So the first Turn ends, and there is no solution as yet to any of the problems in hand!
30.12.195 - 1.1.196
"Come and dance, H'ric!"
H'ric put down his goblet, came to his feet and took the Weyrwoman's hand. Turnover Feast was upon them, and the entire Weyr was celebrating with extravagant food and drink, new clothes, or at least those put by for a festival occasion, and song and dance.
Yorus swept a chord on his lap harp, M'nas tapped out the beat, and the two leaders danced in the great dining hall.
Someone started to sing the words to the catchy tune Yorus was playing, and the dancers joined in.
"Dance with me my darling, my darling, my darling,
Dance with me my darling, my brave rider fair.
All on a sunny morning,
So early in the Turn
The rider came to our hold
His actions brave and bold
Dance with me my darling, my darling, my darling,
Dance with me my darling, my brave rider fair.
As he was coming in to land,
Our hold for to search,
Oh there he spied a bonnie girl
As pretty as a pearl
Dance with me my darling, my darling, my darling,
Dance with me my darling, my brave rider fair.
Come to the Weyr with me, my lass,
Come stand upon the sands
Oh you will make a rider fine
A gold will be your sign
Dance with me my darling, my darling, my darling,
Dance with me my darling, my brave rider fair.
And up upon his dragon's back
He set our lassie there
And if he stole a kiss or two
Well, who'd not a girlie woo
Dance with me my darling, my darling, my darling,
Dance with me my darling, my brave rider fair."
H'ric stood and applauded at the end of the song, as many other riders did.
"I don't know why the Masterharper said he couldn't compose," H'ric said as they waited for the next dance.
"But that's not a song a holder would enjoy," Jiverny said with a laugh. "Can you imagine a harper singing that in a Hold? The Masterharper wants his harpers to compose songs for everyone."
"But that's not right," H'ric said, aware he had probably had a little too much to drink. "We should all share the songs, whether we approve of them or not."
"And this is just a lovely tune he's composed for a dance," Jiverny responded, and swept him into the steps of the next dance. H'ric reflected that he had always watched her dancing at Turnover and appreciated her nimbleness, and it was another key to this highly complex woman. Weyrwoman and leader, and he knew she had been destined to be a Holder's wife before she had been Searched. The ease of command had always been hers.
"You think too much," Jiverny said, poking him in the ribs as the dance ended. "Haveneth says it, and so do I. Come and have some seafood. I haven't cooked and eaten these dishes since I left Ista!"
H'ric eventually made his way to his weyr near dawn. He glanced up into the sky, and the Red Star was pulsing in menace to the north east, enough to sober any dragon rider.
- it comes no closer
"I know. I don't understand it.
- go to sleep and it will become tomorrow's problem
H'ric obeyed his dragon and crawled into bed, aware he would have a headache for days to come from the festivities, but it had been a release for all of them.
Jiverny's remedy and Mina's soothing midday meal meant H'ric was at least able to function the next day. He had declared the two Turnover days as festival, and the dragon riders had devised their own pleasures. He could see the weyrlings and weyrbrats in some sort of sporting competition on the feeding grounds, dragons watching from their ledges. Not enough dragons to fill all the weyrs, he thought, as he made his way to the dining hall to meet with Sharama and his two assistants from Healer Hall.
"Is that klah? I could drain the cauldron!"
Sharama laughed and filled a mug.
"Here you are. I expect the cobblers will be busy with new shoe leather for a week after all that dancing."
"It's good for a change. Like a gather."
"And bubbly pies," Nethmi said with a smile. He had not smiled at first, coming from Healer Hall where he had been a rebellious journeyman, but one Perera the Masterhealer valued highly, from the letter he had sent H'ric.
"Bubbly pies - no - I don't think I could stomach one of those at the moment."
"Heresy," Kalana murmured, the second journeyman Perera had sent to the Weyr.
"True. You wanted a word, Sharama?"
"We've been working on those fluxes the youngsters experienced," Sharama said. "I think it might be to do with the water, I think they've been swallowing the water when they cleaned their dragons."
H'ric frowned at him.
"All weyrlings do that, it's unavoidable."
"Not if you do it as a dare," Sharama replied briskly. "We've done some questioning, and we think that's what's happening."
