Dragonsinger

Chapter 8

Gather! Gather! It’s a gather day!

No work for us, and Thread’s away.

Stalls are building, square’s swept clear,

Gather all from far and near.

Bring your marks and bring your wares,

Bring your family for there’s

Food and drink and fun and song.

The Hold flag flies: so gather along!

“What’s wrong with the Hold?” Menolly asked Piemur the next morning as she, the boy and Camo were feeding the fire lizards. Piemur kept craning his neck past the roofs of the Harper Hall to see the fire heights of Fort Hold.

“Nothing’s wrong. I want to see if the gather flag’s up.”

“Gather flag?” Menolly recalled that Sebell had mentioned a gather.

“Sure! It’s spring, and su

“Half Circle is isolated,” Menolly replied defensively. “And with Thread falling…”

“Yeah, I forgot that. No wonder you’re such a smashing musician,” he said, shaking his head as if this were no real compensation. “Nothing to do but practice! Still,” he added somewhat skeptical, “you must have had gathers before Thread started?”

“Of course we did. Traders came through the marshes three and four times a Turn.” Piemur was unimpressed. Menolly realized that she herself had only the vaguest memories of such events. Threadfall had started when she was barely eight Turns old.

“We have gathers as often as it’s su

“Marks?”

Piemur was thoroughly disgusted with her obtuseness. “Marks! Marks! What you get in exchange for what you’re selling at a gather?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out four small white pieces of highly polished wood, on which the numerals 32 had been incised on one side and on the other, the mark of the Smithcraft. “Only thirty-seconds, but with four I got an eighth, and Smithcraft at that.”

Menolly had never actually seen marks before. All trading transactions had been carried out by her father, the Sea Holder. She was astonished that so young a boy Piemur had possession of marks and said so.

“Oh, I sang, you know, even before I got apprenticed. I’d always get a mark of some amount or other. My foster mother kept them for me until I came here.” Piemur wrinkled his nose in disgust. “But you don’t get paid for singing at gathers if you’re a harper, and you have to do your own turn anyway. I haven’t anything to give the marksmen here. I keep trying, but Master Jerint won’t put his seal on my pipes, so I have to figure out other ways of turning the odd… Hey, look, Menolly,” and he grabbed her arm, “there goes the flag! There’ll be a gather!” He went flying across the court as fast as he could to the apprentice dormitory. On the top of the Fort Hold fire heights, Menolly now saw the bright yellow pe

the mast, the red and black barred streamer that apparently signaled a gather. She heard Piemur’s cries echoing in the apprentice dormitory and the sounds of sleepers stirring in complaint.

As if Piemur’s sighting of the pe

Menolly dispersed her fair to their su

“I told you, Abuna, that with Menolly to help, two more fire lizards would be no problem,” Silvina said, pushing the kitchen woman onto some other task as she smiled warmly at Menolly. “Not that the Harper will be here much with his, nor Sebell either,” she called to Abuna who went off grumbling to herself. “Long as she’s lived in the Harper Hall, you’d think she’d be used to change-about.”

Menolly wanted to ask Silvina about the girls and their gossiping, but Silvina was avoiding her eye. Just then they both heard Menolly’s name being called in a frantic voice. Sebell came crashing down the kitchen steps, holding up his trousers with one bare arm, wincing at the clutch of his fire lizard queen on the other. Kimi was creeling wildly with hunger.

“Menolly! There you are! I’ve been searching everywhere. What’s the matter with her? Ouch!” Sebell was wide-eyed with anxiety.

“She’s only hungry.”

“Only hungry?”

“‘Here, come with me,” and Menolly took Sebell by the arm, picked up the tray she had prepared for the Masterharper and pulled the journeyman out of the kitchen, to spare him Abuna’s black scowl, and into the relative peace of the dining hall. “Now, feed her!”

“I can’t. My pants!” Sebell nodded to his trousers, which, beltless, threatened to slip off his hips.

Stifling a giggle, Menolly unbuckled her own worn belt and secured Sebell’s pants for him. He grabbed a handful of meat and held it out for Kimi. The ungrateful wretch hissed and lunged at the meat, digging her claws into his forearm.

Well, Menolly couldn’t give him her tunic, too. She spotted a scrap of toweling by the service hatch. Deftly she disengaged the queen’s legs from Sebell’s forearm and wrapped the cloth about his scratched and bleeding arm, then managed to redeposit Kimi before the queen was aware of being shifted.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” sighed Sebell, sinking to the nearest bench. “And you had nine of these creatures to feed every day?” He gave her a look of renewed respect. “I don’t know how you did it! I really don’t!”

Menolly pointed to his klah as she took up a handful of meat. Kimi didn’t care whose hand held the meat, so Sebell gratefully gulped some klah.

“Menolly!” Another voice roared from the top of the stairs.

“Sir?” Menolly dashed to the foot of the steps.

“He’s making the most outlandish noises,” the Harper yelled. “Is he hurt or just hungry? His eyes are flaming red.”

“Here you are,” said Silvina, appearing from the kitchen with a second tray of food for human and fire lizard. “I thought we’d be hearing from him once Sebell appeared.”

Menolly could not keep from laughing with Silvina. She took the steps two at a time without spilling so much as a drop of the klah or tumbling a glob of meat from the piled bowl.

The Harper had taken time to dress, and he’d thought to wrap his arm against the needle-sharp claws of his little bronze, but he looked not a whit less harried or distressed than Sebell.

“You’re sure it’s only hunger?” asked Master Robinton. But his fire lizard’s creeling abated with the first mouthful of meat.

Robinton gestured Menolly toward his quarters, but the fire lizard, believing the food was being withdrawn, let out an indignant shriek and swatted at Menolly’s hand.

“Here, here, eat, you greedy thing,” said the Harper with great affection in his voice. “Just don’t wake everyone. It’s restday.”

“Too late,” remarked Domick, in an acid tone of voice, his sleeping rug pulled around him as he stood in the doorway of his room. “Between you howling like an injured dragon, Sebell sounding like a flight of ’em, and these pesky beasts with tones that could bend metal, no one’s going to enjoy a restday.”

“The gather flag is flying,” the Harper said in a conciliatory way. He continued to feed Zair as he and Menolly proceeded to his room.