“I just wanted to spend some time with Jamal,” Cristov said as he neared speaking distance.
“Never mind him,” Tarik growled impatiently. “You’ll make new friends up at the Camp, you won’t need worry about that cripple.”
“He’ll be fine when the cast’s off,” Cristov protested. For all the ten Turns that Cristov had lived, his father had found fault with anyone that Cristov had tried to befriend.
“That’s neither here nor there,” Tarik grunted. “He’s a cripple now and I’m glad you won’t be around him.” He snaked a hand onto Cristov’s shoulder and pulled him tight against him.
“This is Harper Moran,” Tarik said, gesturing to the man in blue beside him. Cristov nodded politely to the harper.
“Look! The dragons are starting the games!” Moran exclaimed, pointing up to the sky.
Cristov craned his neck back but found himself bumping into his father’s chest. He squirmed forward to give himself enough distance to look straight up into the sky.
“It’s a nice day for it,” Moran said. “Not a cloud in the sky.”
“I hope Telgar wins again,” Cristov said. Crom Hold was under Telgar Weyr’s protection; it would be the dragons from Telgar who flamed Thread from the sky when it fell. Cristov knew that Thread wasn’t due for nearly another sixteen Turns; having only ten Turns of age himself, Cristov could hardly imagine such a distant future.
“Of course they’ll win again,” Tarik growled. “They won last year, because of their new Weyrleader.”
“He came from Igen Weyr, didn’t he, Father?” Cristov asked, still amazed that a whole Weyr had been abandoned.
“There wasn’t much else for them to do,” Harper Moran remarked, “given the drought down that way and that their last queen had died.”
“Their loss, our gain,” Tarik said. “Telgar Weyr’s got nearly twice the dragons the other Weyrs have.”
“And twice the duty, too,” Moran said.
Cristov lost the sound of their voices, intent only on the dragons flying into view above him.
One group, all golden, burst into view high up above them. The queen dragons.
Moran pointed. “They’re going to throw the first Thread.”
“Thread?” Cristov gulped. He knew that from the Teaching Ballads that had been drilled into him first by Harper Jofri and then by Harper Zist, just as they were taught to everyone on Pern. He knew that every two hundred Turns the Red Star returned, bringing Thread: a mindless, voracious parasite that ate anything organic—wood, plants, coal, flesh—and grew with such rapidity that a whole valley would be destroyed in mere hours. Water drowned it, steel and stone were impervious to it, and flame, particularly dragon’s fire, reduced it to impotent ash.
“Not real Thread,” Tarik growled. “Just rope.”
“Made to look like Thread,” the harper added. “For the games.”
“Oh.” Cristov turned back around and craned his neck skyward, relieved.
A wing of dragons suddenly appeared in the sky, well below the queens, and moments later the loud booms of their arrival shook the air.
“Light travels faster than sound,” Harper Moran murmured. Cristov wasn’t sure if the harper meant to be heard or was just so used to teaching that he never stopped.
“They look small,” Cristov said, surprised.
“They’re weyrlings,” the harper said. “They’re just old enough to fly between and carry firestone.”
“Firestone?” Cristov repeated, unfamiliar with the word. He made a face and turned to his father. “Is that another name for coal?”
Instantly Cristov knew from his father’s angry look that he’d asked the wrong question. Cristov flinched as he saw his father’s arm flex, ready to smack him, but he was saved by the harper.
“No, it’s not another name for coal, more’s the pity,” the harper said, not noticing or choosing to ignore Tarik’s anger. “You’ve never seen it, though you might remember it from the Songs.”
“I did,” Cristov confessed. “But I always thought it had to be coal.”
Tarik glared at him.
“You said, Father, that Cromcoal makes the hottest fire there is. I thought for sure that the dragons had to use coal for their flames,” he explained, wilting under Tarik’s look. Feebly, he finished, “I was sure they’d only use the best.”
“Your lad’s a fair one for thinking, Tarik,” Moran said with an affable laugh. “You can’t really fault his logic.”
