Dragon’s Time: Dragonriders of Pern Read online

  “Yes,” Fiona said. “I sat on my bed while she drew.”

  “Can I see the picture?” Kindan asked.

  “She took it with her,” Fiona said. She frowned. “She seemed sad, now that I think about it.”

  “How did she look?”

  “I didn’t see her too much, she was in shadow,” Fiona said. “She wanted the light on me, so it was coming over her back.”

  “Did she say where she had been?” T’mar asked.

  “Did she say when she’d be back?” Kindan added.

  Fiona frowned and shook her head. “She just woke me, said she had to draw me, made her drawing, and left.”

  Kindan exchanged glances with T’mar, then Birentir. The older healer sighed.

  Bekka spoke up, her tone gentle. “Sometimes when people are pregnant they have strange dreams,” she suggested.

  “It wasn’t a dream!” Fiona declared. “I was awake!”

  “You said that Lorana woke you,” Bekka said. “I’ve heard of people who think they’re awake and having conversations and they’re only dreaming.”

  “It was real!” Fiona cried, her voice rising as she glanced around at the disbelieving faces gathered around her.

  “I dream of my daughter sometimes,” Birentir said to her gently. “I dream of her being almost as old as you are now, Weyrwoman.”

  “It wasn’t a dream!”

  “Could it have been?” Kindan asked her gently. “Could it not just have been a pleasant dream?” He paused, glancing into her eyes as he added in a wistful tone, “Sometimes I dream of your sister and she’s smiling at me.”

  “It wasn’t a dream!” Fiona roared, flying to her feet and glaring angrily at everyone. “I know when I’m dreaming. It was real!”

  She glanced around, saw no acceptance in the eyes of the others, and, with a sob, raced out of the Cavern.

  “Could it have been real?” T’mar asked Kindan as the others recovered from her abrupt departure.

  “If so, then why didn’t she stay?” Kindan asked. “Where is she now? Can Zirenth hear her?”

  T’mar relayed the question to his bronze dragon, received his reply, and shook his head. “No.”

  “She’s been under a lot of stress,” Birentir said into the silence that followed.

  The others nodded, but Kindan caught T’mar’s eyes and they exchanged a worried look.

  “I’ll have Shaneese bring her breakfast,” Bekka suggested. “She’ll feel better with something in her stomach.” She paused thoughtfully before glancing up at Birentir. “I think this backs my guess.”

  “Twins?”

  Bekka nodded. Kindan and T’mar glanced at her with wide eyes, so she added, “It’s too early to be certain. Shards, it’s even too early to be sure of the pregnancy, but the way she’s been eating and … well, the way she’s been eating makes me think she’s eating for three.”

  Fiona found herself in the Records Room, searching through Records. She’d show them!

  Where to begin? The Records at Telgar weren’t the dry, warm parchment of Igen, some of them were the thin, fragile slivers of hardstone with the words deeply chiseled into them.

  The mustiness of the Records and the room made her stomach roil and turn. Fiona toyed with the idea of leaving for better air, but decided stubbornly to continue with her work.

  She moved the Records more slowly, took smaller stacks, and read them more carefully than usual.

  How it happened, she could never recall, but Fiona woke up hours later with the imprint firmly in her cheek of the Record she’d laid her head on while she’d nodded off. With a quiet snarl of anger, she pushed herself up, left the Records where they were, walked back to her quarters proper, and took a long, soothing bath, hoping that the water would ease the imprint out before anyone noticed.

  Footsteps coming toward the entrance alerted her and she called out, “Don’t come in!”

  “Fiona?” T’mar’s voice echoed into the room. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course,” Fiona said quickly. “I just felt like a bath.”

  T’mar made a noncommittal noise. Fiona glowered unseen in response.

  “Bekka and Birentir wanted me to tell you that they’ll manage just fine on their rounds,” T’mar said.

  Fiona murmured in reply. “That’s good, because I think I’ll look in the Records.”

  “The Records?” T’mar repeated. “I went there first, did you know that someone had left piles on the table?”

  “Mmm,” Fiona returned noncommittally.

