The Masterharper of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

  So he did a rendition of one of his newer songs, backed by C’gan on gitar, and two pipers and the hand drum. The song was appreciated enough to require him to repeat it immediately, and there were many voices lifted in the chorus with him. Riders were not as inhibited as most holders, and whether they had the voice for the song or not, they were lusty in their singing.

  C’gan took turns with him and then called forth some of the solo voices. Maizella sang, as did R’yar, who had an excellent light baritone and hadn’t forgotten any of his repertoire in his Turns as a rider.

  Robinton never knew when Lord Maidir and S’loner left the table, for night had fallen, and although there were plenty of glowbaskets on the poles around the Bowl, there were so many coming and going with wine or to answer nature’s requirements, and so much for him to oversee as Harper, that he noticed their absence only when Lady Hayara rose and left the table, escaping a Jora slumped drunkenly across it.

  No one would ever know exactly what did happen that night, but suddenly a piercing scream from Nemorth roused everyone. Especially when every other dragon voice augmented her heartrending, piteous scream. It seemed to go on and on, as if none of the dragons need pause for breath. It cut through the night air, worse than any tormented watch-wher’s cry—a knife to the ears and to the heart. He thought his heart would stop at the anguish that reverberated in the Bowl.

  He was by no means the first person to clap hands to his ears to muffle the awful screeching. It was the look of shock on dragonrider faces that gave Robinton his clue to the tragedy that had just been announced in dragon voice. The entire Weyr was mourning the death of a dragon.

  Robinton grabbed C’gan and turned the stricken rider to him. C’gan’s nerveless fingers slipped off the gitar neck as tears sprang from his eyes.

  “What is it, C’gan? What’s happened?”

  Gulping to clear his throat, C’gan turned anguished eyes to the harper. “It’s Chendith. He’s dead.”

  “Chendith?” Robinton whirled around, trying to spot S’loner in the crowd of shocked people. He saw F’lon, miraculously sober, running first to T’rell, the Weyrlingmaster, because the keening had aroused the dragonets and T’rell needed help in rounding up the new riders to go comfort their distressed beasts. Not a young man himself, T’rell looked haggard with grief and staggered as he moved about the tables.

  “Dead? Why? How?” Robinton demanded. “He didn’t look sick or anything during the Hatching.” He lost sight of F’lon, then saw him again, hauling the Weyr Healer into the light.

  Then Lady Hayara gave a shriek that pierced through the keening. “Maidir? Maidir! Where are you?”

  It was the watchrider, circling down on his dragon, who told them that he had seen Chendith, with two aboard him, going between. He couldn’t see too well in the darkness above the lighted Bowl, but he thought that Chendith’s passenger had been Lord Maidir. He’d caught the shine of white hair and the green of the man’s garments. Lord Maidir had been wearing green.

  “But why? What could have happened to them? S’loner wouldn’t take Chendith’s life. Nor his own,” C’gan said, sunken in despair. “What could have happened? He was in such high spirits over the Impression. And twenty dragons.”

  They had to try to rouse Jora from her drunken stupor, because Lady Hayara had not seen the two men leave the table.

  “They have been estranged so long,” Hayara said through her tears, “and it was only after that song of yours, Rob, that they started speaking to each other. I thought it was such a good sign, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying because—” She cut off what negative comment she had been about to make, though her disgust with the weyrwoman was plain.

  F’lon, R’gul, and S’lel were trying to sober Jora up with strong klah, but she was boneless and kept sliding down the chair and having to be propped up to get any of the restorative liquid down her throat.

  Healer Tinamon, assisting, put forward a tentative theory. “S’loner may have looked strong and healthy, but he was having chest pains far too frequently,” he said. “I’d given him the usual remedy, although I wanted him to call in a Masterhealer or at least visit the Healer Hall. He said he would after Impression.”

  That did not explain why Maidir had accompanied S’loner on what was his last flight, although Lady Hayara said that her spouse was very tired and might have requested either a place to rest here at the Weyr or the courtesy of a return to Benden Hold.

