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Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
Ruatha. You can be very proud of your Craftsmen and women,
Capiam. They did all that was humanly possible to succor the ill
“And they died, too?” Capiam asked when Tirone’s voice trailed
off.
“They brought honor to your hall.”
Capiam’s heart thumped slowly in his anguish. All dead? Mibbut, gentle Kylos, the earthy Loreana, earnest Rapal, the bone-setter Sneel, Galnish? All of them? Could it really be only seven days ago that he had first had word of the dreadful sickness? And those he had attended at Keroon and Igen already sick to their deaths with it? Though he was now positive that the plague itself didn’t kill, the living had to face another sort of death, the death of hopes and friendships and what might have been in the futures of those whose lives were abruptly ended. And so near to the promise and freedom of an Interval! Capiam felt tears sliding down his cheeks but they eased the tight constriction in his chest. He let them flow, breathing slowly in and out until his emotions were in hand again. He couldn’t think emotionally; he must think professionally. “Igen Sea Hold held nearly a thousand people; only fifty were ill when I attended them at Burdion’s summons.” “Burdion is one of the survivors.” “I trust he kept notes for you.” Capiam could not prevent his tone from being savage.
“I believe he did,” Tirone went on, impervious to the invalid’s bad temper. “The log of the Windtoss is also available.” “The captain was dead when I reached the Sea Hold.” “Did you see the animal?” Tirone leaned forward slightly, his eyes glinting with the avid curiosity he did not voice.
“Yes, I saw it!” That image was now seared in Capiam’s memory. The feline had paced restlessly and vividly through his fever dreams and his restless nightmares. Capiam would never forget its snarling face, the white and black whiskers that sprang from its thick muzzle, the brown stains on its tusks, the nicks in its laid-back tufted ears, the dark-brown medallions of its markings that were so fancifully ringed with black and set off in the tawny, shining coat. He could remember its fierce defiance and had even then, when he’d first seen it, conceived the notion that the creature knew perfectly well that it would take revenge on the beings who had restricted it to a cage,
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who had stared at it in every hold and hall. “Yes, Tirone, I actually saw it. Like hundreds of other people attending Ista Gather. Only I’ve lived to tell the tale. Talpan and I spent twenty minutes observing it while he told me why he thought it had to die. In twenty minutes it probably infected many people even though Talpan was making the gawkers stand well back from the cage. In fact, I probably contracted my dose of the plague there. From the source. Instead of secondhand.” That conclusion afforded Capiam some relief. Made more vulnerable by fatigue, he’d come down with the plague a bare twenty-four hours later. That was better than believing that he had been negligent of hygiene at Igen and Keroon. “Talpan deduced that the animal had to be the cause of the disease already affecting runners from Igen to Keroon. I’d been called to Keroon, too, you see, because so many of their folk were falling ill. I was tracing human contagion, Talpan was tracing runner. We both reached the same conclusion at Ista Gather. The creature was terrified of dragons, you know.” “Really?”
“So I was informed. But K’dall is among the dead at Telgar Weyr and so is his blue dragon.”
Tirone murmured, all the while writing furiously. “How, then, did the disease get to Southern Boll if the creature was killed at Ista Gather?”
“You’ve forgotten the weather.”
“Weather?”
“Yes, the weather was so mild Keroon Runnerhold started shipping early this winter, the tides and winds being favorable. So Lord Ratoshigan got his breeding stock early and an unexpected bounty. As did several other notable breeders, some of whom attended Ruatha Gather.”
“Well, that is interesting. Such a devastating concatenation of so many small events.”