Recovery can be such a fragile thing - I have had a touch of winter vomiting bug, and very unpleasant it was as well - I can't image what it must be like in a culture where you have no modern medicines to fight disease.

1.3 - 1.4.199

Over the next few days H'ric rallied his physical strength. The rash and the sensitivity to light receded, and he was able to eat, but he did not seem able to shake off the mental lethargy into which he had fallen. He responded to Galanath, and the people caring for him, and rejoiced with them when he was moved out of the darkened rooms and onto the veranda with the other recouperating patients. There were two fishermen from Nerat out there, and they told him more about the debris that had been washed in on a storm tide, and which had spread the disease.

"Never thought such a thing could happen, like, but now the Masterhealer's warned us, we'll send word up and down the coast, not to touch such a thing. Let the sea take it again."

"Would it have taken that lot?"

"No," the fisherman admitted. "It were washed too high up, see, it would've taken another storm to take it off, but we could've dug a pit and buried it, rather than picking it over. Sorry, all of us, to have spread it, even up into the Weyr."

"Disease doesn't care where it strikes," H'ric said ruefully.

"No, but when there might be a Pass, we need the Weyr healthy."

"Might be a Pass? Why d'you put it like that?"

"There's an old fisherman saying, Weyrleader, don't know if it's accurate, don't even know if it works, Red Star in the offing, bright flash shining, Red Star in the offing, long break coming. Now, my grandfather always said he saw that flash. I don't know if he's right, any more than I know anything else, but I tell you, there ain't been the storms and upheavals they talk about in other Passes. Why, entire islands were swallowed up in fire, so it's said! I've not seen that, nor heard of it, and if anything disturbed the fishing, it'd soon be passed along."

"That's true," H'ric said thoughtfully. "This business of Pern being disrupted by the Red Star is written about in the Weyr, with warnings about contrary updrafts and so on that might catch a dragon unprepared."

"Huh! You'd just drop in and out of between, wouldn't you?"

"I'd hope to be able to do so, but sometimes even a dragon could be caught out, and if their wings are damaged, when you come out, there'd be a danger of falling from the sky."

"Oh my. I never thought of that. Yes, like a bird with a damaged wing. That'd be bad. We needs the dragons to protect us. Hear you lost a few?"

"Yes, I'm told we did. I don't know who, yet, they won't tell me."

"They should do," the other, older fisherman said at once. "No good leaving you to brood over it, Weyrleader, you get them to speak them names out to you, and all the others that died as well. We two lost a couple of dozen in our village before they found us, and brought us two here - not saying we ain't grateful for the care, but when we get back - there'll be grieving families and fishing craft without a crew, no doubt about it."

H'ric thought about that as he watched people swimming off the beach of this small island. It had a wide beach backed by the area where the huts had been built, and green forest beyond that, and he could hear birds calling from the centre. He could discern the hump of Galanath sunning himself in the weyr he had made.

- the little brothers used sand before caves

- who are the little brothers?

- those that came before dragons

- that's too far back to remember

- the little brothers don't come any more, since men frightened them away

H'ric sighed and shook his head; it all seemed to no purpose, the way firelizards had disappeared, the way the Lord Holders had greedily taken all the land to themselves. There must be more to life, but at present he could see nothing but a bleak future of fighting and death.

"Hola, Weyrleader."

H'ric looked up from his meal and saw Grance stepping up onto the veranda.

"Grance! Were you taken with this sickness as well?"

"Not so badly as some, but the Masterhealer asked me to come and rest myself. I've been helping Sharama and the others, you see, and he said it wasn't good to spend all that time in the Lower Caverns, out of the sunlight."

H'ric surveyed him.

"You do look pale," he admitted. "How is it at the Weyr? We lost riders and their dragons, and others?"

"Yes, but it was not so bad as some places, I'm told, because of course the Weyr is isolated and once the main fury was spent, people recovered."

"But not the dragons or their riders. They won't tell me who we lost - I suppose they think I'm not strong enough to bear the truth."

Grance sat down on the veranda and brought his gitar around in front of him, and strummed a little dance tune.

