Dragon's Fire

CHAPTER 1

He’s still waving, isn’t he?” Master Zist called back for the third time. He sat at the front of the wagon as it slowly drew away from the Harper Hall. The last of the winter snow covered the fields on either side of the track. Every now and then the wagon skidded as the workbeast lost his footing on the hard-packed icy snow and struggled to regain it.

“Yes, he is,” Cayla agreed, looking back out of the brightly painted wagon at the small figure slowly diminishing in the distance.

“We couldn’t bring him,” Zist said regretfully. “He’d be too obvious.”

At least, Zist thought to himself, the lad was taking it better than he had when they’d first told him their plans.

Pellar had thrown a silent tantrum, had sprawled on the ground in the Harper Hall’s courtyard, feet and fists hitting the ground in his outrage. He stopped only when Carissa had started howling in sympathy with him.

“She’s crying for me, isn’t she?” he scrawled quickly on the slate that was never far from his hands.

“Yes, I suppose she is,” Cayla answered.

Pellar swiftly rubbed his slate clean and scrawled a new comment on it, thrusting it under Zist’s eyes. “Are you taking her?”

“We have to, she’s still nursing.”

“We want to know that you’re safe, here,” Cayla added.

“Aren’t I part of your family?” Pellar scrawled in response, tears streaming down his face.

“Of course you are!” Zist declared vociferously. “And we need you, as a member of our family, to stay here out of trouble.”

“You are always part of our family, Pellar,” Cayla said firmly.

“You’ve been part of our family since we first found you, ten Turns ago,” Zist told him.

“Then why can’t I come?” Pellar scrawled on his slate, his mouth working soundlessly in emphasis.

“Because we don’t know who abandoned you,” Zist told him, catching Pellar’s chin in his hand and forcing the youngster to meet his eyes. “It could be some who were Shunned. If you come with us and they see you, they’ll know that we’re not Shunned.”

“You could get in trouble then?” Pellar wrote. Zist nodded. Pellar chewed his lip miserably, shoulders shaking so hard with his unvoiced sobs that he could barely wipe his slate to write a new message. “I’ll stay. No trouble for you.”

Cayla read the note, thrust baby Carissa into Zist’s arms, and grabbed Pellar into a firm and fierce hug.

“That’s my boy,” she said proudly, kissing the top of his head.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Pellar wrote.

“I promise you’ll be the first to hear us return,” Zist swore, freeing a hand to clap the boy on the back.

“He’s stopped waving,” Cayla reported. “Oh, dear! His shoulders are all slumped and he looks so sad.”

Zist blew out a misty breath and pulled on the reins controlling the workbeast, fighting with himself not to turn the wagon back.

“Murenny promised he’d keep an eye on him,” Cayla said, noting how the wagon had slowed. “And this was your idea.”

“Indeed,” Zist agreed, his shoulders slumping in turn. “I think it’s absolutely necessary that we learn all we can about the Shunned—”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Cayla interjected, lifting baby Carissa in her arms and rocking her instinctively.

“Thread will come again soon enough, and what then?” Zist went on, repeating his reasons needlessly. “If there are enough Shunned, what’s to stop them from overwhelming a hold or craft hall?”

Cayla didn’t have to say a word to make her opinion of that clear; she’d said enough before.

“Well, even if they don’t, what will they do when Thread comes again?” Zist asked reflectively. “It’s not right to condemn them all to a death no one on Pern should ever experience.”

“I know, love, I know,” Cayla said soothingly, recognizing that her mate was working himself into another passionate discourse. She knew from past discussions how vivid the image of Thread, falling mindlessly from the sky, devouring all life, searing all flesh, was engrained in Zist’s mind from his reading. “We’ve discussed this, Murenny’s discussed this, and that’s why we’re here in this wagon, dressed like the Shunned—”

“Do you think we should put an ‘S’ on your head, too?” Master Zist asked, pointing to the purple-blue mark on his forehead.

“No,” Cayla said in a tone that brooked no argument. “And you’d best be right about how to get that mark off.”

“It’s not proper bluebush ink,” Zist reminded her. The sap of the bluebush, used for marking the Shunned, was indelible and permanently stained skin. “Some pinesap, lots of hot water and soap, and it’ll come off.”

“So you’ve said,” Cayla remarked, sounding no more convinced.

In front, Zist noticed that the workbeast was slowing and flicked the reins to encourage it back to a faster walk.

“Well, I’m glad you’re with me,” Zist told Cayla, after satisfying himself that they were moving fast enough.

“I’m glad that we left Pellar behind,” Cayla said. “Ten Turns is too young to see the sights we expect.”

“Indeed,” Zist agreed.

“Carissa’s so little that she’ll remember none of it,” Cayla continued, half to answer Zist’s unspoken thought, half to answer her own fears.

“There’ll be children among the Shunned,” Zist remarked. “That’s part of what makes it so wrong.”

“Yes,” Cayla agreed. She flicked a wisp of her honey-blond hair back behind her ear and continued rocking little Carissa. Then she looked back again. “He’s gone now.”

“We’ll be back in less than half a Turn,” Zist said after a moment of thoughtful silence. “He’ll be all right.”

“I hope he’ll forgive us,” Cayla said.

Zist took the coast road south, toward Hold Gar, Southern Boll Hold, and warmer weather. He and Cayla had guessed that the warmer climes would attract the Shunned, who would find the harsh winters of the north harder to survive.

The road was still snow covered and never more than a pair of ruts running down along the coastline. Even in the protected enclosure of the wagon, Cayla wrapped herself up tightly and nuzzled little Carissa close to her side to keep them both warm. In front, perched on the rattling bench seat, Zist had a thick wherhide blanket spread over his knees and layers of warm thick-knit Tillek sweaters, the same as those used by the Tillek sailors because they kept out the worst of the wet and cold even at sea. Even so, Zist was chilled to the bone every evening when they halted.

They were both relieved when they finally came upon the outskirts of Hold Gar.

Their reception by the holders was sharp and unpleasant.

“Go away!” shrieked the first old woman whose cothold they had stopped at, hoping to barter for food. “Would you have me Shunned, too?”

She hurried them on their way by throwing stones and setting her dogs on them.

“Go back north and freeze! We’re hardworking folk down here,” she yelled after them. “You won’t find any handouts.”

Zist shared a shaken look with Cayla who busily tried to comfort a bawling Carissa.

As they neared the next hold, Cayla glanced quickly at the “S” on Zist’s forehead. “Maybe I should go by myself,” she suggested.

“Bring the baby,” Zist agreed. “I’ll tend the beast.”

Carissa returned later, smiling and carrying a sack full of goods.

“They cost more than they should,” she said when she handed the bag to Zist. “The lady fed us, though, and had fresh milk for Carissa.”

Two days later they came upon a wagon by the side of the road. It had been burned down to the wheels.

Zist halted. He went to the wreck, crawled around and through it, and came back thirty minutes later, his face grim.

“They were caught while they were sleeping,” he told Cayla.

“How do you know it wasn’t an accident with a lantern?” Cayla asked. While holders used glows, the Shunned had to make do with what they could scrounge, and that often meant candles or lanterns.

“I’d rather not say,” he replied grimly.

“I suppose we should keep a watch at nights,” Cayla said.

“Maybe we should turn back,” Zist said. “This is beginning to seem more dangerous than I’d feared.”

“Perhaps this is what happened to Moran.”

“Perhaps,” Zist agreed, his face going pale. With a sour look, he gestured to the burned wreck. “There has to be a better way to deal with the Shunned.”

“We don’t know what happened here. We know that some were Shunned for murder. After being Shunned, what would stop them from murdering again?” Cayla responded. “Perhaps we’re only seeing justice done.”

“No,” Zist said, shaking his head firmly. “That was a wagon much like ours.”

