Dragondrums

by Anne McCaffrey

  Hungry though he was, Piemur couldn’t finish all the meat on the bone. He was too tired to eat, he thought, and before he did collapse from exhaustion, he’d better retrieve the egg and slip out to meet Sebell. How he longed for his bed at the Harper Hall.

  The regular kitchen drudges were too busy grumbling about the poor selection left for them to eat and how much those blinking guests were eating and drinking to notice Piemur’s deft exit.

  He took possession of the precious egg, warm to the touch, and wrapping it carefully in a wad of rags, thrust the bundle once again under his tunic. He jauntily approached the main gates, whistling deliberately off key.

  “And where do you think you’re going?”

  “T’Gather,” Piemur replied as if this was all too obvious.

  He was as surprised by the man’s guffaw as he was by being swung around and roughly propelled back the way he had come.

  “Don’t try that one on me again, guttingman!” called the guard as the force of his push sent Piemur stumbling across the cobbles, trying not to fall and damage the egg. He stopped in the darkest shadow of the wall and stood fuming over this unexpected check to his escape. It was ridiculous! He couldn’t think of any other Hold in all Pern where the drudges were denied the privilege of going to the Hold’s own Gather.

  “G’wan back to the ashes, guttingman!”

  It was then that Piemur realized his coverall, none too clean in the light, was still visible in the shadows, so he slunk past the opening into the kitchen court. Out of sight, he stripped off the betraying coverall and flung it into a corner. So he wasn’t allowed to leave, was he?

  Well, the guests would have to be passed. He would simply bide his time and slip out of Nabol Hold the same way he’d gotten in.

  Taking heart in that notion, he looked about him for a suitable place to wait. He should remain in the courtyards, where he would hear the commotion of leave-taking. He’d better not return to the kitchens, or he’d be put to work again. His roving eye caught the blackness that was the ash and blackstone pits, and that solved his problem. Keeping to the shadows, he made his way to this least likely of all hiding spots and settled on the spongy surface at the right hand side of the opening to the ashpit. Not the most comfortable place to wait, he thought, removing a large cinder shell from under his tail bone before he achieved some measure of comfort. The night wind had picked up a bit, and he felt the chill when he poked his nose over the coping. Ah well, he shouldn’t have long to wait. He doubted anyone would tolerate Lord Meron’s smell longer than absolutely necessary.

  He was awakened from a fitful doze by the sound of shouting and much running about in the main courtyard, and then a nearer, more frightening clamor in the kitchen itself. Above the shouts and slammings, he heard a pathetic wail.

  “Ah dunno ’im. Ah tell yuz. First time today Ah saw ’im. Said he was here to help t’Gather, and we needed help.”

  Trust Besel to clear himself of any blame, thought Piemur.

  “Sir, gate guard says a boy answering his description tried to pass out to the Gather awhile back. He couldn’t say if the drudge carried anything about him. Wasn’t looking for stolen items.”

  “Then he didn’t leave?” The voice was a snarl of fury.

  Lord Meron? wondered Piemur. And then realized that the unexpected had happened. The substitute in the egg pot had been discovered. There’d be no way he could creep out of this Hold in the shadow of departing guests. With the way men were dashing about lighting up every crook and corner of the courtyards, he’d be lucky to remain undiscovered. Some eager soul would certainly think to prod a spear through the ashpit just on the off-chance . . . especially if Besel remembered that he’d emptied ash buckets and might have hidden the egg there.

  Frantic now, Piemur glanced up at the walls about him. Carved from the cliff itself, they were, and he could never climb straight up unseen. He caught sight of a rectangular darkness just above his head to the left of the ashpit. A window? To what? This side of the kitchen was devoted to stores rooms, but what window. . . . The stores rooms were backed from the corridor side. No searcher would believe him able to open locked doors without a key. Which the kitchen steward kept on a chain about his waist at all times. He couldn’t ask for a safer hiding place. And if he closed the window behind him . . .