"Is that right? People are strong, y'know, Weyrleader. Strong enough to rise above a fear, mostly."

"You weren't," H'ric said cruelly. "Those bullies at Harperhall - "

Grance shook his head and played a dissonance.

"That was my fault, and I thought I had no supporters, see? But I learned in the Weyr that everyone helps out. You know L'rens helped me get over my fear of dragons, by taking me up with him."

"Yes. He always said you'd the makings of a dragon rider. Maybe I'll present you at Impression and see if he's right, eh? Won't he laugh!"

"No, he won't," Grance said gently. "Because L'rens is gone, Weyrleader."

"L'rens? L'rens is dead?"

- Sicceth is no more, I felt him go when his rider died and we mourned them both

"L'rens - I can't believe it - who were the others?"

Grance looked up at him.

"They haven't told you? But you're the Weyrleader, you need to know, more than anyone else."

"Who else?"

"J'mal and M'dic, of M'dor's wing. They took it to Telgar, but no one else died there, although it was a bad outbreak."

"They would have been lonely without each other," H'ric whispered, because the green and blue riders had been inseparable since their first dragon-induced mating.

"Yes. And who else?" H'ric demanded

"N'rin, the Weyrlingmaster, and two of the weyrlings, H'vel and N'tel."

"And L'rens."

"And L'rens. He'd had a touch of fever, said it was nothing much, and insisted on flying to his valleys to fetch snow to cool everyone, and also to keep the medicines cold. Then one day - the dragons started keening - and he never came back."

H'ric stared over Grance's shoulder at the bright sea and the sky, aware they were blurring in his sight. Grance struck a chord and began to sing in a minor key.

"They are gone now,

Passed between now,

They have gone, and left us here to mourn.

They are gone now,

Passed between now,

But we hold them always in our hearts."

H'ric became aware the Jiverny was holding him, rocking him, as the paroxysm of grief shook him. Someone was speaking angrily, and Grance was answering, but H'ric could hear the dragons singing the lament Grance had composed, and somehow that helped them as well as him, he realised, as he wiped his face and took a sip of water.

"No, don't berate him, lady mine," he said to Jiverny. "I had to know and that song - is a comfort."

Jiverny nodded slowly.

"Yes, you're right. I'm sorry, Grance, when I know you overstrained yourself in the Weyr."

"I had to help out where I could," he said on a sigh and a shake of the head. "These fevers - surely in the past, when men first came, there were medicines that would stop them in their tracks? You could use something to make sure it didn't spread?"

"Yes, there are references to that in old records," H'ric admitted.

Jiverny jumped to her feet and paced angrily.

"I don't blame the Masterhealers!" she burst out. "But all that knowledge - what happened to it, after we came north to build the Weyrs and the Holds, after the First Pass? What happened that made it so difficult to go forward rather than backward?"

"I wish I could answer you, my lady," Perera said as he came along the veranda. "I know there are diktats in the Hall, to stop anyone trying - certain things - that I think could have helped. Now we will never know, until the next outbreak, wherever that is."

"And the miners dying of dust-lung," H'ric said. "Old before their time, Masterhealer, their breathing short and difficult, and then dying."

He nodded. "I've documents about that, but apart from actually sealing a man in a protective suit in the mines, or having him wear breathing apparatus we can no longer make, I don't know the answer."

Jiverny drew a breath and unclenched her hands, seemingly surprised she had drawn blood.

"It's no good trying to apportion blame," she said at last. "What has happened is how it is, and we have to make the best of it, and copy all the old records as they decay."

"I think I'll go and see Galanath," H'ric said suddenly, and Master Perera studied him.

"You feel strong enough? Off you go, then, but try and sit in the shade he makes, rather than out in the sun. No, don't stop him, my lady, he must get some muscle strength back."

H'ric was nonetheless dismayed at how weak he felt as he stepped down off the veranda, and began walking on the loose sand. Galanath had raised his great head and was watching, and as H'ric approached him, he reared up on his hind legs, flapped his great wings, arched his head to the sky and screamed his defiance of illness and death, Thread, the Red Star, everything, in one huge bugle of sound.