“My lord?” a voice whispered nervously into J’trel’s ear. “My lord, it’s very late.”
J’trel stirred, and raised his head from the table even while wondering how it had got there. Except for the light of the lantern the man carried, it was pitch-dark.
Emboldened now that the dragonrider had stirred, the man said, “I’ve got to close up now, my lord.”
Talith? For a terrible instant J’trel feared that something had happened to his dragon and that he’d find himself left all alone, with neither partner nor dragon. The sense of loss for K’nad, which had engulfed him after Lorana had rushed away, enveloped him like a thick shroud. His sense of dread grew as he waited longer and longer for his dragon to respond.
J’trel? Talith’s voice came back to him without its usual warmth and strength. I don’t feel right.
Instantly J’trel heard and felt his dragon’s distress. With a wordless cry, he lurched to his feet, against the pain in his battered ribs, the drink-induced nausea, and the muzziness of an incipient hangover.
“My lord, are you all right?” the tavern man asked, hands fluttering from gestures of aid to gestures of entreaty.
“I’ve been better,” J’trel replied with a trace of his usual humor. “But I’m all right.”
He swiveled blearily toward an exit.
Talith waited in a nearby clearing. J’trel bit off a gasp of pain as he climbed up the dragon’s side. J’trel could hear his dragon’s breathing and noticed how strained it sounded.
You’re hurt, Talith noted compassionately.
And you’re-J’trel was going to say tired but suddenly realized that he meant old-and was shocked into silence. But Talith, from Turns of intimacy, guessed both the original and substitute words J’trel had not thought. The dragon rumbled softly in gentle agreement, and the rumble turned into a sharp cough.
As the blue launched into the cold night air, J’trel reminisced on the past several months. He had only planned to notify K’nad’s next of kin. The pain of his partner’s loss and age itself had taken too much of a toll on the old dragonrider.
There was too much pain-and his duties had been discharged. Some dissenting thought crossed his mind, but he couldn’t focus on it. Talith coughed again, painfully.
I have made you tarry too long, old friend, J’trel said kindly to his life-long mate. You are tired. I am tired. Talith rumbled soft agreement. It is time.
For a moment longer J’trel reflected on his life. Give Lorana my love, old friend. She will carry on without us, I’m sure.
After a moment the blue dragon responded, I have told her.
J’trel nodded. “Good. I am tired and it’s time to rest.”
Together, dragon and rider flashed one moment in the pale moonlight and were gone.
FOUR
It is the duty of an Eridani Adept to preserve their assigned ‘-ome’.
- Excerpt from the Eridani Edicts
As the sound of breaking glass reached her ears over the booming of the message drums, Wind Blossom paused in her slow, steady hunt. She sighed and bid silent farewell to yet more precious glassware. I was never good at this, she thought sadly to herself. The boy was worse than Emorra had ever been.
Wind Blossom took a deep breath and turned toward the noise. Resolutely she overrode the creaks of her joints and the complaints of her muscles. Time-and medicine-on Pern were not what they had been: At seventy-nine, she felt more like a doddering ninety.
The sounds of the drums died as the message was completed-and the noise of breaking glass diminished, but not before Wind Blossom had located its source. It came from her own room. She opened the door but did not enter.
Hunched over the remains of a cabinet at one end of the room, Tieran panted. Tears streamed down his face. Wind Blossom noticed with sadness that his hands were bleeding in several places-again.
“Tieran?” Somehow she managed to modulate her voice to more than a croak. For such small things are we grateful, she thought to herself.
The lad, rangy and awkward in the midst of adolescence, turned away from her, but he did not continue in his destruction. Instead, he started picking his way across the shard-strewn floor toward the door.
Wind Blossom sighed inwardly with relief as she noticed that he at least had his boots on. The damage to his hands looked minor as well, she noted clinically.
As always, almost instinctively, he kept the right side of his face-the “good” side-toward her and tilted his neck in such a way that the lacerations on his nose looked their best.
Of all his injuries, the damage to the nose was the worst-at least for a sixteen-year-old boy who had to endure the pitying stares of his elders and the taunts or the silent shunning of his peers.
Wind Blossom knew that it was possible to repair the damage, once his face had finished growing. If she could learn the necessary skills. If she could find the necessary materials. If she could keep the necessary medicines. If she lived long enough.
They were in a three-legged race: waiting for him to grow up, striving to keep the medical supplies necessary, and hoping that she didn’t grow too feeble to perform the surgery.
And they both knew they were losing.
Latrel could have done it, but that lab accident had cost him the use of his left thumb and, without it, he couldn’t operate. Carelly had never progressed beyond competent nurse. Wind Blossom felt that she could train Tieran to do it-he had the skill-but he could not be both surgeon and patient.
“Where is it?” Tieran demanded in a rough, torn voice. Wind Blossom raised an eyebrow.
“Where is the antibiotic?” He glared at her.
“It is safe,” Wind Blossom said.
“I want it,” Tieran told her. He held out a hand. “Give it to me-now.”
“Why now?”
Tieran’s face crumpled. “He-he-he was under that rock slide for two days! The sepsis had set in long before they found him. The fever took him before I got there.”
Wind Blossom shuddered. “He was a good man.”
Tieran glared at her. “Give it to me! I’m going to find someone-M’hall, someone-and we’ll time it-don’t think I don’t know-and we’ll save him. I need that medicine!”
“You cannot break time, Tieran,” Wind Blossom said softly. “Not even for your father. There is no way.”
Wind Blossom had taught Tieran that dragons could not only go instantaneously between places but also between times. The paradoxes and rules of time travel applied to dragons as much as to anything else that existed in the space-time continuum. It was impossible to go back in time in a manner that could alter events that had already occurred.
“You can’t alter the past,” Wind Blossom said.
Tieran’s face crumpled and he leaned over and onto Wind Blossom. “You said he’d always be there. You said we’d always see each other. You said… And I wasn’t there! I couldn’t help him, I wasn’t there!”
Drawing on her inner strength, Wind Blossom straightened her spine and held the lad while his sorrow and anger poured out.
“I shall miss him, too,” Wind Blossom said after a while. “He was a good man. A good botanist, too. With more training-”