  He had to wait until the kitchen courtyard had been thoroughly searched . . . except for the garbage and ash pits. The shout went up that the thief must be hiding in the Hold. The searchers swarmed back inside, and he leaped to the top of the ashpit wall. His fingers just reached the ledge of the window. Taking a deep breath, Piemur gave a wriggling jump and succeeded in planting both hands over the sill. It took every sinew in his body to secure that awkward and painful grip. He felt as if he’d scraped the skin from all his fingers as he clung and worked his body up until his elbows had purchase on the sill. With another mighty wriggle and kick, he managed to propel himself up and over, falling on his head on the topmost sack. Groaning at the pain of that contact, he twisted about, and reaching up, drew the shutter tightly but quietly across, barring the window. Then he felt the egg to be sure his fall had done it no harm.

  He tried to imagine this room from the perspective of the door side, but all the stores rooms had seemed the same. He crouched in terror as he heard shouting in the corridor. Someone rattled the bolts of the door.

  “Locked tight, and the steward has the keys. He can’t be here.”

  They might just take a look, thought Piemur, when they didn’t find him anywhere else. He crawled cautiously over the stacked bundles until he found one with enough slack at the top to admit him. He opened the thong, and just as he was crawling in, wondering how under the sun he was going to tie it up again, the stitching at the side began to give in his hands. Smiling happily at such a solution, he rapidly undid the stitching down the side. Crawling out, he retied the knot about the mouth of the sack, then slid through the undone seam, which, once inside, he could do up, slowly but enough to pass a cursory inspection. It was hard to do, feeding the thick thread through the original holes from the inside, and his hands and fingers were cramped when he finally accomplished the feat.

  He was in a sack of cloth bales and, despite the cramped confines, he was able to wiggle down between bolts so that he was standing on the bottom of the sack and both he and the egg were cushioned on all sides by the material.

  Between fatigue and the scant supply of air in the sack, he found his eyes drooping, and surrendering to the combination of exhaustion and safety, he fell fast asleep.

  He was roused briefly when the door was unlocked and thrown open. But the inspection was cursory, since the Hold Steward kept insisting that the doors had been locked since the morning and he wouldn’t let them poke any spears lest they harm the contents of the bales.

  “He could have hid in the glow room. He was sent there several times.”

  The door was duly shut and locked.

  Piemur was conscious of more activity, but his sleep was so deep that he wasn’t certain later whether he dreamed the noise or not. He wasn’t even conscious of being moved or of the cold of between. What woke him was a strange difficulty with breathing, a sense of heat and the terror of suffocating in his own sweat.

  Gasping, he tore at the thread he had reworked, hard to undo with moist trembling hands that had no strength, and with sight impeded by perspiration pouring down his forehead.

  Even when he had forced a small hole in the sack, he still couldn’t seem to breathe. Weeping in terror, even to the point of forgetting the egg that had brought him to this extremity, he squirmed out of the sack to discover himself in a small space among other sacks. The heat was unbearable, but caution returned and he listened for any sounds. Instead of noise, his senses reported sun-heated material and hides, sun-warmed metal, and the sour sweat of hot wine.

  He tried to shove the nearest sack away from him and couldn’t shift it. Feeling the contents, he realized that it was metal. Twisting a
round, he tested the sack above him and gave an experimental heave. It moved, and a whoosh of slightly cooler air rewarded his efforts. Dragging breath into his lungs, he waited until his heart stopped its frantic pounding. And then, belatedly remembering the egg, he felt the rags about the precious burden. It seemed to be whole, but he didn’t have sufficient space to get it out and look. He gave another shove at the upper bale with no success. Angling so that his shoulders were against the unyielding metal, he levered his feet and pushed as hard as he could. It moved farther, and he saw a crack of sky so brilliantly blue that he gasped at the color.

  It was then that he realized he wasn’t in Nabol Hold any longer. That the heat was not due to the unventilated stores room beyond Lord Meron’s kitchen, but the sun pouring down from southern skies.

  Once he was able to breathe easily, Piemur became aware of other discomforts: parched mouth and throat, a stomach gnawing with emptiness, and a head that banged with a distressingly keen ache.