“It’s his job to listen to his elders and learn from them,” Tarik replied. “He doesn’t need to do any thinking.”
Moran gave the miner a troubled look. “Thinking comes in handy for harpers.”
“He’s not going to be a harper,” Tarik replied. “Cristov’s going to be a miner. Like his father and my father before me.” He gave Moran a grim smile and held up a hand over Cristov’s head. “We’re built the right size for the mines.”
“I imagine that thinking will be important for miners, Tarik,” Moran said, shaking his head in disagreement. “Times are changing. The old mines have played out; the new seams are all deep underground. Mining down there will require news ways of thinking.”
“Not for me,” Tarik disagreed. “I know all I need to know about mining. I’ve been a miner for twenty Turns now—learned from my father and he’d been a miner for thirty Turns. It was his father that first opened our seam, seventy Turns back.”
A ripple of overwhelming sound and a burst of cold air announced the arrival of a huge wing of dragons, flying low over the crowd.
“Telgar!” The crowd shouted as the dragons entered a steep dive, twisted into a sharp rolling climb, and came to a halt, their formation intermeshed with the weyrlings so perfectly that it looked like the two wings of dragons had been flying as one, even though the fighting wing was head to head and a meter underneath the weyrlings.
Cristov gasped as a rain of sacks fell from the weyrlings only to be caught by the riders of the great fighting dragons. Looking at the jacket worn by the bronze rider leading the fighting wing, he saw the stylized field of wheat set in a white diamond—it was the Weyrleader himself!
As one, the fighting wing of dragons turned and dove again, flawlessly returning to hover in the same place where it had come from between. As the dragons hovered, their great necks twisted and their heads turned back to face their riders, who opened the sacks they had caught to feed the firestone to their dragons.
“Nasty stuff, firestone,” Cristov heard the harper mutter behind him. “Nasty stuff.”
The planet Pern was a beautiful world settled hundreds of Turns ago by colonists seeking to forget the horror of interstellar war—indeed, of all war.
But the original survey of Pern failed to notice that one of its sister planets was a wildly erratic rogue. It was not until eight Turns after Landing that the settlers learned of their peril—when the planet they called “The Red Star” came close enough to loose its deadly cargo of Thread across the void of space and onto fertile Pern.
Thread, an alien life-form that streamed into the atmosphere in the form of long silvery strands, devoured any organic material; neither flesh nor vegetation was safe from it. A single Thread burrow could suck the life out of a whole valley in half a day.
The resourceful colonists fought back with the last of their space-going technology while devising a series of long-term, biological defenses, chief among them, fire-breathing dragons that chewed phosphine-bearing rocks—firestone—to create their flames. At birth, in a ritual called “Impression,” the dragons bonded telepathically with human riders who, with their great mounts, risked their lives fighting Thread. And so Pern survived.
The Red Star receded and Thread stopped falling. For two hundred Turns the colonists spread out across the Northern Continent of Pern. When the Red Star returned, the dragonriders were prepared and flamed the Thread out of the skies.
Even a pastoral world needed steel for plows, horseshoes, and shovels. Pern required m
ore, including steel buckles and fasteners for the riding harness used by the great dragons. Making steel required iron ore, coal, and a host of trace metals. After nearly five hundred Turns, the original surface seams of coal—easy to find, easy to mine—had been exhausted.
The Masterminer, Britell, had sent out parties of talented miners to bore into mountains seeking new seams of coal deep below ground. Those mining camps that succeeded in producing coal would be rewarded by elevation to full working mines.
Natalon, who was both Cristov’s uncle and Tarik’s nephew, had just opened one such mine. When he’d heard that Tarik was looking for work, he’d sent word inviting him to Camp Natalon. Tarik and his family would leave for the camp the day after the Games.
Tenim stood toward the back of the crowd as the next wing of dragons started its first run. He let himself be caught up in the excitement, along with the rest of the Gather, as they looked up in awe at the sight of thirty flaming dragons racing across the afternoon sky, flaming the rope Threads thrown down by the queen riders high above them, displaying their skill as dragon and rider worked to reduce the mock menace to dust.