Cayla realized from what he’d left unsaid that the occupants of the wagon were much like them, too—a man, woman, and child.

“We should move on before we attract attention,” she said firmly.

“I’d like you to keep watch from the back of the wagon,” Zist said by way of agreement.

“Of course.”

When they camped that evening, Cayla brought out her pipes and Zist’s gitar. They had left their best instruments behind as they had the telltale stamp of the Harper Hall to distinguish them as works of craftsmanship. Instead, they had brought older instruments, as befitted their status of homeless Shunned.

“Let’s play a bit,” Cayla said as she handed him his gitar. “The baby’s asleep and all bundled up for the night.”

Zist took the gitar and started tuning it; he recognized her desire to calm them both down from the horrors of the burned wagon.

Cayla adjusted her pipes slightly to match his gitar and then, with a twinkle in her eye, started into a lively reel, daring him to keep up.

Zist smiled back at her, matched her pace, and then exceeded it, nodding a challenge back to her, only to find himself surprised as her fingers seemed to fly over the holes and switched pace and melody at once.

“Very nice,” a voice called out from the darkness as they finished the reel in record time. “Have you any other songs?”

Zist stood up quickly, started to grab for the cudgel he’d laid close to hand and stopped, raising his gitar instead. As a weapon it’d do in a pinch and it had the advantage of not being obvious.

A thin, lanky figure stepped out of the shadows toward the fire.

Zist’s eyes swept over him, then back to Cayla, who’d turned her back to the fire and was scanning the darkness. She trilled a quick note on her pipes but Zist wasn’t fooled—the note was a D sharp, three notes up from C, meaning that Cayla had spotted three others around the fire.

Pretending to check his gitar, Zist glanced behind the stranger and caught sight of the gleam of several pairs of eyes. He strummed his gitar twice, changing chords, as though checking his tuning but really letting Cayla know his tally of two. That made five, total.

“There’s a baby in the wagon, she’s sleeping,” a woman’s voice called from the far side of their wagon. Six.

Zist tensed, his jaw clenched angrily.

“Her name’s Carissa,” Cayla replied in an easy tone to the woman. “Please don’t disturb her, she’s impossible to get back to sleep.”

“What are you doing camped out here on Gar land?” the first man asked.

“We’re heading down to Southern Boll,” Zist said quickly. “We were hoping to trade tunes and news.”

“That’s harper’s work,” the man said.

The man was only visible as a shadow in the night; Zist couldn’t see his face. The question was, was the man one of the Shunned or one of Hold Gar? And if he was from Hold Gar, was he the same one who’d burned the other wagon—if that’s what had really happened?

Cayla took the decision out of his hands. “We’re hoping to sing to those that harpers wouldn’t.”

“You wouldn’t know any healing would you?” the woman at the back of the wagon called out anxiously. “For my Jenni’s got a terrible fever.”

“I don’t know much,” Cayla said cautiously.

The woman rushed from the back of the wagon and into the firelight. In her arms she held a tightly wrapped bundle, which she started to thrust into Cayla’s hands but stopped, thinking better of it.

“Maybe you ought not,” the woman said. “My Jenni’s got a terrible fever; I wouldn’t want your wee one to get it, too.”

“We’ve probably all got it,” the man by the fire grumbled sourly. “Three dead already…”

“They weren’t the ones in the wagon a ways back?” Zist asked thoughtfully.

“You found them, eh?” the man replied. Zist nodded and the man peered at him thoughtfully. “Thought it was some holder folk who set fire to the wagon, didn’t you?”

He saw Zist’s reaction and laughed bitterly, shaking his head.

“Other days it would have been,” the man said, and spat toward the fire. “Some of them holders would do it just for fun.”

“You shouldn’t say that, Malir,” the woman snapped at him. The baby in her arms bawled feebly and she forgot whatever else she was going to say, instead peering down worriedly at the baby and feeling her forehead with her free hand. Horrified, she cried to Cayla, “Oh, she’s burning up! Is there anything you can do?”

“When did the fever start and were there other symptoms?” Zist asked, turning to the woman.

“What about those others you mentioned?” Cayla asked, turning to Malir.

Malir gestured to the woman across the fire.

“Yona knows it all, let her tell it,” he said, turning abruptly and disappearing into the shadows to confer, Zist guessed, with the others who had kept out of sight.

Zist turned back to the woman, Yona.

“Here, sit down by the fire,” Cayla said, gesturing to a comfortable spot.

“Start heating some water,” she ordered Zist, “and get the herbals from the wagon.” She paused, frowning, frantically reviewing in her head the lore she’d learned from Mikal about fevers. “I think Carissa is safe enough in the wagon for the moment.”

“She is, with my man and his crew guarding us,” Yona declared.

As Zist set about his errands, Cayla turned to the other woman, for the first time able to examine her carefully. Yona’s face was lined with dirt, grime, and the strain of years of rough living. Even so, Cayla noted, there were laugh lines around her eyes. Life had been hard on Yona, Cayla surmised, but not unbearable. At least until now.

“So tell me about the others,” Cayla said, making herself relax in order to encourage Yona to do the same. “Who got sick first and when was it noticed?”

“Mara was first,” Yona said after a moment’s reflection. She shook her head, adding, “It’s hard to remember, because Kenner got sick just after and then their baby, little Koria.”

She raised her eyes to meet Cayla’s and told her, “I’m the one the others come to for healing in our group. Not that I know all that much, it’s just that they started asking once and they’ve never stopped.”

Cayla nodded understandingly.

“So it was Mara, Koria’s mother, then Mara’s mate, and finally their baby—was that the order?”

Yona nodded.

“And beside the fever, were there any other symptoms?”

“They were always thirsty, and coughing,” Yona told her. “They couldn’t drink enough and”—she paused delicately—“everything they ate came out really quick, from one end or the other.”

Cayla nodded, showing no sign of unease. “What remedies did you try?”

By the end of the third day there were five sick in the camp: baby Jenni; an older man named Vero; Nikka, a young girl; Torellan, Malir’s lieutenant; and Yona.

Zist found himself splitting his time between caring for Carissa and fetching herbs for Cayla, who was completely immersed in her attempts to find a cure for the fever.

After Zist had finished getting Carissa down for the night, he left the wagon and gathered fuel for the fire. On his return, he noticed that Cayla had fallen asleep, propped up against the wagon wheel nearest the fire’s warmth.

He peered down at her fondly for a moment, then shook himself and started to the back of the wagon to get a blanket for her. The sound of footsteps startled him and he turned quickly. It was Malir.

“The baby’s dead,” he said, his face etched with pain and eyes dull with fatigue. “She died just moments ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Go,” Malir ordered. Zist drew a breath to console the distraught man, but Malir silenced him with a shake of his head. “The others think it’s your missus’s fault; they’re talking about burning our wagon—and yours.”

“Come with us,” Zist suggested.

Malir shook his head. “I’ll stay with my kind,” he said. He snorted when he saw Zist’s expression. “You’ve had too many meals recently to be one of us,” Malir told him. “The others haven’t noticed yet but they will, they will.”

Malir shook his head, adding, “Anyways, if we went with you, they’d come after us for sure, certain that we were in this together.”

Zist cast about for another way to make his argument but Malir forestalled him with an impatient gesture. “Go, now! Before they come after you.”

Pellar was the first to hear the returning wagon, just as Master Zist had promised. He ran out under the archway from the Harper Hall. He unshielded the glows in the basket he’d kept ready and recharged for the past six months.

“No, Pellar!” Zist shouted, his voice hoarse and oddly troubled. It took Pellar a moment to realize that the harper’s voice was tearstrained. “Get the healer and make everyone stay away.” He gestured from his seat to the covered part of the wagon, “They’re sick. It might be fever.”

