Fiona was busy laying out medicinal supplies and bandages when a shadow alerted her to another presence. It was Lorana.

“Can I help?”

“It’ll be messy,” Fiona warned.

“I’m used to it from Benden,” Lorana said. “Although with forty dragons I think we can hope for few injuries.”

“We might even get away with none,” Fiona agreed. She glanced around at the tables set up nearby. “In which case all this effort will be for nothing.”

“I would be happy with that.”

“So would I,” Fiona said with a grin. Her expression slipped as she added, “I just hope it’s not too bad.”

“You never really get numb to all the pain and screaming,” Lorana said absently.

Fiona gave her an intense look. “They say that you can feel dragons.”

Lorana nodded.

“What’s it like?”

“It’s like breathing,” Lorana told her. “Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it’s marvelous, but always it’s just something I do.”

“But you didn’t always.”

“Actually, I think I did,” Lorana told her. “I only knew what I was doing after I Impressed Garth and Grenn.”

“Your fire-lizards?”

A ghost of a smile crossed Lorana’s face as she nodded. “When I thought I was dying, I sent them away to save them.” Lorana explained how she’d been lost overboard in a storm, how the fire-lizards were sick even then, and how she’d sent them away from her.

“I would have done the same,” Fiona said, even as, privately, she wondered if she would have had the courage.

“Somehow Grenn survived.”

“He survived?”

“He went back in time, the First Pass or the end of it,” Lorana said. “I think he was sick then and his sickness alerted them to our problem.”

“So you saved Pern three times,” Fiona said. Lorana looked at her quizzically. “Kindan told me all about it. First, when you sent your fire-lizard back as a warning, and then when you lost your queen—you said your locket had a piece of your riding harness in it—and finally when you called”—Fiona paused, looking at Lorana in growing surprise—“you called across time, didn’t you?”

“I must have,” Lorana agreed. “I wasn’t trying to do that. I was trying to save D’gan and the others, to save Caranth and, instead …”

“And that’s how Wind Blossom and Emorra—five hundred Turns back in time—knew what to put in the Ancient Rooms found at Benden. And how you found the cure to the illness,” Fiona finished when it was clear that Lorana was unable to speak. She reached out to the older woman and touched her gently on the shoulder.

Lorana looked up and met Fiona’s eyes.

“Thank you,” Fiona said, her eyes sparkling with emotion. “I’m sorry you lost your queen, but you saved mine and if there’s anything I can do …”