  He repositioned himself and shoved the sack a little further to one side. Then he had to rest, panting with the exertion as sweat trickled down inside his clothes. He had made enough space to take a look at the egg, and he fumbled under his tunic for it with trembling hands. It was warm to his touch, almost hot, and he worried that an egg could be overheated. What had Menolly said about the temperature required by hatching eggs? Surely beach sands under the sun were hotter than his body. He could see no fracture marks on the shell and fancied he felt a faint throbbing. Probably his own blood. He squinted at the blue sky, which meant freedom, and decided not to put the egg back in his tunic. If he held it in front of him, then it didn’t matter how he twisted and squeezed his body past the sacks and bales, the egg would take no harm and – there was no way it could fall far.

  When he was breathing more easily, he gathered his body, egg-holding hand above his head, and began to squirm upward. Just as he thought he was free, the sack behind him settled agonizingly on his left foot, and he had to put the egg down to free himself.

  Bruised—torn in muscle, skin and nerve—Piemur slowly dragged himself out of the carelessly piled goods. He lay stretched flat, mindful that he might be visible. The unshielded sun baked his dehydrated and exhausted body as he listened beyond the pounding of his heart and the thudding of blood through his veins. But he heard only the distant sound of voices raised in laughing conversation. He could smell salt in the air and the odd aroma of something sweet and, perhaps, overripe.

  His tired mind could not recall much of what he’d heard of the Southern Weyr. Vague flashes of people saying you could pick fresh fruit right off the trees reassured him. A breeze fanned his face, bringing with it the smell of baking meats. Hunger asserted itself. He licked his dried, cracking lips and winced as the salt of his sweat settled painfully in the cuts.

  Cautiously he raised his head and realized that he was at the top of a considerable mound that was braced against the stone walls of a structure of some height. To one side there was open space, to the other the crushed green of leaves and fronds, half-trapped by the bales. He inched himself cautiously toward the foliage, the egg considered at each movement. But even with caution his heart all but stopped when his motion caused one of the bundles to settle abruptly with what seemed to him a lot of unnecessary noise.

  He listened intently for a long moment before continuing his crawl toward the foliage. Now, if he could climb up that tree . . . One look at the horny bark decided him against that. His hands were sore, scratched and bleeding from past efforts. He was about to crawl down the mound instead when something orangey caught his eye. A round fruit slowly swayed just above his head. He licked his dry lips and swallowed painfully against the parched tissue of mouth and throat. It looked ripe. He reached out, scarcely believing his luck, and the fruit rind dented softly at his touch.

  Piemur did not remember picking the fruit: he did remember the incredibly delicious, wet, tangy taste of the orange-yellow meat as he tore juicy segments out of the rind and crammed them into his moisture-starved mouth. The juice stung his cracked lips, but it seemed to revive the rest of him.

  It was while he was licking his fingers clean of the last of the fruit that he noticed the change in the laughing and talking. The noise was coming nearer, and he could hear individual phrases.

  “If we don’t get some of that stuff under cover, it’ll be ruined,” said a tenor voice.

  “I can smell the wine, in fact, and that better be taken out of the sun or it will be undrinkable,” said a second male voice with some urgency.

  “And if Meron’s ignored my order for fabric this time . . .” The woman’s sharp alto left the threat unspoken.

  “I made it a condition of that last shipment of fire lizard eggs, Mardra, so don’t worry.”

  “Oh, I won’t worry, but Meron will.”

  “Here, this one bears a weaver’s seal.”

  “At the very bottom, too. Who piled this so carelessly?”

  Piemur, scurrying down the other side as fast as he could, felt the shiver as someone began tugging at the sacks in the front. Then he was sliding and grabbed the egg more tightly, exclaiming as he hit the ground with a thud.

  Immediately three fire lizards, a bronze and two browns, appeared in the air about him.

  “I’m not here,” he told them in a soundless whisper, gesturing urgently for them to go away. “You haven’t seen me. I’m not here!” He took to his heels, his knees wobbling uncertainly, but as he lurched down a faintly outlined path leading away from the voices and the goods, he thought so fiercely of the black nothingness of between that the fire lizards gave a shriek and disappeared.

  “Who’s not here? What are you talking about?” The strident tones of the woman’s voice followed Piemur as he careered away.

