Dragonriders of Pern 4 - Dragonsinger

by Anne McCaffrey

  Menolly felt reproved. “I was caught out during Threadfall, you see, far from my cave and had to run…oooh!”

  “Sorry, did I hurt? The flesh is very tender. And will remain that way awhile longer.”

  He began to smooth on a pungent-smelling substance, and she couldn’t keep her foot still. He grabbed her ankle firmly to complete the medication, countering her embarrassed apology by remarking that her twitching proved that she’d done the nerves no harm with the pounding she’d given her feet.

  “You’re to keep off them as much as possible. I’ll tell Silvina so. And use this salve morning and night. Aids healing and keeps the skin from itching.” He replaced Menolly’s slippers. “Now, this hand of yours.”

  She hesitated, knowing that his opinion of the bungled wound was likely to echo Manora’s and Silvina’s. Perversely she was afflicted by an obscure loyalty to her mother.

  Oldive regarded her steadily, as if divining some mea sure of her reluctance, and extended his own hand. Compelled by the very neutrality of his gaze, she gave him her injured hand. To her surprise, there was no change of expression on his face, no condemnation or pity, merely interest in the problem the thick-scarred palm posed for a man of his skill. He prodded the scar tissue, murmuring thoughtfully in his throat.

  “Make a fist.”

  She could just about do that but, when he asked her to extend her fingers, the scar pulled as she tried to stretch the palm.

  “Not as bad as I was led to believe. An infection, I suppose…”

  “Packtail slime…”

  “Hmm, yes. Insidious stuff.” He gave her hand another twist. “But the scar is not long healed, and the tissue can still be stretched. A few more months and we might not have been able to do anything to flex the hand. Now, you will do exercises, tightening your fingers about a small hard ball, which I will provide you, and extending the hand.” He demonstrated, forcing her fingers upward and apart so that she cried out involuntarily. “If you can discipline yourself to the point of actual discomfort, you are doing the exercise properly. We must stretch the tightened skin, the webbing between your fingers, and the stiffened tendons. I shall also provide a salve, which you are to rub well into the scar tissue to make it softer and more pliable. Conscientious effort on your part will determine the rate of progress. I suspect that you will be sufficiently motivated.”

  Before Menolly could stammer her thanks, the astonishing man was out of the room and closing the door behind him. Beauty made a sound—half quizzical chirp, half approving burble. She’d come loose from Menolly’s neck during the examination, watching the proceedings from a depression in the sleeping furs. Now she walked over to Menolly and stroked her head against Menolly’s arm.

  From the apprentices’ hall across the courtyard, the singing was renewed, with vigor and volume. Beauty cocked her head, humming with delight and then, when Menolly shushed her, looked wistfully up at the girl.

  “I don’t think we should sing again just now, but they do sound grand, don’t they?”

  She sat there, caressing Beauty, delighting in the music. Very close harmony, she realized approvingly, the sort only trained voices and well-rehearsed singers can achieve.

  “Well,” said Silvina, entering the room briskly, “you have stirred them up. It’s good to hear that old rooter sung with some spirit.”

  Menolly had no time to register astonishment at Silvina’s comment, for the headwoman poked at Menolly’s bundle of things on the table, and twitched the sleeping rug into neat folds.

  “We might just as well get you settled in Dunca’s cottage now,” Silvina continued. “Fortunately, there’s an outside room unoccupied…” The headwoman wrinkled her nose in a slightly disparaging grimace. “Those holder girls are impossible about being outside, but it oughtn’t to worry you.” She smiled at Menolly. “Oldive says you’re to keep off your feet, but some walking’s got to be done. Still, you won’t be in a chore section…another good reason to keep you at Dunca’s, I suppose…” Silvina frowned and then looked back at Menolly’s small bundle.

  “This is all you brought with you?”

  “And nine fire lizards.”

  Silvina laughed. “An embarrassment of riches.” She glanced out the window, peering across the courtyard to the far roof where the fire lizards were still sunning themselves. “They do stay where they’re told, don’t they?”

  “Generally. But I’m not sure how good they are with too many people about or unusual noise.”

  “Or fascinating diversions…” Silvina smiled again at Menolly as she nodded toward the windows and the music issuing from the apprentices’ hall.

  “They always sang along with me…I didn’t realize we shouldn’t—”

  “How should you? Not to worry, Menolly. You’ll fit in here just fine. Now, let’s wrap up your bundle and show you the way to Dunca’s. Then Robinton wants you to borrow a gitar, Master Jerint is sure to have a spare usable one in the workshop. You’ll have to make your own, you know. Unless you made one for Petiron at the Sea Hold?”

  “I had none of my own.” Menolly was relieved that she could keep her voice steady.