It was. Master Zist’s wife, Cayla, and their baby daughter, Carissa, were confined to the wagon. Masterhealer Kilti tried everything.

Pellar set himself up in a tent nearby, ready to run errands whenever Zist wished. But nothing he nor Masterhealer Kilti could do helped. Even Mikal, who had come at Pellar’s first desperate pleading, could find no cure. First little Carissa, then Cayla, succumbed to the fever.

An anguished cry, more felt than heard, startled Pellar out of his sleep and he raced to the wagon to find Master Zist leaning against it, his face buried in his hands. Pellar knew without asking that Cayla had lost her battle with the fever. Tentatively, he reached for the taller harper, awkwardly patting him only to gasp in surprise as Zist grabbed him into a tight embrace. Pellar hugged the older man back tightly until he felt Zist relax.

Then Pellar pulled out his slate and wrote on it, “I should have come with you.”

He thrust it under Master Zist’s tear-bleared eyes. Zist read it and shook his head. “Then you would have been lost, too.”

Pellar shook his head fiercely, gently pulled his slate out of the harper’s limp hands, erased its message with a corner of his nightshirt, and wrote once more, “Wouldn’t have mattered.”

Zist read the new note and shook his head. “You do matter, Pellar. I’m glad you stayed behind, I’m glad you’re here.” He hugged the youngster once more. “Now, please go tell the healer.”

Pellar gave Master Zist a cautionary look, so reminiscent of those Zist had used all too often on his mischievous charge that the harper felt his lips curving upward in spite of his sorrow. Satisfied, Pellar nodded to himself, spun on his heel, and raced off to fetch the Masterhealer.

In the Turn that followed, Pellar was never far from the harper, doing whatever he could to console him in his grief, a grief he himself shared. Pellar helped dig the graves, one so terribly little, with tears streaming down his face as he remembered little Carissa’s first and only word: “Pellah!”

He stood up front with Masterharper Murenny and Masterhealer Kilti while Master Zist said his last farewells to his wife and daughter. And he was by Zist’s side months later when he planted the first fresh buds of spring on their graves.

And now Pellar stood outside the Masterharper’s door, carefully listening to the conversation inside.

“You should have seen them, Murenny,” Pellar heard Master Zist saying. “Some of them were no more than skin and bones.”

“They were Shunned, they had their chance,” Masterharper Murenny reminded him.

“Not the children,” Zist responded heatedly. “And some of them were Shunned for no more than not giving favors to the Lord Holder or their local Craftmaster. Where’s the justice in that?”

Master Murenny sighed in agreement. “But what more can we do?”

“We—” Zist cut himself off. Pellar held his breath so as not to make any sound, but it wasn’t enough. With a resigned sigh, Zist rose from his chair, saying, “Hold on.”

Before Pellar could scamper out of sight, the door to the Masterharper’s quarters sprang open and Zist appeared in the doorway, beckoning to him with a crooked finger. With his head hung low, Pellar slumped into the room, expecting a scolding. Instead, with a glance of confirmation at the Masterharper, Zist said, “You’ll hear better on this side of the door.”

“Not a harper,” Pellar scrawled on his slate in protest. Master Zist read the message and passed it over to the Masterharper with a twinkle in his eye.

Murenny gave a loud guffaw as he read the slate and then said to Pellar, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, youngster. You listen well, as you’ve just shown.”

He gestured for Pellar to take a chair and beckoned inquiringly toward the spare mug beside the pitcher of klah. With a wink, he said, “Listening’s thirsty work.”

Pellar looked inquiringly at Master Zist, who nodded permission. Pellar smiled gratefully and offered the pitcher to the Masterharper and Master Zist, who both declined, before serving himself some of the hot tasty brew.

“I know there’s no need to tell you that what we say here is craft secret,” Murenny said when Pellar had seated himself and fastened his eyes on the Masterharper. Pellar nodded emphatically.

“Good,” the Masterharper said, satisfied. He turned to Master Zist. “Any sign of Moran, then?”

“None at all,” Master Zist said, shaking his head. “Of course, we didn’t travel very far before we came across those poor sick folk and then—” His voice broke, and it was a moment before he continued, “Cayla insisted we help. When Carissa got a fever, we broke camp as quickly as we could, but…”

“I understand,” Murenny said softly in the pained silence that fell.

Zist looked up again, his eyes shining. “That’s another thing, what about the children? They’ve done nothing wrong, and yet they’re either separated from their Shunned parents or forced to leave with them—mostly on the whim of their Holder—to starve or die without any hope for a future. Is this the justice of Pern?”

Murenny shook his head. “Those who refuse to do their share of work, who steal from others, who commit murder—what else is there to do with them but to Shun them?”

Zist made a face but said nothing, staring at the floor.

“Holders and Crafters can set fines, but if that doesn’t bring a person to his senses, what else is there?” Murenny persisted. “Is it any fairer to insist that good, hardworking folk support lazy, shiftless thieves?”

Zist shook his head glumly. He glanced up, saying, “But Thread is coming soon, what then? Shall the Shunned be scoured off Pern by Thread?”

Pellar shuddered. Thread had not fallen on Pern for nearly two hundred Turns. The Red Star, harbinger of Pern’s doom, was still only a glowing menace in the night sky. It would be another eighteen Turns before it grew to its ghastly largest size and brought the voracious Thread to threaten all life on Pern for a whole fifty Turns. Pellar would be nearly thirty then, a number unimaginable to him, but he did not doubt the harpers’ tales of the First and Second Passes of the Red Star.

To be caught outside of the safe stone of hold or crafthall would mean being exposed to the ravages of Thread, to be burned to a lifeless crisp as the Thread devoured all life. Only Pern’s great fire-breathing dragons could save everyone and the planet itself from complete annihilation.

Zist snorted as another thought crossed his mind. “Not that Thread’s their biggest threat—there’s enough disease and fever to be found, as well.”

“Did you get an idea of their numbers, then?” Murenny asked softly.

“No, they were always drifting about, and some of them were mixed in with proper Traders,” Zist responded. “The traders don’t like them because too many of them steal—what have they got to lose?—and they give the traders a bad name with the Holders.

“And there’s another thing,” he continued. “They eat so poorly that many of them succumb to the least cold or infection. But they mix enough with crafters and holders that their diseases could be spread to others.”

“Have you a suggestion, then?”

“Not any better than my last,” Zist replied sourly. “Nor the one before it.”

“I thought it was a good idea to get a harper in amongst the Shunned,” Murenny said. “It’s a shame that we’ll never know what happened to Moran.”

“It’s a great shame,” Zist agreed. “I was sure they would have accepted him. Perhaps he could have helped their plight.”

“And given us some better thoughts on how to deal with the long-term issues of Thread and the Shunned,” Murenny agreed.

Pellar scribbled quickly on his slate, “I’ll go.”

“No, you won’t,” Zist said harshly when he read the slate.

“Not a harper?” Pellar scrawled in response.

“That’s not it,” Murenny said, leaning forward to read Pellar’s message upside down. He glanced significantly at Master Zist, and Pellar subsided. The older harper’s face was scrunched up in thought.

“I’ll make you a harper now,” Zist said finally. He looked up at Murenny. “With Moran gone, I’ve a right to another apprentice.”

“Very well,” Murenny agreed, raising his bushy eyebrows to Pellar. “Do you accept?” Before Pellar could write his reply, Murenny held up a hand. “You know how tough he is. Think carefully before you answer.”

Pellar’s face lit up impishly and he shook with silent laughter.

“I should,” he wrote, showing the slate to the other two. He grabbed it back quickly, wiped it clean with his sleeve, and wrote, “But I won’t.”

He held his answer out until the others nodded that they’d read it, then hastily wiped it clean again to write another note, which he showed to Master Zist. “I’d be honored.”

