the worst of the water, he was incapable of setting another storm anchor
and had to shout instructions to Lorana until he lost his voice.
Lorana had made two mistakes in setting the new storm anchor: She’d
used their oars; and she’d tied them to the tiller. When a particularly violent
gust had nearly scuppered the launch, the resulting drag had torn not only
the oars but also the tiller off of the stern.
When the storm broke and the fog had replaced it, Lorana had made a new
storm anchor out of the launch’s boom.
“Storm coming,” Colfet said drowsily. “Two, maybe three hours away.”
Lorana glanced about. Yes, there was a wisp of wind—and it was cold.
The storm engulfed the launch without warning. Lorana found herself
grabbing the fire-lizards and shoving them down behind Colfet in a hectic
instant, blinded by the sea spray and drenching rain. She barely had time to
brace herself in the bottom of the launch before the little boat was whipped
violently around by the fierce winds of the new storm.
After that, time ceased to exist. Lorana was tossed about, frozen, inundated
with freezing rain and roiling sea.
When the water level got too high in the boat, she started bailing,
desperately fighting the incoming rain and sea, all the while terrified that one
more wave would sink them. When Garth and Grenn tried to help her, she
cursed them.
“Go! Go!” She wailed at them. Garth’s mouth opened in response but her
voice was lost on the wind. Lorana didn’t need to hear the fire-lizard to
recognize her stubborn resolve. Grenn hadn’t even bothered to slow down
in his efforts.
Nor did Lorana. Still bailing, she grieved at the thought of her fire-lizards
needlessly sacrificing themselves for her. Numbly she tried to organize new
arguments to convince them to leave her.
“Lorana!” Colfet’s hoarse voice barely rose above the howl of the storm,
and the warning came too late for her to do anything. The launch heeled
horribly, nearly capsizing as it was tossed by a sudden swell.
Lorana knew instantly that the sea anchor had torn loose. She dropped the
bailer. The only thing left to use was the launch’s mast. She bent down and
started untying the stays that had kept it secure, all the while tossed horribly
as the launch lurched on the sea.
Finally, she got the mast secured to the stern of the launch and was ready
to place it overboard.
As she kneeled to push the mast out over the stern, another wave hit the
bow of the launch and Lorana tumbled overboard.
In an instant the launch was lost from her sight. A wave crashed over her,
submerging her. She returned to the surface gasping for breath, frozen to
the core.
“Lorana!” Colfet shouted from the distance.
“No!” Lorana shouted back, but the wind whipped her words away.
Flitters of brown and gold appeared above her, battling the wind to avoid
being slammed into the sea.
“Go away!” Lorana shouted at them. “Save yourselves!”
Garth and Grenn ignored her, diving to grab at her hair and yanking painfully
on it. The pain was nothing compared to Lorana’s outraged grieving that her
two fire-lizards would waste themselves for her.
“Go!” she shouted again, trying to bat away their hold on her hair.
Something bumped into her and she grabbed at it. It was the mast. Lorana
closed her eyes against tears. Colfet must have cut the mast free, hoping it
would get to her as a float. Her wail was inarticulate. He had thrown away his
life for hers.
I’m not worth it, she told herself. He’ll die, Garth and Grenn will die—all for
nothing. Me.
Arms wrapped around the mast for support, Lorana caught her breath. The
sea rose all around her. Lightning flashed in the distance. She was
doomed.
“Garth,” she said, her words a whisper echoing her thoughts as she tried to
find the gold fire-lizard in the air above her. “Grenn. You must go. Leave
me. Find someone else. I can’t survive this and I can’t bear the thought of
you dying with me.”
She felt a wash of steadfast warmth from the two fire-lizards in response.
They would not leave her. They would not abandon her.
Anger shook her. They would
die
if they stayed with her. And it would be
such a waste.
“You must go!”
Lorana’s voice carried above the roar of the storm. Feeling
her heart stiffen, she hardened her will and thrust it at the two fire-lizards.
Go!
Garth and Grenn shrieked in the night sky. A flash of lightning peeled
across the sky. Lorana gathered all her strength, felt herself like a
thunderbolt, and threw herself at the fire-lizards.
Go!
Somewhere safe, Lorana thought. Somewhere where you’ll be loved.
Another flash of lightning lit the sky, and again she pushed the fire-lizards
away from her.
Go!
And they were gone. Lorana heaved a sigh that was more like a whimper
and laid her head on the mast. Safe, she thought. At least I’ve saved them.
As she lay there, she felt the last of the warmth and comfort the fire-lizards
had given her fade away, like a lost dream. And then, as she drifted into a
numbed sleep, at the very end, Lorana thought she felt something—an
answering warmth at the end of the long tunnel that connected her to Garth
and Grenn. A frozen smile played across her lips. Good, she thought dimly,
someone will take care of them.
SIX
Terrome: (i) the biological portion of the ecosystem of Terra, the third
planet of solar system Sol; (ii) the information and materials required to
produce a functioning ecosystem based on the Terran ecosystem. (See
terraforming.)
—Glossary of terms,
Ecosystems: From -ome to Planet, 24th Edition
Fort Hold, First Pass, Year 50, AL 58
Sunlight streamed through the room, bathing Wind Blossom’s cot in
warmth. Wind Blossom woke, startled by the sun. You should have been up
hours ago, she chided herself.
Her old, stiff bones resisted her efforts to rise quickly. Wind Blossom
forced herself up anyway. With a deep, relaxing sigh she began her
morning exercises.
As she completed her exercises, the Drum Tower boomed out an alert.
She wondered if the drummer were Tieran. She had only seen him
fleetingly in the two years since his father had died and he’d fled to the
Drum Tower. He’d be eighteen now, near his full growth, and quite capable
of pounding the drums as loud as they were being pounded now.
