Chap. 336 Conquering the Wind

Chap. 336 Conquering the Wind

After a fitful night’s sleep-this time in the visitors weyr-he’d awakened far earlier than Igen’s dawn.

I just hate the time zone changes, he reflected. But he’d had the communal shower to himself the night before, allowing him to wash off the desert sand.

He’d stepped outside the weyr to look at the stars. They were beautiful, the sweep of the galaxy illuminating the dark sands. Now that he understood what the Great Wheel really was, he found it all that more astounding.

The cold breeze that rustled the tree leaves also knifed through his body.

I’ll never get used to the desert getting so cold at night, he thought.

I’m amazed that even with large openings in the mountain, the sandstone retains heat. It’s still warm in the weyr, and I know they don’t have thermal heating here. I think I’ll look at the garden plots, then leave. Rahman released me from transport duty.

“I’ll be fine,” the astronomer had said, “It’s not fair for me to keep you from your job at Landing, anyway. I’ll just call on the datalink should I need a ride back, but I doubt I’ll need to bother you again. There’s many dragons here, I’m sure you know, and I know I can cadge a ride to Landing on one of them.”

Bother? Well, yes, even my mentor can be a bother, he thought, feeling a twinge of guilt. I’m not abandoning him.

The cry of a baby echoed through the tunnels of the Weyr. It had been wailing most of the night, constantly waking him.

Don’t they ever sleep, he grumbled, why in the world is it crying in the first place? If all babies are like that it’s amazing we humans have survived this long. I would hate to have to listen to that every night for months. I don’t want kids. Most women do, so if it means I’ll be alone my whole life, so be it. I’ve always been a loner, he reflected. I have Raventh and Siskin. I don’t need any more company.

It would be nice to be able to mate Raventh chided him.

Um he stuttered in his mind.

Well, yes. There was that. How to respond to that?

The dining hall’s night crew had kindly fixed him a good breakfast. The smell of fresh bread in the stillness before dawn brought back memories of Weyrling School. He thanked them, grateful that at this early hour, they were fully prepared to feed breakfast.

“No need to thank us, dragonrider,” one of the cook staff had said, “the Weyrlings will be here very shortly. We get up early here in Igen. If we wait for sunup, we have about two hours, maybe, before it gets too hot to do much out in the sun. We get everything done in the morning-for instance, the Weyrlings do their flying and dragon care first thing. Then we siesta,although it’s seldom to sleep, we get a lot of inside work done. For instance, the kids are in school during siesta. At about six or so, it’s beginning to cool off so we can go back out and take care of tasks outside.”

Dawdling over his klah and a fabulous fruit juice that he’d not caught the name of, he listened to the weyrlings chatter as they inhaled their breakfast. Close order drill was scheduled for the morning, and just like he’d done, a few whinged about how ‘stupid’ close order drill was when they’d much rather be flying.

A few cast doubtful looks at him, wondering if he’d snitch on them to the Weyrlingmaster. But he was obviously a stranger, and Weyrlings were not encouraged to engage with adult, fully vested dragonriders.

He smiled inwardly. I can tell you why close order drill is necessary, even in these days without Thread. But it will come to you, eventually.

I was you, once, long ago, he reminisced, feeling the odd touch of nostalgia. I was so clueless, I felt so clumsy, my classmates all seemed to know more than I. I didn’t think I’d ever catch on to which of my feet was which.

And just as he remembered, doing, when the hall began to fill with adults, both dragonriders and groundpounders, the weyrlings reduced their chatter to whispers.

After breakfast, he’d walked down to the growing plots. They were already being worked. Things do indeed start early here in Igen, he thought. He heard the familiar clip clop of a pony and saw, in the middle distance, someone plowing behind a pair of roan oxen. Some of this is so like Kahrain Weyr, he thought, and so much of it is new.

An elderly woman straightened up as he approached her garden plot. She was almost hidden in the middle of a forest of small, head high trees. Masses of yellow corms hung from the tree limbs. She wore a conical hat of woven withy, and a similarly composed basket at her waist. Her hands were stained purple, he noticed. Siskin chipped.

The fire lizard sent an image of the woman, and he could see himself, seen from the back. It showed him from the back. From the perspective, he realized Siskin was sending him images from another fire lizard.

“Good morning,” he said.

“And to you, dragonrider! You’re a visitor, yes? Do you have a moment to chat? That’s a lovely fire lizard you have there.”

He hesitated, not really wanting to chat, then relented. “Thank you. His name is Siskin. He’s sending me images of us, you and me, I believe it’s from a fire lizard in one of the trees on the road.”

