Dragon Harper (24 page)

Kindan found Koriana at the entrance.

“Come with me, it’s Father,” she cried, grabbing his hand and tugging him.

“Hurry back as soon as you can, boy,” Kilti croaked from the far end of the Hall.

Koriana led him out of the Hall and up the great stairs. At the top landing, Kindan stopped, suddenly nervous. They were in the Lord Holder’s private quarters. The wall-hangings were opulent, the floor carpeted. Kindan had never seen carpeted floor before.

“Come on,” Koriana urged, pulling him into a bedroom. It had the largest bed he’d ever seen. Nearby was a crib and in it a small child was crying feebly. It was Fiona.

Kindan rushed to her and picked her up. Her forehead was roasting.

“How long since she’s eaten anything?” Kindan asked Koriana. He noticed a pungent smell and wondered when Fiona’s clothing had last been checked.

“Over here,” Koriana called, ignoring Kindan’s question.

Kindan tucked Fiona in the crook of his arm and trotted over to Koriana.

Lord Bemin was kneeling at the side of the bed, crouched over a hand and weeping.

Wordlessly, Kindan pushed Fiona into Koriana’s arms and sat down beside the Lord Holder. Gently, he put his hand beside Bemin’s, feeling the cold flesh of the hand that he was holding.

He stood up and looked at the still face of Lady Sannora. It was rigid, waxlike. He reached under her jaw and felt beside her throat for a pulse. The skin was cold. There hadn’t been a pulse for a very long time, Kindan decided.

“He won’t move, he won’t listen,” Koriana told him anxiously. With a tone bordering on hysteria, she added, “He’s the Lord Holder, he’s
got
to move!”

Kindan noticed that Koriana’s eyes constantly darted away from Sannora’s body, as if denying its existence.

He knelt down beside the Lord Holder, fumbling in his mind for the right words. He draped his arms over the Lord Holder’s large shoulders and clasped them softly.

“My lord,” Kindan said uncertainly. “You must come away, your holders need you.” Gently he pulled Bemin away from Sannora’s body. Bemin resisted passively, too bereft to struggle.

“Your daughters need you,” Kindan continued softly, pulling Bemin farther away from his wife’s body. Koriana took his words for a cue and moved up against her father.

“Take Fiona, Father,” she said, gently pushing the toddler into his arms. Reluctantly, Bemin cradled his youngest and then with a sob, clenched her tightly against his body and kissed her forehead. He felt the heat there and looked up in alarm, tears flowing freely, saying to Kindan, “She’s so hot!”

“I know, my lord,” Kindan replied. “We must get her downstairs to Master Kilti.” He gestured toward the door. “Come on, we must hurry.”

“You will save her?” Bemin asked, looking down at his daughter and back to Kindan. A fierce light burned in his eyes. “Promise me you will save her?”

“I will do what I can,” Kindan said.

“No,” Bemin cried, “I need you to
promise
me that you’ll save her.”

Kindan locked eyes with the taller man for a long moment. This was the man who said that Kindan had besmirched his honor, that his word was meaningless to him. And here, now, in this moment, the Lord Holder of Fort Hold was asking for a promise to do the impossible.

“I will save her, my lord,” Kindan promised. “Or die trying.”

“Don’t you dare die!” Koriana cried fiercely. “Don’t you dare!”

“I will save her,” Kindan repeated. He gestured to the door. “But we must get down to Master Kilti.”

Slowly, in a shambling gait, the Lord Holder of Fort Hold followed the young harper down to the Great Hall.

How they made it to the next day, Kindan could never recall. Only willpower kept him moving; he slept only when he collapsed, ate only when he thought of it, drank only when his throat was parched.

Little Fiona worsened through the night and Kindan was beside her at her merest whimper. He kept a bucket and a cloth and gently dribbled cool water on her forehead, having been forbidden to touch her by Master Kilti.

“Touch her and you’ll get it yourself,” Kilti had warned with a wheeze.

“I’ve already touched her,” Kindan replied.

“And maybe you caught it, maybe you didn’t,” Kilti rasped. “Take enough chances, and you’ll get it for certain.”

Something about the healer’s voice alarmed Kindan but he was too tired to dwell on it.