“Well,” Master Murenny said in a drawl to Master Zist, “here’s a first: a silent harper.”

“He might be silent, but he behaves no better than the others,” Zist replied. He turned to Pellar. “You should have been my apprentice last Turn.” When Pellar made to protest, Zist shook his head firmly, saying, “You can make and play drums, guitar, and pipes already. This Turn you’ll be able to pick your wood for a violin.”

Pellar’s eyes widened in delighted surprise. He was to be a harper!

“So now, Apprentice Pellar, what do you suggest we do?” Murenny asked.

“Go where they steal,” Pellar wrote immediately.

“A brilliant suggestion, Pellar,” Murenny said, clapping the youngster on the shoulder.

“It is,” Zist agreed fervently.

“We don’t know where they steal, though,” Murenny remarked after a moment of thoughtful silence. Pellar looked crestfallen until the Masterharper added, “But we can find out.”

“Pellar, go to the drumheights and ask them to send a message requesting reports of any missing or lost material from all the Holds and Crafts,” Zist said.

Pellar smiled shyly, bobbed his head once in acknowledgment, and sped out the door.

“Now that he’s out of earshot, why don’t you tell me why aren’t you thinking of sending him out this time?” Masterharper Murenny asked Zist after the boy had left.

“He’s better able to look out for himself than even Moran,” Zist said. “Mikal says that he’s good in the wild, he survived a full sevenday relying only on his wits. His woodcraft is such that I have trouble tracking him.” He frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then shook his head. “But no, I think he’s better here at the Harper Hall.”

“Then who would you send?”

“Me,” Zist replied instantly. He spread his hands out, gesturing toward the Harper Hall. “There are too many sad memories here for me now.”

Murenny regarded the harper silently for a long while before he sighed and nodded.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” he said. “I can’t say that I blame you.” In the distance, the Harper Hall’s drums rattled “attention.” “Just don’t forget that you’re my apprentice.”

Zist smiled and shook his head. “As if you’ll ever let me forget!”

“Indeed,” Murenny agreed, letting his voice go commandingly deep. “And as your Master, it is my pleasant duty to inform you that Lord Egremer has informed me that he is sending two fire-lizard eggs from his latest clutch.” He wagged a finger at Zist. “I’d like you to take one.”

Zist shook his head adamantly. When the Masterharper drew breath to protest, Zist said, “Give it to the boy instead. He’ll need a messenger, and a fire-lizard would be best.”

Murenny pursed his lips thoughtfully and then nodded. “Very well.”

Pellar had been overjoyed at the prospect of impressing a fire-lizard, then reflective. He stopped in his tracks as they walked back from Fort Hold to the Harper Hall and, with obvious reluctance, put down the pot full of warm sand in which the mottled fire-lizard egg was nestled. Zist looked at him inquiringly but Pellar shook his head and pulled out his slate.

“You should have it,” he wrote to Master Zist.

“It was offered to me,” Zist told him. “I chose to give it to you—apprentice.”

Pellar’s face went through a rainbow of expressions, going from stubborn intent through hopeful disbelief to delirious incredulity. He dropped his slate back around his neck and hugged Zist tight. Zist returned the hug with equal intensity, finally pushing the youngster away and pointing down to the egg.

“We’d better get it back to the Hall quickly and near the hearth so that it stays warm.”

Pellar picked up the pot gingerly, and in an unusual display of controlled haste, set off again for the Harper Hall.

In the end, Zist was glad of his choice, content to let Pellar spend the next several sevendays hovering around the kitchen hearth in the Harper Hall, happily answering any questions about the egg and anxiously checking it every few minutes.

Pellar was well prepared when the egg finally started shaking and small cracks appeared in the middle of the night. Zist was sure that, had he kept the egg himself, he would have been too tired to notice.

As it was, Zist was rudely jostled awake by Pellar, who used his foot, his hands being fully occupied with the just-gorged fire-lizard, his face split with a grin and his eyes shining in pure joy. Zist managed to remain awake long enough to ascertain that the fire-lizard was a brown, and to assure Pellar that it was, indeed, the most marvelous creature ever to grace any part of Pern.

Pellar named the fire-lizard Chitter, having first toyed with the name Voice because, as he wrote, Chitter was even better than having a voice—no one complained (much) when the fire-lizard made noise.

Masterharper Murenny had to agree with the youngster’s assessment, as the antics of the fire-lizard and his bright-eyed partner were soon the talk of the Harper Hall.

Not everyone appreciated the fire-lizard, however. “Take it away!” Mikal had cried in a hoarse, pained voice when Pellar proudly brought Chitter over to Mikal’s cave for inspection. Better was the effect the pair had on Zist, bringing the harper slowly out of the depths of his grief.

They spent more than a Turn gathering information. In that time, Pellar had made his first violin under Master Caldazon’s instruction, and had spent as much time as he could working with Mikal, learning about herbal cures and first aid. Summer had come again before Zist made his discovery.

“I think I should go to Crom,” he said late one night in a quiet conference with Murenny.

The Masterharper gave him an inquiring look.

“There were those reports last winter of missing coal and there are some more reports just in,” Zist said, waving a slate to the Masterharper. “And Masterminer Britell’s setting up some new mines far away from Crom Hold.”

“Go on.”

“Places far up in the mountains that will be isolated during the winter months,” Zist continued.

“Good places for things to go missing?” Murenny suggested.

“Along with good places to hide,” Zist agreed. “This report from Jofri suggests that there might be some friction between Miner Natalon and his uncle Tarik.”

“Wasn’t Tarik the one who reported missing a bunch of coal last winter?”

“He was,” Zist replied.

“You think perhaps the coal wasn’t lost?”

“Cromcoal costs.”

“No one would be happy to lose the value of their work,” Murenny remarked.

“Jofri’s reports lead me to wonder why Tarik didn’t complain more,” Zist said.

“What are you thinking?”

“Jofri’s ready for his Mastery,” Zist said. “He should come back here.”

Murenny nodded and motioned for the harper to continue.

“So we’ll need someone to take his place,” Zist said. “And, as I said before, I need some time away from here.”

“What about Pellar?”

Pellar had progressed mightily in the past Turn, producing a beautifully toned violin that had practically become his voice. In almost all respects, Zist thought, the boy was ready to walk the tables and become a journeyman.

“Would you leave him behind?” Murenny prompted when Zist made no response.

The other harper shook himself. “Sorry, just thinking.”

“I see my lessons have finally paid off,” Murenny remarked drolly.

Zist acknowledged the gibe with a roll of his eyes.

“And?” Murenny prompted.

“He should come with me,” Zist said. “He can make his own camp and keep out of sight.”

“His woodcraft is excellent,” Murenny agreed. “But why keep him out of sight?”

Zist shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just think it would be better if I appeared the old bitter harper, unaided.”

“Without Pellar,” Murenny noted sadly, “you’ll have no trouble filling the role.”

Pellar missed his fiddle; it had become the voice he didn’t have and he had rejoiced in it.

“I’ll keep it safe for you,” Masterharper Murenny had promised him, reverently placing it in its case and shaking his head in wonder. “I haven’t seen the like, and that’s the truth.” He shook a warning finger at Zist, saying, “You make sure the lad stays in one piece, Zist. I’ll want him back here to pass on his knowledge.” He looked down at the fiddle again and added wistfully, “If I’d’ve known, I would have had him building them Turns back.”

“He’s a talent with wood, that’s for sure,” Zist agreed. He cocked an eyebrow toward Pellar, who had filled out and shot up in the two Turns since Zist’s disastrous trip. “You’ve the makings of a fine harper.”

Murenny nodded in emphatic agreement, and Pellar’s eyes went wide with joy.