“Oh, that’s probably ‘my’ green fire lizard. I wasn’t sure if she was still around.”

“?”

“Two years ago, I had a green, for a season. I found a nest of their eggs, see that rock wall over there? We’d built it to contain the water, and a fire lizard laid her eggs in that gap there! But a sea wherry followed the queen to learn where her clutch was. And the moment they hatched the sea wherries showed up in droves. The queen tried to defend them, but they almost got her, and she fled. The sea wherries killed every one of the hatchlings save one. I caught my green as she left the den, she’d hatched out a little late.”

“Ahh,” he said, “You’re right, sea wherries are ferocious predators. Why is she not here with you?”

“She went wild, I believe, although I do see her now and then. See, I didn’t know what I was doing, I’d never met anyone with a fire lizard and had no idea how to care for one. I just caught her as she popped out of the den and then ran with her, chased by those bloody wherries! I know now that I should have started feeding her raw meat, but it was just happenstance, you know? They don’t eat spices, that’s all I had at the time, the corms from these spice trees. So she didn’t impress on me. I fed her meat later on, and she stayed with me for a while, but one day she came into heat, and a bronze showed up from somewhere, took her away. Since then she only comes around now and then. I miss her, you know.”

“No doubt,” he said, stroking Siskin’s neck. “I’d be lost without my little blue here. He’s such a great pet and my dragon just loves him.”

Siskin chittered his agreement from his spot on his shoulder.

“Would you care for some of my berries? I’ve got to get them picked before the sun gets too hot, and that will be very soon.”

“Uh, why, yes, of course.”

She passed a handful of berries into his open palm. Their tartness surprised him.

“Oh, my, these are VERY good. I’ve never had anything like this, what IS it?”

The woman beamed at his honest reaction. “It’s a berry I rehabilitated, I suppose you could say. The blueberries we make into bubbly pies were brought here by the colonists, I’m sure you know. They’ve done very well here, they’ve naturalized and now you can find them virtually everywhere on Northern. The tealberries brought from Vulcan, well, they do okay, but we don’t have the long, bitter winters they require, so you can only find them up near the Northern ranges. Even then, they take a very long time to ripen and the avians and wherries usually get them first. I tried growing them here and the poor things couldn’t deal with the heat, even when I tried to keep them shaded. So I gave up on Vulcan’s berries, and tried my hand at these beauties. The spice trees provide us that lovely spice for our curries, but I’m growing them in order to provide shade for my special berries. So I get two crops from one plot!

“That’s very clever!” He was about to leave, but she handed him another handful in order to keep him. I just can’t walk off, now can I? he thought. She certainly is willing to bend my ear. Are all Igens garrulous?

“I grew up in Keroon Hold. I’m a direct descendant of Moreta’s sister, did you know? And my forbears, my great great told me, transported on the Bahrain as horticulturists. Did you see the tapestries in the Main Hall? One of them was made by my mother, she was a wonderful weaver. The Weyrleaders allowed me to hang the tapestry here even though it’s a scene from Keroon. It shows us Keroons planting the berry bushes, way back when we were still colonists. So it’s in my roots, hehehe! to be a grower. I love my plants, I do. They brought others, the colonists, I mean, a flower called saffron, and something called a chili pepper, I have no idea what that was, those plants didn’t survive.

The founders of Keroon had, all these many years, tended this Terran berry. It’s called a marionberry. It didn’t grow very well outside of Keroon Hold, but when I married and moved here, I thought, I have to find a way to make the marionberries flourish here. And I did, the secret is the soil, you see, it’s so rich!

The trick, sir, is keeping them shaded from our desert sun. See the bushes beneath the trees? The trees protect the berry bushes from the direct sunlight. They keep it just cool enough so that the berries can prosper. The tree is native here to Pern so it doesn’t mind the sun and they produce that fabulous spice for our curries. You HAVE had some of Igen’s curry, haven’t you? No? Pity, sir, you’ll have to have some. But see, it works. Marionberries from end to end and side to side! It took some time for me to figure it out. It was the tree leaves that did it. Watch this.”

She gave a leaf on the nearest tree a hearty pishnuck. The leaf reacted immediately, rolling up into a tight spiral. The underside of each leaf was studded with short, vicious looking spikes. Within seconds, every leaf on the tree was tightly rolled. They hung down, covering the limbs and the slender trunk like a spiky shield.

Ah, he thought, yet another way of defeating Thread. He reached out to pluck a leaf.

“Careful! I wouldn’t touch it when it’s rolled up. I didn’t catch your name?”