At Kindan’s urging, they cleared one cot next to Fiona and Bemin, Koriana, Vaxoram, Kilti, and any others of those still standing took turns catching naps of a half hour, an hour, never more.

Night blurred into day. Kindan carried some dim glows out to the laundry line, brought fresher ones back. He thought once more of the brave little girl who had stirred the boiling pot and looked for her cot when he returned to the Great Hall. It was empty.

“She died awhile back,” was all Vaxoram could say when Kindan asked him.

Kindan shook his head sadly and was depressed to realize that he could dredge up no deeper emotion—his tears had all dried up long ago.

He went back to the kitchen to drain the fellis decoction and let it cool, dragging more soiled sheets with him.

He was about to return when Valla appeared in front of him, chittering excitedly.

“What is it?” Kindan asking, surprised at how much the small fire-lizard buoyed his spirits. Valla chirped again and bobbed his head smugly, then gestured to his harness with his forelimbs. There was a message: Moodpaste ready. Will drop in courtyard.

Ready? Moodpaste? Kindan thought muzzily. Oh! They had figured out how to make moodstone into a paste!

Kindan ran out through the Great Hall, ignoring the cries of the others, and went through the front doors, looking for any sign of a delivery, all the while worrying that the dragonriders might come in contact with the contagion.

A dark shadow crossed over him and he glanced up in time to see a bronze dragon fly overhead. He waved and the rider waved back—it was M’tal, he was sure of it. M’tal threw something over Gaminth’s neck and Kindan stood rooted in horrified fear that the object would break and shatter when it hit the flagstones of the courtyard. Instead, a piece of fabric sprang open and slowed the object’s fall. Kindan groped for the name, he recalled reading about it a long time ago—a parachute. How simple, how elegant. A piece of cloth tied at its four corners and attached to the bundle.

The bundle drifted down to the courtyard and Kindan raced to retrieve it. The parcel was just bigger than his two fists. As he untied the parachute, his mind suggested that the shape was somehow significant but he ignored the thought, his attention directed at the bundle. Inside was a set of bottles, all carefully cushioned. None were broken.

He stood up and waved to M’tal who was still above. The dragonrider waved back and soared away, blinking
between
back to Benden Weyr. Belatedly, Kindan wondered why he’d sent Valla to Benden and not to the Fort Weyrleader. Probably it was because he and M’tal knew each other, because the Benden Weyrleader trusted him.

Kindan tottered back into the Great Hall, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer light. He opened one of the bottles and peered at the paste inside. He turned to one of the nearer patients and gently dabbed a bit on her forehead, careful not to let his fingers touch her directly. She moaned in her sleep but made no other motion. In a moment the moodpaste had turned bright yellow, indicating high fever. Kindan moved on, pasting all the foreheads he could before the first bottle was empty.

“What have you got there, boy?” Kilti croaked as he passed near the healer.

“Moodpaste,” Kindan replied. “Dab it on a forehead and you’ll know if they’ve got fever.” He put some on the forehead of Kilti’s patient and stood back. The paste turned from green to blue and Kindan’s spirits sank. “I think this one is dead.”

Kilti turned back to the patient, searched for signs of life, found none and leaned back with a deep sigh. The old healer closed his eyes for a long moment, dealing with his grief. When he opened his eyes again, he said to Kindan, “What are the colors, then?”

“Green for healthy,” Kindan told him. “Red for hot, yellow for feverish, blue for—”

“Dead,” Kilti finished. He held out his hand for one of the bottles. “I’ll finish up this row, you get the next.”

Kindan checked Fiona next: The moodpaste turned an ugly yellow.

“Let me try you,” Koriana said. She dipped her finger in the paste and dabbed it on Kindan, who reciprocated with a dab on her forehead. But he knew, even as he touched her, what color the moodpaste would turn: bright red, verging on orange.

“I’ll be all right,” Koriana declared as she caught Kindan’s changing expression. “I’ve been taking some fellis juice.”

“It doesn’t help,” Kindan told her. “It just makes you feel better.”

“I’ll be all right,” Koriana repeated firmly. She gestured to the sick people in their cots. “I have to be, for them.”

“Your mother—” Kindan began worriedly.