  “And one of them was wet,” T’mar added, his tone full of humor. “It seemed like someone had fallen asleep on it and drooled.”

  “Drooled,” Fiona muttered to herself, chagrined.

  “Pardon,” T’mar called, “I didn’t catch that.”

  “That’s interesting,” Fiona called back loudly. “I suppose I’ll have to clean that up.” Fiona’s brows creased as a thought came to her. “Aren’t you supposed to be training?”

  “We’re just back for lunch,” T’mar replied easily, in a teasing tone. His tone changed as he added, “Has Terin spoken to you about F’jian?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was everything he could do to stay on his dragon at drill,” T’mar said. He added in a thoughtful tone, “I know that all of us are still muzzy-headed, but he seemed worse than most.”

  “Kindan thinks we’re timing it,” Fiona reminded him. “Maybe F’jian feels it worse just now.”

  “Or maybe he’s timing it more,” T’mar murmured thoughtfully. “We know that the effects of going between times are cumulative—if he were timing it more than once a day, then he’d feel it worse than others.”

  “There could be another perfectly reasonable answer,” Fiona answered after a moment. She flushed as she explained, “I mean there are other ways to get tired than simply going between times.”

  “One for which congratulations would be in order?” T’mar asked with a grin.

  “I suppose that depends upon who you’re asking and how they feel about it,” Fiona said.

  She could almost feel T’mar thinking furiously as he stood outside her bath, deciding upon a course of action.

  “Would you like me to talk with Terin?” Fiona offered.

  “When you’re done with the Records,” T’mar replied with a renewed spark of humor in his tone. Fiona growled at him and the Weyrleader laughed easily in reply. “I’d best get back to lunch, we’ll be practicing this afternoon, too.”

  “Keep an eye on F’jian!” Fiona called to the sound of his departing steps.

  “Indeed,” T’mar’s distance-muffled voice replied. A moment later his steps faded from her hearing. Fiona lay back in her bath, thinking.

  The next Fall was over lower Crom in four days’ time. It was an evening Fall, starting just about the seventh hour after noon. She frowned, realizing that, stretching for six hours, the Fall would go into the early hours of the next morning.

  Talenth, Fiona reached out to her queen who responded drowsily, has T’mar asked Nuella about training with the watch-whers?

  In another two days, Talenth replied after a short pause to relay the question to her mate, Zirenth, and receive his rider’s response.

  Having the watch-whers flying with them would certainly help and a night Fall had less live Thread than a daytime Fall. Idly, Fiona wondered how the watch-whers were faring and whether their numbers were as precipitously low as the dragons’.

  Kindan had told her that what had killed Lorana’s queen Arith had been the contents of the fourth vial found in the Ancient Rooms at Benden—the one meant to change a watch-wher into a dragon. In her ignorance, Lorana had mixed all four vials together in her desperate attempt to save her queen’s life. It had been Arith’s death—and Lorana’s frantic grab for her across nearly five hundred Turns of time—that had warned the Ancient Timers of the peril of the sickness in the present time. Lorana had only used a little of each vial, thankfully, so there w
as enough left to save the dragons of Pern—and provide, in that fourth vial, a chance to turn watch-whers into dragons. Did Lorana tell Nuella when to use that scary vial that would make watch-whers into dragons? Had she somehow known that it would be needed?

  Fiona let out a sad sigh as she asked herself honestly, Could Lorana have gone between forever? Fiona shook her head, reminding herself: I saw her, she came here, drew a picture of me.

  Lorana could have come back from the past, she thought in response. In irritation with her own thoughts, Fiona stirred and pulled herself from the bath into the cold air of her bathroom. She stood there for a moment, her face set in a frown, her skin freezing, as if in punishment, before reaching determinedly for a towel. I saw her!

  In darkest night I find you,

  The sisters of tomorrow:

  Heralding the dawn.

  “There’s no chance you could be wrong?” Lorana asked the young man hopefully.

  “There’s every chance I could be wrong,” Tenniz agreed. “And imagine how embarrassed I’d be to find myself not dead.”