“His woodcraft is as good as this?” Murenny asked Zist, with a hint of a frown as he tore himself away from the beautiful sheen of the fiddle and turned his attention back to its maker.

“Better,” Zist told him.

Pellar looked embarrassed. “I’m naturally quiet,” he wrote.

“He crept up on me—caught me completely unawares—even though I’d told him to and was on the lookout,” Zist confided. He shook his head ruefully. “He’ll not be seen, or heard, unless he wants to.”

“Good,” Murenny said firmly. “Otherwise I would have to think twice about letting him go.” His eyes strayed again to the fiddle and then up to Pellar.

“I’ve seen you grow from a babe, youngster, and I’ve watched you more than you might imagine,” Murenny told him solemnly. “I need you to understand this: You will always have a place in the Harper Hall.” He gestured to the fiddle. “This just makes us more eager for your return.”

Pellar’s eyes grew round as he absorbed the Masterharper’s emphatic words.

Zist clapped his adopted son on the shoulder. “I told you,” he murmured softly in Pellar’s ear.

Pellar blushed bright red, but his eyes were shining with happiness.

CHAPTER 2

Come on, Jamal, you’ll miss it!” Cristov called as he weaved through the Gather crowd. He looked over his shoulder and frowned as he saw that the distance between him and his friend had widened. Jamal hobbled after him gamely on his crutches. Cristov stopped, then turned back.

“I could carry you, if you want,” he offered.

“I weigh as much as you do,” Jamal said. “How far do you think we’d get?”

“Far enough,” Cristov lied stoutly. “It’s only a few dragonlengths to the edge of the crowd.”

Jamal shoved Cristov away.

“It’ll take forever with these,” he cried, waving at one of the crutches with his arm. Jamal had broken his leg a sevenday before and would be on crutches for at least two months.

“Then I’ll carry you,” Cristov persisted, trying again to grab hold of his friend.

“You couldn’t do it even if you were the size of your father,” Jamal said. Cristov hid a sigh; even if he were the size of Tarik, he’d probably not be big enough to carry Jamal.

“You’ll be the proper size for the mines,” Tarik had said once when Cristov had complained that all his friends were taller than him.

“I can still try,” Cristov persisted. Jamal groaned at him and tried to shake off Cristov’s aid.

“There’s your father,” Jamal said in a low tone. Cristov looked back to the edge of the Gather and saw Tarik. Their eyes locked, and Cristov’s heart sank as his father beckoned imperiously to him. “You’d better go. He looks like he’s in one of his moods.”

“I’ll be back,” Cristov said as he started away. Not hearing any comment from Jamal, he turned back but Jamal was already hobbling away, nearly lost in the Gather crowd. Cristov wanted to sprint after him, to turn him around, to meet his father with a friend at his side, but—

With a grimace, Cristov turned back to the edge of the Gather crowd and caught the look on his father’s face, Tarik repeated his impatient, beckoning gesture and Cristov knew why Jamal had left.

“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 more, 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

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 Zist.

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.

The bright something he’d seen earlier resolved itself to a bundle of yellow flowers. Pellar paused, his throat suddenly tight and dry.

The mound was a grave, newly dug—and it was too small for an adult.

He took a deep breath and worked his way closer to the mound, keeping a careful eye out for any signs of footprints. At first he thought he’d found none, then, as he looked near where the flowers had been left, he made out faint signs of disturbed ground. Curious, he got on his hands and knees, and bent close to the ground. The markings didn’t look like footprints until he got close enough to see the straight thin lines of bindings and realized that the strange markings around them were those of bark being pressed into the ground. The prints were small, another child.

A child wearing sandals made of bark tied on to the feet with twine.

“You can make shoes out of anything,” Mikal had once told him. “Wherhide’s the best, of course. But I once made a pair out of bark.” He’d shaken his head. “They’re brittle, hard to keep on, and don’t last long, but they’re better than going barefoot, particularly in the cold.”

Pellar made a wide circle around the far side of the grave, trying to intersect the bark-sandal tracks as they moved away. He found them. He got down on the ground again, carefully, checking for signs of others. He was about to give up when he noticed some disturbed grass. He smiled to himself.

Someone had very carefully erased his or her tracks. If the small child hadn’t felt compelled to put some flowers on the grave site, Pellar doubted if he would have spotted the tracks at all. Now that he knew what to look for, it would be easy to find—the tracks were less than a day old.

A small child had died and been buried here in an unmarked grave without even flowers to mark the passing. Another child—maybe a sister or a brother—had sneaked back to put flowers on the grave before joining the rest of the troop as they headed north toward Camp Natalon.

If he moved quickly, Pellar thought, he could trail the group right to their camp. Pellar was certain that they were Shunned. Tightening his jaw in determination, Pellar hiked his pack farther up his shoulders. But he had not gone forty paces when he spotted the broken stems of flowers snatched along the pathway. They were taken in ones and twos from a clump, so that only someone looking would have seen them. Pellar wondered for a moment if the child who had picked them had done that deliberately or had merely been picking the nicest flowers he or she could find. He looked down at the clump and stopped, his face clouded.

He unshouldered his pack, pulled out a small shovel, and carefully dug up a small outcropping of the flowers.

Carrying them in his hands, he returned to the grave site and firmly planted them on it, going so far as to pour a bit of his precious water over them. Images of Carissa were mingled in his mind with those of another child, older and faceless but another innocent lost because of the Shunned and those who Shunned them.

Nodding to the dead child’s ghost, Pellar stood back up from his planting, dusted himself off, and turned back resolutely to his tracking. How long, he wondered, could a child who wore bark shoes survive in the northern cold?

He turned back to face the direction of the tracks and peered into the distance, spotting landmarks and guessing at their general destination. Satisfied that he could pick up the trail again, Pellar turned back the way he came. If he went back to the road, he thought, he could make better time and get in front of the slow-moving band.

Pellar arrived at Camp Natalon in the middle of the night, silently moving through the trees on the plain to the west before breaking out into the camp’s clearing and striding boldly, as if he belonged, to the small stone cot that Zist occupied.

The entire camp was sleeping; not even a night shift was working the mine, for that evening there had been a great celebration. Pellar had observed it all from across the lake. When the last of the festivities had died down, he had started his roundabout journey, going west around the far side of the lake, crossing the stream that fed it, and picking his way through the forest.

By the time Pellar reached Master Zist’s doorstep, the evening had turned so cold that Pellar could be seen clearly even in the dim light of the lesser of Pern’s two moons. As he knocked on the door, his stomach grumbled loudly.

The door opened quickly and Zist stood back, blinking away sleep, to let Pellar in to the warmth.

“Your lips are blue,” Zist told him. Pellar could only nod in agreement. Zist grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him, and gave him a gentle shove. “The fire’s over there.”

Pellar scented succulent smells in the air. “I saved you some food from the feast,” Zist said, and Pellar picked up his pace.

He was surprised and grateful when Master Zist thrust a cup of warm klah into his frozen hands and pushed him into a chair, making it clear that Pellar was to eat before discussing their business.

As Pellar avidly ate and drank, Zist sat and leaned back in his chair, eyeing the youngster worriedly. Pellar caught the look and interpreted it correctly. He reached under his cloak and pulled out his slate, sliding it over to Master Zist before returning to the excellent food on his plate.

Zist frowned until he saw that the slate was covered with a stiff piece of cloth. He folded the cloth aside and saw that Pellar had written a long missive in carefully precise, tiny letters.

As Zist read, his eyebrows went up.

“You found their camp?” he said in surprise, looking up to Pellar for confirmation. The young harper nodded, grinned, and waved for his Master to continue reading. Zist grunted in assent and bent over the slate once more. He did not read for long before he looked up again. “Mostly children? How are they dressed?”

