Dragonseye

by Anne McCaffrey

  He managed to get enough saucers or mugs—they used a very cheap pottery in Bitra Hold—to hold the different colors he needed. He hadn’t quite finished the repair work when Chaldon recovered sufficiently from the rash to be able to sit/stand—once more.

  Chaldon had lost weight during the fever which accompanied the emergence of the rash. He was also lethargic, and as long as Iantine could think up funny stories to tell as he worked, he stayed reasonably still. Calling himself the worst kind of panderer, Iantine made the boy resemble the best looking of the ancestors he’d relimned. The boy was certainly pleased and ran off to find his mother, shouting that he did look like Great-granddaddy, just as she always said he did.

  The same ploy did not quite work on Luccha’s portrait when she had recovered. Her skin was sallower, she’d lost hair and too much weight to improve her undistinguished looks. While he had aimed for her greatgrandmother thrice removed, she didn’t have the right facial structure and even he had to admit the result was unsatisfactory.

  “Her illness,” he’d mumbled when Chalkin and Nadona recited the long catalog of dissimilarities between their daughter and the portrait.

  He did better with Lonada and Briskin, who, several kilos lighter, had the look of his great-uncle—pinch-faced, lantern-jawed, and big-eared. Iantine had judiciously reduced the size of those even as he wondered what Artist had got away with such unflattering appendages on great-uncle.

  He redid Luccha’s after the other two: she’d put on some weight and her color was better. Not much, but better. And he set her eyes wider in her face, which improved her no end. Too bad it couldn’t be done to the model. He vaguely remembered that the First Settlers had been able to remodel noses and bob ears and stuff like that.

  So, grudgingly and after making him touch up each of the four not-so-miniature paintings to the point where he was ready to break something—their heads for preference—the Lord and Lady Holder considered the four paintings satisfactory. The final critiquing had lasted well into the night, which was dark and stormy: the winds audible even through the three-meter-thick cliff walls.

  So, as he descended wearily but in great relief to the lower-floor cubicle, he became aware of the intense chill in this level. The temperature in the big Hall had been somewhat warmed by the roaring fires in the four hearths, but there was no heating down here. In fact, it was so cold that Iantine did no more than loosen his belt and remove his boots before crawling onto the hard surface that was supposed to be a mattress. It looked and felt like something recycled from the ships of the First Crossing. He curled up in the furs, more grateful than ever that he’d brought his own, and fell asleep.

  Arctic temperatures swirling about his face roused him. His face was stiff with cold and, despite the warmth of his furs, when he tried to stretch his body, his muscles resisted. He had a crick in his neck and he wondered if he’d moved at all during the night. Certainly it was cold enough to have kept in the warm of the furs. But he had to relieve himself.

  He crammed his feet into boot leather that was rigid with ice and, wrapping his furs tightly about himself, made his way down the corridor to the toilet. His breath was a plume of white, his cheeks and nose stung by the cold. He managed his business and returned to his room only long enough to throw on his thickest woolen jumper. With half a mind to throw his furs around him for added warmth, he ran up the several flights of stone steps, past walls that dripped with moisture. He paused at the first window on the upper level: solidly snowed closed. He went up the next short flight and opened the door into what should have been the relatively warmer kitchen area.

  Had every fire in the place gone out overnight? Had the spit boys frozen on their bed shelf? As he turned his head in their direction, his glance caught at the window. Snow was piled up against the first hand’s breadth of it. He moved closer and looked out at the courtyard but it was all one expanse of unbroken snow. Indeed, where the courtyard should have stepped down to the roadway, the snow was even, concealing any depression where the road should have been. No one moved outside. Nor were there any tracks in the expanse of snow-covered court to suggest that anyone had tried to come in from one of the outer holds.

  “Just what I needed,” Iantine said, totally depressed by what he saw. “I could be trapped here for weeks!”

