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As they began to mount the stalwart Nabeth, Moreta turned to Alessan.
"Tuero's watching us. Has he any idea?"
Alessan moved his hands about her waist more than was strictly required to heave her toward B'lerion, who was already seated on Nabeth's neck.
"One can't keep a harper from having ideas, but he should be under the impression that we are going to see Master Balfor at the Beasthold about the animal vaccine. Moving everything up to the main Hall presently will occupy even his active mind."
Then all were aboard. B'lerion had insisted that Oklina ride before him, where he could secure her with his fighting straps. Moreta he positioned behind him to help direct Nabeth. Alessan rode behind Moreta, then Desdra and, finally, Capiam as the most experienced of the other passengers.
Orlith. I shan't be long but I must go, Moreta said. So Nabeth has told me. Orlith sounded unconcerned.
"Moreta!" B'lerion's voice and a hard nudge of his right elbow interrupted her private communication. "I've got the moons and the Red Star visualized. Facing northwest, the Red Star is horizon, Belior half full ascending, and the quarter horn of Timor mid-heaven. You will please concentrate on how Ista looks with those ging trees in bloom. Think of them as now and in Ista, and the heat of autumn and the smell of those rotting rainforests."
Nabeth was excited but his launch had the smooth precision of the experienced dragon and did not even sway his passengers as he took off.
Moreta had become accustomed to two dragon presences in her mind; now a third one, a lighter one but by no means weaker, added itself. She conjured the image of Ista's southern palisades in their autumnal finery, the Red Star balefully glowering above the western sea, Belior half full and rising, and the quarter horn of the smaller Timor demurely above. She held that vision locked in her mind as she felt Nabeth take them between. She wanted to make use of her usual litany, but the blossom eyes of the ging tree and the heavenheld guides were sufficient comfort. Then, tearfulness mounting to an incredible pressure in heart and lungs, they were suddenly in the warm air, high over Ista's rocky coast, the creamy eyes of the ging tree blossoms seeking the early-morning sun just rising in the east. B'lerion let out a whoop and Oklina a tiny scream. This time it was Alessan who clung to Moreta for reassurance.
Nabeth immediately noticed the rocky ledge where Moreta had often landed Orlith to harvest needlethorn. It was high above the incoming tide that battered diligently at the rock palisade. Nabeth landed as competently as he had taken off, his wing strokes flattening the thick brush that clung to the very edge of the cliff.
"Needlethorn will be down that slope," Moreta called as they prepared to dismount.
B'lerion made an ostentatious descent from Nabeth, causing the dragon to turn his head with a startled exclamation.
"You could have broken your other arm, B'lerion," Moreta said, but she had to laugh because he'd succeeded. She explained to Oklina the proper and safer way of dismounting a tall dragon, and Nabeth obediently lifted his foreleg.
"Are we really in the future?" Capiam asked as Alessan handed out the cargo nets. He looked about him with an expression of awe.
"We'd better be," B'lerion said, glowering with mock ferocity at Moreta before taking another speculative glance at the three guides in the lightening sky.
"We are," she replied as calmly as she could, for she was becoming increasingly aware of a curious sense of disorientation within her-a sensation of weightlessness and a growing euphoria, neither of which she had ever experienced before. Action would dispel such contradictory agitations. She pointed down the slope. "We'll go this way and we'll know soon enough if we find needlethorn. I harvested here myself last year, with Ista's permission since they gather on more accessible slopes." And she led the way.
The ravine was ten or more dragon-lengths from the cliff edge, and Moreta was suddenly filled with apprehension. She hadn't cleared the bushes completely last autumn, but then the moons had been in a different conjunction and the Red Star was higher in the west. No one was more relieved than she to break onto the lip of the ravine and see needlebushes thick with brown spikes. Above them the rainforest closed over the sky. The ravine, winding away to the north and the south, had been caused by an ancient earthquake, and the shallow soil over solid rock could not support many of the lush rainforest plants though creepers draped its sides, keeping well clear of needlethorn bushes. Alessan commented on that.
"The needlethorn is omnivorous," she said. "The spines are poisonous through spring and summer. They'll suck the juice from anything that comes near them until the autumn when the thick stem of the plant has stored enough moisture and food, vegetable or animal. The vine grows during the winter and has to shed its old corona or leave too many unprotected gaps. I understand that the flesh is tasty."
Oklina shuddered, but Desdra went down on one knee by the specimen they were examining.
"During spring and summer the bush has an odor to attract snakes and insects. The hollow spines suck essential juices from the creatures the plant impales, and also rainwater. See, on that one there, the top is scarred. Some animal broke off the spines. That'll make it easier to harvest."
"You said the spines are poisonous." B'lerion was not too keen to start picking.
"In spring and summer, but right now the poison has dried up. See where new thorn buds are capping the scarred one? It's the new growth that forces the spines off. So all you do is-" With a sweep of her hand starting in the scar, she cleared a swath of needlethorns, holding the handful for all to see. "Very simple, but don't get too ambitious. Clear a small area first to give your hand room. You don't want to tick off the point and you want to avoid the fine hairs on the skin of the plant. They can cause an irritation and possibly an inflammation that would be rather difficult for us to explain."
"We can't transport them like that," Capiam said, looking at Moreta's handful.
"No. We have to wrap them in the fronds of the ging tree. Slice the edge, and sap from the frond provides its own glue. Very handy, and the fronds are thick and spongy enough to cushion and protect the needlethorn. It takes only a moment to strip a bush, so it might be more efficient if we paired off, one to pick and the other to pack."
"I'll pack for you, Moreta," Alessan suggested, and, taking his belt knife out of its sheath, went off to hack down the nearest ging frond.
"A grand idea," B'lerion said, his eyes dancing as he laid a possessive hand on Oklina's shoulder. "If you don't mind working with a one-handed man?"
"My dear journeywoman, pick or pack?" Capiam asked in high good humor as he bowed to Desdra. "Though we can switch off as the whim takes us."
"I daresay I've picked more often than you, good Master Capiam." She laughed as she led Capiam off down the ravine. "You'd best see how it's done."
"Take the tenderer fronds, Alessan," Moreta cautioned. "They've more sap and suppleness."
He had cut several, muttering about doing hatchet work with a table knife, when Moreta showed him how to break the frond off at the stem of the tree with a quick downward jerk. She laid the needlethorns on the petiole that was sufficiently concave to form a bed, and, deftly cutting away the excess leaf, she closed the needlethorns in a tough, tight little envelope, sealing the ends with the sap of the severed frond.
"No wonder you said we'd have everything in the rainforest. It's easy once you get the trick of it."
"That's all there is to it. Just a knack." She gri