Pellar pointed to the slate again and once more Zist returned to his reading. The next time he looked up, ready to ask a question, Pellar merely smiled and pointed back down to the slate.

“There’s nothing more there!” Zist protested. Pellar nodded in agreement. “So that’s all you know?”

Pellar nodded again.

“Winter’s coming on,” Zist muttered to himself. “Those children will freeze.”

Pellar made a grimace in agreement and then emphatically rubbed his belly.

“And starve,” Zist agreed. “But I don’t understand why they’re here. Why weren’t they left somewhere else? What use are they up here?”

Pellar stood up, waving his arms to attract the harper’s attention and, when he got it, pointed his thumb at himself, put his hand flat over his head, and then lowered it down to his waist while making big and cute eyes.

“They’re small and cute.”

Pellar nodded and waved a hand, palm up in a general arc, pointed toward the miners’ cottages at the edge of the lake, and then gave Zist the same small-child look.

“Well, of course there are children the same age here, but everyone must know all the children in the camp by now.”

Pellar gestured for his slate and Zist passed it to him, waiting patiently until the young man passed it back with the new message, “Not at night.”

“They’re stealing coal at night?” Zist asked, frowning. After a moment’s thought he declared, “They couldn’t take much, being so small.”

Pellar shook his head and dramatically raised a hand to his forehead, turning back and forth, scanning the room intently.

“They keep watch,” Zist surmised. He nodded in agreement. “And, at night, if one of them saw someone he didn’t recognize, he could shout a warning or act lost and no one would be the wiser.”

Zist leaned back in his chair and gestured for Pellar to sit down. Pellar knew the old harper well: He filled his plate again and nibbled at its contents while occasionally eyeing Master Zist as if hoping to see what the harper was thinking.

“Do you know how much they’re taking?” Zist asked after a long, thoughtful silence. Pellar looked up from his plate and shrugged. Zist gave him a small nod of thanks and resumed his musings.

A long while later, Pellar finished his dinner and reached for his slate again.

“Tell me about the feast,” he wrote.

Master Zist reached for the slate, read it in a quick glance and grunted in assent. “It was quite interesting,” he replied. “Illuminating, really.”

Zist proceeded to describe the wedding between Silstra, the daughter of Danil, one of the miners—in fact, the sole remaining wherhandler at Camp Natalon—and a Smithcrafter named Terregar. He went on at length about the singing ability of one of Danil’s younger sons and the strains he’d noticed between Natalon, the camp’s founder, and Tarik, his uncle.

“And the strangest thing was the watch-wher,” Zist added, shaking his head in awe. “It flew over the ceremony, carrying a basket of glows in its claws.”

Pellar jerked his head up in surprise. He tucked his thumbs under his shoulders and flapped his arms awkwardly, disbelief clear on his face.

“I know, I know,” Zist said, raising a hand to fend off Pellar’s skepticism, “it’s hard to believe a watch-wher flying and no one’s ever reported such a thing before. But then, no one really pays much attention to watch-whers.

“I had a long talk with Danil about it afterward and he claims that he even rode the beast once at night.” Zist shook his head at the notion. “Said that the air was thicker at night.”

Pellar shrugged, then wrote on his slate, “Not as good as dragons.”

“No, certainly not,” Zist agreed. “It’s one thing for a beast to go where it wants, and quite another to train it to go where you want it to go.”

Pellar nodded emphatically, recalling his efforts to train Chitter. Zist smiled and shook his head fondly. “There’s no love lost between Tarik and Natalon, that much is obvious,” he continued. “And I’m afraid in my first few days here I also created some stress between Kindan and Kaylek.” He glanced at Pellar, saw his confusion, and explained. “They’re two of Danil’s boys. The younger one has got the makings of a good singer, while the older—well, he’ll do well in the mines.

“Kaylek’s got the makings of a bully,” Zist added after a moment spent with his lips pursed in thought. “And I’m afraid he may take his anger out on Kindan. I’d hate to have the youngster too scared by his big brother to sing from now on.”

Pellar thought, then wrote, “Mentor.”

Zist glanced at the word and nodded.

“I suppose that might work,” he agreed. It was an old Harper Hall trick to assign some of the more difficult personalities the job of mentoring a younger person. Sometimes the responsibility and the assumption of a mantle of authority succeeded in teaching the “mentor” more than the youngster.

“But who?” Zist asked himself, leaning back once more in his chair.

A yawn escaped from Pellar before he could clamp his jaws shut against it. Master Zist looked up and smiled, shaking his head. “There’s no need for you to stay. I can ponder on this by myself.” He rose from his chair and gestured to the kitchen. Pellar smiled and charged forward eagerly, opening his carisak as he moved. After twenty minutes of rummaging through Zist’s stores, Pellar pulled the strings on the carisak tightly closed and put it on his shoulders. Master Zist smiled, asking, “Did you get your fill of supplies?”

Pellar patted his carisak and nodded. He retrieved his slate, hung it back around his neck, and settled it under his tunic.

“Chitter’s guarding your camp?” Zist guessed as they headed for the door, Pellar leading the way. “You can send him here if you need more supplies.”

Pellar turned back to the harper, surprised.

“Oh,” Zist said with a laugh, “if he’s seen I’ll just say that he’s here on harper business.” He winked at Pellar. “And it’ll be true, won’t it?”

Suddenly, as if on cue, a fire-lizard exploded into the hallway, searching desperately for Pellar and screeching anxiously.

“What is this, is he hungry?” Zist asked. Pellar reached out and coaxed the skittish fire-lizard into his arms, stroking him gently with one hand. Once Chitter had settled, Pellar lifted him away from his body in order to look the fire-lizard in the eye. Zist stood by quietly, still marveling at the way Pellar had learned to commune with the creature.

After a moment, Pellar drew Chitter close to his side again and stroked him softly with a finger. Then he launched the fire-lizard into the air and Chitter went between again, leaving only a cold patch of air behind.

Pellar turned to the door with an unmistakable air of urgency.

“Pellar, what is it?”

The youngster turned back, pulling his slate from under his tunic at the same time and quickly writing, “Someone found my camp.”

Pellar didn’t return to his camp. Instead he spent the night cold and restless crouched nearby, waiting for dawn.

As the sun rose high enough to spread its rays into the deep valley where he’d made his camp, Pellar willed himself to be calm and motionless, doing his best not to give away his position to anyone who might be looking for him.

He had sent Chitter back to Master Zist with a note to say that he was safe and had told the fire-lizard to wait with the harper until he called for him.

Pellar waited an hour before he was satisfied that no one was lurking near his camp, then he slowly made his way toward it. Someone had found his pack, examined it, and carefully rehidden it.

Except—there was a small bouquet of flowers on top of it.

Pellar smiled. It didn’t take him long to spot the tracks of bark-soled shoes. He was sure that whoever had found his camp was the same person—a little girl?—who had left the flowers at the grave site.

Quickly he gathered his things, careful to leave his campsite no more disturbed than before. Then he shrugged on his backpack and strode away, determined to find a better campsite, resolved to leave no more clues of his presence.

Pellar found his new hiding place high up in the mountains to the east of Camp Natalon. The site itself was a cave whose narrow entrance looked like it was nothing more than a crevice. Inside, the crevice widened out again. Pellar imagined that part of the mountain had split a long time ago to make the hollow he found. A steady, chilling breeze blew through the crevice and up the natural chimney formed by the mountain’s split. Fortunately, part of the hollow was wider and provided a relatively sheltered spot out of the worst of the breeze.

That was just as well, for Pellar was shivering with a bone-deep chill when he finally crawled into the widening part of the crevice and decided to make it his camp. The last rays of the evening sun only partially lit his new hiding place.

He carefully scouted out a collection of small rocks and set them out in a circle, in the center of which he placed the bundle of dead twigs and branches he’d gathered along his way. From one pocket he pulled some dead leaves and from another his precious flint stones.

