Dragonsinger

by Anne McCaffrey

  ‘Now then, that’s settled. Yes, Piemur, you were looking for me?’

  ‘No, Silvina. It’s Menolly I’m after. For Master Shonagar. She’s dead late for her lesson.’

  ‘Nonsense, there’re no regular lessons on a Threadfall day. He should know that as well as anyone,’ Silvina said, taking Menolly by the arm as she started to leave the room.

  ‘That’s what I told him, Silvina,’ said Piemur, grinning from ear to ear, ‘but he asked me when had Menolly been assigned to a section. And, of course, I know she hasn’t, so he said that she’d have nothing better to do with her time so she’d better learn something constructive. So …’ And Piemur shrugged his helplessness in the face of such logic.

  ‘Well, girl, you’d better go then. We’re all settled here anyway. And you, Piemur, you pop over to Dunca’s. Ask Audiva, politely, too, you imp, to bundle up Menolly’s things … including the skirt and tunic Menolly washed today. What else did you have there, Menolly?’

  Silvina smiled as if she knew perfectly well that Menolly was grateful not to have to return to the cot.

  ‘Master Jerint has my pipes so there’s only the medicines.’

  ‘Off with you, Piemur, and mind you make sure it’s Audiva.’

  ‘I’d’ve asked for her anyhow, Silvina!’

  ‘Bold as brass you are,’ Silvina called after him as he scampered down the steps. ‘A good lad at heart. You’ve heard him sing? He’s younger than I like to have them in the Hall, but he does hold his own, rascal that he is, and where else should he be with a glorious treble voice like that? Planting tubers or herding the beasties? No, for such originals as Piemur and yourself, you’re better here. Off with you now, before Master Shonagar starts bellowing. We don’t really need a claxon with him in the Hall, so we don’t.’

  Silvina had walked Menolly down the steps and now gave her a gentle shove towards the open Hall doors as she turned towards the kitchen. Menolly watched her for a moment, suffused by an inarticulate gratitude and affection for Silvina’s understanding. The woman wasn’t at all like Petiron, and yet Menolly knew that she could go to Silvina, as she had to Petiron, when she was perplexed or in difficulties. Silvina was like … like a storm anchor. Menolly, trotting obediently across the yard to Master Shonagar, smiled at such a seamanly metaphor for a landbound woman.

  Master Shonagar did roar and bellow and carry on, but, buoyed by Silvina’s courtesies, Menolly took the berating in silence until he made her promise faithfully that whatever else happened to her during the morning hours, the afternoon was his. Otherwise he’d never make a singer of her. So she was to report to him, please and thank you, through Fall, fog or fire, for how else was she to be a credit to his skill or the Craft Hall that had been pleased to exhibit its secrets for her edification and education?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Don’t leave me alone!

  A cry in the night,

  Of anguish heart-striking,

  Of soul-killing fright.

  THE RESTLESSNESS OF the fire lizards about her woke Menolly from a deep sleep. She wished irritably that they didn’t insist on sleeping with her; it had been an exciting and trying day, and she’d had a hard enough time getting to sleep. Her hand ached so from the day’s playing that she’d had to slather the scar with numbweed to dull the pain. Beauty’s tail twitched violently against Menolly’s ear. She nudged the little queen, hoping to stir her out of whatever dream disturbed her. But Beauty was awake, not dreaming: her eyes, yellow and whirling with anxiety. All the fire lizards were awake and unusually alert in the dark of the night.

  Seeing that Menolly’s eyes were open, Beauty crooned, a half-fearful, half-worried sound. Rocky and Diver minced up Menolly’s legs and crouched on her stomach, extending their heads towards her. Their eyes, too, were whirling with the speed and shade of fear. The rest, cuddling close against her, crooned for comfort.

  Propping herself up on one elbow, Menolly peered towards the open windows. She could just distinguish the Fort Hold fire heights, black against dark sky. It took her some time to locate the dark bulk of the watch dragon. He was motionless, so whatever distressed the fire lizards did not apparently concern him.

  ‘Whatever is your problem, Beauty?’

  The little queen’s croon increased its intensity. First Rocky, then Diver, added their notes. Aunties One and Two crept up and nuzzled to get under Menolly’s left arm. Lazy, Mimic and Uncle burrowed into the fur at her right side, their twined tails latching fiercely on to her wrist while Brownie piteously paced across her feet. They were afraid.

