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person's arm, Kitti Ping created the huge fire-breathing dragons, able to
carry
a rider, telepathically bound to his mount, into a flaming battle against
Thread. And so humankind on Pern was saved.
It was the sound of a dragon's bugle that had disturbed Wind Blossom's
dreams.
Through the unshuttered windows, she could make out the beat of the dragon's
wings and heard it land in the courtyard outside the College.
Shouts and cries reached her window with emotions intact but words
incomprehensible. The dragon alone was indication enough of something
extraordinary, and the voices confirmed that there was some sort of
emergency.
The voices in the courtyard moved inside.
Her room smelled of lavender. Wind Blossom took a long, deep lungful of the
smell and turned to look at the fresh cutting on her bedside table. Her
mother's
room had always smelled of cedar. Sometimes of apple blossoms, too, but
always
of cedar.
Perhaps some arnica would help, Wind Blossom thought as she summoned the
strength to ignore the pain in her old joints and the weakness of her muscles
as
she sat up in bed and slid her feet into her slippers. Arnica was good for
bruises and aches.
And some peppermint tea for my thinking, she added with a bittersweet twinkle
in
her eyes.
She walked to her dresser and looked impassively at her face reflected in the
still water of the wash basin. Her hair was still dark-it would always be
dark-as were her eyes. They stared impassively back at her as she examined
her
face. Her skin had the same yellowish tinge of her Asian ancestors; her eyes
had
the Asian almond shape.
Wind Blossom completed her inspection, noting once again that the muscles
around
her face, which had slackened thirty years before, pulled the corners of her
lips downward.
Opening her dresser, she saw the yellow tunic at the bottom of her drawer and
sighed imperceptibly as she had done at the sight of it every day for the
past
twenty years. Once, an accident at the laundry had left one of her white
tunics
with a distinctly yellowish tinge. No one had remarked on it. When the day
was
over, Wind Blossom had carefully put the yellow tunic away in her drawers.
She
had worn it again, years later-and no one had noticed. Now, as always, she
carefully pulled out one of her scrupulously white tunics. From the lower
drawer
she pulled out a fresh pair of black pants.
Dressed, Wind Blossom turned her attention back to the noises that had awoken
her. From the sounds outside, she suspected-
"My lady, my lady!" a girl's voice called. Wind Blossom didn't recognize the
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voice. It was probably one of the new medical trainees. "Please come quickly,
there's been an accident!"
Although there was no one in the room to see, Wind Blossom did not let her
face
show her amusement at being called "my lady."
"What is it?" she asked, rising and moving toward the door.
"Weyrleader M'hall from Benden has brought in a boy," the trainee answered,
opening the door as she heard Wind Blossom reach for the latch. "He was
attacked."
Wind Blossom's heart sank. Her face remained calm, but inwardly she quailed.
The
look on the girl's face was all she needed to identify the attacker. The
youngster continued resolutely, "It was a watch-wher."
Wind Blossom passed through the door and marched past the apprentice who,
though
much younger, towered over her. "Bring my bag."
The trainee paused, torn between guiding the frail old woman down the steps
and
obeying her orders.
"My bones are not so worn that I cannot walk unaided," Wind Blossom told her.
"Get my bag."
There was only one clean room in the infirmary. It was too primitive to be
considered anything like a proper operating room but it was well scrubbed.
Wind Blossom registered how the people outside it were grouped: Her daughter
and
a musician were in one group, M'hall and a man she thought she should know
were
in another group, and two interns were in a third.
The interns looked up when she arrived, but M'hall spoke first. "My lady Wind
Blossom, my mother told me that you are the most skilled in sutures."
When had everyone started with the "my lady" 's? Wind Blossom thought acidly.
"How is the patient?" she asked Latrel, the nearest intern.
"The patient has severe lacerations on the face, neck, and abdomen," he
answered
quickly. Wind Blossom noted but did not comment on his ashen appearance and
the
way he licked his lips. Latrel had attended a number of major
injuries-clearly
this was worse. "He is a ten-year-old boy. He's been dosed with numbweed and
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