"You've my permission to approach the Weyrling Master, then, and get him to issue a reprimand."
"Thanks. Once the water settles in the lake there's nothing wrong with it, so far as we can understand, but it's when it's roiled up and full of dragons, it goes bad."
"We don't understand enough," Kalana said bitterly. "I'm sure there's more in the Healer records that we don't access. It's as if we have to start again, in every generation, relearning."
"I can understand that with Pass and Interval," H'ric replied. "It's a thought I've always had, even at Crom, in the mines, that everything stops and stagnates for the Turns of a Pass. Yet why should it?"
"Because of hiding from Thread?"
"But that's why dragons were bred, to sear it from the skies before it reaches Pern. And the agenothree sprayers as well."
"It's not something easily put aside, the fear of Thread," Nethmi pointed out.
"And I wouldn't want it put aside! It was fear of Thread that drove the first development of dragons, and the system of Holds to keep people safe under rock and stone."
"The Red Star wasn't bracketed this time, though, when you sent out the watchers?" Sharama asked.
H'ric shook his head.
"I had watchers at all the Weyrs, and I intend to chart the Red Star's progress, marking each Turn on a sheet of parchment for each Weyr. It was off by several degrees, although everyone can see it's brighter, so it must be approaching closer to us."
"Even if it was bracketed, surely it's too small?" Nethmi asked. "I thought the song went - the finger points, at an eye blood red - the Red Star as it is at the moment wouldn't fill the Eye Rock."
"I know. Five Turns or so in the future it might fill it."
Nethmi shook his head in frustration. "So much we have lost, just in two hundred Turns, merely because the other Weyrs took their records with them. Oh well. I've been working with the women here, they know a lot of different things about wounds and such like. The skin heals itself, so the less interference the better!"
H'ric nodded. "That's excellent. Make sure the women know all you can teach them, but take heed of their own knowledge and recipes."
"I will do. I've been writing some of it down - when I can get parchment."
He looked hopefully at the Weyrleader, and H'ric made a note for himself.
"A visit to the Tannercraft Hall, then. I might go myself, I've not been there, and I could combine it with another visit to Igen Weyr. I do wish we had something else to write on - even those bits of bark the children use for scribbling, if they could be preserved?"
Sharama shook his head.
"I've tried it, but the only way to preserve it is to bury it in mud, and then of course you have to get it out and wash it to read it!"
H'ric laughed as they finished the klah and prepared to go their separate ways.
"Transparent mud, and surely we could make that? We seem to be making everything else new!"
H'ric stood at the Star Stones and watched the sun going down in the west. It was cold up here, and the constant wind blew his hair about, but he turned and stood watching the Red Star brighten in the darkening sky. The sun was bannered in purple and gold, a beautiful sight in the winter sky, but he was looking up at the Red Star.
"Why don't we know more about you?" he muttered. "Why don't we know where you come from, where you pick up your deadly cargo, and how to stop you?"
- we cannot go there
H'ric turned to look at Galanath
"Why would we want to go?"
- to burn the Thread there on the Red Star, to stop it coming down
H'ric rubbed his chin as he considered that suggestion.
"There's no landmarks."
- and without them we cannot go there
"I wonder if anyone ever tried?"
- there were always enough dragons to fight Thread
"And there is the nub of it, my fighting friend. Even if you and the other bronzes mated all the golds from here to the end of the Interval, we won't have enough dragons."
- the golds did not rise as often as they should, in the past
"Mmm. I searched all the Weyrleader records, and the golds should have been laying twenty to thirty eggs each Turn for at least the last ten, or possibly twenty, Turns. It's not as if we can't count the Turns to the next Pass!"
- it is not for us to know why this neglect, but to work through it
H'ric heaved a sigh and walked over to Galanath, rubbing his eye ridges as they watched the sun vanish over the western horizon, and the stars become more visible, the two moons low in the sky as yet.
"Do the best you can, and don't worry about the rest, my father always used to say. It's strange, how I can remember some of what he said, and his voice, but I can't always remember his face, or that of my mother."
- then you will do your best, although everyone in the Weyr knows you are a worrier
"Cheek!" H'ric was laughing as he climbed to Galanath's back and the dragon back winged off the ridge and circled to come down to the warmth of the weyr again.