  ‘What’s gotten into you?’ Menolly couldn’t for the life of her imagine anything within the Harper Craft Hall that would menace them. Covet them, yes: injure them, no.

  ‘Shush a minute and let me listen.’ Beauty and Rocky gave little spurting sounds of fear, but they obeyed her. She listened as hard as she could, but the only sounds on the night air were the comfortable murmur of men’s voices and an occasional laugh from the Hall beneath her. It wasn’t as late as it had first seemed to her then, if the masters and older journeymen were still chatting.

  Gently disengaging tails, Menolly slipped from her sleeping furs to the window. Several rectangles of light shone on the stones of the courtyard, two from the Great Hall and one above it, from Robinton’s quarters, beyond hers.

  Beauty gave a worried cheep and flew to Menolly’s shoulder, wrapping her tail tightly around the girl’s neck and burrowing into her hair, the slender little body trembling. The others set up an anxious clamour from the furs, so Menolly hurriedly returned to them. They were panic-stricken. The Masterharper might not approve of Silvina’s moving her into this room if her fire lizards disturbed his studies at night. She tried to quiet them with a soft song, but now Beauty’s voice rose querulously above her lullaby. Menolly gathered all of the fire lizards against her. Their tails twined about her arms so firmly that she couldn’t use her hands to stroke them.

  Now she felt a confused sense of imminent danger; clearly all the fire lizards were responding to a mutually experienced threat. Menolly fought against the panic their fear stirred in her.

  ‘You’re being ridiculous. What can harm us in the Harper Hall?’

  Beauty on one side, Rocky on the other, stroked her face urgently with their heads, cheeping in mounting distress. Through their touch and minds, she got the distinct impression that they were reacting to a fear beyond them, beyond the walls, at a distance.

  ‘Then how could it hurt you?’

  Suddenly their terror erupted in her with such intensity that she cried out.

  ‘Don’t!’ Her injunction was spontaneous. She tried to throw up her arms to protect herself from this unknown danger, but her hands were lizard-bound. Their fear was completely and utterly hers. And, incoherently, she repeated the cry, ‘Don’t! DON’T!’

  In her mind, out of nowhere, Menolly received an indelible impression of turbulence: savage, ruthless, destructive; a pressure inexorable and deadly; churning masses of slick, sickly grey surfaces that heaved and dipped. Heat as massive as a tidal wave. Fear! Terror! An inarticulate longing!

  A scream, heard in her mind, a scream like a knife upon raw nerves!

  ‘DON’T LEAVE ME ALONE!’

  Menolly didn’t think she had cried out. She was, as far as she could think sanely, certain that she hadn’t heard the cry, but she knew that the words had been spoken at the extreme of someone’s anguish.

  Simultaneously the door to her room burst open, and the watch dragon on the Hold fire heights let out a shriek so like the one in her mind that she wondered if the dragon had called before. But dragons don’t speak.

  ‘Menolly! What’s wrong?’ Master Robinton was striding across the floor to her. The fire lizards took wing, darting out one window and back in the next, maniacal with fear.

  ‘The dragon!’ Menolly pointed, diverting Robinton’s eyes to the window, to prove that she wasn’t alone in alarm. They both saw the watch dragon launching himself, riderless
, into the sky, bugling his distress. Robinton and Menolly heard, on the night air, the faint echo of answering bugles, a moment of silence and then the eerie screech of an hysterical watch-wher from the Fort Hold court.

  ‘Is every winged thing in the Hold out of its mind?’ asked Robinton. ‘What made you scream, Menolly? “Don’t” what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Menolly cried, tears streaming down her face. She experienced a profound grief now and hugged herself against the chill of an awe-filled panic she couldn’t explain and yet had experienced so profoundly. ‘I just don’t know.’

  Robinton ducked as Beauty, leading the others, swooped past him and out the window. The queen was screaming at the others to follow. Menolly saw them outlined briefly by the light of the Masterharper’s window and then the entire fair disappeared. Before Menolly, frightened for fear the fire lizards had gone completely from her, could tell Master Robinton, Domick came charging into the room.

