Dragonsinger

The next morning, looking from her window to the place where the gather had been held, she saw few traces of litter, only the dew-glistening trampled earth of the dancing square. Holders trudged toward the fields, herdsmen were guiding their beasts to the meadows, and apprentices dashed up and down the holdway on their errands. Down the ramp from Fort Hold paced a troop of leggy ru

Menolly heard the noise from the apprentices’ dormitory, and a soft, all but inaudible, creeling closer by. She threw on her clothes and dashed down the steps.

“Knew you wouldn’t miss, Menolly,” said Silvina, meeting her on the steps from the kitchen. She carried a tray, which she thrust ahead. “Do take this up to the Harper, like a pet, would you? Camo’s just about finished wielding that chopper of his for your fair.”

Menolly’s polite tap at the Masterharper’s door brought an instant response. He had a fur clutched around him and an insistently creeling fire lizard clawing at his bare arm.

“How’d you know?” he asked, delighted and relieved to see her. “Thank goodness you did. I really can’t appear in the kitchen wrapped in a sleeping fur. There, there! I’m stuffing your face, you bottomless pit. How long does this insatiable appetite continue, Menolly?”

She held the tray for him so he could feed Zair as they crossed the room. She slid the tray onto the middle the sandtable and, anticipating the Harper’s own requirements, offered Zair his next few pieces of meat while Master Robinton gratefully gulped down steaming klah. He grabbed a piece of bread, dipped it into the sweeting, had another sip of klah and then, his mouth full, waved at Menolly to leave.

“You’ve got your own to feed, too. Don’t forget to work on your song. I’ll require a finished copy later this morning.”

She nodded and left him, wondering if she ought to check and see if Sebell was managing with Kimi. He was, seated at one of the journeymen’s tables, with more than enough willing assistants.

Her fire lizards waited patiently at the kitchen steps with Piemur and Camo. Once her friends had been fed, she was enjoying a second cup of klah when Domick came striding across the court toward her.

“Menolly,” and he was frowning with irritation, “I know Robinton wants you to finish that song for him, but will it take all morning? I wanted you to go through that quartet music with Sebell, Talmor and myself. Morshal has the girls for theory on firstday so Talmor’s free. I’ll never get that quartet ready for performance unless we have a few more good rehearsals.”

“I’ll start the copy right now, only…”

“Only what?”

“I don’t have any copying tools.”

“Is that all? Finish your klah quickly. I’ll show you Arnor’s den. Just as well I’m taking you,” Domick said, guiding her toward the door in the opposite corner of the court. “Robinton wants the song done on those sheets of pulped wood, and Arnor won’t hand them out to apprentices.”

Master Arnor, the Hall’s archivist, occupied the large room behind the Main Hall. It was brilliantly lit with glow baskets in each corner, in the center of the room, and smaller ones depending above the tilted worktables where apprentices and journeymen bent to tasks of copying faded record hides and newer songs. Master Arnor was a fusser: he wanted to know why Menolly was to have sheets; apprentices had to learn how to copy properly on old hide before they could be entrusted with the precious sheets; what was all the hurry about? And why hadn’t Master Robinton told him himself if it was all this important? And a girl? Yes, yes, he’d heard of Menolly. He’d seen her in the dining hall, same as he saw all the other nuisancy apprentices and holder girls and, oh, well, all right, here was tool and ink, but she wasn’t to waste it now, or he’d have to make more and that was a lengthy process and apprentices never paid close attention to the simmering and if the solution boiled, it would be ruined and fade too soon and oh, he didn’t know what the world was coming to!

A journeyman had been unobtrusively assembling the various items, and he handed them to Menolly, giving her an amused wink for his master’s querulousness. His smile also conveyed to Menolly the tip that the next time she should come directly to him rather than approach his cranky master.

Domick got her away from the old archivist after the barest of courtesies. As they walked back to the Hall entrance, he again directed her not to be all morning at the copying or he’d never get the new quartet sufficiently rehearsed before the Festival. As he opened the door to the Main Hall, she heard the Masterharper’s voice and sped up the stairs.

As she worked in her room, her concentration was penetrated now and then by voices raised in discussion in the Hall below. Absently she identified the various masters: Domick, Morshal, Jerint, the Masterharper and, to her surprise, Silvina, and others whose voices she couldn’t recognize as readily. As the conversations apparently had to do with posting journeymen to various positions about the country, she paid scant heed.

She was, in fact, just finishing the third and looser interpretation of the song when a brisk tapping at the door startled her so much she almost smeared the sheet. At her answer, Domick strode in.

“Haven’t you finished yet?”

She nodded to the sheets, spread out to dry. Scowling with exasperation, he strode across the room and picked up the nearest sheet. Before she could warn him about damp ink, she noticed that he took the sheet carefully by the edges.

“Hmmm. Yes. You copy neatly enough to please even old Arnor. Yes, now…” he was sca

With that he left her. Her right hand ached from the cramped position of copying, and she massaged it, then shook her fingers vigorously from the wrist to relieve the strain.

“Now,” she heard the Masterharper’s voice from the room below, “the point is that all but one of the formalities has been observed. Admittedly, there’s not been much time spent in the Hall, but an apprenticeship served elsewhere under a competent journeyman has always been admissible. Does anyone wish to register any reservations about the competence of that journeyman?” There was a short pause. “So that’s settled. Ah, yes, thank you, Domick. Now, Master Arnor…” and Menolly lost the sound of his voice as he evidently moved away from the window.

She was uncomfortably aware that she was not only an inadvertent eavesdropper on Craft matters not her business, but disobedient to Master Domick’s orders. Not that she didn’t wish to follow them. She picked up her gitar. Playing with Talmor, Sebell and Domick was a pure delight. Had Master Domick meant to intimate that she’d be part of that quartet in a performance? Well, if yesterday was any sample of being a harper, yes, she probably would be performing in that quartet, new as she was to the Harper Hall. That was part of being a harper, after all.

When Menolly entered Domick’s quarters, Talmor and Sebell, Kimi disposed on his shoulder and not looking too pleased to be shifted from the crook of his arm, were already discussing the music. They greeted her cheerfully and asked if she’d enjoyed her first go in a gather at Fort Hold. They both laughed at her enthusiastic replies.