“I know,” Salina replied softly. “I think she feels every dragon’s death.” She looked up at him. “You must know something of how she feels, for all your years healing.”
“Is it terribly lonely, losing your dragon?” K’tan asked, fighting to keep his voice steady.
“It’s the worst feeling there is,” Salina told him honestly. She grabbed him and hugged him tight. “But as long as you have people to live for…”
Overwhelmed by her words and enveloped in her comforting embrace, K’tan’s composure broke in one soft, heart-torn sob. Clumsily he pushed himself away.
“I’ll be all right,” he declared. “Thank you.”
“I’m sure you will be,” Salina agreed, accepting his lie.
K’tan turned quickly, saying, “I must check on Lorana.”
“Give her my love,” Salina called as the healer strode off deliberately.
By the time K’tan arrived in Lorana’s quarters, he had his emotions back under control. After all, he chided himself, he had had Turns of consoling the bereaved, of keeping quiet watch as sick and injured slipped away forever; he should be used to this. And he owed it to his patients and weyrmates. Those who were suffering deserved no less than the best he could give them.
He heard a voice from inside Lorana’s quarters and quickened his pace, arriving breathless. Perhaps-
“What are you doing here?” he demanded abruptly, spotting the Weyrwoman as he entered Lorana’s quarters.
“My duty as Weyrwoman,” Tullea snapped, her cheeks flushing. She stood up from Lorana’s bedside, hands clenched by her side. Her features tightened severely as her anger grew.
“Let me relieve you, then,” K’tan said crisply.
Tullea glared at him through narrowed eyes, then spun on her heels and was out of the room before K’tan could react.
He couldn’t, for a moment, imagine that Tullea was watching Lorana out of any concern or compassion for the dragonless woman. He knelt beside Lorana, took her pulse, and checked her temperature and breathing, assuring himself that she hadn’t suffered from Tullea’s attentions.
K’tan searched the room for a chair, found it, dragged it up beside Lorana’s bed, and sat in it, leaning back and stretching out his legs in readiness for a long, patient wait. The room smelled of fresh high-bloom flowers. Had Tullea brought them? Probably Salina, K’tan decided.
As long as you have people to live for. Salina’s words echoed sourly in his memory. Who did Lorana have to live for? Her family was gone, she was new at the Weyr, and Tullea, the senior Weyrwoman, clearly had no love for her.
Kindan? The harper was certainly a possibility, K’tan decided, although his blunder in singing “Wind Blossom’s Song” may have soured Lorana on him.
The dragons? K’tan snorted his opinion of that prospect. While he got the impression that Lorana was more in tune with the dragons than anyone he’d heard of, even in the Ballads, he couldn’t see them, dying in such droves, providing her with a reason for living.
And what of me? K’tan asked himself.
You will stay, Drith told him groggily. Even in the distance, K’tan could pick out the Drith’s raspy cough from all the others. You will stay, she will stay. You must. Both of you.
K’tan was surprised at his dragon’s fierce tone.
The answer is here, Drith continued. You and Lorana must find it. K’tan wondered how much of Drith’s conviction was simply a reflection of K’tan’s own beliefs.
We will find it, he promised his dragon. Lorana will recover soon, and we’ll find it. Rest up, old friend.
In the distance, K’tan could hear Drith’s answering rumble turn into another long, raspy cough.
K’tan shot out of his chair and headed for the door. I’m coming, Drith!
No, Drith responded. I must do this now while I still can.
“No!” K’tan shouted both out loud and in his mind.
I will always love you, Drith told him fondly.
And then-he was gone.
“No!” K’tan shouted again, reaching with his mind to follow Drith. He jerked as he felt another presence join him, searching in the darkness of between for the brown dragon. Together they roamed, searching all that they could find-but there was no sign of Drith.
Gasping for breath, K’tan found himself once again feeling his body. “Drith, no!”
“Come back!” Lorana cried in unison with him.
Across the room, K’tan-Ketan-locked tear-soaked eyes with Lorana.
“I tried,” Lorana called to him, struggling to get out of her bed. “I tried, K’tan, but he fought me. He wouldn’t come back.”
Ketan stumbled back to Lorana’s bedside.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I tried.”
Ketan grabbed one of her hands and stroked it comfortingly, his need to reassure her overcoming his own grief.
“I know, lass, I know,” he told her. “I felt you there with me.” He closed his eyes and reached once more for his beloved Drith. Nothing. For a long moment, Ketan wished he could follow his dragon, realized he would have ridden Drith on that last journey between if he’d had the chance. With a chilling shock, Ketan realized that Drith had known that, too. “We must end this.”
Lorana’s hand tightened on his, and the ex-dragonrider opened his eyes again to see a look of fierce determination in her red-rimmed brown eyes.
“We will end this,” she promised.
NINETEEN
Symbiont: A life-form that lives in harmony with its host, often performing valuable functions for the host, e.g.: E. coli in the human gut.
Tieran spotted M’hall and Brianth circling through the clouds above and sent Grenn up to them.
“Tell them it’s safe, but to land at a distance,” Tieran told his fire-lizard. Grenn gave him a chirp to show that he understood and flew on up to the huge bronze dragon.
Moments later, Brianth landed, cautiously far from the still-smoldering remains of the young queen, and M’hall approached on foot. The Benden Weyrleader’s jaw was set, and his eyes bleak.
“Did Wind Blossom order this?” he asked Tieran as he neared.
“Yes,” Tieran said. “The queen fell from the sky and was dead either from the impact or before that.”
M’hall peered closely at the remains. “It seems small for a queen. Are you sure it wasn’t a green?”
“It was a queen,” Tieran replied firmly. “Not just from the color but there”-he pointed at the blackened skull-“you can see from the shape of the skull and the teeth that it’s a young dragon, months old, probably less than six-”
“Less than six?” M’hall was amazed. “And that big? A six-month-old queen shouldn’t be that big.”
“But it was,” Tieran replied. “That would be about the size expected at about the thirtieth generation, or so.”
“The thirtieth generation?” M’hall repeated, amazed. “How would you know?”
Tieran shrugged. “Wind Blossom explained it,” he said. “There were limits on the original work they had done and they knew that the first generations would be smaller than the final generations. That,” he added, pointing to the skeleton, “is close to as large as they get, though.”