J’trel waved a hand. “He’s old. Sometimes a thick lungful of air will make a dragon cough. His lungs aren’t like they used to be.”
“Do dragons cough often?” Lorana asked, with natural curiosity-her father had been a beastmaster and had even tended people in emergencies, and she had learned much of his craft.
J’trel shrugged. “Dragons are very healthy. Sometimes they seem to get a bit of a bug, and sometimes a cough.” He made a throwaway gesture, saying, “It doesn’t last long.”
“What about the Plague?” Lorana asked with a faint shudder.
“The Plague affected people, not dragons, and the dragonriders were careful to keep safe.” J’trel’s face took on a clouded look. “Some say we were too careful.”
Lorana shook her head emphatically. “We have to have dragons to fight Thread, and they have to have riders to help them.”
J’trel smiled and wrapped an arm around her shoulder for a brief hug. “That’s the spirit.”
Because she was with a dragonrider, Lorana was not jostled by the crowd: People cleared out of their path. J’trel took this deference by the seaholders as a dragonrider’s just due and set a brisk pace to make up for his earlier tardiness.
Lorana struggled to keep up with him. J’trel noticed and gave her a worried look. “Are you all right?”
Lorana flushed and waved his courteous inquiry aside. “I’m just a bit tired, is all. Maybe I’ve been walking too long.”
You have never gone between times before, Talith told her with a yawn of his own.
“Between times?” Lorana asked aloud.
“Shh,” J’trel said suddenly, holding a hand up warningly. Then his eyes narrowed as he considered what she’d said. “Why did you say that?”
“Talith told me,” Lorana said.
J’trel sighed. “We had to get here before Wind Rider sailed,” he explained.
Lorana motioned for him to continue. Leaning closer to her, he lowered his voice. “Dragons can not only go between from one place to another, but from one time to another,” he explained. “When we jumped between we also jumped back in time. In time for you to catch the Wind Rider.”
“That’s amazing!”
“It has its price, though,” J’trel added, wearily rubbing the back of his neck. “It takes a toll on dragon and rider-and any passengers.”
Lorana gave him an inquiring look.
“Right now you’re here at Ista Sea Hold and also on the Igen seashore,” J’trel explained. “How do you feel?”
Lorana thought about it. “I’m tired,” she said after a moment. “But I thought that was from all the excitement.”
“That, and timing it,” J’trel said. “Some people feel stretched and irritable after they’ve timed it. It gets worse the longer the jump, the more a person’s in two places at once.”
“So dragons don’t time it that often?” Lorana asked.
“Dragonriders are never supposed to time it,” J’trel replied. He wagged a finger at her. “Let it be our secret.”
Lorana nodded, but she had a distracted look on her face. J’trel had seen that look before on others and had worn it himself when first confronted by the dragons’ amazing ability, so he waited patiently for the question he knew she would ask.
“J’trel,” Lorana began slowly, her expression guarded but hopeful, “could we go between time to when my father was with that herdbeast and warn him?”
J’trel shook his head and said sadly, “If we could have, we already would have.”
Lorana raised her brows in confusion.
“You can’t alter the past,” he told her. “As long as it never happened in the past, it never can happen in the past.”
“Why not?”
It cannot be done, Talith said. A dragon cannot go to a place that is not.
Lorana looked puzzled.
“I tried once,” J’trel said, shaking his head at some sad memory. “I couldn’t picture my destination in my mind.”
It is like trying to fly through rock, Talith added.
“I wanted to go back to when my mother was still alive,” J’trel said. “I wanted her to see that I’d Impressed, that I’d become a dragonrider. I thought it’d make her happy.” He shook his head. “But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t see her and the place clearly enough in my mind to give Talith the image.”
You had not done it, so you could not, Talith explained with draconic logic.
Lorana shook her head, mystified. “Maybe if I think about it long enough, it’ll make sense,” she said, but her attention was already caught by the tall masts of the ships docked just ahead. Swarms of seamen and landsmen bustled about, loading and unloading carts, ships, and conveyances. “Which one is it?” she asked J’trel.
“The shiny new one!” he told her, gesturing with a flourish. “The good ship Wind Rider, readying for her maiden voyage.”
Eyes widening, Lorana grabbed her book and stylus from her carisak and began sketching furiously.
A sea voyage would do her good, J’trel mused, watching her draw. It would give her a chance to take stock, see more of the world, and maybe learn to see herself as she really was. She thought too poorly of herself.
He remembered how he had first met Lorana. It had been late and dark, and he and Talith had been cold and feeling old… lost.
His partner, K’nad, had succumbed to his ailment, and K’nad’s green Narith had departed forever between a sevenday before. J’trel had summoned his courage and done everything to make K’nad’s passing easier for everyone in the Weyr.
Then he had gone to tell K’nad’s kinsfolk, at the Hold where he had been born and raised. Carel, Lord Holder of Lemose and K’nad’s younger brother, took the news silently, inured to death from the great losses of the Plague twelve Turns before.
After an uncomfortable dinner, Lady Munori saw J’trel to the great Hold doors.
“He has buried his grief so deep that it no longer shows,” she said of her husband, as an apology to the dragonrider. She touched his arm consolingly. “He was always proud of K’nad.”
J’trel nodded and turned to leave.
“Dragonrider! My lord!” someone called out of the night. “A moment, please.” There was a note of panic in the voice.
J’trel turned to see a young woman rushing toward him. She was tall, still gangly in her youth, and not very pretty.
“Your pardon, my lord,” she said. “I was hoping to speak with you before you left.”
“This is Lorana,” Munori said to J’trel, her voice tinged with sadness. “Her father, Sannel, was a beastmaster who bred for us, as well as Benden and Bitra.” She grimaced. “One of our beasts got crazed and kicked him in the head.”
“To be in demand by three Holds-your father must be sorely missed,” J’trel said, looking at Lorana more closely. He revised his first impression. Her dark hair and almond eyes were set in an expressive face that was, at the moment, quite somber. He wondered what she would look like when she smiled.
Lorana nodded. “I was wondering if I could ask your advice,” she said after a moment. “The beast that killed my father also snapped the wing on Grenn, one of my fire-lizards.”
“I’m sorry,” J’trel replied, guessing at the nature of her request. “I’m afraid I haven’t heard of any new clutches recently. But if I do, I’ll be sure to put your name in for a replacement egg.”
Lorana shook her head. “He still lives.”
J’trel was amazed. “Usually a fire-lizard suffering such a wound will go between,” he remarked. “Often forever.”