There were no dragons.
Those dragons had gone between and would never come back.
Thread fell lower, into warmer bands of air near the ground. Soon they would touch and-
A gout of flame licked the sky, then another, and another. Suddenly, the air was filled with flaming dragons and charred Thread.
“Take a wing low!” D’vin ordered as the riders of High Reaches Weyr fanned out, weary from their jump a day into the future. Hurth roared, adding his own emphasis, and D’vin slapped his bronze dragon affectionately.
“You tell them!” he roared out loud, grinning from ear to ear. She was right, he thought to himself.
She is a queen rider, Hurth said, as though that were all that needed saying.
D’vin nodded and turned his attention to the Thread in front of him. He was a dragonman, and this was his duty.
No Thread would fall on Crom Hold while there were still dragons left at High Reaches Weyr, D’vin swore to himself.
“Lorana?”
Lorana opened her eyes. Kindan’s anxious face swam into view. She was lying on her back on something hard. Cold, too.
“Are you all right?” Ketan asked, leaning over her.
Lorana rolled to her side and raised herself on her arm.
“No, no, stay put!” Kindan ordered.
Lorana ignored him with a shake of her head-a move she regretted as the room swirled before her eyes. She closed them for a moment, opened them again and stood up.
“Lorana!” Kindan begged, looking at her anxiously. “You need to rest. You passed out!”
Lorana shook her head in disagreement. She reached out with her senses, touching Minith. She felt Caranth sleeping fitfully.
“No,” Lorana said feebly. “No, I’ve got to work.”
“No, you’re too ill,” Kindan said.
“I’m not ill,” Lorana replied testily. She quickly explained what had happened, how she’d grabbed for Minith and Caranth, using the dragons of the Weyr, and then, when she felt the dragons of Telgar Weyr being lost, had tried to grab them, too-and had failed only to discover herself connected to a distant someone, the Oldtimer she’d felt before, and how she’d answered the Oldtimer’s question.
“I’m not ill,” Lorana repeated when she had finished. Without giving him a chance to answer, she moved past him, through the doorway that her word had opened and into the room beyond.
Lights came up in the new room as she came in, but no voice greeted her. She looked around the room and her eyes lit up with wonder.
“Kindan, come look!” she cried excitedly, heading toward the benches placed on one side of the room.
Kindan followed her, with Ketan trailing behind. Salina paused in the doorway, taking in every part of the room in silent wonder.
“Look, there’s the other door!” Ketan declared, pointing to a door on the far wall. “And it’s got the same press plate as the others.”
He ran across the room and pressed the plate. The door slid open, revealing the first room they’d discovered.
“We couldn’t open this door from the other side,” he said.
“I think we were supposed to come this way,” Salina remarked. “I think the first door we came through was just for emergencies.”
“So the rockslide activated it?” Ketan asked.
“Well, we might as well get working,” Lorana said. “M’tal will be back from the Fall soon enough.” She looked at Ketan. “There are some injured dragons coming back now.”
Ketan was surprised. “So soon?”
“Everyone was disturbed when Telgar was lost,” Lorana replied.
“Those who could still hear dragons,” Ketan said, his eyes full of sorrow. He saw Lorana’s look and hastily added, “I would not have wanted to have been you just then.”
Lorana managed a small, sour smile and shrugged. “If I hadn’t been-”
“Our ancestors would never have known our peril,” Kindan finished briskly. He gestured around the room. “Where should we start first?”
“I’ll go tend the dragons,” Ketan said, turning to leave.
“You’ll be quicker going through that door,” Lorana said, pointing to the door leading to the Hatching Grounds.
“So I will,” Ketan agreed in pleasant surprise. As he headed off, he called back over his shoulder, “I’ll send for you if we need help.”
Salina waved acknowledgment and sauntered over toward Lorana.
Lorana gravitated toward the cabinets on the left wall. There were three, just as in the first room. The nearest was also marked A. She opened it and drew back in awe.
On the middle shelf of the cabinet was an ungainly object.
“I know what that is,” Kindan declared.
“It’s a microscope,” Lorana said, gently cradling it in her arms and placing it on the countertop behind her. She looked it over carefully, angled the reflecting mirror at the bottom to catch the light from overhead. She frowned for a moment, turned back to the cabinet, and then murmured happily as she found what she was looking for. “Here are the specimen slides!”
“What have they got?” Salina asked.
“What sort of magnification does that microscope have?” Kindan added.
“Sixteen hundred,” Lorana answered, peering at the different lenses at the base of the barrel. She looked back at the slides, selected one, and slid it under the calipers on the microscope’s table, firmly holding it in place.
She bent down over the eyepiece and very carefully adjusted the focus. With a gasp of surprise, she drew back.
“What is it?” Salina asked.
“A human hair,” Lorana replied, gesturing for the older woman to look. Kindan was next and just as impressed.
They spent hours working with the microscope, examining the prepared specimens and commenting to each other about their findings.
“So what we need now is a sample from one of the sick dragons,” Kindan said finally, looking up from the last of the bacteria specimen slides.
Lorana looked ready to agree and then her face took on a distant look.
“That will have to wait,” she told the others. “M’tal is back and Ketan needs help.”
Salina gave Lorana a nervous look. “No,” Lorana assured her, “he and Gaminth are just fine. But there were many injured in the Fall.”
“I think we can leave everything where it is,” Salina said as they left the room and headed toward the Hatching Grounds. “But should we shut this door?”
“I’d advise against it,” Kindan said. “We don’t know how much power it takes to open it again.”
Salina and Lorana nodded in agreement.
As they entered the Bowl from the Hatching Grounds, two sounds came to their ears simultaneously. One was Tullea calling imperiously for Lorana. The other was a dragon’s cough-Minith’s.
Kindan was surprised to see Lorana’s face light up in excitement: He would never have considered her spiteful. Her words immediately erased his unease and left him feeling chagrined. “Minith must have just come down with the illness,” she said. “If we can get a sample from her-”
“We could identify the disease,” Salina finished excitedly.
Then Lorana’s shoulders drooped. “Or maybe not,” she said. “It’s also possible that Minith has been sick for quite some time and is only now at the stage where we notice it.”
“So the beasties we find might not be the culprit?” Kindan asked.
“Perhaps just some secondary infections,” Lorana agreed.
“It’s better than nothing,” Salina said. She stopped as she looked at the injured dragons and riders covering the Weyr Bowl floor. She turned to Kindan. “You get the sample while Lorana and I help Ketan.”
Kindan bit back saying, “Me?” Instead, he mutely nodded and headed up to the Weyrleaders’ quarters.
It was past dinner when Lorana and Salina finally made their way back to the Learning Rooms. There they found Kindan and B’nik peering over the microscope.