“K’ndar, rider of brown Raventh, ma’am.”

“Beware the spikes, K’ndar, they are very sharp. They’re pure silica, drawn from the sand. They protect the leaves from Thread. It’s quite interesting. When Thread fell, it would hit the leaves. They’re very sensitive to impact. Rain doesn’t bother them, even brushing against the leaves from the side doesn’t cause a reaction. I think the plant can tell the difference between a thread spore and a raindrop. But when something fairly solid hits the TOP of the leaf, they roll up. Thread couldn’t get a good hold on the leaf. It couldn’t burn silica so it would fall off, right onto the sand, or into the water when we flood the plots. I’m not sure of that, because, of course, when Thread fell, all of us took cover in the weyr, under good solid rock.”

“Like everyone on Pern except dragonriders! Does the tree produce the berries?”

She laughed again. “No, no! I said they grow our curry spice. I didn’t have any success growing the marionberries until Thread was done for good. Keroon was lucky in that there are areas that have never been hit by Thread. I can’t say why, only that it’s true. But Igen always got the full onslaught, and even when most of the spores died in the sand, still, I didn’t want to risk my stock. I was ever so grateful that you dragonriders diverted the Red Star and got rid of Thread forever. It made life so much better.”

“Uh, thank you, ma’am, but I wasn’t even born yet when that happened.”

“Ah, I can see that you’re very young. No matter. Dragonriders saved Pern. And my berries.”

She surveyed her garden plot, a deep satisfaction on her face. “I did that,” she said, her voice husky with pride. “No one at Keroon believed me, they all thought I was a bit daft, saying plants could work together.”

She looked at K’ndar, waiting for him to scoff.

“Does that surprise you? That plants can work as a team? I discovered it all by myself. It knew it worked but had no name for the process. Then Lemos’s papercraft hall published a book about farming and gardening, it contained a chapter about ‘Companion Planting’. Oh, how validated I felt when I read it! It works. The berry bush and the spice tree are like weyrmates. The berry bush provides nutrients the spice tree can’t make, and the spice tree shades the berry bush.”

K’ndar felt the satisfying click of another piece of the biology puzzle he loved.

“I’m a biologist, ma’am, and I am happily surprised by it almost every day. That process is also called symbiosis. You are right. It’s one living being helping another. As a team.”

“Yes,” she sighed, “Symbiosis. Yes, I’d forgotten, that’s the word in the book.”

She looked a K’ndar. “Even though Keroon has always kept them a deep, dark secret, I’m determined to see the day when everyone on Pern knows about my marionberries.”

He wanted more of the berries, but wondered how long it would take to continue his walk. “They’re very good, I’ll remember them. Thank you!”

“And thank you for listening to my prattle!”

He laughed. “It’s not prattle, ma’am.”

“You sound like a Southerner. Are you transferring here?”

“No, ma’am. I grew up on Kahrain Steppe on Southern, but I work at Landing and transported Rahman, the starsmith. I’ve only been here since yesterday. I’ll probably will be leaving by noon, before it gets too hot.”

“Ah. I see. Well, I’ve seen him around, now and then, but I really am not interested in the stars. They’re pretty, is all.” Then she frowned, shaking her head.

“You might want to leave sooner than later, K’ndar. I don’t like the looks of the sky, and there’s not a breath of wind. That bodes no good. My sinuses are tingling, and that’s never a good sign.”

Hmm, he thought. “I’ll keep that in mind, ma’am.”

He turned to walk off, then paused. He thought of Lindea, at Kahrain Weyr, and her talent in baking.

“Ma’am, I’ll tell my friends about your berries. I might even bring a good friend of mine who just loves baking. What is your name?”

She laughed. “Oh, come now, sir. I don’t go by my milk name. Think.”

He grinned. “Marion?”

She grinned.

____________________________________________________________

The air feels strange. I smell something odd about it Raventh said.

They’d launched from Igen. The sun was broiling, even though it was only 1000 hrs, and made even more unbearable by the complete lack of wind. It made for hard flying. Raventh’s wings thudded as he pumped skyward, trying to find a thermal to coast on.

There’s no wind, I have to work to gain altitude

K’ndar felt Raventh’s shoulders powering them upwards by brute force. His wings whiffed over head, sending great gouts of hot air tumbling over his head.

Siskin shook his head, hissing softly.

The queen is calling for every dragon to return to the weyr. Immediately.

Because of the heat?

She doesn’t say. All the dragons know why, but I don’t. As soon as I get some height, I will go between. Landing?