  “Oh, please will someone take me back to the Hold immediately?” Lady Hayara asked piteously. “Maidir may be there and have some explanation for us.”

  R’gul promptly volunteered, and the quiet weyrgirl who had spoken to S’loner earlier had the good sense to bring Lady Hayara’s riding jacket. Together they escorted her into the darkness of the Bowl, where Hath, still keening, waited.

  C’rob, M’ridin, and C’vrel, the oldest of the wingleaders, were holding a conference, which F’lon joined as if he had the right. Plainly the other riders did not think so.

  “The next mating flight will decide that, F’lon, so let’s not jump to any premature assumptions. And with Jora the way she is, that’s likely to take a few Turns,” M’ridin said in a low but angry voice.

  “I suggest we clear the Weyr of all visitors,” C’rob said. “This Impression is over.”

  “And marred by a death, which is not good, not good at all,” C’vrel added, shaking his head.

  “Keeping the dragons busy is the best thing for them,” M’ridin went on. “Only be bloody sure to remind riders to give the clearest coordinates they ever had in their minds.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to let people stay . . .” C’vrel said.

  “No, the Weyr must mourn its own,” C’rob said. “I’ll ask only the older riders to convey passengers.” He ignored F’lon and went to choose those whom he considered responsible enough.

  S’lel and another stalwart weyrman were now carrying Jora up the steps to her quarters, having failed to rouse her. On the ledge, Nemorth was still keening loudly for her mate, swaying her head and neck back and forth, her eyes whirling with the muddy reds shot with orangey yellows of extreme distress. It was then that Robinton realized the sides of the Weyr were punctuated by many pairs of whirling, distressed dragon eyes, like colored glowbaskets of unusual size. He remembered that long after other details of that terrible evening faded: the whirling eyes and the sad, bone-shaking keening from several hundred dragon throats echoing back and forth across the Bowl, all night long.

  A drum message brought the information that Lady Hayara had not found Maidir at Benden Hold. The fatal accident had taken all three in that brief instant between. Robinton asked C’gan to convey himself and Raid, who was probably now the Lord Holder of Benden, back to the Hold. His stepmother would need his support and what comfort could be given her.

  Robinton was packing up his music and instrument when F’lon came up to him.

  “You’ll want to go back,” the young bronze rider said in a weary voice.

  “I’ve asked C’gan . . .”

  “Why him?” F’lon was angry.

  “You’ve just lost your father, man,” Robinton said, gripping the rider tightly on the arm. “I could scarcely impose on you . . .”

  F’lon brushed hair back from his forehead in an irritable gesture and swung this way and that. “It’s not as if we were close—weyrbred not taking that much store in relationships—and shards! But he’s messed things up dying like this!”

  Whether or not that outburst was F’lon’s way of expressing his grief, Robinton was never sure, but the dragonrider was certainly furious. Robinton knew that the young bronze rider had been proud of being the Weyrleader’s son. He’d always affected an attitude of disdain for the relationship, but at least he had had one with his father. Robinton envied him that.

  “The others are too nervous as it is,” F’lon went on savagely, looking every way but at the harper. He kicked at the dirt of the Bowl and kept shaking his h
ead. “I told him he was chancing it with those chest pains. Listen to his son? Oh, no, he knew it all.”

  In the glowbaskets, Robinton now noticed the wet streaks on F’lon’s cheeks and he wished he could find something to say that would ease his loss. There was nothing.

  “Oh, go on, Rob. You’re safer with C’gan anyway. At least right now.”

  “Keep me posted how things are here, will you, F’lon? I know you can drum.”

  He gripped the bronze rider’s arm in what he hoped expressed his sympathy and regret and then, picking up his carisaks, made his way out of the brightly lit area to the blackness of the Bowl, the silhouetted shape of C’gan’s blue Tagath, and the glimmering shine of sad dragon eyes, dotting the wall of the Weyr.

  CHAPTER XI

  HIS FIRST ACT on returning to Benden was to search for Maizella and find out how Lady Hayara was doing. The girl looked almost as haggard as her mother had.