Wind Blossom tensed, then relaxed again immediately as she recognized
why she had slept so late: The Drum Tower had been silent. With this
realization, she knew why the tower had been silent earlier and what its
message now would be—Threadfall.
That also explained why her newest trainee had failed to wake her this
morning: The young lady was helping prepare the HNO tanks for the
3
ground crews, whose job it was to search out stray Thread missed by the
dragons and burn it before it could burrow into the ground.
Wind Blossom’s place was in the infirmary, to deal with any mishaps
beyond the expertise of her alumni. She changed with a conservative haste
and proceeded down the stairs, clutching the railing carefully; it would not
do to let rushing make her the first patient of the day.
One of the new trainees—Mirlan, Wind Blossom thought it was—saw her
approach and strode over to offer a hand.
Wind Blossom snatched her own hand away from the proffered support. “I
am not enfeebled, child!” she said, bitter that the whole effect was spoiled
by her scratchy voice.
“I do need something to drink, however,” she added as soon as she could
trust her voice again.
Mirlan escorted her to Admissions and then hurried off for some food and
drink.
Janir—when had he gotten so tall?—approached her.
“The current pool is guessing that there’ll be two severe, one minor, and
three stupidities this Fall,” he said, his eyebrows quirking with amusement.
Long ago Wind Blossom had started a guessing game with the students to
help prepare them for those wounded in Threadfall. Long ago it had
ceased to be amusing to Wind Blossom. But it was still educational, so she
pretended to enjoy it.
“Two minor, two stupidities,” Wind Blossom guessed. Janir pursed his lips
speculatively.
“Is that a wager?” a new voice asked. Wind Blossom turned to see Josten,
another of the new ones, appear behind her.
“If it is, it is between myself and the senior surgeon,” Wind Blossom
replied. She noticed that the room had fallen silent. Mirlan returned with
some food.
“This Threadfall will last six hours, yes?” Wind Blossom asked rhetorically.
Around her, heads nodded.
“Is all the equipment ready?” Again, heads nodded.
“Then is there any reason why you should not be studying?” she asked the
collected group. Janir suppressed a grin of remembrance and added his
scowl to hers. Hastily the others in the room filed out in search of texts or to
work together in groups, practicing various injuries.
“I shall inspect later,” Wind Blossom said. Janir’s eyes darkened. Wind
Blossom noticed it. “What?”
“Um, my lady—”
“Spit it out, Janir.”
“Don’t you remember?” Janir looked embarrassed. Wind Blossom
frowned. “After the last Threadfall we had agreed that I should run the
infirmary and you would consult.”
Wind Blossom started to respond, then froze. After a moment she
continued, “Of course. May I speak with you alone?”
Janir nodded and gestured to his examining room.
Once inside, Wind Blossom turned to him and said in a toneless voice,
“Janir, it appears that I am beginning to exhibit signs of senile dementia. Do
you concur?”
Janir closed his eyes briefly, a look of pain lining his face, then nodded. “My
lady, this is the second time you’ve told me that.”
Outwardly, Wind Blossom absorbed this news like a rock; inwardly she
reeled like a reed in a storm. “I see. When was the first time?”
“Only last Threadfall, my lady,” Janir replied. “Since then, you’ve exhibited
no memory problems. Perhaps the stress?”
“Threadfall should not be stressful for me.”
Janir disagreed. “Threadfall itself is not stressful but, as you yourself said,
we must anticipate a number of injuries—I think that is very stressful for
you, my lady.”
“Yes, I believe that is so,” Wind Blossom said. My mind! I am losing my
mind! She took a deep, calming breath. “But I am alarmed at the possible
implications.”
Janir gave her an apologetic look. “We’ve been keeping an eye on you, my
lady, to be safe.”
Wind Blossom pursed her lips and nodded. “Thank you. I was considering
the broader implication to our aging population. I had expected that we
would retain our faculties well through the late eighties, perhaps even our
nineties.”
Janir nodded. “You said this the last time, my lady.”
Wind Blossom was so troubled by that answer that it took her a second to
regain her composure. “I have no memory of that. What else did I say?”
Janir sighed. “When we talked, we agreed that while some of the
early-onset dementia might be due to increased stress, it was more likely
that it was due to differences in diet.”
“There could be other factors, too,” Wind Blossom said. “Could there be
environmental factors?”
“You were concerned that there might be trace elements present or
missing in our food that might affect memory and neural function,” Janir
replied.
“We should perform some biopsies on any new cadavers,” Wind Blossom
said. Janir gave her a long, discerning look, and she shook her head. “I do
remember that we do not have the facilities to maintain a morgue. But if we
could get to a corpse early enough, we could obtain some samples.”
“I agree, my lady,” Janir replied. “Sadly, our older population was depleted
during the Fever Years and reports of death usually come after the burial
has already taken place.”
“We would need to locate a cadaver nearby,” Wind Blossom agreed.
“And if we did, my lady, what then?” Janir asked gently. “Do we have the
equipment to identify the contributing factors?”
A number of scathing arguments sprang into Wind Blossom’s mind. With a
kick of her will, she disposed of them. She then spent some moments in
deep thought. Finally, she answered, “I think you will say that our staff does
not have time to do such extensive studies, and that we could gain more
working on solving infant mortality problems.”
Janir shook his head, a small grin on his lips. “Actually, my lady, you said
that in our last conversation. I have to agree, however. Given our current
population it is vitally important to ensure that it grows as rapidly as
possible. Our biggest gains will be in improving survival through early
childhood.”
Wind Blossom nodded. “And while the young represent new cultural
capital, the elderly increasingly become a drain on our precious
resources.”
“You said that, too,” Janir said gently. “But I would like to disagree with you
on that score. I have always admired you and wished that I could learn