“More light would help,” Lorana agreed. As Kindan busied himself with the task, she followed him around the room with her eyes, partly to distract herself and partly because he was such a pleasant distraction.
He turned back to her when he was done. “May I stay?”
Lorana met his gaze with a bittersweet look and patted the ground beside her. “I was hoping you would,” she told him. “The ground’s hard, but you don’t notice it after a while.”
Kindan sat beside her, unsure whether to lean against Arith as she was doing, or to offer himself as a support for Lorana, or to lean himself against her.
She sensed his unease and turned her back to him, stretching her neck from side to side to get out the kinks. She reached behind her and said to him, “Could you?”
Kindan stifled a laugh and began to gently massage her tense shoulder blades and upper back. He took his time and was thorough.
Partway through, Lorana gasped and Arith jerked awake, eyes opening quickly. The little queen keened softly beside her rider, and Kindan didn’t need to see Lorana’s face to know that she was crying with the pain of dragons forever lost.
In the end, Kindan couldn’t say who was more distraught: Lorana, Arith, or himself. Through the course of the evening-the length of the Fall as it traveled from Igen Weyr southwest, over the Ista Strait and onto the southern tip of Ista Island-Lorana shuddered as though beaten down by a miner’s hammer, and Arith keened, sometimes so often that it almost seemed as if the small dragon was chanting. The pain and anguish that both rider and dragon were suffering hurt Kindan even more because he did not feel it except through them and could not anticipate the next loss.
All through the long Fall he stayed by them, gently massaging Lorana’s tense back, softly patting Arith’s hide. Kiyary or Mikkala must have come to check on them several times, for Kindan remembered nodding thankfully to them at various points in the night and resisting the same wine he tried to force unsuccessfully on Lorana.
In the end, Kindan had started to count when either Lorana or Arith gasped or shuddered with the pain of dragons and riders far away. He stopped when he reached seventy. Ista Weyr had some one hundred and twenty dragons or more able to fight Thread; if seventy were injured or lost, it was just as Verilan had said: Ista would not be able to fight another Threadfall. Two Falls like that and Benden Weyr would not be able to fight Thread either.
And then Thread would fall-unchecked-and leach all the life from the land. And even if the Holders survived, locked in their Holds, how long would it be before they starved in a lifeless and barren land?
J’lantir surveyed the surviving Wingleaders as they gathered in the Council Room at Ista Weyr.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said to M’kir, barring the brown rider as he tried to enter. M’kir’s left arm was in a sling, his shoulder heavily bandaged where Thread had gouged it, the left side of his head bandaged to hide the gaping hole that had once held a fierce blue eye.
M’kir opened his mouth to protest but stopped as J’lantir swayed in the doorway.
“You need to get some rest,” the brown rider told his Weyrleader, sliding past him.
J’lantir turned to face the others in the room. S’maj was the only Wingleader left besides himself. B’lon was favoring his left leg, wrapped in a bandage placed over his now-useless flying pants-a long thin line of blood showed where Thread had eaten through it and into his leg, but the score was not deep; B’lon’s Lareth had been able to take them quickly between, where the Thread had frozen, shriveled, and cracked off.
A sound from behind him caused J’lantir to swivel his head. His eyes went unfocused for a bit as the movement caused the world to wobble.
You must rest too, Lolanth chided him. J’lantir knew his dragon was right, just as he knew he had to ignore the advice.
Dalia entered, smoothing her features as she surveyed the occupants of the room.
“How bad is it?” M’kir asked her urgently.
“It’s bad,” B’lon predicted.
“Perhaps we should let our Weyrwoman tell us,” J’lantir said with a tone of reproval in his voice. He inclined his head toward her-a mistake, his stomach informed him. I’ll feed you later, J’lantir growled back at his stomach.
Dalia raised an eyebrow at J’lantir, clearly recognizing that he was suffering, but stopped herself from commenting as she caught the pleading look on his face.
“Fourteen dragons went between,” she told the others. “Twenty were severely injured, and it will be more than three months before they will fly again.”
A groan went around the table.
“Another thirty-one have lesser injuries but will need at least several weeks to recuperate.” She took a breath before finishing. “And we’ve identified another eleven sick dragons.”
“So how many dragons will be able to fly Thread over Ista Hold in three days’ time?” J’lantir asked, dreading the answer.
“Forty-eight,” Dalia answered, unable to keep the pain out of her voice.
Kindan woke the next morning to Arith’s coughing. It took him a moment to realize that he was leaning against her back and that Lorana was sleeping in his lap. Arith turned her head to give Kindan an apologetic look.
“Think nothing of it,” he responded with a courteous nod of his head. At that moment Arith sneezed, covering him with green mist.
Lorana twitched and sat upright, blinking the morning into focus.
“Shh, it’s all right,” Kindan said soothingly.
Lorana focused on his face. “She sneezed again, didn’t she? You’re all covered in green.”
Arith gave an apologetic bleek.
“So are you,” Kindan told Lorana. Then he frowned consideringly. “Well, maybe not quite as much.”
Are you hungry? Lorana asked Arith.
Thirsty, Arith replied after a moment’s reflection.
“Arith’s thirsty,” Lorana announced, standing up. Kindan followed her action.
“We’d best clean up before we go anywhere,” he said, peeling off his stained tunic. “Or people will think that we’re sick.”
Lorana gave no reaction to his attempt at humor. With a polite nod to the humans, Arith stood up, stretched, took a few quick steps to the ledge of her lair, and blithely jumped off it, gliding surely toward the lake in the Weyr Bowl.
“You know,” Kindan said, gesturing fondly after the departing gold, “I’ve never seen a dragon so young act so self-assured.”
Lorana’s lips twisted up in the ghost of a smile. “She is agile, isn’t she?”
They met Arith again as she splashed about on the shoreline of the lake.
“Well,” someone behind them drawled, “now that you two have deigned to join the rest of us, perhaps you’d care to look for these special rooms I’ve heard so much about.”
They turned to see Tullea leaning indolently against Minith’s foreleg. B’nik stood beside her.
“Arith was sick,” Lorana explained, turning back to catch sight of the young queen as she splashed back to the shore.
“All the more reason to search, then,” Tullea responded. “Unless you two are more inclined to cavorting?” She cast a disdainful look at Kindan’s bare chest. “And get some clothes on.”
With that, Tullea turned away from them and headed back to her weyr, B’nik following, stony-faced.
“I’ll go on,” Kindan said to Lorana. “I’ve got to get a clean shirt from my room anyway.”
Passing by the Kitchen Cavern on the way to his room, Kindan was hailed by Kiyary.
“Tullea giving out to you, was she?” Kiyary asked, smiling evilly. “I can see why, too-your bare chest is enough to make a dragon swoon.”