasn’t his exclusive services. Fortunately blues have good appetites and, although Capiam maintains that dragons, wherries, and watchwhers can’t contract the plague, dragons had best eat from stock isolated in their own weyrs. So K’lon brings Rogeth home to eat. Daily.”

“Dragons don’t eat daily.”

“Blue dragons who must flit
between
twice hourly do.” Leri gave Moreta a stern glance. “I had a note from Capjam, could barely read his script, lauding K’lon’s dedication—”

“A’murry?”

“Recovering. Very close thing but Holth was in constant touch with Granth once I realized how vital dragon support could be. L’bol lost both his sons and he grieves constantly. M’tani’s impossible, but then he has fought Thread longer than most and sees this incident as a personal affront. If it weren’t for K’dren and S’ligar, I think we’d have had trouble with F’gal: He’s lost heart, too.”

“Leri, there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Yes, dear girl” Leri patted Moreta’s arm gently before she filled a glass from one of her flasks. “Take a sip of this,” she said peremptorily, handing it to her.

Obediently Moreta did, and she was about to ask what on earth Leri had concocted, when she felt Orlith’s presence in her mind, like a buffer.

“Your family’s hold . . .” Leri’s voice thickened and she avoided Moreta’s gaze, staring instead at the bright central design of the door curtain. “. . . was very hard hit.”

Leri’s voice habitually broke but that time it was pronounced, and Moreta peered at the older woman’s averted face. Tears were running unheeded down the round cheek nearest her.

“There’d been no drum message in two days. The harper at Keroon heights made the trip downriver . . .” Leri’s fingers tightened on Moreta’s arm. “There was no one alive.”

“No one?” Moreta was stunned. Her father’s hold had supported nearly three hundred people, and another ten families had cots nearby on the river bluffs.

“Drink that down!”

Numbly Moreta complied. “No one alive? Not even someone out with the bloodstock?”

Leri shook her head slowly. “Not even the bloodstock!” Her admission was almost a whisper. Moreta could barely grasp the staggering tragedy. Obscurely, it was the deaths of the bloodstock that she regretted the most. Twenty Turns ago she had acquiesced to her family’s wish that she respond to Search. She regretted their deaths, certainly, for she had been fond of her mother, and several of her brothers and sisters, and one paternal uncle; she had enormous respect for her father. The runnerbeasts—all the bloodstock that had been so carefully bred for the eight generations her family had the runnerhold—that loss cut more deeply.

Orlith crooned gently, and her dragon’s compassion was subtly reinforced by a second pressure. Moreta felt the terrible weight of her grief being eased by an anodyne of love and affection, of total understanding for the complexities of her sorrow, of a commitment to share and ease the multiple pressures of bereavement.

Tears streamed down Moreta’s cheeks until she felt drained but curiously detached from her body and mind, floating in an unusual sensation of remoteness. Leri had put something very powerful in that wine of hers, she thought with an odd clarity. Then she noticed that Leri was watching her intently, her eyes incredibly sad and tired, every line of her many Turns etched in her round small face.

“No stock at all?” Moreta asked finally.

“Would young runners have been wintering on the plains? The harper couldn’t check. Didn’t know where and there hasn’t been time to send a sweeprider.”

“No, no. Of course there wouldn’t be time . . .” Moreta could quite see that impossibility with the present demands on available riders but she accepted the hopeful suggestion. “Yearlings and gravid runners would be in the winter pasture. Somebody of the Hold will have been tending them and survive.”

The comforting presences in her mind wrapped her with love and reassurances.
We are here!

Is Holth with you, Orlith?
Moreta asked.

Of course,
was the reply from two, now distinct to her, sources.

Oh! How kind!
Moreta’s mind drifted, oddly divorced from her body, until she became aware of Leri’s anxious expression. “I’m all right. As Holth will tell you. Did you know she speaks to me?”

“Yes, she’s got rather used to checking in on you,” Leri said with a kind and serene smile.

“What did you put in that wine? I feel . . . disembodied.”

“That
was
rather the effect I hoped to achieve. Fellis juice, numbweed, and one of the euphorics. Just to cushion the shock.”

“Are there more?” From the wavering of Leri’s smile, Moreta knew that there were. “You might as well give me the whole round tale now while I’m so remote. My family’s hold . . . cannot have been unique.” Leri shook her head. “Ruatha Hold?” That would follow the line of catastrophe, Moreta thought.