“She was never very strong,” Koriana assured him. “She had no constitution and she was always weak after Fiona was born.” She touched him gently on the forearm and smiled shyly. “Don’t worry about me, Kindan, I’ll be fine.”

“I need some help over here,” Vaxoram called. Kindan rushed off and shortly found himself lost once more in a never-ending field of feverish faces, tormented bodies, and cold death.

The days passed on blearily, one into the next. Kindan could no longer imagine what it was like to wake refreshed, to not have the constant fatigue-induced itching under his eyes, to see anyone smile.

Slowly, however, he began to detect some pattern, some noise, like a music of bodies, in all the suffering. He couldn’t say when he noticed it and it took him a long time to identify the feeling but something was nagging at him.

His notion crystallized when he asked sourly about Bemin’s elder sons. “Where are they? Why are they not helping?” Kindan demanded of Koriana after he and Vaxoram had labored to haul a particularly large holder’s body out of the Great Hall.

“Upstairs,” Koriana said in a choked voice. “They died before Mother.”

“Both of them?” Kindan asked in surprise.

Koriana nodded, turning back to her little sister and gently dripping some water on her forehead. The moodpaste was still bright yellow. Kindan had lost hope for Fiona the day before. Somewhere around the Great Hall was Bemin, tending to one of the many feverish.

Bannor and Semin had been in the prime of youth, some of the healthiest men in all Fort Hold, and yet they had been among the first to fall victim to this plague. Why?

Kindan looked at Fiona. The child should have succumbed two days ago, or at best a day ago and yet she was still hanging on, hot, fevered, unable to eat, yet still clinging to life. Why?

This flu seemed to attack the healthiest, the strongest, harder than it did the older and infirm. It made no sense.

A cough distracted him. It came from one of the helpers. He followed the noise as it continued and his eyes locked on Vaxoram. The older apprentice looked up and nodded his head slightly before returning to the bed where he knelt, rolled a corpse over his shoulders, and staggered once more upright to carry the body out of the Great Hall.

Vaxoram had the flu. Vaxoram was nearly Bannor’s age—and just a little older than Koriana. Would he be the next to die?

CHAPTER 11

For fever, take you feverfew

For pains, take you fellis too

For vomiting, keep your stomach free

For flu, let your eating be.

F
ORT
H
OLD

I
n the next several days, Vaxoram’s symptoms grew worse. Kindan kept an eye on the older apprentice as best he could, but it was hard to keep track of anyone—they were all constantly rushing from crisis to crisis, death to death. Once Kindan remembered drumming to Kelsa and he knew she responded but he couldn’t remember either his message or what she drummed in response.

They had expanded their rounds from the Great Hall to all the lesser rooms in Fort Hold, collecting the seriously ill, organizing more help. Somehow they managed to keep the fires in the kitchen going, and another small girl was found to stir the huge pot that boiled the dirty sheets.

It was in the middle of the night on the fourth day since they’d brought Fiona into the Hall that Kindan came across Vaxoram, sprawled on the floor beside a cot, a corpse half-burying him.

“Get help!” Kindan ordered Valla and the little bronze disappeared
between.
Kindan couldn’t remember how many times he’d now sent the fire-lizard for help; he couldn’t imagine life without Valla. He knelt slowly, his joints aching, and rolled the corpse off of Vaxoram. He reached to Vaxoram’s throat, feeling for the artery, afraid of what he would discover.

Vaxoram’s body was a furnace; he had a pulse, faint but steady.

“Kindan!” Koriana called trailed by the chittering noise of two fire-lizards.

“Over here,” Kindan called back. “Vaxoram’s ill.”

Together they raised him up onto a cot. His skin was on fire, his face waxlike.

“We’ll have to move the body,” Kindan said, gesturing for Koriana to get the feet while he reached under the corpse’s arms. Together they managed to drag the deadweight out to the courtyard before their strength gave out. It was several minutes before Kindan had breath and strength enough to return into the Great Hall, he and Koriana leaning against each other for support.

“Get some fellis and a cloth,” Kindan told her. “I’ll go look for Master Kilti.”

Koriana nodded, not much more than a jerk of her exhausted head, and shambled off to the kitchen while Kindan headed in the other direction, toward the apartments in the rear of the Hold. He spotted Valla flying toward him.