  “Have you ever been wrong before?”

  Tenniz shook his head slowly. “No.” He added, “I’ve wished it several times but—no, I’ve never been wrong.”

  “But you said that you see only glimpses,” Lorana reminded him.

  “Some glimpses are more definite than others,” Tenniz said. “As I said, I saw you crying and piling rocks on the cairn.” He turned back toward their camp and gestured graciously for her to accompany him.

  “But you could die another day,” Lorana protested as they walked back slowly. “It doesn’t have to be today.”

  “Tomorrow, in the morning, I’ll be dead,” Tenniz assured her. A cough wracked him and he gestured at himself with a hand as if in proof. “All that really matters is now and what we’ll do with our time together.” He smiled at her. “I, for one, am hoping to spend it in pleasant conversation.”

  “I’m not prepared to die.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m not prepared to die,” Lorana repeated. “I’d much rather talk about how to save Pern.”

  Tenniz nodded in understanding. “I would like to know that my son and daughter will grow up in a world free of Thread.”

  “You’ve a son and a daughter?”

  “I’ve nearly twenty Turns,” Tenniz said.

  “But you knew you were going to die,” Lorana said.

  “I did and I do,” he said. He gave her a wry look. “As are we all in our own time.”

  Lorana accepted that with a nod. “It must be hard on you,” she said.

  “No harder than it was for you,” the young man replied. Lorana’s eyes misted as she caught his meaning. “We faced hard choices.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Safe, with their mother,” Tenniz replied, a wistful look livening his face. “My son’s the elder, my daughter’s not yet born.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Jeriz’s just turned a very difficult two,” Tenniz said with a rueful look. “I’m sorry to be leaving him for Javissa to deal with, but”—he dipped his head—“we traders look after our families and no one was ignorant of my fate.”

  “They’re trying to keep this Sight of yours alive, aren’t they?”

  “Among the traders it has saved countless lives,” Tenniz told her. “Even for myself, I would say it was more blessing than curse.”

  Lorana cast a quick sad glance at her flat belly and gave Tenniz a fierce look as she asked, “And your daughter, how do you know she’ll be born?”

  Tenniz gave her a sympathetic look before telling her, “I’ve seen it.”

  “And what else, to save the traders, have you seen of the future?”

  “All that I could say to you, I have,” Tenniz told her in a pained voice. “You know that we can’t break time.”

  “J’trel tried,” Lorana said, more to herself than the trader. With a sad smile, she recalled the old blue rider who had brought her out of her misery, succored her after the death of her father, and set her on the path that led to Benden Weyr and her beautiful gold Arith. She recalled him telling her how he’d tried to go back in time to show his dragon to his mother and how he’d found that he couldn’t.

  “Many more will try,” Tenniz said, “none will succeed.”

  Lorana gave him a sharp look. “You say that for me, particularly.”

  Tenniz regarded her silently. Finally, he said, “I think you must have some trader blood, some of the Sight.”

  Lorana shook her head in irritation.

  “Who else hears the dragons the way you do?” Tenniz prodded gently. “I think that you are a distant relative.”

  “My father was a beastman near Benden.”

  “A traveling man,” Tenniz said. “Your family moved a lot, with the herds, as he bred for the best.” Lorana was surprised. “You’ve been seen by others,” Tenniz said. “Your father?” Lorana guessed.

  Tenniz shook his head. “My mother,” he told her. “The Sight can go to either man or woman.”

  “But only one,” Lorana guessed. “The Sight only comes to one in each generation.”

  Tenniz gave her a wry look. “See? You prove my point,” he told her triumphantly.

  “It was a guess,” Lorana said acerbically. The wind, which had been light and steady, gusted suddenly, catching Lorana off guard.

  Tenniz nodded toward the bedrolls. “It can get very cold up here,” he said. “You might want to wrap in a blanket.” He moved over to the fire, stirred the embers with a nearby stick and threw some more light kindling on to keep it going. “If you’re hungry, we can heat up lunch.”

  “How did you get all your supplies up here?” Lorana wondered, glancing around at the gear of the camp and appraising the effort it must have taken to transport to the top of the Butte.