With the fire going, Pellar rolled out his bedding and pulled off his boots. He made a face when one of the leather laces broke, and made yet another when he reached into his pack for his spare and found only dirtied twine instead. He stared at it dumbly for a moment and then shook his head in chagrin—apparently his flower giver had made him a trade, taking his good leather lace strips for her bark-soled shoes and leaving him her worn-out twine in their place.

With a sigh, Pellar found the least worn, least dirty piece of the twine and cut it off of the rest, carefully knotted it onto his broken lace and laid his boots near the fire to dry. He placed his wet socks on a nearby rock but, mindful of a time early in his training with Master Zist, not so near that they would catch fire.

His feet, socks, and boots were wet not just from the sweat of his exertion in climbing into this new place but also from his trek through a number of streambeds as he worked to hide his trail. Master Zist had told him about the burned-out Shunned wagon that he’d found on his ill-fated sojourn with Cayla and Carissa, and that tale, along with so many others regarding the Shunned, left Pellar certain that at least some of them would think nothing of killing him for his belongings—or even just out of simple spite.

Pellar clenched his jaw as he thought of the little flower girl in the company of such rough men. His thoughts grew darker and he found himself thinking about Moran, Zist’s lost apprentice, imagining him tortured and worse after being unmasked by the Shunned. For a moment, Pellar shook in cold fear, but then got control of himself. He had Chitter and he was better, much better, at tracking and fieldcraft than Moran had ever been—Master Zist had said so repeatedly.

Pellar took a deep calming breath and stared at the fire. With a start he realized that some of the cold he felt was from letting the fire burn low. He smiled at his silliness and gently fed some smaller twigs to the fire until it was strong enough to take another branch.

Satisfied, he searched through his pack for some more jerked beef and chewed on it slowly, doing his best not to think of bubbly pies or sliced roast wherry. When his stomach felt fuller, he put the rest of the jerky away.

He stared at the fire, then craned his head around to get a good look at his surroundings.

Chitter, he thought, concentrating on the image of the fire-lizard and sending a mental image of his hiding place.

A rush of cold air burst on him and suddenly the hollow was full of ecstatic fire-lizard, warbling in pride at having found Pellar.

Pellar burst into a wide grin and held out an arm for the small creature to perch on.

You are the best, Pellar thought to him. Chitter preened and stroked his face against Pellar’s.

Pellar soon fell into a routine, meeting every other sevenday with Master Zist while the rest of the time keeping a distant eye on the spot he’d noted at the camp’s coal dump where the Shunned were stealing their coal.

Their depradations were small and carefully timed, occurring when fresh coal had been deposited by a night shift but before the coal could be bagged, making it harder for the theft to be noticed.

Pellar was glad of his visits, not only for the warmth and the food, but also for the chance to hear Zist’s observations of the miners. He was glad to hear that the harper had taken his suggestion regarding Kaylek and pleasantly surprised to learn that it had worked—Kaylek and Cristov had formed a pleasant attachment, the elder Kaylek learning more restraint and the younger Cristov becoming more outgoing and assured by Kaylek’s teachings.

Aside from those visits, Pellar ventured no farther from his cave than he needed, ensuring that he left few tracks. Those tracks he did leave always headed first south before circling back around to the north, and he was careful to break his tracks whenever he could, whether by walking in the middle of stream or by climbing across several trees.

He never used the same observation point two days in a row, and chose each one so that he could observe his previous observation point from his current one, in case someone had spotted him the day before.

He stayed at his observation point only long enough to see what the Shunned had taken from the coal dump the night before. Because he moved when they were sleeping, Pellar was less worried about being discovered by the Shunned than he was about being discovered by Ima, Camp Natalon’s hunter. But his caution worked just as well in keeping him from her sight as it did from the Shunned.

Still, he made it a point to arrive at his day’s observation point an hour or two before dawn, and left as quickly as he could.

He had learned in his two months of observations that the night shift, which included the light-sensitive watch-wher, usually finished before the sun crested the horizon, and he kept a careful eye for when they left the mine, not certain how good the watch-wher’s sight was and whether it might spot him.

He was surprised one morning when the sky seemed to have gotten lighter than usual and still the night shift hadn’t departed the mine shaft. In fact, the sun was now over the horizon and others in the camp were beginning to stir. Pellar smiled as he spotted a distant figure walking sedately from the Harper’s cot to Natalon’s stone house: Master Zist on his way to teach the children of the camp.

Not long after, his surprise turned to alarm when he noticed a trickle of dark smoke—coal dust—rising out of the mine shaft’s mouth. The trickle grew to a torrent and Pellar, with a sinking feeling, realized that something terrible had happened.

He could think of no way to send a warning to Master Zist, nor any of the miners. The torrent of coal was its own alarm, darkening the sky above the camp, marking it in shadow. Miners in the camp noticed the smoke and moved quickly.

Soon the camp was a swarm of activity around the mine entrance. Pellar watched in horror as the tragedy played itself out in the distance. He saw how the women in the camp set up an aid station, saw one boy, about ten or so, rush out of the mine, grab some bandages, and rush back while one of the nurses waved her arms after him scoldingly. Pellar guessed that the boy was one of the victim’s sons.

A knot formed in Pellar’s throat as he imagined how the youngster must feel and he wished fervently, as if his hopes could change the past, that the boy’s father was not too badly injured.

Or perhaps the victim was another boy, Pellar thought as he suddenly remembered that Kaylek was supposed to have been on that shift for the first time. Was Kaylek among the injured?

Feeling an indistinct bond with the lad, who was near his own age, Pellar strained through the distance for any sign of him.

For hours Pellar watched the tragedy, saw the few injured brought up out of the mine, caught sight of a red-haired boy being brought up. Hours later, Pellar gasped in relief as he spotted a youngster emerge from the mine shaft. His relief was short-lived: He saw the figure find the red-haired boy and realized that the other boy was not Kaylek but his little brother.

He kept looking and hoping until he saw one of the women throw a blanket over the two boys and realized that they were the only children in the aid station.

There was no sign of the watch-wher, Dask, of his handler, Danil, or of any of the sons of Danil that had were assigned to that shift. Nor was there any sign of the red-haired boy’s father.

Chitter arrived with a cryptic note from Master Zist later the next day: “He can’t stay here for a while.”

Pellar considered the notion of sending the brown fire-lizard back to the Harper Hall, but he was not at all sure that Chitter would go, nor that he could recall the fire-lizard from such a distance.

Pellar waited several days before making his way circuitously to the camp. He’d seen the shrouded bodies of the dead miners brought up—there were nine.

He’d started his journey at the first of the dark, so there was a chance that the Shunned might also be moving. He sent Chitter ahead to the miners’ graveyard to reconnoiter and followed more slowly, going down the southern side of his mountain, around west below the lake, crossing the stream that fed it at the far side before going east again toward the camp. The night was noisy with the light winds that carried the cold mountain air down into the cooling valley.

The graveyard was in a clearing beside a waterfall that gushed down the cliffside a kilometer west of the miners’ camp.

It was a peaceful place with thankfully few graves—most of them, sadly, the nine new ones from this latest accident.

Pellar had picked some yellow flowers on his way and wasn’t surprised to see, among other large floral bouquets, small bunches of yellow flowers already at the graves, each bunch tied together with a blade of grass. Even though it was possible that the yellow flowers had been left by one of the miners’ children, Pellar was certain that the little girl had left them.

He wondered if the little girl who had left the flowers did so because she felt somehow responsible. Or was it just because she was remembering her own dead, and honoring them by honoring these—as Pellar was honoring Cayla and Carissa.

Pellar’s musings were interrupted as Chitter suddenly ruffled his wings loudly and disappeared between. It was a warning. Pellar pushed himself tight against a tree, motionless.