  ‘Robinton, what’s going on—’

  ‘Quiet, Domick!’ The Masterharper’s stern voice interrupted. ‘Whatever has frightened Menolly has also alarmed the watch dragon, and even the dead could hear that watch-wher’s howling. Furthermore, the dragon went between, without his rider!’

  ‘What?’ Domick was startled, no longer angry.

  ‘Menolly,’ said Robinton, his hands warm and firm on her shoulders, his voice kindly calm, ‘take a deep breath. Now, take another …’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t. Something terrible is happening,’ and Menolly was appalled at the sobs that tore at her, the cold terror that made her tremble so violently in the grip of this unknown disaster. ‘It’s something terrible …’

  Others were crowding into her room now, roused by her involuntary cries. Someone said loudly that there wasn’t anything stirring in the court or on any of the roads. Another remarked that it was ridiculous to be startled out of a sound sleep by an hysterical child, trying to attract attention.

  ‘Hold your silly tongue, Morshal,’ said Silvina, pushing through the crowd to Menolly’s bed. ‘Better still, get off to your beds. All of you. You’re no help here.’

  ‘Yes, if you’d please leave,’ said Robinton in a voice as close to anger as anyone had ever heard in him.

  ‘It isn’t the eggs hatching, is it?’ Sebell asked anxiously.

  Menolly shook her head, struggling to control herself and to stop the spasmodic shudders of fear that were depriving her of voice and wit enough to explain what was so inexplicable.

  Silvina was soothing her. ‘Her hands are ice cold, Robinton,’ she said, and Menolly clung to the woman, as Robinton slipped to the other side of the double cot to support her shuddering body. ‘And these aren’t hysterical tremors …’

  Abruptly the spasms eased, then ceased completely. Menolly went limp against Silvina, gasping for breath, forcing herself to breathe as deeply as Robinton again urged her to do.

  ‘Whatever was wrong has stopped,’ she said, spent.

  Silvina and the Harper eased her against the bed rushes, Silvina drawing the fur up to her neck.

  ‘Did the fire lizards take a fit?’ the headwoman asked, glancing about the now-bright room. ‘They’re not here …’

  ‘I saw them go between. I don’t know where. They were so afraid. It was incredible. There was nothing I could do.’

  ‘Take your time and tell us,’ said the Masterharper.

  ‘I don’t know all of it. I woke because they were so restless. They usually sleep quietly. And they got more and more frightened. And there wasn’t anything … nothing … I could see that …’

  ‘Yes, yes, but something caused them to react.’ Robinton had captured her hand and was stroking it reassuringly. ‘Tell us the sequence.’

  ‘They were frightened out of their wits. And it got to me, too. Then,’ and Menolly swallowed quickly against that flash of vivid impression, ‘then, in my mind, I was aware of something so dangerous, so terrible, something heaving, and grey and deadly … Masses of it … all grey and … and … terrible! Hot, too. Yes, the heat was part of the terror. Then a longing. I don’t know which was the worst …’ She clutched at the comforting hands and could not keep back the sobs of fright that rose from her guts. ‘I wasn’t asleep either. It wasn’t just a bad dream!’

  ‘Don’t talk anymore, Menolly. We can hope the terror has passed completely.’

  ‘No, I have to tell you. That’s part of it. I’m supposed to tell. Then … I heard, only I didn’t hear … except that it was as clear as if someone had shouted it right in this room … right inside my head … I heard something scream, “Don’t leave me alone!”’

  The muscles in her body relaxed all at once now that she had spoken of the weight of terror.

  ‘ “Don’t leave me alone”?’ The Harper repeated the words half to himself, puzzling over the significance of the phrase.

  ‘It’s all gone now. Being afraid, I mean … and …’

  The fire lizards swooped back into the room, aiming for the bed, but some of them dipped and darted for the window ledges, away from Master Robinton and Silvina, twittering, but only with surprise, not fear. Beauty and the two bronzes landed on the foot of the double cot, chirping at Menolly with little calls that sounded so normally inquisitive that Menolly let out an exasperated exclamation.

  ‘Don’t scold them, Menolly,’ said the Masterharper. ‘See if you can determine where they’ve just been.’

  Menolly beckoned to Beauty, who obediently crawled up to her arm and permitted Menolly to stroke her head and body.

  ‘She’s certainly not bothered by anything now.’

  ‘Yes, but where did she go?’

