Colfet seemed to realize his gaffe. “I meant no disrespect, dragon-rider.”
J’trel didn’t hear much apology in the northerner’s tone but let it go. “Then I’ll take none, seaman.”
Tanner decided to change the subject. “J’trel says you’ve also got a way with beasts.”
“My father worked with them, yes,” Lorana replied.
“Do you suppose you could splint an arm or tend a scrape for a person?”
Lorana shrugged. “It’s not much different. More than a scrape or a break and you’d want to get a proper healer.”
The seamen all nodded in agreement.
“None of the lads are likely to get themselves hurt on a milk run like this,” Colfet growled. “Just down to that new sea hold and back here.”
Captain Tanner told Lorana, “I’m only captain for Wind Rider’s shakedown cruise. After these three get the feel of her rigging, they’ll be taking her on up to Tillek.”
“But I’d like to go to Tillek,” Lorana said.
Colfet glanced at the other Tillek men, then said, “For that you’ll have to get my approval.” He took a long thoughtful breath. “Let’s see how you are on this run down to this new Hold, first.”
“We’d better be moving then,” Tanner said, turning to the others. “The tide doesn’t wait.”
J’trel shook her hand and then grabbed her in a hug. “You watch out for yourself, youngster. I’ll want to know how you get along.”
Lorana gave him a smile. “I’ll do that, J’trel.”
The Wind Rider was everything Captain Tanner had said it would be. Lorana stowed her gear in the healer’s cabin and then joined the crew on deck as the ship was nimbly warped out of Ista Harbor. The schooner heeled as the wind caught her quarter, and the helmsman cursed as he struggled to control the wheel.
As the ship heeled into a new wave and burst through the other side, Captain Tanner said to Colfet, “What do you think of her now, Mister Colfet? Is she fit for your Master’s fleet?”
“She grabs the wind well, Captain Tanner,” Colfet admitted. “But it’s early days, early days. I’d like to see her in a blow.”
Tanner laughed and pointed to the confused seamen above in the rigging. “Not before this lot get themselves sorted out, I hope.”
Colfet gave him a sour grin. “No, not before.” He glanced at the setting sun over the taffrail. “And tomorrow will be too fair for a strong wind.”
“What makes you say that?” Lorana asked.
“Bad weather coming, probably a blow,” Colfet answered, as if that were all the explanation needed.
Captain Tanner raised his monocular to his eye. “Lorana, look there! It seems we’re getting a send-off!”
Lorana looked where Tanner pointed and could see a dragon and rider in the distance waving at them. She laughed and waved back.
J’trel says safe voyage, Lorana, Talith told her.
Thank him please, Talith.
High up in the sky, Talith relayed Lorana’s reply to J’trel.
“You’re welcome, lass,” J’trel said to himself. “Did you hear that, Talith? How many can speak to other dragons? How many Weyrwomen can do that? Not one, I’m telling you. She’ll ride gold, and she’ll be the best Weyrwoman Pern’s ever seen.”
TWO
- ome (suffix): (i) the biological portion of an ecosystem. (ii) the material and genetic information required to re-create the biological portion of an ecosystem. Examples: the “terrome” refers to the biological portion of the Terran ecosystem; the “cetome” refers to the biological portion of the Cetus III ecosystem; the “eridanome” refers to the biological portion of the Eridani ecosystem.
- Glossary of terms, Ecosystems: From -ome to Planet, 24th Edition
With another wordless cry, Wind Blossom rolled out of her dreams into the new day. It was always the same dream. Only-different this time. Something had woken her early.
Even with the dream interrupted, as if against her will, Wind Blossom remembered her mother’s last words: “Always a disappointment you were to me. Now you hold the family honor. Fail not, Wind Blossom.”
Wind Blossom had had the same dreams for the last forty years.
The sound repeated itself: a dragon bugling in the sky above.
Her mother, Kitti Ping, had created the dragons. Kitti Ping, famed Eridani Adept, who had saved Cetus III from the ravages of the Nathi War was also Pern’s savior with the creation of the great, fire-breathing, telepathic dragons.
Wind Blossom was credited with-blamed for-the creation, through similar genetic manipulation, of the photophobic watch-whers. On the starships’ manifests Kitti Ping and Wind Blossom had been listed as geneticists. That title conveyed only a small portion of the full Eridani training Kitti Ping had received and had passed on to her daughter, Wind Blossom.
“Always a disappointment you were to me,” her mother’s calm, controlled voice came to Wind Blossom’s mind-a memory over forty years old.
They had come to Pern fifty years earlier, thousands of war-weary people seeking an idyllic world beyond the knowledge of human and Nathi alike. They had been led by such luminaries as Emily Boll, famed Governor of Tau Ceti and heroic leader of Cetus III, and Admiral Paul Benden, the victor of the Nathi Wars.
Instead of finding rest and a pastoral, agricultural world, they discovered that their lush planet Pern had an evil stepsister-the Red Star. Its orbit was wildly erratic, coming through the solar system on a cometary 250-year cycle, dragging with it the mysterious peril of Thread.
Eight years after the colonists landed on Pern, the Red Star came close enough to unload its burden on its sister-planet. The Thread, mindless, voracious, space-traveling spores, ate anything organic-plastics, woods, flesh. The first Threadfall on the unsuspecting colony was devastating.
Galvanized by this new threat, Kitti Ping, Wind Blossom, and all the biologists on Pern dropped their work in adapting terran life-forms to life on Pern to concentrate instead on creating a defense against Thread.
From the native flying fire-lizards, barely longer from nose to tail than a person’s arm, Kitti Ping created the huge fire-breathing dragons, able to carry a rider, telepathically bound to his mount, into a flaming battle against Thread. And so humankind on Pern was saved.
It was the sound of a dragon’s bugle that had disturbed Wind Blossom’s dreams. Through the unshuttered windows, she could make out the beat of the dragon’s wings and heard it land in the courtyard outside the College.
Shouts and cries reached her window with emotions intact but words incomprehensible. The dragon alone was indication enough of something extraordinary, and the voices confirmed that there was some sort of emergency.
The voices in the courtyard moved inside.
Her room smelled of lavender. Wind Blossom took a long, deep lungful of the smell and turned to look at the fresh cutting on her bedside table. Her mother’s room had always smelled of cedar. Sometimes of apple blossoms, too, but always of cedar.
Perhaps some arnica would help, Wind Blossom thought as she summoned the strength to ignore the pain in her old joints and the weakness of her muscles as she sat up in bed and slid her feet into her slippers. Arnica was good for bruises and aches.
And some peppermint tea for my thinking, she added with a bittersweet twinkle in her eyes.
She walked to her dresser and looked impassively at her face reflected in the still water of the wash basin. Her hair was still dark-it would always be dark-as were her eyes. They stared impassively back at her as she examined her face. Her skin had the same yellowish tinge of her Asian ancestors; her eyes had the Asian almond shape.