Of course.

He pushed the image of their dragon meadow right outside his quarters at Landing, despite the fact that it was no longer necessary. Raventh’s memory was fully working now that he needn’t consume firestone.

In the distance, he saw a small cluster of shelters in the desert. Something was flashing, something metallic, in their midst. He suddenly realized it was aimed directly at him. It flashed three times, stopped, flashed three times, stopped. It’s a signal! Three always means danger!

Without warning, the sky over head turned black, as if a giant hand had come between the sun and the planet.

What in the world?

He heard a rolling boom, like thunder without the rain.

The wind, it comes. Look at it!

The sun vanished.

Beneath the blackened sky, an enormous, towering wall of dust arched over their heads. It billowed as if boiling. It looked like a monstrous beast, gigantic paws galloping along the floor of the desert with blinding speed. It consumed the few clouds in the sky and blanketed the horizon. The shelters sent one last trio of flashes and then were swallowed up by the wall, appearing no bigger than insects. As it rolled, the wall it grew ever taller and more menacing. A different flash lit it up-lightning!

“Nooooo!” K’ndar moaned.

Then it was upon them.

The wind slammed Raventh’s wings backwards. For one horrifying moment, they were upside down. Only his harness kept K’ndar from falling off. Raventh was plummeting but which way, he couldn’t tell. They were in a violent, boiling tsunami of dust. From everywhere, he was blasted with dust, filling his ears and nose. He could see nothing through his flight goggles.

Raventh roared in fury as they fell, the sound lost in the cacophony. With a herculean effort, he wrenched his wings forward, pounding the wind with mighty strokes. I’m helpless, K’ndar’s mind screamed in fear, I can do nothing to save us.

Then they were in the silent, Stygian blackness and icy cold of between.

They reappeared over Landing.

Somehow, Raventh stabilized in mid-air, catching a thermal almost immediately. His great wings outstretched, he relaxed, falling into a gentle circle to ease the strain on his shoulders. He immediately began to cough out great clouds of dust.

K’ndar was shaking from adrenaline. His ears were ringing and itched from the dust. He gagged and coughed, trying to keep from inhaling the dust that covered them all. And he could see nothing. Thank the stars I wore my goggles, he thought.

He pulled them down to see a bright, mid afternoon blue sky, fleecy white clouds sailing overhead. In the far distance, he could see the ocean, sparkling in the sunshine. The air was cool and the wind gentle.

Their dragon meadow below them was the most welcome sight.

My eyes Raventh said, I can’t see the meadow, I can’t see anything

Terror stabbed his heart.

Are you blind? Noooooo!

No. I am not blind, but my eyes are full of dust. I keep blinking but I need you to wash them out.

Only his nictitating membranes had saved Raventh’s sight.

You saved our lives. What you did was the most incredible flying I’ve ever seen.

Yes. The wind cannot conquer me. I am Raventh!

The most incredible dragon on Pern!

Can you see where to land?

Yes. See through me. Just drop down, you are right over the middle of the meadow.

Raventh snorted, trying to clear the dust from his nostrils. As he descended, he stretched his hind legs as far as they would go, hoping not to thump the landing.

He thumped the landing.

Sorry.

Sorry? For landing blind? You’re incredible.

Siskin sat up and wheeked. He’d pushed himself in so tightly between Raventh’s neck spines that only his back was dusted. For the moment, though, he was no longer blue, but the same color as K’ndar and Raventh-dust. He launched and shook in mid-air, creating a cloud of dust.

K’ndar sneezed. Will I ever get this damned dust out of my nose? My ears, my hair? It’s in my mouth, my teeth feel gritty. Even my face hurts, as if I’d scrubbed it with grit.

He looked at his dragons, and himself. From head to toe, from wingtip to wingtip, from nose to tail, they were sand colored, completely covered with dust.

I’ve never been so scared in my life he said, so proud of Raventh he was overwhelmed. You saved our lives.

He leaned against the harness, grateful for its restraint, and hugged the dragon’s neck for long, long moments.

Raventh’s wings drooped.

Your wings! They’re broken! he shouted, grief freezing his heart. If he was forever unable to fly..

No. I can fly, I just did! But my shoulders hurt. I think something pulled in them. That was worse than Thread. At least with Thread I knew how to avoid it. What was that?

I think it was the habub. A dust storm.

It tried to kill us.

Yes. I was so scared. I thought we were dead.

Somehow, Raventh laughed.

I was, for just a little bit, when it took my wings back. But now I think if it weren’t for the dust, it would have been fun. I fought the wind and I won!