  “She’s had a healer’s draught and will sleep her grief out,” she said. “And I’m about to take one myself. I still can’t believe what’s happened. Couldn’t there still be a chance they’ll emerge from between?”

  Robinton shook his head. “The dragons would know. And they know that Chendith is no more. I’m so sorry, Maizella”

  “I know you are, Rob,” she said, touching his arm. “And Raid’s taking charge,” she added with a touch of bitterness. “Could he not have waited until morning? Oh, he wants you on the drum tower . . .”

  That was Robinton’s second act, sending out the sad report of the double tragedy. Raid had already composed the message and thrust it abruptly at Robinton the moment the harper reached the top of the tower. As he got his wind back, Robinton read it. Different temperaments responded to tragedy in different ways, he reflected. He did not, as Maizella evidently did, think that Raid was heartless and unaffected. Rather he was proceeding with what he had been trained to do: take over the Hold and do whatever that new responsibility required of him.

  The Lord Holders of Fort, South Boll, Tillek, and High Reaches, where it was only early evening, immediately drummed requests for dragons. There were messages later that long night from Telgar, Ista, Igen, and Nerat as men were roused with the tragic news.

  By morning, all the major Holds knew and had responded. And by morning, a stream of Benden holders started arriving, some with wine or food. The women went either to the kitchens to help or upstairs to the family, to express their grief. The harpers from the outlying holds arrived to spell Robinton at the drums: his hands were swollen from constant use of the sticks and he could barely concentrate on incoming messages, much less reply confidently.

  With the tower manned, he collapsed for a few hours’ needed sleep and was roused when F’lon, looking pale and exhausted, woke him with klah and slabs of bread.

  “I brought Faroguy in, with two of his family,” the bronze rider said. “They didn’t know I was S’loner’s son.” He gave a snort as he collapsed on the foot of the bed, slumping against the wall and nursing the hot klah on his chest. “You learn a lot more that way.”

  “What more?” Robinton struggled to a sitting position. “Who came with Faroguy?” he asked, the mere fumes of the strong klah sparking his instincts.

  “Oh, that nephew and the son.”

  “Fax?”

  F’lon frowned. “I think that was the name he said.”

  Robinton swore under his breath. “Watch that one.”

  “Oh, I intend to,” F’lon said, cocking his head, his expression fierce. “He doesn’t think much of dragonriders, and he doesn’t think much of harpers, for that matter.”

  “I know. I would have thought he’d abstain.”

  “Shards no! He was grinning from ear to ear. Although . . .” And now F’lon paused, knitting his brows. “I think that his coming was a last-minute addition. There were just Faroguy and his oldest waiting for me. Then Fax came rushing out. He was up onto Simanith before I could speak.”

  Robinton continued to swear under his breath. He had no desire to confront Fax. He wondered how—and why—Fax had inserted himself into the group from High Reaches. He wasn’t a member of the Council of Lord Holders and Masters. He couldn’t vote on the matter of Raid’s suitability.

  “Oh, I also picked up MasterHarper Gennell and Lord Grogellan from Fort. Gennell’s asking for you.”

  “Yes, he would be.” Robinton drew his knees up so he could throw the covers off his legs. He had not bothered to strip off his clothing, and now he could scarcely appear in such wrinkled garments.

  “Take your time. Have a quick bath. You need it.” F’lon’s ever whimsical sense of humor prompted him to hold his nose in demonstration.

  “Yes, I do, don’t I?” Robinton was aware of the reek of wine and sweat about his person.

  “Gennell didn’t seem in a hurry. Just asked where you were. Hayon said you were catching some rest. How’s he taking his father’s death?”

  “He’s been marvelous with Lady Hayara and the others but I can’t think he likes having Raid in charge now.”

  “Don’t think I would either,” F’lon said bluntly and left the room.

  Robinton stripped off the dirty clothing, grabbed clean garments from his chest, and strode to the bath, grateful that he didn’t have to vie with others to use the common one down the hall. The hot water was stimulating, and he felt much better as he pulled on trousers and wriggled his arms into the clean shirt. He took his shoulder cords from the old shirt and attached them, making certain they were properly hung. Then he rough-dried his hair before he gathered it back with a thong. He really should have it trimmed. Later.