  Menolly raised Beauty to her face, looking into the idly whirling eyes, laying the back of her hand against Beauty’s cheek. ‘Where’d you go, pet? Where have you just been?’

  Beauty stroked Menolly’s hand, gave a smug chirrup, cocking her dainty head to one side. But an impression reached Menolly’s mind, of a Weyr Bowl, and many dragons and excited people.

  ‘I think they’ve been back to Benden Weyr. It must be Benden! They don’t know Fort Weyr well enough to be that vivid. And whatever happened involved many dragons and lots of excited people.’

  ‘Ask Beauty what frightened her?’

  Menolly stroked the little queen’s head for a moment longer, to reassure her, because the question was sure to upset the little fire lizard. It did. Beauty launched herself from Menolly’s arm so violently that her talons scratched deep enough to draw blood.

  ‘A dragon falling in the sky!’ Menolly gasped out the picture. ‘Dragons don’t fall in the sky.’

  ‘She scratched you, child …’

  ‘Oh, that’s nothing, Master Robinton, but I don’t think we’ll get anything more out of her.’

  Beauty was clinging to the fireplace, chittering irritably, her eyes wheeling angrily orange.

  ‘If something has happened at Benden Weyr, Master Robinton,’ remarked Silvina in a dry tone of voice, ‘they won’t be overlong in sending for you.’ Silvina had to raise her voice to counteract the excited cries of the other fire lizards, who were reacting to Beauty’s scolding. ‘We’d best not upset the creatures any further now. And I’m getting you a dose, young lady, or you’ll never sleep tonight from the look of your eyes.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to disturb everyone …’

  Silvina gave her an exasperated snort, dismissing the need for an apology, although Menolly couldn’t help but see, as Silvina opened the door, that harpers were lingering in the corridor. Menolly heard Silvina berating them and telling them to get off to their beds, what did they think they knew about fire lizards?

  ‘The strangest aspect to this incident, Menolly,’ said the Masterharper, his forehead creased with thought lines, ‘is that the dragon reacted, too. I’ve never seen a dragon – short of a mating flight – go off without his rider. I shouldn’t wonder,’ and Robinton smiled wryly, ‘if we don’t have T’ledon over here demanding an explanation from you for t
he disappearance of his dragon.’

  The notion of a dragonrider compelled to ask her for advice was so absurd that Menolly managed a weak smile.

  ‘How’s that hand? You’ve been playing a lot, I hear,’ and the Harper turned her left hand over in his. ‘That scar’s too red. You have been doing too much. Make haste a little more slowly. Is it painful?’

  ‘Not much. Master Oldive gave me some salve.’

  ‘And your feet?’

  ‘So long as I don’t have to stand too much or walk too far …’

  ‘Too bad your fire lizards can’t combine to give you one little dragonpower.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think I ought to tell you … my fire lizards can lift things. They brought me my pipes the other day … to spare me the walk …’ she added hastily. ‘They took it from my room at the cot, all in a cluster, and then dropped it into my hands!’

  ‘Now that is very interesting. I didn’t realize they had so much initiative. You know, Brekke, Mirrim and F’nor have got theirs to carry messages on a collar about their necks …’ The Masterharper smiled with amusement, ‘… though they aren’t always good about arriving promptly.’

  ‘I think you have to make certain they know how urgent the matter is.’

  ‘Like having your pipes for Master Jerint?’

  ‘I didn’t wish to be late, and I can’t walk fast.’

  ‘We’ll let that stand as the reason then, Menolly,’ said Robinton gently, and when Menolly glanced up at him startled, she saw the kind understanding in his eyes and flushed. He stroked her hand again. ‘What I don’t know, I sometimes guess, knowing the way people interact, Menolly. Don’t keep so much bottled inside, girl. And do tell me anything unusual that your fire lizards do. That’s far more important than why they did it. We don’t know much about these tiny cousins of the dragons, and I have a suspicion they’ll be very important creatures to us.’

  ‘Is the little white dragon all right?’

  ‘Reading my mind, too, Menolly? Little Ruth is all right,’ but the Harper’s heavy, slightly hesitant tone gave the lie to his reassurance. ‘Don’t fret yourself about Jaxom and Ruth. Just about everyone else on Pern does.’ He placed her hand back on the furs with a final pat.