  Paying for room and board. If only the kids hadn’t come down with measles . . . If only he hadn’t already freshened up the murals . . . How would he survive? Would he have any left of his original fee—that had seemed so generous—by the time he could leave this miserable hold?

  Later that morning, when half-frozen people had begun to cope with the effects of the blizzard, he struck another bargain with the Holder Lord and Lady: and very carefully did he word it. Two full-sized portraits, each a square meter on skybroom wood to be supplied by Lord Chalkin, one of Lady Nadona and one of Lord Chalkin, head and shoulder in Gather dress, with all materials and equipment to make additional pigments supplied by the hold; maintenance for himself and quarters on an upper floor with morning and evening fuel for a fire on the hearth.

  He completed Lady Nadona’s portrait without too much difficulty—she would sit still, loved nothing better than to have a valid excuse for doing nothing. Halfway through the sitting, though, she wanted to change her costume, believing the red did not flatter her complexion as well as the blue. It didn’t, but he talked her out of changing and subtly altered her naturally florid complexion to a kinder blush and darkened the color of her pale eyes so that they seemed to dominate her face. By then he’d heard enough of the supposed resemblance between herself and Luccha so that he improved on it, giving her a more youthful appearance.

  When she wanted to change the collar of her dress, he improvised one he remembered seeing in an Ancient’s portrait—a lacy froth that hid much of the loose skin of her neck. Not that he had painted that in, but the lace softened the whole look of her.

  He had not been as lucky with Chalkin. The man was psychologically unable to sit still—tapping his fingers, swinging one leg as he crossed and uncrossed them, twitching his shoulders or his face, making it basically impossible to obtain a set pose.

  Iantine was nearly desperate now to finish and leave this dreadful place before another snowstorm. The young portraitist wondered if Chalkin’s delays, and the short periods in which he would deign to sit, were yet another ploy to delay him—and rake back some of the original fee. Though Chalkin had even invited him to come into the gaming rooms—the warmest and most elegant rooms in the hold, Iantine had managed to excuse himself somehow or other.

  “Do sit still, Lord Chalkin, I’m working on your eyes and I cannot if you keep moving them about in your face,” Iantine said, rather more sharply than he had ever addressed the Lord Holder before.

  “I beg your pardon,” Chalkin said, jerking his shoulders about angrily.

  “Lord Chalkin, unless you wish to be portrayed with your eyes crossed, sit still for five minutes! I beg of you.”

  Something of Iantine’s frustration must have come across because Chalkin not only sat still, he glared at the portraitist. And for longer than five minutes.

  Working as fast as he could, Iantine completed the delicate work on the eyes. He had subtly widened them in the man’s face and cleared up the edemic pouches that sagged below them. He had made the jowly face less porcine and subtracted sufficient flesh from the bulbous nose to give it a more Roman look. He had also widened and lifted the shoulders to give a more athletic appearance and darkened the hair. Further, he had meticulously caught the fire of the many-jeweled rings. Actually, they dominated the painting, which he felt would find favor with Lord Chalkin, who seemed to have more rings than days of the year.

  “There!” he said, putting down his brush and standing back from the painting, satisfied in himself that he had done the best job possible: that is, the best job that would prove “satisfactory” and allow him to leave this ghastly hold.

  “It’s about time,” Chalkin said, sli
pping down from the chair and stamping over to view the result.

  Iantine watched his face, seeing that flash of pleasure before Chalkin’s usual glum expression settled back over his features. Chalkin peered more closely, seeming to count the brush strokes—although there were none, for Iantine was too competent a technician to have left any.

  “Watch the paint. It’s not yet dry,” Iantine said quickly, raising his arm to ward off Chalkin’s touch.

  “Humph,” Chalkin said, shrugging his shoulders to settle his heavy jerkin. He affected diffidence, but the way he kept looking at his own face told Iantine that the man was finally pleased.

  “Well? Is it satisfactory?” Iantine asked, unable to bear the suspense any longer.

