Capiam waited for an outcry, for surely the other guards had noticed her. Nerilka was already trudging down the slope toward the tents of the internment camp when Theng took him by the arm to
escort him back. “Nah, then, Master Capiam, you know I can’t allow you close
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern 211
contact with any of your craftsmen,” Theng said as Capiam cast one more glance after Nerilka’s retreating figure.
“I know, Leader Theng. The medicine was my concern. So little of its ingredients remain.”
Theng made a conciliatory noise between his teeth and then his attention was taken by the spacing of his guards. Slowly Capiam turned in the direction of the halls.
As he walked, he realized that he could not walk out of his Hall as Nerilka could leave her Hold. Withdrawing his healers from the Hold was quite within his right as Masterhealer, but he must remain in his Hall, available to those who need him throughout Pem. However, he felt the better for his brief flirtation with the idea. And the camp had gained not only supplies but a valuable assistant. He must ask for volunteers to take the remainder of Nerilka’s purloined supplies to Ruatha with all possible haste.
“The ichor can be extracted from one queen and applied to the joints of another,” Moreta told Leri. “And you shouldn’t be coming all this way for a message someone else could have brought.”
They were standing at the entrance to the Hatching Ground and talking in quiet tones, although it was doubtful that the sleeping Orlith would have paid them any attention had they bellowed. She was still exhausted from the laying of twenty-five eggs. Orlith had curled herself about the leathery eggs, the queen egg within the circle of her forearms, her head laid at an awkward angle. Her belly skin was beginning to shrink and her color was good, so Moreta had no more anxieties about her queen and time to worry about Falga’s Tamianth.
“No one there is capable of doing that,” Leri said with a fine scom, “or so Holth was informed by Kilanath. Holth says she sounds very worried.”
“She has reason to be if Tamianth is not producing any ichor on that damaged wing.” Moreta paced up and down. “Is Falga conscious?”
“Delirious.”
“Not the plague?”
“No, wound fever. Under control.”
“Shards! Falga knows how to draw ichor. It would have to be
212
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
Kilanath and Diona …” Moreta looked back at the slumbering
Orlith.
“She’ll be out a long while,” Leri murmured, stepping inside the Hatching Ground and gripping Moreta’s hands tightly in hers. “It doesn’t take long to draw ichor and spread it”
“That’s abusing Oriith’s trust in me!”
“She trusts me as well. Every moment you delay …”
“I know! I know!” Moreta thought wretchedly ofFalga and Tamianth, of all that Weyr had done the last few days.
“If Orlith should rouse, Holth will know and, considering the emergency, Orlith will understand. The clutching’s over!” Leri pressed urgently on Moreta’s hands.
Unusual circumstances, of which there were far too many recently in Moreta’s opinion, warranted unusual actions.
“Holth’s willing. I asked her first, as soon as she told me about
Tamianth.”
Obviously Leri felt that no one at Fort realized that Moreta had been absent two days before to treat the injured High Reaches’ queen. Moreta cast a distraught look toward her sleeping queen, returned Leri’s clasp with an answering pressure, and walked hurriedly from the sheltering arch of the Hatching Ground, quickly leaving Leri behind.
“Don’t stride so! I can’t,” Leri whispered after her. Moreta adjusted her pace. Anyone really observant would have noticed the difference in height between the woman who had entered the Ground and the one who left, but it was the gray hour before dawn and no one was about. Thread would Fall later that day at Nerat and the dragonriders rested whenever possible with so difficult
a schedule.
Moreta delayed long enough on her way to Holth to change into her own riding gear. Leri’s had left a broad exposed band across her back and she couldn’t risk kidney chill. Holth greeted her at the entrance to her weyr and Moreta stepped aside for the queen to reach the edge. Then she mounted, conscious once again of the difference between dragons. She wished fervently that she did not feel that she was somehow betraying Orlith.