Skinny shied at some imaginary bogey in the greening bushes by the track. Alessan swayed to the motion, checking the animal's sideway plunge with a firm pressure of that leg, while he made sure that the flaps on the saddlebags were secure. Alessan liked an active mover but he couldn't risk the precious fluid or pause to school a fractious beast. He must concentrate on riding and not be diverted by visions of the impossible. Moreta was the Fort Weyrwoman. Although she might, just might, enjoy a discreet relationship with him, might even allow a pregnancy-and suddenly Alessan longed for a child as he had not with Suriana-Alessan was still Lord of a severely depleted bloodline. He had to have an acknowledged wife, and others to bear his children, as many as he could beget.

Old Runel was dead, he thought with a flash of regret. Old Runel and all the Ruathan begets as well as the bloodlines of runners back to the Crossing. He'd never thought he would rue the loss of that man.

Skinny trotted, its hocks well under it and with a fine forward extension. Too bad the creature was gelded. Ruatha had once had far better specimens to propagate. Alessan inhaled against the hope at the end of this track. He tried to keep from wondering which animals Dag had seen fit to take with him. If only Dag had included one breeding pair of the Lord Leef's heavy carters . . . The records of animals destroyed that Norman had started to keep had been lost when the raceflats temporary hospital had been abandoned. Alessan wished futilely that he had made time to look in OK the beasthold that frantic morning before he had taken ill.

Alessan came to the fork in the track, each direction leading to nursery fields. Dag would have taken the less accessible one, he decided, but he paused long enough to see if there had been a message left at the division. Not a rag, a bone, or an unnatural formation of the pebbles. Nine days had passed since Dag left with Fergal. Fear burrowed from the trap in his mind to which Alessan had banished it.

He dug his heels into Skinny, and the beast responded instantly, skittering at a good rate up the track, high breathing as it caught the excitement generated in its rider. Runners were considered stupid, had few ways to communicate with riders, and yet occasionally one seemed to know exactly what was going on in the human it bore. Alessan laid a soothing hand on Skinny's arched neck and brought the animal to a more sensible pace.

Then they were at the rise that led to the pasture and, for a heartbreaking moment, Alessan could see nothing of man or beast in the rolling fields. But the barrier had been man-made, with prickly hedge and stone, high enough to contain docile beasts. He rose in his stirrups, numb with the fear that Dag had brought the plague with him and died with all the animals. Then he saw the thin column of smoke to his right, saw the flapping of a shirt drying on a branch. He heard a piercing whistle.

From the slope down to the stream, runners trooped obediently in answer to the summons. Alessan felt tears prick his eyes. He hauled Skinny smartly back down the road, turned, set his heels to the bony ribs, and Skinny charged the barrier, sailing nobly over it, clacking with surprise when they landed on the far side. Alessan hauled the delighted animal to a more sedate pace, remembering his mission. It was only then that he saw, among the beasts jogging up the slope, the wobbly-legged awkward infantile bodies, the waddling pace of the gravid. Alessan let out a whoop of jubilation and it reverberated from the hills. Had Dag taken all the pregnant mares with him? Alessan had bleakly had to assume that all the anticipated foals had died of the plague or been aborted, for all he found in the fields of the Hold proper had been gelded males and barren mares.

His whoop was answered from the rude shelter dug into the high side of the slope. The small figure standing at its entrance waved both arms. One small figure! Inadvertently Alessan checked Skinny and then urged it forward. One small black-haired figure, now with impudent arms cocked against ragged pants. Fergal!

"You took your time. Lord Alessan!" The boy's expression was as impertinent as his words were resentful and unforgiving.

"Dag?" Alessan's voice broke in consternation. He could not move from the saddle. Until that moment, he hadn't realized how much he had looked forward to seeing the old handler, how sorely he needed Dag's knowledgeable advice if Ruathan runners were ever to regain their former prestige.

Annoyingly, Fergal shrugged and then cocked his head up at Alessan.

"I thought you'd forgotten us!" He stepped to one side and gestured toward the shelter. "He broke his leg. I took care of all the runners, even the ones who birthed. Didn't I do a good job?"

Alessan would have swatted him for impudence had he been able to catch him but Fergal, grinning with positive malice at his little hoax, had slipped neatly out of range into the shelter of his charges.

"Alessan?" Dag's summons came from the shelter and Alessan put aside any thought of discipline to rush in to his old ally. "I saved all I could for you, Alessan. I saved all I could."

"You have also saved Ruatha!"

"I do apologize for intruding on the Hatching Ground, Moreta," Capiam said, peering cautiously around the entrance.

"Come in. Come in!" Moreta beckoned him eagerly to join her in her temporary accommodation in the first tier.

Capiam looked back over his shoulder a moment and then entered, keeping an anxious eye on Orlith among her eggs.

"She does seem quite serene, doesn't she?"

"Oh, she is!"

"M'barak, who conveyed Desdra and me here, said that she will even show off that splendid queen egg she clutched." With due respect for the hot volcanic sands, Capiam walked quickly to Moreta.

"Desdra's here? I've heard a great deal about her from M'barak and K'lon."

"She's chatting with Jallora so I could have a private word with you." Capiam cleared his throat in an uncharacteristic show of nervousness.

Moreta thought he was wary of Orlith and extended her hands to him. She supposed she must get used to the changes wrought in people by the plague. Capiam appeared only to have lost weight, for his eyes sparkled out of a craggy face that would become more attractive with age. His hair was thinning at the temples and she fancied that the gray had encroached farther into the black, but there was no diminution in the force of his personality, or in his grip as he clasped her hands.

"To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" she asked.

His eyes twinkled. "An unexpected . . . challenge is what I told Master Tirone."

Alerted by his geniality, Moreta searched his face. "What sort of a challenge?"

"I'll come to that in a moment, if I may. First, would you know if runnerbeasts would respond favorably to a serum vaccine against the plague they also suffer?"

Moreta stared at him a moment, surprised to be asked the same question twice in a short space of time, and surprised that the question had to be asked at all. She was angry that no one had taken steps to safeguard the runnerbeasts, which were such valuable assets of the Northern Continent. She had tried to appreciate that saving human life had been the priority, but surely someone must have been rational enough in one of the runnerholds to apply the principal to the beasts. She had been complimented and touched that Alessan had sought her advice yesterday evening and, despite her varied irritations, slightly amused that she, Weyrwoman of Fort, was now being approached by the Masterhealer.

"I answered that same question for Alessan last night."

"Oh!" Capiam blinked with surprise. "Oh, and how did you answer Lord Alessan?"

"Affirmatively."