Tenim’s eye darted from the spectacle above him back to his intended victim, a red-faced, corpulent Trader who bellowed loudly as the Fort riders finished their run and the flags on the Lord Holders’ stands were changed to Benden.
The crowd roared and Tenim seized the moment. He added his own voice, feigned a slip, and fell roughly against the Trader.
“I’m sorry, so sorry!” Tenim said, helping the Trader to his feet and trying to brush the dirt off the man. He pushed a lock of jet black hair off his face, his bright green eyes tinged with concern.
“Not to worry,” the Trader answered genially, backing away. Then he stopped, patting his clothes, and turned back, an angry look on his face.
His purse was in plain sight in Tenim’s hands. With a nervous swallow, Tenim held up the purse and put on his most innocent look. “You dropped your purse. Here it is.”
“Well, thank you, lad,” the Trader said, grabbing the purse.
“You’ll not tell my master on me?” Tenim asked, his eyes wide with fear. “He’d beat me if he found out. I’m always clumsy,” he added with eyes downcast.
“No,” the Trader said kindly. He reached into his purse and pulled out a half-mark. “Not every lad is as honest as you,” he said as he pressed it into Tenim’s hand.
“Thank you!” Tenim said cheerfully, still in character. “Thank you so much.”
He waved at the Trader and started off at a brisk walk, careful not to look back lest the Trader suspect.
Out of sight, Tenim allowed himself one long, explosive curse. His belly rumbled in agreement.
No matter what Moran said, he was too old to beg. It was time to steal.
In the evening there would be gambling; Tenim decided to risk his half-mark on the chance for more.
If he didn’t, there were always those too deep in their cups to notice his light fingers late at night.
“So, Harper, what do you reckon?” the question came from a young impetuous man, part of the crowd Moran had cheerfully insinuated himself into earlier.
“It’s always difficult to know how these things will turn out, Berrin,” Moran replied after a moment’s thought.
Someone in the group shouted, “Ah, no, it’s easy—Telgar for sure!”
“Telgar for first, I’m certain,” Moran said hastily. He couldn’t identify the speaker but he knew better than to cast doubt on the local Weyr’s chances. “It’s which Weyr will come second and third that’s hard to know.”
“Have you a guess?” Berrin asked. When Moran nodded, the Crom holder fingered the bulge in his tunic and asked, “Care to wager?”
“I don’t know if, as a harper, I should bet with you.”
“Why not?”
“Well,” Moran said thoughtfully, “after all, I’ve been around, and I wouldn’t want you to believe that my superior knowledge bested you.”
He caught the holder’s greedy look and knew that his deliberate mistakes in their previous conversations had convinced the holder that Moran was a pompous, overconfident fool. The holder glanced at the bulging purse Moran had carefully hung on his belt in plain sight to all. Of course, the holder had convinced himself that Moran’s purse was bulging with harper marks, a belief that Moran was careful to cultivate by the overprotective way he clutched at it.
Fools and their money are soon parted, Moran reflected silently, remembering his early years at the Harper Hall.
“Well, now, I’m sure you’re a fair man, Harper,” Berrin replied in a tone that told Moran that, in fact, Berrin was sure that Moran was a stupid man. “And I’d trust you to be honest with me if you knew something special.”
Moran nodded affably.
“So how about a wager for second place?” Berrin asked. Moran raised his hands, feigning nervous indecision. “Nothing much, say a mark or two?”
Moran gave the holder a doubtful look.
“Ah, go on, Harper,” one of Berrin’s friends called out from the crowd.
“Well,” Moran began slowly, clutching at his bag, “perhaps a mark that Benden gets second.”
