“There is,” Kindan agreed. “But I think we’ll find enough here to keep us occupied for a while.”
“We’ll be glad to help again,” Renna said. Dalor nodded firmly in agreement.
“When we’re ready, we’ll be happy to have you back,” B’nik said. “You’ve been a great help.”
M’tal’s Gaminth and K’tan’s Drith were waiting in the Bowl as they emerged from the Hatching Grounds. Kindan helped the miners climb up on the dragons’ backs.
“I’ll get started while you’re gone,” he told K’tan when all the miners were settled a-dragonback.
“I’ll expect you to be done by the time I get back,” K’tan called down. Kindan grinned and tossed the dragonrider a sloppy salute.
With a leap and a few great sweeps of their wings, the two dragons were airborne and then gone between.
“There’s got to be something more,” Kindan said to K’tan hours later.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because, aside from those four glass vials and whatever’s in them,” Kindan replied, “there isn’t anything there.”
“There are these,” K’tan said, pulling open a drawer and pointing at some long, thin clear objects with strange handles on the top. “They have to be syringes for injections.”
“Injections?”
K’tan nodded. “Sometimes the herders use syringes when there’s a particularly nasty spread of infection going around. They take the blood from one of the recovered herdbeasts and inject it into the others, spreading the immunity.”
Kindan gave the healer a dubious look.
“Lorana would know about it,” K’tan added. He looked at the vial. “I suspect that this is supposed to be liquefied and injected.”
“Liquefied?”
“Probably with sterile water,” K’tan said.
“For what purpose?” Kindan asked.
“I don’t know. I’d be a whole lot happier if there was a sign that said this was the cure we were looking for,” K’tan agreed.
“Do you see any sign?” Kindan asked, pivoting to look all around the room.
“The marks on the walls,” K’tan pointed out, gesturing.
“Which don’t serve any purpose that I can make out,” Kindan said, making a sour face.
“What about that song of yours-doesn’t it offer any suggestions?”
Kindan shook his head, his jaw clenched. “I can’t remember any more of it.” He slammed his fist onto the countertop in anger. Then he tapped his head. “It’s in here, I know it is, but I can’t remember it-even just after the fire in the Archives, I couldn’t remember-and I’m the last one who read that dratted song.”
“Certainly the last one left alive,” K’tan agreed grimly. He had heard the story from both Kindan and M’tal, although their accounts differed: a playfight in the Harper Hall’s Archives had caused a fire that had burned countless old Records to ashes. He remembered hearing how Kindan had been banished to Fort Hold until his fate was decided, how the Plague had interrupted everything, how Kindan’s efforts had saved the survivors of Fort Hold, and how the grateful Lord Holder had seen to Kindan’s reinstatement in the Harper Hall.
K’tan’s expression grew grim. “If we don’t find a cure soon…”
Dejectedly, Kindan turned toward the exit. “I have to report to B’nik.”
It was Arith’s coughing that drove Lorana down to the newly opened Oldtimer room. She waited until her dragon was sleeping as well as could be expected, waited until she felt hopeful that Arith might not have another coughing episode-which meant that she didn’t leave until late in the night.
Softly she made her way across the Bowl and into the Hatching Ground. She searched in the dim light until she found the new opening, visible by the faint light coming from it. Her steps grew surer as she got closer and the light from the room grew brighter. She paused for a moment at the doorway, stifling a gasp of wonder at the drawing on the other side of the room, and then entered.
Salina and Kiyary had both given her good descriptions of the room, but she needed to see with her own eyes. Kindan was sitting behind the tabletop that held the four vials. When she entered the room, he started, wiping the fatigue from his eyes.
“I must have dozed off,” he muttered when he saw her. He straightened up and asked, “How is Arith?”
“Her cough is getting worse,” Lorana said, striving to keep her composure. She gestured at the vials. “Is that all there is?”
Kindan nodded resignedly. “These cabinets are empty. There’s another doorway,” he said, pointing to the wall with the drawings, “but it won’t open.”
“Is it blocked? The rockslide?”
“No,” Kindan replied, “I don’t think so. We got an echo when we knocked on it.” He shook his head. “Either the mechanism’s broken or…”
Lorana waved away his explanation and strode over to the drawings. “So we’ve got these, and those vials?”
“That’s it,” Kindan said.
Lorana bent to peer closely at the drawings. “These are very detailed.” She traced the spiraling patterns of one, bending down and peering closer. “This must mean something-someone went to an awful lot of trouble to make these.”
“Mmm.” Kindan’s response sounded more like the noise of someone falling asleep than the noise of someone listening attentively. Lorana turned around just in time to catch him nodding off; he woke up again just as his head bobbed down to his chest.
“You should get some sleep,” she told him. “You’re no good here.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be up most of the night anyway,” Lorana said morosely. “Arith’s not sleeping well.”
“I’m sorry,” Kindan said miserably.
Lorana shook her head. “You can’t help if you’re asleep on your feet.” She pointed to the door. “Go.”
Kindan entertained a rebellious look for a moment before sighing resignedly and shuffling toward the door. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”
Lorana had already turned back to the drawing and was examining it intently, so her only response was a negligent wave of her hand over her shoulder.
When she had finished examining the first drawing, Lorana repeated her inspection on the next. She stopped as she noticed some patterns in the new drawing and went back to look at the first. She sighed. There were not only similar patterns between the two drawings but also similar patterns within each drawing. It reminded her of some strange beadwork. For a while she entertained the notion of getting some colored beads and stringing them in the spiraling triangles that were represented by the drawings. The beadwork would be pretty enough, she mused, but she couldn’t see how it could help the dragons.
She shook her head to clear the thought and turned to the third drawing. Again she found similar patterns and repeated patterns in the drawing. She turned her efforts to the fourth drawing-and stopped dead in her tracks. Four drawings, four vials.
Lorana straightened and turned to the tabletop where the four vials were placed. Did the four patterns match the four vials somehow?
Were the patterns supposed to tell someone which vial to use? Could it be that the knowledge represented by those drawings had been so common when they were first drawn that no one had ever considered that the method of reading them might be forgotten and that was why there were only the vials and the drawings? Read the drawings and pick the vial?
But Lorana couldn’t read the drawings. And Arith was dying. She knew it, she tried to deny it, and she would never think it while Arith was awake and might hear her thought, but it was so. No dragon who had gotten the sickness had survived.
Four vials. Four drawings. Four illnesses? Was one of the vials the one that could cure the dragons?