  F’lon wandered in just then, having filled Robinton’s klah mug. “Now you look respectable, as befits the Hold Harper.”

  “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Robinton suggested, pointing to his empty bed.

  F’lon looked in that direction and sighed. “That’s the best idea you’ve had so far. Call me if you need me,” he said, gulping down the last of his klah and beginning to roll down the tops of his flying boots.

  Robinton heard the thud of the first one as he was closing his door.

  The Hold was teeming with quiet people, talking in the corridors or in small groups in the Hall as Robinton descended the front stairs. Trestle tables had been set up and were loaded with plates of bread and bowls of fruit and slices of meat that had been rolled up for easy eating. He spotted Master Gennell talking to other Masters, flown in from their Halls to attend to the sad duty of succession. Gennell saw him and waved for him to join them.

  As Robinton obediently wove his way through the assembled, he looked about for Fax, or at least Faroguy and whichever son had accompanied him. He assumed the Lord Holders must be convening somewhere else, but he did spot Farevene, standing in the entrance hall, looking around uneasily. Then Naprila came up to the young holder and Robinton had reached the Masters.

  Gennell introduced him to the Masters surrounding him: Smith, Weaver, Fisherman, Farmer, and Miner. He already knew Masterhealer Ginia, and she nodded soberly in greeting. More Masters would assemble for the Council meeting; these were but the first arrivals.

  “Give us your account of what happened last night, Robinton,” the MasterHarper said, and Robinton did, pleased that his wits had been aided by the klah and the bath so that he was able to make his report concise.

  “Dreadful thing!”

  “Terrible tragedy to lose both a Lord Holder and the Weyrleader.”

  “And at such a time—right after a Hatching!”

  “Who will take over at the Weyr?”

  They all looked at Robinton.

  “I believe that will be decided in the traditional way when the queen mates again,” the young harper replied.

  “But the Weyr can’t be without leadership for several Turns,” the Fisherman protested.

  “There are older riders: C’vrel, C’rob, and M’ridin,” Robinton said. “They were taking charge last night.”

  “It’s n
ot as if there were Threadfall to worry about,” the Miner said.

  The Weaver snorted. “All too true, not that S’loner wasn’t drumming up alarms. Didn’t take any serious notice of that, I can tell you.”

  Robinton forbore to speak up in such company, but he did notice that all the other Masters but his own seemed in agreement on that point.

  “Jora is a young woman,” the Farmer went on. “I wouldn’t be concerned with Weyr management if Carola were still alive. She knew what was what.”

  “Weyr management is,” Master Gennell pointed out politely, “the concern of the Weyr. Not ours. I presented my condolences to the bronze rider who conveyed us.”

  Robinton nodded. “That was F’lon, a son of S’loner.”

  “It was?” Ginia exclaimed in surprise. “Amazing. I don’t think we need worry about the Weyr if that is the standard of rider presently handling its affairs.”

  Robinton told himself to remember to tell F’lon that he had one admirer among the Masters.

  Just then, Raid approached and greeted them all with weary courtesy, thanking them for coming so quickly. “I’ve had seats for the entire Council placed in the small dining room, if you’d like to proceed,” he said. “Robinton, will you show them the way?”

  “Are we all present and accounted for then?” the Weaver asked, glancing about the crowded room.

  “The last have arrived and are prepared to proceed,” Raid said, bowing and moving off toward the refreshments, where Maizella was pouring wine, assisted by Cording. Hayon was standing nearby, looking dolefully into his glass, Rasa and Anta beyond him.

  Robinton duly led the Masters to the small dining room, which was just about large enough to accommodate the numbers.

  “Wait here, Rob, in case we need to send for someone,” Gennell said, pausing as the rest of the Craftmasters filed in.

  Robinton nodded. Send for whom? There were no other Weyrleaders who traditionally officiated at such a meeting.

  “It’s started?” a familiar voice asked with a touch of amused malice.