  When he could run no more for the stitch in his side and the lack of breath, he dared no more than pause until he’d gotten his wind. He did stop longer when he came to a stream, rinsed his mouth out with the tepid water and then splashed it about his heated face and head.

  A noise, to his apprehensive mind like the querying note of a fire lizard, set him off again, after nearly falling into the stream. He plunged on, tripped twice, curling his body each time as he fell to protect the egg; but the third time he fell, he had reached the end of his resources. He crawled out of the line of the faint path to a place well under the broad leaves of a flowering bush and probably slept even before his labored breathing quietened.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SEBELL HAD NOT really worried about Piemur throughout the Gather day as he wandered—or staggered—about in his assumed role of wine-happy herdsman. And when word flashed through the crowds that Lord Meron was to walk the Gather, Sebell had no time to look for his apprentice. He had to concentrate on listening to the mutterings about Lord Meron and his curious generosity with fire lizard eggs that only hatched greens.

  If Lord Meron’s appearance gave the lie to rumors that the man was dead or dying, it was apparent to Sebell’s sharp eyes that the Lord Holder needed the support of the two men who walked beside him, arms linked in his. Some of his heirs, Sebell heard whispered in glum and disgusted tones.

  When the roasted beasts were being sliced for distribution to the Gather crowd, Sebell did begin to search for Piemur. Surely the boy wouldn’t miss free meat at Lord Meron’s expense. Not that the beasts were juicy, probably the oldest creatures in the Hold herds, Sebell thought, endlessly chewing on his portion. He had placed himself at an end table about the Gather square where Piemur ought to be able to see him.

  By the time the dancing started, Sebell began to worry. N’ton would be returning for them at full dark, and he didn’t want to impose on the bronze dragonrider by requiring him to wait about or return at a later time.

  It was then that Sebell wondered if Piemur had somehow gotten into trouble and maybe left the Gather area. But, if Piemur had gotten into trouble, surely he would have set up a howl for Sebell to rescue him. Perhaps he had only crawled aw
ay for a nap. He’d had an early rising and he might not be completely recovered from his fall. Sebell sent Kimi about the Gather to see if she could locate the boy, but she returned, cheeping anxiously at her failure. He sent her then to the allotment, in case Piemur had gone there to wait. When that errand too was fruitless, Sebell appropriated a handy, fast-looking runner beast from the picket lines and made his way to their original meeting place, on the off-chance that Piemur had returned there, to wait for him and N’ton.

  Though Sebell searched the valley carefully, he found no trace of his young friend. He was forced to admit that something had indeed happened to Piemur. He couldn’t imagine what, nor why Piemur, or whoever the lad might have crossed, had not sent for him as Piemur’s master.

  He sped back to the Hold, retied his borrowed mount, and reached the Gather just as news of the theft of the queen egg rippled through the crowds. Feelings were mixed as that news spread; anger from those who had received lesser eggs, and amusement that someone had outsmarted Lord Meron. By the time Sebell got to the Hold gates, no one was being allowed in or out. Glowbaskets shone on empty courtyards, and every window of the Hold was brilliant with light. Sebell watched with the rest of the curious gatherers while even the ash and refuse pits were searched. Wagers were being laid that somehow Kaljan the Miner had managed to steal the egg.

  Sebell was there when the minemaster was escorted by guard into the Hold after the man’s baggage was thoroughly searched. An order was circulated, and additional guards posted, to prevent anyone’s leaving the Gather. Sebell positioned himself along the ramp parapet leading to the Hold, where Piemur could easily spot him in the light from the Hold’s glows. Surely if the boy had only fallen asleep, the noise would rouse him.

  It was only when word filtered through the crowd that some unknown drudge had made off with the precious egg that Sebell came to the startling conclusion that that drudge could have been Piemur. How the boy had managed to enter the guarded Hold, Sebell couldn’t figure out, but trust Piemur to find a way. Certainly it was like the boy to steal a fire lizard egg, given the opportunity. A queen egg at that! Piemur never did anything by halves. Sebell chuckled to himself and then sent Kimi flying with the other agitated fire lizards to see if she could discover where Piemur was hiding.