“Could someone else train me?” Lorana asked. “From what Kindan has told me, it seems like it would be a good idea if the watch-whers knew me.”
M’tal rubbed a hand wearily across his forehead. “It would be a good idea,” he agreed. “But-”
“Perhaps Nuella would teach her,” Kindan suggested, stepping closer to join the conversation.
“Nuella is at Plains Hold,” M’tal said. “How are you proposing she teach Lorana?”
“She could come here,” Kindan said.
M’tal shook his head. “We don’t know if watch-whers can catch this illness; I don’t think it’s fair to ask her to risk it.”
“A good point,” Kindan conceded. “But watch-whers have been around fire-lizards as much as the dragons have, and I’ve not heard of any watch-wher getting sick.”
“Could they be immune?” Lorana wondered. The idea surprised her-everyone knew that watch-whers and dragons were related.
K’tan had zeroed in on the group and joined it just in time to hear the last exchange between Kindan and Lorana. “If the watch-whers are immune, could they fight Thread?” he asked.
Kindan considered the idea for only a moment before shaking his head. “Watch-whers are nocturnal, and Thread falls during the day.”
“It sometimes falls at night, as well,” K’tan disagreed. Something about his comment troubled Lorana, but she couldn’t determine what.
M’tal’s next comment drove the thought from her mind. “Watch-whers might well be immune, but that might not stop them from carrying the illness. Bringing a watch-wher here might bring more illness, too.”
Kindan nodded in agreement. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He turned to M’tal. “You’re right, Weyrleader, this doesn’t seem to be a good time.”
“A pity,” K’tan murmured.
M’tal’s brows creased in thought. “Perhaps we can use Nuella after all.” The others looked at him questioningly. “She met Lorana at the Hatching, so perhaps she and Nuella could share images with the other watch-whers,” M’tal said. He shrugged. “It wouldn’t mean that Lorana could contact individual watch-whers, but they might be able to contact her.”
“That’s a great idea,” Kindan exclaimed. “We’ll get right on it.” He grabbed Lorana by the arm. “Come on, Lorana, let’s get out of this crowd.”
M’tal waved them away with a look that was nearly cheerful. “That’s one more thing off of my mind,” he said to K’tan.
“It is, Weyrleader,” K’tan agreed dubiously.
M’tal shot him a look.
“It’s another thing on Lorana’s mind,” K’tan explained.
“Is she overworked?”
“We’re all overworked,” K’tan said. “You more than most, particularly with Breth gone. But there’s a mating flight soon, and Tullea rides the senior queen.”
M’tal gave the healer an encouraging gesture.
“And I worry,” K’tan continued, “that Tullea might not appreciate having Lorana’s abilities become so necessary to the success of the Weyr.”
M’tal’s lips thinned as he slowly nodded in agreement. “She hasn’t been the same since High Reaches closed their Weyr, three Turns ago.”
“Perhaps she had a lover there,” K’tan mused.
M’tal snorted. “If she did, I’d never heard of it.” He shook his head. “From what I’ve heard, they still take their tithes, but that’s all.”
K’tan cocked his head at the Weyrleader. “Do you suppose they guessed about the illness?”
M’tal frowned thoughtfully, then shook his head. “I can’t see how,” he said. “D’vin and Sonia were always a bit odd, maybe they just got… odder.”
K’tan shrugged in turn. “Well, I need to get back to the Records,” he said, turning toward the First Stairs.
“Speaking of overwork,” M’tal quipped. The Weyr healer flashed a smile over his shoulder, and the Weyrleader waved him away genially.
“And there are no fire-lizards left at all?” Masterharper Zist asked Harper Jofri. The harper nodded.
“I’d heard that the Weyrs have banned them,” said Bemin, Lord Holder of Fort Hold. “But I don’t think any were left by then.”
He had lost his marvelous brown Jokester. After the Plague had carried off his wife and his sons, the loss of his fire-lizard had been easier to bear, if still painful, but his real distress had come in comforting his young only surviving child, Fiona, on her loss of her gold fire-lizard, Fire.
“I’ve heard some people say that the dragonriders were jealous and bothered by the fire-lizards,” Nonala, the Harper Hall’s voice craftmaster added.
“I think it’s mostly grumbling,” Jofri said. “When people are upset and worried, some like to complain.”
“Nonetheless, it is a very real concern,” Bemin said. The others looked at him. “Holders and crafters pay their tithes to the Weyrs and wonder what they get for it.”
He drew another breath to continue, but the Masterharper suddenly raised his hand and the others cocked their heads, listening.
“Dragons? Dead?” Nonala gasped as the drum message rolled in.
“Ista, Benden, Telgar,” Jofri added in a whisper.
“Benden’s queen,” Zist said, with a pained look on his face.
Bemin looked from one to the other as they spoke. It was a moment before he could find his voice. But when he did, it was to declare with the heartfelt pain of a father who has lost children, of a husband who has lost a wife, of someone who knew something of the pain the bereft riders must be feeling, and-last of all-as the Lord Holder of Pern’s oldest Hold. “Whatever I can do, or my Hold, you-or the Weyrs-have only to ask.”
At lunch the next day, Kindan bounded into the Records Room to tell Lorana breathlessly, “Fort Weyr has reported black dust!”
Lorana was up on her Records enough to realize that black dust was what happened when the weather was too cold and Thread froze on the way to the ground.
“When?” she asked.
“M’tal says that K’lior’s watch riders noticed it just around dinnertime-that would make it around lunchtime here,” Kindan said. “M’tal says we can expect Thread to fall from the shoreline over the Weyr and on to Bitra nine days from now.”
Lorana stifled a groan and buried herself back in her Records.
The morning bustle was louder than usual nine days later as the Weyr waited for its first Threadfall. Lorana had just managed to get Salina back into a fellis-laced, troubled sleep when the alert came: Thread falls! Thread falls at the shoreline!
The alert woke Arith out of a fretful sleep and Lorana spent precious moments calming her beloved dragon before she could race down the stairs to help.
“Go back to your rest,” M’tal said when he saw her. “Tullea will handle this.”
Lorana’s eyes widened in surprise at the suggestion, for Tullea was nowhere to be seen. She waited until a disheveled B’nik appeared beside an even more disheveled Tullea, whose mouth smirked at the expressions of the other dragonriders. As their faces remain fixed in disapproval, Tullea’s smirk changed to a pout.
“We were just getting to bed,” she said defensively.
“Thread falls at Upper Bitra,” M’tal told her. He looked past her to B’nik, “Is your wing ready?”
J’tol, B’nik’s wingsecond, appeared beside him. “Just ready now, Weyrleader,” the sturdy brown rider said, his gaze focused directly between the elder M’tal and the younger B’nik, as if casting doubt on whom the title should be conferred.
M’tal chose to ignore the taunt. “Good, good,” he said, moving toward Gaminth as the bronze glided to a landing beside him. “We’ll form up at the Star Stones and go between on my coordinates.”