  “Not bad, not bad, but . . .” and Chalkin once again put out a finger.

  “You will not smear the paint, Lord Chalkin,” Iantine said, fearing just that and another session to repair the damage.

  “You’re a rude fellow, painter.”

  “My title is Artist, Lord Chalkin, and do tell me if this portrait is satisfactory or not!”

  Chalkin gave him a quick nervous glance, one facial muscle twitching. Even the Lord of Bitra Hold knew when he had pushed someone too hard.

  “It’s not bad . . .”

  “Is it satisfactory, Lord Chalkin?” Iantine put all the pent-up frustration and anxiety into that question.

  Chalkin shifted one shoulder, screwed up his face with indecision and then hastily composed his features in the more dignified pose of the portrait before him.

  “Yes, I believe it is satisfactory.”

  “Then,” and now Iantine took Lord Chalkin by the elbow and steered him toward the door, “let us to your office and complete the contract.”

  “Now, see here—”

  “If it is satisfactory, I have honored that contract and you may now settle with me for the miniatures,” Iantine said, guiding the man down the cold corridor and to his office. He tapped his foot impatiently as Chalkin took the keys from his inside pocket and opened the door.

  The fire within was so fierce that Iantine felt sweat blossom on his forehead. At Chalkin’s abrupt gesture, he turned around while the man fiddled with whatever it was he had in his strongbox. He heard, with infinite relief, the turn of the metal lock and then silence. A slamming of a lid.

  “Here you are,” said Chalkin coldly.

  Iantine counted out the marks, sixteen of them, Farmermarks, but good enough since he would be using them in Benden, which didn’t mind Farmermarks.

  “The contracts?”

  Chalkin glared but he unlocked the drawer and extracted them, almost flinging them across the desk at Iantine. Iantine signed his name and turned them back to Chalkin.

  “Use mine,” Iantine said when Chalkin made a show of finding a good pen in the clutter on his desk.

  Chalkin scrawled his name.

  “Date it,” Iantine added, wishing to have no complaint at a later time.

  “You want too much, painter.”

  “Artist, Lord Chalkin,” Iantine said with a humorless smile and turned to leave. At the door he turned again, “And don’t touch the painting for forty-eight hours. I will not come back if you smear it. It was satisfactory when we left the room. Keep it that way.”

  Iantine returned to collect his good brushes, but left what remained of the paints he had had to make. Last night, in a hopeful mood, he had packed everything else. Now, he took the stairs up two and three at a time, stored his brushes carefully, stuffed the signed and dated contracts into his pack, shrugged into his coat, rolled up his sleeping furs, looped both packs in one hand, and was halfway down the stairs again when he met Chalkin ascending.

  “You cannot leave now,” Chalkin protested, grabbing his arm. “You have to wait until my wife has seen and approved my portrait.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t,” Iantine said, wrenching free of the restraining hand.

  He was out the main door before Chalkin could say another word, and ran down the roadway between the soiled snowbanks. If he was benighted on the road in the middle of a snowstorm, he would still be safer than staying one more hour at Bitra Hold.

  Luckily for him, he found shelter during that next storm in a woodman’s holding some kicks away from the main hold.

  CHAPTER VI

  Telgar Weyr, Fort Hold

  “GUESS WHAT I FOUND?” P’tero cried, ushering his guest into the kitchen cavern. “Tisha, he’s half frozen and starving of the hunger,” the young green rider added, hauling the tall fur-wrapped figure toward the nearest hearth and pushing him into a chair. He deposited the packs he was carrying onto the table. “Klah, for the love of little dragons, please . . .”

  Two women came running, one with klah and the other with a hastily filled bowl of soup. Tisha came striding across the cavern, demanding to know what the problem was, who had P’tero rescued and from where.

  “No one should be out in weather like this,” she said as she reached the table and grabbed up the victim’s wrist to get a pulse. “All but froze, he is.”

