1.3 - 1.4.199
H'ric looked up from the ancient records he had been perusing, when someone entered the record room. He had copied down some references, but as he had feared, there was very little about the previous Passes and Intervals, beyond the settling of the land from unusual weather patterns at the end of every Pass, and the lists of harvests increasing as the tithes decreased in the Intervals. That had made depressing reading, but he was grateful Lord Jamas in this Interval sent them fresh fruit as part of his tithe.
"They told me you were holed up here, Weyrleader."
H'ric smiled as Perera put a tray of fruit juice and some savoury bread rolls onto the table and sat down, looking around at the records.
"Have you found anything worthwhile?" Perera continued.
"Not really. The tithes diminish, of course, and the dragons do not breed so often during an Interval. They keep time, so to speak, until the pulse of the returning Red Star alerts them."
"The pulse of the Red Star. We know the dragons were engineered by the ancients at the beginning of the First Pass, but you imply they're connected to the Red Star?"
"Only because they know it's in the east, and they're supposed to breed in tune with it."
"And in tune with the Weyrleader and his Weyrwoman," Perera said. "I've asked Jiverny and her mother to attend us, with your permission?"
"Of course. Is there something about that recent illness we should know?"
Perera shook his head. "That's gone and done with, Weyrleader, there have been no reports of fresh outbreaks for several days, although all the healers along the coasts of Bitra, Benden and Nerat are on the alert for it still. No, this is to do with your concern at the breeding of dragons."
Both men stood up as Jiverny and her mother the Lady Holder Iveris entered the room.
"Is this an appropriate place, Masterhealer, to speak to us?" Lady Iveris asked, looking around at the clutter of scrolls and hides. H'ric gathered a pile together and laid them on a chair to one side, and the Lady Holder sat down, still looking suspicious and put out. Jiverny poured drinks for them and glanced at H'ric's notes, grimacing at their paucity.
"I would like to ask you, Lady Iveris, in what relation you stand to your Lord Holder?"
"What relation? I'm his second cousin - we share a great grandfather."
"I see. May I ask if the Lord Holder of Ista usually weds inside his own family?"
Lady Iveris stared at him, frowning, and then demanded a piece of parchment and a pen, and began making rapid notes of initials joined by lines. Perera watched her as Jiverny read through H'ric's notes.
"Yes," the Lady Holder said at last. "Yes, in the last five generations at least, the Lord Holder has married his own relation. Why? Is it important?"
"May I ask how many living children you have borne?"
Lady Iveris drew in a sharp hurting breath. "Three," she said at last. "Three living, and six died in infancy. My mother was the same."
"I suspect also, that across the Lord Holder's line, the same is true," Perera said gently. "What fosterlings the Lord Holder takes, he does not keep, he sends them back to their own Holds, I believe?"
"It's always been said the Island cannot sustain a large population," Jiverny said.
"I've been told that, as well," Perera replied. "But having a large population on the Island itself, has nothing to do with ameliorating the blood lines and preventing inbreeding."
"Is that what you believe is happening here?" Lady Iveris demanded. "My son - who should be Lord Holder in time - has no children. He married his first cousin."
Perera winced and looked away.
"Don't you take any fosterlings?" H'ric asked. "I thought it was common practice for the Lord Holders to farm out their surplus offspring, so to speak, and have them form good alliances amongst other Holds?"
"That's a fairly blunt and impolite way of putting it," Jiverny admitted, as her mother looked too shocked to speak. "But why should Ista be so different? Mother?"
"Tradition, I suppose, and the fear of overpopulation. It's always been small - the Weyr was small as well. Even at the end of the last Pass, when it was at full strength, it only had about 300 dragons, under D'ram and his bronze, Tiroth. His Weyrwoman was Fanna, the rider of gold Miranth. They went - wherever they went."
"Probably with much rejoicing from the Lord Holder at the time that he could dispense with most of his tithe," Jiverny said ruefully, and her mother did not protest that idea.
"I can't send you 300 dragons to protect Ista and the area those riders covered back then, my lady," H'ric said.
"I know that, Weyrleader, and we are prepared to send out ground crews - with stone and rock and sand we should make less of a target than those lush lands of Telgar, for instance!"
The others nodded an acknowledgement of this, and Lady Iveris looked again at Perera.
"I understand your concern with the Lord Holder's lineage, Masterhealer. But why does it concern my daughter, who is a Weyrwoman now? In fact, the only Weyrwoman!"
"You have one child, Weyrwoman?"
"Yes. In all the time since Haveneth's first mating flight, I conceived no children until H'ric took on the leadership three Turns ago."
"You are absolutely sure of that?"
"I am sure. I took all the usual remedies woman take, but nothing happened."
H'ric glanced at her, wondering if Mima knew about those remedies, and if she had advised the Weyrwoman to stop fretting and grieving over her inability to have children.
"And your son is healthy and fit?" Perera asked.
"Overly so," Jiverny said with a fond smile. "You know he's fostered in the Lower Caverns, but he does seem to be as bright and forward as any other child three Turns old."
"And you had no others."
"If a dragon rider goes between with any frequency, that can abort a child," H'ric said. "It's a well known fact in the Weyr."
"And have you done so, Jiverny?"
She shook her head. "There never seemed any need. I rode the senior gold dragon, so I had the care of the Weyr. Before H'ric became Weyrleader I'd not been out of the Weyr for at least three Turns."
H'ric frowned at her. "That's right," he said. "I remember that - I did ask R'tin about it - he said there was no need for you to go out and about - with the care of the Weyr and the junior golds - three Turns is a very long time, lady mine, to be immured in the Weyr!"
She smiled at him and took his clenched fist and gently straightened his fingers, laced hers with them.
"Yes, I know. I suppose I never noticed the time passing. Haveneth rose twice in those three Turns, Masterhealer, and to R'tin's dragon Teneth each time, and produced ten eggs each time. There was never a hint either then, or in any other times we slept together, that I might have a child. But it could have been him! Different partners, different - "
H'ric had looked away, and Jiverny stopped short and looked hard at him.
"He had children in the weyr?"
"Um - at least two, lady mine. I think the Masterhealer, though, is trying to say that your terribly inbred line is what stopped you conceiving a child all those Turns."
"Yes, that is what I am saying. And I am saying further - it is because of your very infertility that the clutches at Benden have been small."
Lady Iveris looked at him in astonishment and then at H'ric and Jiverny.
"Is that truth, Masterhealer? What a dreadful thing to think, that what we have done in our generations on Ista could impact on the well-being of the Weyr and the Pass to come!"
"I could step down," Jiverny said. "I could step down, and one of the junior gold riders could become Weyrwoman and produce the vast clutches you want, Weyrleader."
"Haveneth has averaged twenty eggs in each clutch we have been together," H'ric said, turning his hand to hold hers more firmly. "In an Interval, that's respectable, and perhaps even profligate. None of the junior golds have equalled that, and indeed have risen only once each in the three Turns I've been Weyrleader."
Perera nodded. "I am sorry, Jiverny, to have put it that way when I could have been gentler in the saying. But I do truly believe your fertility impacts on your dragon."
Jiverny looked abstracted suddenly, and H'ric felt a chattering in his mind that he associated with dragon talk. Jiverny closed her eyes and shook her head, tears starting to trickle down her cheeks.
"Haveneth said she didn't know about all this," she whispered. "She said she was merely - reluctant - to blood her kill and rise very often. Oh - H'ric - what are we going to do?"