“Where’s Kilti, Valla?” Kindan said to the fire-lizard. “Take me there.”

The fire-lizard had to loop back several times, Kindan moved so slowly. He found Kilti in a room crowded with cots, lit only by the dimmest of glows. Fuzzy-brained, he made a mental note to set out more glows to charge as soon as he had the chance.

“Vaxoram,” Kindan said, jerking his head in the direction of the Great Hall.

“Red or yellow?” Kilti asked, referring to the color of the moodpaste.

“Orange,” Kindan replied, dredging up the memory. “He was burning up.”

“I’ll come as soon as I can,” the old healer replied. As he turned back to his patients, his body was wracked by a long, throbbing cough. “Unless we can figure out a way to stop spreading this blasted thing, we’ll reinfect everyone.”

Kindan nodded dully and staggered back to the Great Hall. There he spotted Bemin and one of the Fort guards.

“Where’s Koriana?” Bemin rasped hoarsely.

“Kitchen,” Kindan told him. “Vaxoram’s ill.”

“Giller here and two others are well enough to dig in the rose garden,” Bemin said. “How deep?”

“Two meters, one and a half at least,” Kindan said. Bemin’s words registered and he took a longer look at the Lord Holder. “The ancestor garden?”

Fort Hold had a special garden reserved for the dead ancestors of the Lord Holder. In the past it had been tended under the direction of Lady Sannora and grew the most magnificent roses.

“We’ve set the roses aside,” Giller said hoarsely with a respectful nod toward Bemin. “I figure we can plant them again, after, if your lordship—”

“That would be splendid,” Bemin said, straightening up with a hint of his normal lordly manner.

“Use lime to line the grave,” Kindan suggested.

“There’d be more than one grave needed,” Giller said, eyeing Kindan judiciously.

“One big grave,” Kindan corrected. “You’ve no time for individual ones.”

“But Lady Sannora—” Giller began in protest.

“Let all our dead be mingled,” Bemin ordered. “It is fitting; we’ve all suffered together.”

Giller drew himself up to his full height, his eyes filled with tears and respect. “As you wish, my lord.”

Bemin found the strength to clap Giller firmly on the back and send him on his way. As the man faded from sight, Bemin’s shoulders hunched once more and his chin fell. “Let’s see your friend.”

Koriana was already there beside Vaxoram when they arrived.

“He’s very hot,” she said, shaking her head as she met Kindan’s eyes. “Feverish. I gave him some fellis juice and cooled his head.”

Vaxoram rolled over and coughed at that moment, expelling a visible mist of sputum in the air, covering Koriana who leaned back too slowly to avoid it. His eyes opened for a moment and he murmured, “Sorry.” He tried to move. “Got to get up.”

“Lie down,” Kindan ordered. “You’re feverish.”

“Must help,” Vaxoram protested muzzily.

“Just lie still for a moment,” Kindan told him. “You can get up when you feel better.”

“Alrigh’,” Vaxoram muttered. “Tired.” His eyes closed again and his head lolled as he drifted into a daze.

“Master Kilti said he’ll check on him,” Kindan said, rising and extending a helping hand toward Koriana, who took it gratefully. She slid into his embrace for a warm moment, then pushed back, aware of her father glaring at them.

Then, with a determined “No,” Koriana wrapped her arms around Kindan once more and hugged him tightly. She gestured with her free hand toward her father and Kindan was surprised a moment later to feel the Lord Holder embrace him and Koriana both.

“We must get back to work,” Kindan said shortly. Bemin and Koriana broke the embrace. Kindan turned to see the Lord Holder looking at him uncertainly. Kindan turned away, unsure of himself, and noted that some of the cots were empty.

“We must get more people in here,” Kindan said, gesturing toward the cots.

“There’s no one else,” Bemin said. “We could carry some from the cots upstairs but that’s about all.”

“No one else?” Kindan asked in surprise. “Where are they, then?”

“Dead,” Fort’s Lord Holder responded somberly.

A cough distracted them and Kindan turned, nearly swooning as he tried to locate it. Bemin caught his shoulder, steadying him, and felt Kindan’s forehead. He looked grave.

“You’ve got the fever,” the Lord Holder said.

“I’m just tired,” Kindan argued.