“Benden? I’ll take a mark on that,” another man called from the crowd. Moran smiled to himself as he recognized the man as another of Berrin’s cronies. Privately, the harper was pretty certain that only half of the current crowd was working with Berrin, the rest being innocent but greedy gamblers hoping to exploit Berrin and the harper. Moran was quite certain that in the end he would take money from both groups and come out ahead. He had no qualms with that—there were hungry children at their camp who wouldn’t question how their bellies came to be full.
Halla peered worriedly at her big brother as he slid on the slick ground. Jamal winced and bit off a curse after jarring his broken leg.
“Are you okay?” Halla asked him. She helped him get up and made a face. “What’s that smell? It’s coming from your leg.”
“It’s nothing,” Jamal lied.
“Maybe you should see a healer,” Halla said.
“Healers won’t see us, you know that,” Jamal replied. He waved Halla away. “You go over with the other children, you’re supposed to be watching them.”
Halla sniffed, but dutifully headed off to a forlorn cluster of youngsters mostly younger than her own eight Turns. She turned to look back as Jamal disappeared once more into the Gather crowd and hoped that he would be okay.
“Of course I’ll keep this our secret,” Moran promised the disconsolate wagerers as he collected his winnings.
“That’s very kind of you, Harper,” Berrin told him feelingly, his words echoed by the worried nods of the other losers.
“After all, it was all in good spirits,” the harper said, carefully fishing out a few quarter-marks to each of the losing bettors. After the losers thanked him for his graciousness, Moran returned to the miners.
“Didn’t I say that Telgar would win?” Tarik declared, soundly slapping the harper on the shoulder. He peered down at him, his eyes shining with an avaricious gleam. “You’ve some marks for me, I believe?”
“Indeed I do,” Moran declared jovially, handing over a two-mark piece that he’d just won as part of his other wagers. He leaned closer to Tarik and said in a softer voice, “And I hope you’ll find our other arrangement as advantageous.”
Tarik’s face hardened for just a moment before he responded, “I’m sure I will. Indeed, I’m certain of it.”
CHAPTER 3
Work and living drays do roll,
Taking every long day’s toll.
Bearing goods and bringing gifts—
Traders working every shift.
NEAR CAMP NATALON,
AL 492.7–493.4
Following Master Zist’s instructions, Pellar snuck onto one of the trader’s drays and hid behind the barrels of goods intended for Camp Natalon. To increase his chances of avoiding detection, Pellar sent Chitter ahead to Zis
t.
The trip up to the camp took a sevenday. Zist could only manage to sneak him food twice. Fortunately, Pellar had filled his pack wisely and had planned on surviving on his own for at least two sevendays. He left the trader caravan the night before it was due to arrive at the camp and took off into the mountains.
The weather was chillier than at Fort Hold and the Harper Hall. Pellar was dressed well and kept up a hard pace, knowing that his exertions would keep him warm. He pressed on through the night, only looking for a spot to sleep as the sun crested the horizon.
He found the spot in a clearing on an eastern plateau of the mountains that rose up toward Camp Natalon. The plateau was wide, with a thick canopy of trees and lush undergrowth. Grass grew in wide swathes.
Pellar paused before he entered the plateau, scanning it carefully for any signs of life. A tingling feeling, some strange sense of unease, disturbed him and he shrank back tight against a boulder. He waited, taking the time to pull a piece of jerked beef from his tunic, chewing on the tough strip of meat slowly both from necessity and to force himself to maintain his composure as Mikal had trained him.
He peered around the boulder much later and scanned the plateau again. It took him a moment to spot what had first disturbed him—a darker spot of brown underneath one of the trees. He peered at it suspiciously. A breeze blowing up the side of the mountain, fanned by the warming air of the morning sun, caused something bright on the dark mound to flicker. Pellar shrank back against his boulder and waited again.
Finally, he peered back around, examining the whole plateau until he was certain that it was abandoned. He moved around the boulder that had hidden him and walked briskly onto the plateau. He still suspiciously searched the area, stopping to check the ground and scan the areas beyond the plateau that had been out of his sight, resting himself against a tree or crouching down by a boulder. Satisfied, he made a roundabout circle to the brown spot.
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