Amharath and Lifeanth startled awake from restless slumber. There, again, a sharp knocking. Instantly alert, Amharath cracked open the door.
“Looks like I found the place!” said a familiar voice. But it wasn’t Simon. After joining them at the Mistral Meals competition yesterday, he’d napped deeply and then headed back towards WindSky Weyr to do some more intensive scouting around the local environs, having dutifully reported in to the Courriers’ Station on the situation he’d encountered. He’d planned to stay out through the night. Instead, a tawny wildclaw stood in the doorway. “Dayth! I didn’t expect to see you here!” She was known to spend up to a week at a time in the Harpy’s Roost, and often forgot what day it was. “Do come in! Er, all of you,” remembering her companion animals. “How did you know we were at this inn?”
“Simon!” she said. “We found him last night, and he knew you’d want to know what was going on, so I hightailed it over.”
“Wait,
you found
him? And what do you mean by
we?” It didn’t sound like she was referring to her snakes.
“Sounds like another story!” Lifeanth piped up. “I’ll make the tea!”
When they had settled in with their cups, Dayth began. “Okay, so you remember that Coatl that died last week during training?” “Er, no ….” “Oh right, you headed out here early …. Well, she’d come in to work with our trainers before moving on to serve the gods, and started having a bad time, getting more slow and clumsy instead of better.
Pousseth thought she should take a break, but no sooner had she called an out, the poor thing started gasping worse than ever and collapsed. She wasn’t breathing! Pousseth tried to revive her - you know the Coliseum fighters are all first responders - and said she felt really hot, and by the time the medics arrived it was too late, she was dead! Of course everyone wanted to find out what happened, and they poked at the body the way those sciencey types do, but all they could say was she’d been sick when she arrived, it wasn’t anything Pousseth had done. That was a relief for her, but then the next day she started feeling bad, and before you know it, everyone was getting sick! At least a third of the Weyr is down, though no one else has died.” She didn’t say “yet”, but they both could hear it. “ The fireborn dragons seem to be immune, and are keeping things going, though we don’t have many, mostly
Chie and her kids, and a number of those young
banescales,though they usually keep to themselves. Lucky for us
Gwentoth was originally a fire native or we’d have no idea what happened when we found ourselves on the outside of a Windchanter Keep Away spell! When so many dragons started dropping at once,
Windrith had her scry, and she said if they didn’t contain it, all Sornieth could be infected! They had to move fast, so the spell was put in place without warning to anyone inside or outside of the barrier. Since then she’s been using the familiars to mentally link one another and pass word to their host dragons, and we’ve been gathering outside our borders for safety, with our usual haven closed off. Simon didn’t find us, but we saw him and figured he was looking for news, so he’s there now. A few of the others are heading this way, but most of them are too shell-shocked. It’s bad! And worse, there may be other pockets of illness we don't know about, like where that fighter came from.”
She fell silent, while the other two stared at her.
“That’s not the story I wanted to hear,” said Lifeanth quietly, “but I guess it explains why no WindSky dragons showed up for the Mistral Meals this year!”
“Is there something we can do? I want to rush home and help, but obviously that’s exactly the sort of thing they're trying to prevent.” Amharath’s instincts were at full strength.
“No, we’re to stay away until Gwentoth sends word. She said it could be a long time before it’s safe to come home, and to plan to extend our stays wherever we were when this happened, or find some other temporary places. I was hoping you might have a little extra space for a night or two …”
“Of course! This room is rented to WindSky though the end of the week, as many as will fit, and you see it’s quite spacious. We hadn’t expected to be here still, but with no other arrivals, we didn’t want to leave it empty! We should get some breakfast, and then you must join us for a look around. This is the first time you’ve come during the Mistral Jamboree, isn’t it?”
“It is! And I could use a little diversion, after the stress of all this! I look forward to checking it out!” She gathered her snakes and followed them out.
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