“How?” Kindan asked, but Salina had moved beside him and grabbed Lorana. With palm wide-open, she slapped Lorana’s face.
“Lorana! Lorana, you must come back, come back now,” Salina begged. She swung for another slap just as Lorana’s eyes fluttered open and she raised a hand feebly to ward off the blow. “Call them back, Lorana. Bring them back.”
“I can’t,” Lorana said, her voice choking on tears. “I tried that with Arith and it didn’t work.”
“You must, Lorana,” Salina said fiercely. “You must. Call all the dragons of Pern. Bring them back.”
Lorana took a deep steadying breath, glanced at the old Weyrwoman, and nodded slowly. She closed her eyes and reached out, as she had done before when Arith had gone between.
This time, however, she stretched beyond the confines of the Weyr, reaching first to Gaminth, then to all the dragons of Benden and then beyond-
- to Ista,
- to Fort,
- and to High Reaches.
There were not enough dragons at High Reaches and she found herself feeling a strange echo. It reminded her somewhat of the echo she’d felt before, but that other echo had had a feeling of old about it-this one didn’t.
Mentally, Lorana shook the strangeness aside, desperate to find Minith, Caranth, and the dragons of Telgar. She searched, forcing all the dragons of Pern to follow her will, to search with her.
They were willing accomplices. She felt the presence of Bidenth, the senior queen at Ista, and suddenly all the dragons of Ista were behind her, aligned with the direction of her mind. And then she felt Melirth, the queen of Fort Weyr, and again the strength of dragons merged with her. For a moment Lorana felt as though she were exploding, being stretched beyond all imagining. She fought a moment of panic, won, and redirected her efforts back to Minith.
There! She found a faint echo, a spark of the queen dragon. And beside it, she felt Caranth. She tugged at them, battling them, willing them to obey her and ruthlessly channeling the power of all the dragons of Pern to her aid.
She could feel Caranth resist, try to slide away from her. She fastened on to him tightly and pulled against him, pulling him back to here. She felt his resistance crumble, felt a shadow of B’nik as he, too, added a call to his dragon. Relieved, Lorana allowed her mind for just an instant to range further, searching for the dragons of Telgar.
She felt a faint echo, a response, and turned all her power toward it, compelling Minith to order the dragons of Benden behind her, and weaving Caranth indissolubly into the mix. She reached-
- and felt a shock, a stab of familiarity. Not the dragons of Telgar, but something different, something she’d felt before.
Garth? she called. And just then she felt something else, some other presence. Lorana felt herself opening a door, using all the strength of the dragons to push it open.
For only a brief instant she felt she had a connection.
Dragons? The question came to her more as a feeling than a thought. Sick? How?
And in that instant Lorana knew the answer. Across the link, with the greatest effort she could muster, she shouted out loud and in her mind, “Air!”
Kindan felt Lorana go limp and caught her.
“The door!” Ketan exclaimed in awe. “Look at the door!”
The door to the second Learning Room was sliding open.
TWENTY-THREE
Parasite: A life-form inimical to its host, often killing the host to ensure its survival.
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.”