“Get some rest,” Bemin ordered, pointing to an empty cot. “You can check on Vaxoram when you wake up.”

“No,” Kindan muttered, trying to keep the room from spinning away around him, “too much to do.”

“Rest, Kindan,” a girl’s voice urged him. Koriana? Here? Or was it Bemin and he misheard?

The room spun out of control and Kindan remembered no more.

The images in his head spun all around and Kindan groaned in hoarse agony. He was fire, burning bright. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t feel anything but pain. And the images—a parachute falling from the sky, its four straps wrapping around his head, covering his mouth and nose, Vaxoram on the ground, corpses everywhere, Lady Sannora on her bed, then Koriana on the same bed, then…darkness.

“Here, drink this,” a voice said in the darkness. Kindan felt his head being lifted, felt the room spin more horribly, feebly tried to bat away the coolness touching his lips, choked on a liquid, choked, and choked, and choked…darkness.

“Come on, Kindan, another sip,” the voice was kindly but not Koriana. Bemin? The Lord Holder was feeding him? Kindan gulped down the liquid as best he could and then his head was lying, peacefully, once more on the cot. He fell asleep.

“Kindan?” The same voice, urgent, called his name. Kindan opened his eyes. The room wasn’t spinning. “Kindan, are you awake? Your fever’s broken.” Lord Bemin sounded near to tears. “You’re going to be all right, Kindan, you’re going to be all right.”

Something hot splashed on his face. Tears? Was the Lord Holder crying for him?

“Kindan, you’ve got to wake up,” Bemin’s voice was insistent. Kindan felt Bemin’s hand under his neck, lifting him up. “Kindan?”

“Yes?” Kindan said, opening his eyes. He hardly recognized Bemin’s face swimming in front of him. The Lord Holder’s cheeks were bristly, his eyes sunken, skeletal. Kindan made himself move, felt the pain in every one of his joints but willed the pain away as he sat up. Beside him, Valla stirred and chirruped encouragingly, nuzzling against his chest.

“That tickles, stop,” Kindan murmured to the fire-lizard.

“Tickles?” Bemin repeated.

“Valla, on my chest,” Kindan explained. He was ravenous, nearly faint with hunger. “I’m hungry.”

“Here,” Bemin said, extending a cup toward him. “Soup. Drink slowly.”

Kindan started to gulp the warm broth down, but Bemin held on to the cup and tilted it away from him so that Kindan wouldn’t choke.

When the glass was empty, Kindan looked up at Bemin. “How long?”

“Three days,” the Lord Holder told him.

Kindan threw his legs over the side of the cot and forced himself upright. He was wobbly, and Bemin steadied him. He glanced around—slowly. More cots were empty. He gestured to the cots. “Dead?”

Bemin nodded sadly. “Most. Some live.” He turned back to Kindan, his eyes despairing.

“What?”

“Kilti is dead,” Bemin said.

Kindan gasped.

“You’re the healer now,” the Lord Holder went on.

Kindan fell back onto the cot. “Me? I can’t—”

“You can,” a voice murmured beside him. He turned and saw Vaxoram, his face pallid with fever. “You will. Remember—”

“Moment by moment,” Kindan completed for him. “Shh, rest, you’ll be well soon, too.”

As if in answer, Vaxoram’s chest was torn by a wracking cough that seemed to never subside. Helpless, Kindan took his eyes off the older harper and looked to the cot beyond—

“Koriana!” Kindan cried, pushing himself to his feet once more and racing around the head of Vaxoram’s cot.

“She collapsed yesterday,” Bemin said. Kindan looked back at the Lord Holder, guessing his next words. “She was tending you.”

Kindan looked wildly around the Great Hall. “Where’s Fiona? Where’s your youngest?”

Bemin had a momentary look of panic. “By the First Egg, Bemin, where’d you put your child?” The Lord Holder berated himself, pounding on his own chest with his fists, sobbing in dry heaves, “What sort of father are you?”

Kindan spotted a small child in dirty clothes and moved back to the Lord Holder. Gently he grabbed the distraught man’s hands and held them, turning Bemin around. “She’s there, she’s all right.”

With a wordless sob, Bemin staggered over to Fiona and grabbed her, cradling her in his arms. “She’s alive!”