"How many are ill, if the Weyrs must consolidate to fly Fall?" Leri grimaced. "Steel yourself! Nearly two thirds of every Weyr except High Reaches is out of action. Between the plague and injuries, we can only just manage to send our two wings to cover Fall."

"But you said Master Capiam had a cure?"

"A preventive. And not enough of this vaccine yet." Leri spoke with an angry regret. "So the Weyrwomen decided that the High Reaches' riders must be vaccinated"-she stumbled over the unfamiliar term-"since we must all look to S'ligar and Falga. As more of the serum is prepared, other Weyrs will be vaccinated. Right now Capiam has the drums burning to find more people who have recovered from this viral influence. First dragonriders"-Leri ticked off each name on a finger-"then Healers, then Lord Holders and other Craftsmasters, except for Tirone, which, I think no matter how Tolocamp objects, is sensible."

"Tolocamp hasn't been ill?"

"Tolocamp won't leave his apartment."

"You know a great deal about what's happening for a woman who stays in her own weyr most of the time!"

Leri chuckled. "K'lon reports to me! Whenever, that is, Capiam hasn't his exclusive services. Fortunately blues have good appetites and, although Capiam maintains that dragons, wherries, and watchwhers can't contract the plague, dragons had best eat from stock isolated in their own weyrs. So K'lon brings Rogeth home to eat. Daily."

"Dragons don't eat daily."

"Blue dragons who must flit between twice hourly do." Leri gave Moreta a stern glance. "I had a note from Capiam, could barely read his script, lauding K'lon's dedication-"

"A'murry?"

"Recovering. Very close thing but Holth was in constant touch with Granth once I realized how vital dragon support could be. L'bol lost both his sons and he grieves constantly. M'tani's impossible, but then he has fought Thread longer than most and sees this incident as a personal affront. If it weren't for K'dren and S'ligar, I think we'd have had trouble with F'gal: He's lost heart, too."

"Leri, there's something you're not telling me."

"Yes, dear girl." Leri patted Moreta's arm gently before she filled a glass from one of her flasks. "Take a sip of this," she said peremptorily, handing it to her.

Obediently Moreta did, and she was about to ask what on earth Leri had concocted, when she felt Orlith's presence in her mind, like a buffer.

"Your family's hold . . ." Leri's voice thickened and she avoided Moreta's gaze, staring instead at the bright central design of the door curtain. ". . . was very hard hit."

Leri's voice habitually broke but that time it was pronounced, and Moreta peered at the older woman's averted face. Tears were running unheeded down the round cheek nearest her.

"There'd been no drum message in two days. The harper at Keroon heights made the trip downriver . . ." Leri's fingers tightened on Moreta's arm. "There was no one alive."

"No one?" Moreta was stunned. Her father's hold had supported nearly three hundred people, and another ten families had cots nearby on the river bluffs.

"Drink that down!"

Numbly Moreta complied. "No one alive? Not even someone out with the bloodstock?"

Leri shook her head slowly. "Not even the bloodstock!" Her admission was almost a whisper. Moreta could barely grasp the staggering tragedy. Obscurely, it was the deaths of the bloodstock that she regretted the most. Twenty Turns ago she had acquiesced to her family's wish that she respond to Search. She regretted their deaths, certainly, for she had been fond of her mother, and several of her brothers and sisters, and one paternal uncle; she had enormous respect for her father. The runnerbeasts-all the bloodstock that had been so carefully bred for the eight generations her family had the runnerhold-that loss cut more deeply.

Orlith crooned gently, and her dragon's compassion was subtly reinforced by a second pressure. Moreta felt the terrible weight of her grief being eased by an anodyne of love and affection, of total understanding for the complexities of her sorrow, of a commitment to share and ease the multiple pressures of bereavement.

Tears streamed down Moreta's cheeks until she felt drained but curiously detached from her body and mind, floating in an unusual sensation of remoteness. Leri had put something very powerful in that wine of hers, she thought with an odd clarity. Then she noticed that Leri was watching her intently, her eyes incredibly sad and tired, every line of her many Turns etched in her round small face.

"No stock at all?" Moreta asked finally.

"Would young runners have been wintering on the plains? The harper couldn't check. Didn't know where and there hasn't been time to send a sweeprider."

"No, no. Of course there wouldn't be time. . . ." Moreta could quite see that impossibility with the present demands on available riders but she accepted the hopeful suggestion. "Yearlings and gravid runners would be in the winter pasture. Somebody of the Hold will have been tending them and survive."

The comforting presences in her mind wrapped her with love and reassurances. We are here!

Is Holth with you, Orlith? Moreta asked.

Of course, was the reply from two, now distinct to her, sources.

Oh! How kind! Moreta's mind drifted, oddly divorced from her body, until she became aware of Leri's anxious expression. "I'm all right. As Holth will tell you. Did you know she speaks to me?"

"Yes, she's got rather used to checking in on you," Leri said with a kind and serene smile.

"What did you put in that wine? I feel ... disembodied."

"That was rather the effect I hoped to achieve. Fellis juice, numbweed, and one of the euphorics. Just to cushion the shock."

"Are there more?" From the wavering of Leri's smile, Moreta knew that there were. "You might as well give me the whole round tale now while I'm so remote. My family's hold . . . cannot have been unique." Leri shook her head. "Ruatha Hold?" That would follow the line of catastrophe, Moreta thought.

"They have been badly hit. . . ."

"Alessan?" She asked about him first because his would be the worst loss there, before he'd even had time to enjoy being a Lord Holder.

"No, he's recovering, but the decimation among the Gather guests– his brothers, almost all the racers-"

"Dag?"

"I don't have many names. Igen Weyr and Hold have been shockingly depleted. Lord Fitatric, his Lady, half their children . . ."

"By the Egg, isn't there any place spared?"

"Yes, in fact, Bitra, Lemos, Nerat, Benden, and Tillek have had relatively few cases, and those were isolated promptly to avoid contagion. Those Holds have been magnificent in sending people to the stricken."

"Why?" Moreta clenched her fists, hunching herself together in a sudden convulsion that was more mental than physical. "Why? When we're so near the end of the Pass? It's not fair so close to an Interval. Did you know"-Moreta's voice was hard and intense– "that my family started out after the end of the last Pass? My bloodline started then? And now-just before the next Interval-it's wiped out!"

That isn't known for certain, if what you say of wintering stock applies. Do consider that possibility. That probability." The dragons reinforced Leri's optimism.

Moreta's outburst passed almost as swiftly as it had consumed her. She lay back, limp, her eyelids suddenly heavy, her body flaccid. Leri seemed to be retreating from her though she was conscious that the Weyrwoman still sat on the bed.

"That's right. You sleep now," Leri said in a gentle croon echoed by two dragon voices.

"I can't stay awake!" Moreta mumbled and, sighing, relaxed into a potion-induced sleep.

K'lon was intensely relieved when Journeyman Healer Fallen, his lips pulled down in a sorrowful line, emerged from Lord Alessan's apartment. The death-stench of the cold corridor bothered K'lon, inured though he was to plague-ridden holds.