  Tisha pulled aside the furs wrapped about his neck and then let him take the cup. He cradled the klah in reddened fingers, blowing before he took his first cautious sip. He was also shivering uncontrollably.

  “I spotted an SOS on the snow—lucky for him that the sun made shadows or I’d never have seen it,” P’tero was saying, thoroughly pleased with himself. “Found him below Bitra Hold . . .”

  “Poor man,” Tisha interjected.

  “Oh, you’re so right there,” P’tero said with ironic fervor, “and he’ll never return. Not that he’s told me all . . .” and P’tero flopped to a chair when someone brought him a cup of klah. “Got out of Chalkin’s clutches intact,” P’tero grinned impishly, “and then survived three nights in a Bitran woodsman’s hold . . . with only a half cup of old oats to sustain him . . .”

  Through his explanation, Tisha ordered hot water bottles, warmed blankets, and, taking a good look at the man’s fingers, numbweed and frostbite salve.

  “Don’t think they’re more than cold,” she said, removing one of his hands from its fevered grip on the hot cup and spreading the fingers out, lightly pinching the tips. “No, no harm done.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” the man said, returning his fingers to the warm cup. “I got so cold stamping out that emergency code . . .”

  “And out of doors in such weather with no gloves,” Tisha chided him.

  “When I left Hall Domaize for Bitra Hold, it was only autumn,” he said in a grating voice.

  “Autumn?” Tisha echoed, widening her fine eyes in surprise. “How long were you at Bitra Hold, then?”

  “Seven damned weeks,” the man replied, spitting out the words in a disgusted tone of voice. “I thought a week at the most . . .”

  Tisha laughed, her belly heaving under her broad apron. “What under the stars took you to Bitra in the first place? Artist, are you?” she added.

  “How’d you know?” The man regarded her with surprise.

  “Still have paint under your nails . . .”

  Iantine inspected them and his cold-reddened face flushed a deeper red. “I didn’t even stop to wash,” he said.

  “As well you didn’t, considering the price Chalkin charges for such luxuries as soap,” she said, chuckling again.

  The woman returned with the things Tisha had ordered. While they ministered to the warming of him, he clung with one hand or the other to the klah. And then to the soup cup. His furs, which had kept him from freezing to death, were taken to dry at one fire; his boots were removed and his toes checked for frostbite, but he had been lucky there, too, so they were coated with salve for good measure and then wrapped in warm toweling, while warmed blankets were snugged about his body. Salve was applied to his hands and face and then he was allowed to finish the hot food.

  “Now, your name, and whom shall we contact that you’ve been found?” Tisha asked when all this had been done.

  “I’m
Iantine,” he said, and then he added in wry pride, “portraitist from Hall Domaize. I was contracted to do miniatures of Chalkin’s children . . .”

  “Your first mistake,” Tisha said, chuckling.

  Iantine flushed. “You’re so right, but I needed the fee.”

  “Did you come away with any of it?” P’tero asked, his eyes gleaming with mischief.

  “Oh, that I did,” the journeyman replied so fiercely that everyone grinned. Then he sighed. “But I did have to part with an eighth at the woodsman’s hold. He had little enough to share but was willing to do so.”

  “At a profit, I’m sure . . .”

  Iantine considered that for a moment. “I was lucky to find any place to wait out the storm. And he did share . . .” He shrugged briefly, and a dejected look crossed his features as he sighed. “Anyway, it was he who suggested I make a sign in the snow to attract any dragonrider. I’m just lucky one saw me.” He nodded thanks to P’tero.

  “No problem,” the blue dragonrider said airily. “Glad I came.” He leaned toward Tisha across the table. “He’d’ve been frozen solid in another day.”

  “Were you long waiting?”

  “Two days after the storm ended, but I spent the nights with ol’ Fendler. If you’re hungry enough, even tunnel snake tastes good,” Iantine added. How long had it been since he’d eaten a decent meal?