Dragonsblood

Dragonsblood is the title of a 2005 fantasy-science fiction novel by Todd McCaffrey, based upon the Dragonriders of Pern universe created by his mother, Anne McCaffrey.

Predating the plague that sweeps humanity in the stories Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern and Nerilka's Story, Dragonsblood answers the question of what happens when a specialized species is hit with a disease that is incurable given the level of technology available.

Plot summary

Near the end of the first Pass of the Red Star, the elderly Wind Blossom, a geneticist and granddaughter of the legendary Kitti Ping is bemoaning the gradual loss of manufactured items and the technology to create them. She and her ex-protégé Tieran are startled by two fire-lizards who literally fall from the sky. One, a gold, dies upon arrival and it is obvious that both are sick. They nurse the other one, a brown, back to health, using the last of the antibiotics. Not knowing if the fire-lizard’s sickness is contagious, they quarantine it until it recovers. Tieran adopts the fire lizard and names him Grenn – the name found on the harness he was wearing. Further investigation of the decorations on Grenn’s harness leads to the incredible conclusion that he is from the future. Since fire-lizards were the original blueprint that Kitti Ping used to build the Thread-fighting dragons (and Wind Blossom used to build the watch-whers), they speculate that this future disease could be fatal to dragons. This is confirmed when a dead gold dragonet appears – one that was obviously sick from the same future disease. The dragon’s body is destroyed, but Tieren recovers a decorated piece of metal from its harness. In order to save the dragons of the future, Wind Blossom and Tieren devise a plan to educate someone from the future in genetics and the scientific knowledge to isolate the disease and devise a cure. They create hidden rooms in Benden Weyr and fill them with instructions and equipment to educate that future person. Tieran believes that both the fire-lizard and dragon came from the same future woman, since both had similar harness decorations and only women Impress gold dragons. He further believes that she has some connection to himself and Wind Blossom – a connection that both dragon and fire lizards followed. He leaves a small souvenir for her in the hidden rooms.

About 400 years later, at the beginning of the 3rd Pass of the Red Star, a talented young sketch artist/amateur healer named Lorana is hitching a ride across the ocean to the newly built Half-Circle seahold. In a desperate attempt to save her two fire-lizards Grenn and Garth during a storm at sea, she orders them to leave her and believes they are dead. She is found washed up on the beach by dragonriders from Benden Weyr and recovers just in time to Impress Arith, a gold dragon. Meanwhile, dragons and fire-lizards are falling sick to a disease with a 100% mortality rate. Fire-lizards are banned from the Weyrs and many die due to the disease. Lorana, who can hear and speak with any dragon, thus sharing in the death of each dragon, frantically scours records in hopes for some sort of clue or help towards fighting the disease. She unearths records of hidden rooms in the Weyr and gets them open. The recorded voice of Wind Blossom invites her and her companions to enter and learn what they need to find a cure. Lorana’s dragon Arith goes between and dies when a combination of the disease and an injection of watch-wher genetic material wreak havoc with her system. Despite the tragedy of losing Arith and the added burden of over a thousand dragon deaths, Lorana successfully learns how to use such items as a microscope and a genetic sampler to find the disease and create a cure. She can only make a single dose which she injects into the pregnant gold Minith, in hopes that the cure will be passed onto future dragon generations. Minith, her irritable rider Tullea and several others are sent between times to the past to give them time to recover. They return in triumph, with enough cure to save the rest of the dragons. An older and kinder Tullea gives Lorana an ancient locket she had swiped from the first of the hidden rooms. In it are a piece of Arith’s harness and pictures of Wind Blossom, Tieran and her fire-lizard Grenn.

Notes

The fire-lizard banishment probably lead the absence of fire-lizards (once common creatures to the average human on Pern) by Moreta’s time (5th or 6th Pass) and their ‘re-discovery’ by F’nor and Menolly several hundred years later (9th pass).

The story also brings back a time shortly after that of Dragonsdawn, introducing the use of drums as a means of communication across distances that figures prominently in the Harper Hall trilogy and other earlier stories. Fire-lizards used to be the main relayers of messages, but with their banishment, people turned to drums to spread news.

The loss of technology leads to a shift towards an oral tradition and the creation and use of Teaching Songs.

Wind Blossom was trained by her grandmother, Kitti Ping, who was an Eridani-trained geneticist. The Eridani have a tradition of passing the responsibility of watching over genetic changes to their descendants. Wind Blossom was resistant to this idea, but it still played through as her daughter Emorra marries Tieran - it is strongly implied that Lorana is a descendant of Tieran.

Watch-whers are shown in a more prominent light compared to books written after the 9th pass. It is mentioned that they were purposly built to be nocturnal and fight Thread at night. This is a ret-con from books written by Anne McCaffrey alone. It is unclear if there are wild watch-whers or if they continue to fight Thread by the 9th pass. Watch-whers that are with humans are misunderstood and have been reduced to chained up watchdogs.