  “But Petiron took his with him. Surely you…”

  “I had the use of it, yes.” Menolly managed to keep her tone even as she rigidly suppressed the memory of how she had lost the use, of the beating her father had given her for forbidden tuning, playing her own songs. “I made myself pipes…” she added, diverting Silvina from further questions. Rummaging in her bundle, she brought out the multiple pipes she had made in her cave by the sea.

  “Reeds? And done with a belt knife by the look of them,” said Silvina, walking to the window for more light as she turned the pipes in a critical examination. “Well done for just a belt knife.” She returned the pipes to Menolly with an approving expression. “Petiron was a good teacher.”

  “Did you know him well?” Menolly felt a wave of grief at her loss of the only person in her home hold who had been interested in her.

  “Indeed I did.” Silvina gave Menolly a frown, “Did he not talk of the Harper Hall at all to you?”

  “No. Why should he?”

  “Why shouldn’t he? He taught you, didn’t he? He encouraged you to write…Sent Robinton those songs…” Silvina stared at Menolly in real surprise for a long moment, then she shrugged with a little laugh. “Well, Petiron always had his own reasons for everything he did, and no one the wiser. But he was a good man!”

  Menolly nodded, unable for a moment to speak, berating herself for ever once doubting, during those lonely miserable days at Half-Circle after Petiron’s death, that he’d done what he said he’d do. Though the old Harper’s mind had taken to wandering…

  “Before I forget it,” Silvina said, How often do your fire lizards need to be fed?”

  “They’re hungriest in the morning, though they eat any time, but maybe that was because I had to hunt and catch food for them, and it took hours. The wild ones seemed to have no trouble…”

  “Fed ’em once and they’re always looking to you, is that it?” Silvina smiled, to soften any implied criticism. “The cooks throw all scraps into a big earthen jar in the cold room…most of it goes to the watchwhers, but I’ll give orders that you’re to have whatever you require.”

  “I don’t mean to be a bother…” Silvina gave her such a look that Menolly broke off her attempt to apologize.

  “Be sure that when you do bother me, I’ll inform you.” Silvina grinned. “Just ask any of the apprentices if I won’t.”

  Silvina had been leading Menolly down the steps and out of the cliffhold of the Harper Hall as she talked. Now they passed under an arch that gave onto a broad road of paving stones, never a blade of grass or spot of moss to be seen anywhere.

  For the first time Menolly had a chance to appreciate the size of Fort Hold. Knowing that it was the oldest and largest Hold was quite different from seeing it, being outside the towering cliff.

  Thousands of people must live in t
he cliffholds and cottages that hugged the rock palisade. Awed, Menolly’s steps slowed as she stared at the wide ramp leading to the courtyard and main entrance of Fort Hold, higher in the cliff face than the Harper Graft Hall, and with rows of windows extending upward in sheer stone, almost to the fire heights themselves. In Half-Circle Sea Hold, everyone had been in the cliff, but at Fort Hold, stone buildings had been built out in wings from the cliff, forming a quadrangle similar to the Harper Craft Hall, Smaller cottages had been added onto the original wings, on either side of the ramp. There were dwellings bordering the sides of the broad paved road that led in several well-traveled directions; south to the fields and pastures, east down the valley toward the low foothills and west around to the pass in the cliff that would lead to the higher mountains of the Central Fort Range.

  Silvina guided Menolly now toward a cottage, a good-sized one with five windows, all of them shuttered tight, on the upper floor. The cottage nestled against the slope of the ramp. As they got close enough, Menolly realized that the little cot was also quite old. And the cottage door was metal, too! Incredible! Silvina opened it, calling out for Dunca. Menolly had just time to notice that the metal door closed as the one at the Harper Hall did, with a small wheel throwing the thick rods into grooves in ceiling and floor.

  “Menolly, come and meet Dunca who holds the cottage for the girls who study at the Harper Hall.”

  Menolly dutifully greeted the short, dumpy little woman with bright black eyes and cheeks like a puff-belly’s sides. Dunca gave Menolly a raking look, at odds with her jolly appearance, as if measuring up Menolly to the gossip she’d already heard. Then Dunca saw Beauty peeking around Menolly’s ear. She gave a shriek, jumping back.

  “What’s that?”

  Menolly reached up to calm Beauty, who was hissing and raising her wings, getting one entangled in Menolly’s hair.

  “But, Dunca, surely you knew—” Silvina’s voice chided the woman, “—that Menolly had Impressed fire lizards.”

  Menolly’s sharp ear caught the edge to Silvina’s voice, and so did the little queen, for Beauty thrummed softly and warningly in her throat as her eyes whirled at Dunca. Menolly silently called her to order.

  “I’d heard, but I don’t always credit things I’m told,” said Dunca, standing as far away from Menolly and Beauty as the hall permitted.

  “Very wise of you,” replied Silvina. The set of the headwoman’s lips and the wary amusement in her glance told Menolly that Silvina was not overly fond of the little cotholder. “Now you’ve a windowed room vacant, have you not? I think it’s best if we settled her there.”

