” To fight Thread is in their blood! Despite their cruel losses, they rise, as always, to defend the continent …’”
Tirone was off in what Capiam had derisively termed his lyric trance. It was not the time to be composing sagas and ballads! Yet the ringing phrases plucked at a long forgotten memory.
“Do be quiet, Tirone. I must think! Or there won’t be any dragonriders left to fight Thread. Get out!”
Blood! That’s what Tirone had said. It’s in their blood! Blood! Capiam hit his temples with the heels of his hands as if he could jolt the vagrant memory into recall. He could almost hear the creaky old voice of old Master Gallardy. Yes, he’d been preparing for his journeyman’s examinations and old Gallardy had been droning on and on about unusual and obsolescent techniques. Something to do with blood. Gallardy had been talking about the curative properties of bloodblood what? Blood serum! That was it!
Blood serum as an extreme remedy for contagious or virulent disease.
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“Capiam?” It was Desdra, her voice hesitant. “Are you all right?
Tirone said”
“I’m fine! I’m fine! What was that you kept telling me? What can’t be cured must be endured. Well, there’s another way; Inuring to cure. Immunizing. And it’s in the blood! It’s not a bark, a powder, a leaf, it’s blood. And the deterrant is in my blood right now! Because
I’ve survived the plague.” “Master Capiam!” Desdra stepped forward, hesitant, mindful of
the precautions of the last five days.
“I do not think I am contagious any longer, my brave Desdra. I’m the cure! At least I believe I am.” In his excitement, Capiam had crawled out of bed, flinging sleeping rugs away from him in an effort to reach the case that held his apprentice and journeyman’s texts.
“Capiam! You’ll fall!”
Capiam was tottering and he grasped at the chair Tirone had vacated to prevent the collapse. He couldn’t summon the strength to
reach to the shelves.
“Get me my notes. The oldest ones, there on the left-hand side of the top shelf.” He sat down abruptly in the chair, shaking with weakness. “I must be right. I have to be right. ‘The blood of a recovered patient prevents others from contracting the disease.’”
“Your blood, my fine feeble friend,” Desdra said tartly, dusting off the records before she handed them to him, “is very thin and very weak, and you’re going back to your bed.”
“Yes, yes, in a minute,” Capiam was riming through the thin hide pages, trying in his haste not to crack the brittle fabric, forcing himself to recall exactly when Master Gallardy had delivered those lectures on “unusual techniques.” Spring. It was spring. He turned to the last third of his notes. Spring, because he had allowed his mind to dwell more on normal springtime urges than ancient procedures. He felt Desdra tugging at his shoulder.
“You have me spend two hours fixing glowbaskets just to illuminate you in bed and now you read in the darkest comer of your room. Get back into bed! I haven’t nursed you this far out of that plague to have you die on me from a chill caught prancing about in the dark like a broody dragon.”
“And hand me my kit … please.” He kept reading as he allowed himself to be escorted back to bed. Desdra tugged the furs so
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tightly in at the foot that he couldn’t bend his knees to prop up the notes. With a tug and a kick, he undid her handiwork.
“Capiam!” Returning with his kit, she was furious at his renewed disarray. She grabbed his shoulder and laid her hand across his forehead. He pushed it away, trying not to show the irritation he felt at her interruptions.
“I’m all right. I’m all right.”
“Tirone thought you’d had a relapse the way you’re acting. It’s not like you, you know, to cry ‘blood, blood, it’s in their blood.’ Or in yours, for that matter.”
He only half heard her for he had found the series of lectures that he had copied that spring, thirty Turns gone, when he was far more interested in urgent problems like Threadscore, infection, preventive doses, and nutrition.