  “I have my ways,” Tenniz told her drolly, reaching back for his pack and quickly pulling some strips of dried meat from a bag. “We’ve water enough, if we can wait, that this will cook into a nice stew with a good broth.” A cough distracted him and he frowned in mild annoyance until it passed. He rummaged in the pack some more and, with an amused glance at Lorana, pulled forth a bottle. “And some wine for later, if we feel like it.”

  “You plan on drinking at your own wake?”

  Tenniz shrugged. “I merely hope to spend time with a friend.”

  The wind died down and Lorana shrugged out of the blanket, rose quickly, and came over to Tenniz, reaching for the pack. “Let’s see what you have in here,” she said.

  There were several large flasks of water laid near the pack and Lorana once again felt surprise at the provisioning of this temporary camp.

  “Put some more wood on the fire,” Lorana told him. “We’re going to need a lot of heat to stew that dried beef.” She took the pack from his hands as he rose to comply and peered into it. While Tenniz built up the fire, Lorana rummaged in the pack and found several savory dried herbs. Her eyebrows lifted in wonder; someone had good taste. Perhaps Nuella had packed for him? Someone had to have brought him up here and with Nuella nearby and the relations the traders had established with the wherhold, she was the likely choice.

  The gold watch-wher was large enough to have managed carrying the two of them and the supplies, but probably not all in one trip. Back in this time she had yet to meet the Wherwoman, but she could easily imagine the delight Nuella would have had in arranging the journey and completing the trip, probably all in alarming darkness. If that was what happened, Lorana was amazed that Tenniz wasn’t still in shock.

  “There’s another pot in that large bag,” Tenniz said as he caught Lorana eyeing their breakfast pot warily. He added, in an oddly amused tone, “We don’t have enough water to wash them out, afterward.”

  “Hmm,” Lorana agreed, not entirely surprised. “I suppose if we left them up here long enough, the grit in the wind would be enough to clean them.”

  “We traders have done that i
n the desert sometimes,” Tenniz agreed.

  Lorana fetched a flask of water, unstoppered it, and poured a generous amount into the new pot, throwing in the herbs she’d gathered in her other hand before setting it atop the stones centered in the fire.

  “There’s another lid over there,” Tenniz said, pointing with the stick he’d used to prod the fire to greater life. As Lorana turned to spy yet another sack, Tenniz added from behind her, “Three of them, in fact.”

  “So we’re set for three meals?”

  “We prepared for four,” Tenniz said. “Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and”—his eyes cut away from hers—“well, food for the morning.”

  The sun rose, reached its noon height, and presently began to sink again. She and Tenniz had fallen into a companionable, thoughtful silence as they’d watched the dim flickers of flame in the bright sun, had felt the winds gentle with the nooning, had watched Minith dozing comfortably.

  Presently Tenniz rose and busied himself with some long poles. Lorana watched him curiously for a moment, then rose and helped him assemble a crude awning.

  “Too long in the sun up here and we’d both be burnt crisp,” Tenniz explained as he finished tying the last of the stay ropes to a large rock. He gestured for Lorana to join him and together they put themselves in the shade, out of the worst of the sun’s rays, pulling in the bedrolls and spreading them out to ease the bite of the hard ground beneath.

  “So, what is your daughter going to be named, or do you know?” Lorana asked conversationally.

  Tenniz shot her a startled look. “We agreed—” he stopped and took a quick breath, looking away from her as if to re-collect his control. “That is, we were hoping, with your blessing, to call her Jirana,” Tenniz said after a moment, speaking as though choosing his words carefully.

  “My permission?”

  Tenniz’s eyes darted away from hers with the same look Lorana had come to associate with Fiona when she was caught scheming. “I told Javissa what I saw of you,” Tenniz responded shortly, “and we agreed that if you wouldn’t mind, we would include part of your name in our daughter’s.”

  “I’d be honored,” Lorana told him. She cocked her head at him, giving him a thoughtful look. He raised an eyebrow questioningly. “I was trying to imagine your features on a girl.”