  “I don’t want another hysterical girl who’ll panic during Threadfall and scare us all with imagining that Thread is actually in the cottage!”

  Silvina’s eyes danced with suppressed laughter as she glanced Menolly’s way. “No, Menolly won’t panic. She is, by the way, the youngest daughter of Yanus Sea Holder of Half-Circle Sea Hold, beholden to Benden Weyr. The sea breeds stern souls, you know.”

  Dunca’s bright little eyes were almost lost in the folds of her eye flesh as she peered up at Menolly.

  “So you knew Petiron, did you?”

  “Yes, I did, Dunca.”

  The cotholder gave a disgusted snort and turned so quickly her full skirt followed in hasty swirls as she made for the stone steps carved into the wall at the back of the hallway. She kept twitching her skirt, grunting at the steepness of the risers as she heaved her small fat person upward.

  Two narrow corridors, lit at either end by dimming glows, went left and right from the stairwell. Dunca turned right, led them to the far end and threw open the last door on the outside.

  “Lazy sluts,” she said truculently, fumbling at the catch of the glowbasket. “They’ve cleared the glows.”

  “Where are they kept?” asked Menolly, wishing to ingratiate herself with the cotkeeper. Fleetingly she wondered if she’d always be trotting up and down narrow steps after glows.

  “Where’s your drudge, Dunca? It’s her task to bring glows, not Menolly’s,” said Silvina as she walked past Dunca and flipped open first one, then a second set of shutters, flooding the room with sunlight.

  “Silvina! What are you doing?”

  “Threadfall’s not for two more days, Dunca. Be sensible. The room’s fusty.”

  Dunca’s answer was a shriek as the other fire lizards swooped in through the opened window, diving about the room, chittering excitedly. There was nothing for them to cling to, since the walls were bare of hangings and the bed a frame, empty of rushes, the sleeping fur rolled up on the small press. The two green Aunties and blue Uncle fought for landing space on the stool and then zoomed out the window again as Dunca’s screams startled them. The little cotholder cowered in the corner, skirts about her head, shrieking.

  Menolly ordered the browns to stop diving, told Auntie One and Two and Uncle to stay on the window ledge, got Rocky and Diver to settle on the bedstead while Silvina calmed Dunca and led her from the corner. By the time the cotholder had been cajoled into watching Silvina handle Lazybones, who’d let anyone caress him so long as it involved no effort on his part, Menolly realized that Dunca would never be comfortable in their presence and that the woman disliked Menolly intensely for witnessing her fearfulness. For a long, sad moment, Menolly wished that she could have stayed at the Weyr where everyone could accept fire lizards equably.

  She sighed softly to herself as she stroked Beauty, absently listening to Silvina’s reassurances to Dunca that the fire lizards wouldn’t harm anyone, not her, not her charges; that Dunca’d be the envy of every other cotholder in Fort to have nine fire lizards…

  “Nine?” Dunca’s protest came out in a terrified squeak, and she reached for her skirts to throw over her head. “Nine of those beastly things flitting and diving about my home—”

  “They don’t like to stay inside, except at night,” said Menolly, hoping to reassure Dunca. “They’re rarely all with me at one time.”

  From the horrified and malicious look Dunca gave her, Menolly realized that she herself would be rarely with Dunca if the cotholder had anything to say in the matter.

  “We can stop here no longer now, Menolly. You’ve to pick a gitar from the workshop,” said Silvina. “If you need more rushes, Dunca, you’ve only to send your woman to the Hall,” she added as she motioned Menolly to precede her from the room. “Menolly will be more closely involved with the Hall than the other girls…”

  “She’s to be back here at shutter time, same as the others, or stay at the Hall,” said Dunca as Silvina and Menolly went down the steps.

  “She’s strict with the girls,” Silvina remarked as they emerged into the bright midday sun and started across the broad paved square, “but that’s to the good with all those lads vying for their attention. And take no heed to her grumbles over Petiron. She’d hoped to wed him after Merelan died. I’d say Petiron resigned as Fort Hold Harper as much to get free of Dunca as to clear the way for Robinton. He was so very proud that his son was elected Masterharper.”

  “Half-Circle Sea Hold is a long way from Fort Hold!”

  Silvina chuckled. “And one of the few places isolated enough to prevent Dunca from following him, child. As if Petiron would ever have taken another woman after Merelan. She was the loveliest person, a voice of unusual beauty and range. Ah, I miss her still.”

  More people were about: field workers coming in for their midday meal; a party of men on leggy runners, slowing to an amble through the crowd. An apprentice, intent on his errand, ran right into Menolly. He was mouthing an apology when Beauty, peering through Menolly’s hair, hissed at him. He yelped, ducked with an apprentice’s well-developed instinct, and went pelting back the way he’d come.