A figure appeared near the grave site, not three meters from Pellar. The figure made its way to the graves. Pellar caught sight of a strand of blond hair around the person’s face. It was a youngster—a girl, Pellar thought—perhaps two years younger than himself. Definitely not the flower girl, who was much smaller and probably younger, too.

Something alarmed her, and she turned toward Pellar’s hiding place, reached down, and searched the ground with her hand, coming up with a large rock.

“Who’s there?” she called—definitely a girl. “I’ve got a rock.”

Pellar pressed closer against the tree, though he was positive that she couldn’t see him in the darkness.

Strangely, the girl sniffed the air. “I can tell you’re not from the camp,” she called over the breeze. “If you don’t identify yourself, I’ll—I’ll tell Master Zist about you.”

Pellar allowed himself a smile; Master Zist would be the least of his worries. But he wondered how the girl could tell he wasn’t from the camp, and why she had sniffed the air? The breeze was blowing to her from his direction and he knew that a good bath would not be amiss, but he was certain that no one could smell him at such a distance, particularly in a clearing full of fresh-cut flowers. Perhaps she could see him. But if so, why hadn’t she thrown her rock?

The girl stayed motionless for a minute more, then dropped her rock and turned back to the camp. She paused once, turned back quickly, perhaps hoping to catch Pellar leaving his hiding place, and called, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Master Zist has quite a temper and won’t give up until he finds you.”

Pellar stifled a snort of laughter; he was certain that he was more familiar with both Master Zist’s temper and tenaciousness than the girl was.

He waited until his feet and fingers were numb before he sent the thought to Chitter to check the way to the camp. Chitter responded instantly, letting him know that the way was clear.

Thirty minutes later, well past midnight, Pellar was ushered into Master Zist’s kitchen and handed a mug of warm klah. Affectionately, the Master also tossed some small rolls in Chitter’s direction; they were caught midair by the hungry fire-lizard.

“Was that you that Nuella ran into at the grave site?” Zist asked as soon as he saw Pellar rest his mug on the kitchen table and pull out his slate.

Pellar didn’t pick up his slate but instead drew two curves in the air with his hands and then brought one hand, palm flat, against his chest at the height of the girl he’d encountered.

“Yes,” Zist agreed drolly, “that would be Nuella. She thought she’d frightened you away.”

Pellar smiled and shook his head.

“I’d prefer it if she didn’t find you again.”

Pellar nodded emphatically in agreement.

“And I think we should be very careful about your future visits,” Zist said. He jerked his head toward the front of the cottage. “I’ve got a new houseguest.”

Pellar raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Kindan,” Zist explained. “One of Danil’s sons. He wanted to stay on at the Camp and as none of his kin could take him, I”—the harper waved a hand—“agreed to take him in.”

Pellar tried his best to hide his dismay, but Zist knew him too well.

“My predecessor, Harper Jofri, thought highly of him,” Zist continued. “His notes show that Kindan has potential as a harper.”

Pellar was afraid he knew what was coming next.

“I’m thinking of taking him as my apprentice.”

Pellar burst up from his chair, his anger and sense of betrayal overwhelming him and he pointed emphatically at his chest. “Me! Me!” he wanted to shout.

“Shh!” Zist hissed, waving Pellar back down into his chair. “He’s got good ears—he’ll hear you and we don’t want that.”

Pellar’s eyes flashed in an obvious response. Let him! he thought.

“Jofri has gone back for his Mastery,” Zist said, looking sternly at Pellar. “And while it’s possible for a Master to have two apprentices—though rare—it’s more common to promote one to journeyman.”

The color drained as abruptly from Pellar’s face as his anger did from his heart and he sat down loudly in his seat.

“Better,” Zist said. He cocked his head at Pellar and waggled a finger in his direction. “Although after an outburst like that—” He broke off abruptly and shook his head.

“The truth is that you’re still a bit too young to be rated a journeyman,” Zist admitted with a sigh. “You need two, maybe even four, more Turns of experience.” He caught Pellar’s eyes squarely with his own. “But you know everything you need to know—”

Pellar interrupted with a wave of his hands, pointing to his throat.

“Singing, or even speaking, isn’t everything,” Zist answered waspishly. He glanced back to the rooms at the front of the cottage and added, “In fact, I rather suspect in a short while I’ll come to regard your quiet ways with more than a little nostalgia.”

Zist frowned in thought for a moment and then nodded. “I’ll rate you journeyman, pending more classes back at the Harper Hall. By the time we’re done here, I’m sure you’ll have earned it.

“Now,” he continued, briskly changing the topic, “tell me all your latest news.”

It didn’t take Pellar long to bring Master Zist up to date with his observations of the past few days. He hesitated before telling Master Zist about the flowers he’d seen at the grave site—he hadn’t thought to mention his previous encounter, and he was afraid that Zist would be not angry but perhaps displeased at the omission.

He was right. Zist pressed him for every detail and made him repeat the details about how his leather laces had been exchanged for twine.

“You know you should have told me earlier,” Zist told him when Pellar had finished writing out his latest answer. Pellar grimaced and nodded sheepishly. Zist regarded him steadily and then added in a voice tinged with sympathy, “I can see, perhaps, why you kept this to yourself.”

“I shouldn’t have,” Pellar wrote back on his slate.

“I can understand the way you feel,” Zist said. “It must have seemed a bit of a betrayal when she took your laces.”

Pellar thought for a moment and then rocked one hand in a side-to-side maybe-yes, maybe-no gesture.

“She needed them,” he wrote in explanation.

“I’m sure she did,” Zist agreed. “But more than you?”

Pellar thought about that for a while before he answered with a shrug.

Zist nodded absently and sat back in his chair, cupping one knee with his hands while engrossed in thought.

“Winter will be coming soon,” he murmured after a long silence. He looked up at Pellar and sat forward. “I expect the Shunned will leave the area when the snows come. When that happens, I’ll want you to go back to the Harper Hall.”

Pellar was disturbed at the notion of leaving Master Zist by himself, and his facial expression made it clear.

“I’ll be safe enough,” Zist said, waving aside the objection. “Besides, I couldn’t live with myself if you froze to death on a fool’s errand.”

“I could follow them,” Pellar suggested on his slate.

“I think you’d be better employed back at the Harper Hall.”

Pellar nodded, hiding his own thought that it would be months before winter and things could change.

As the weather grew colder, Pellar grew bolder. He still avoided the area of the Shunned’s camp but he spent more of the daylight out of hiding. Partly it was from necessity—he felt a need for more fresh food than he could reasonably ask Chitter to carry from Master Zist’s. Partly it was to increase his woodcraft. Partly, also, it was to keep warm by constantly moving in the cold weather. Partly, Pellar admitted when he forced himself to be honest, it was to prove his abilities to himself.

He carefully copied the traps and styles of Camp Natalon’s hunter, but avoided setting out any traps where the hunter might operate. If anyone other than Ima, the hunter, came across the traps, they’d attribute them to him rather than someone else.

Pellar chose to seed his traps down the south side of his mountain, toward distant Crom Hold and away from both Camp Natalon and the Shunned.

As the weather grew colder still and the first snows began to fall, Pellar decided that there might be some sense in Master Zist’s desire to send him back to the Harper Hall. The snow was not yet sticking but, even so, Pellar had to spend extra care to ensure that he left tracks neither in snow nor in the muddy ground that it produced when it melted.

Pellar’s best traps were simple loop snares that, when sprung, hurled the quarry high up into the trees, out of sight of anyone that might later come along.

Being cautious, Pellar always varied his routes, sometimes starting at one end of his line of traps, sometimes the other, sometimes in the middle—he never took the same route on any given day and he never repeated his pattern.

This day, nearly three months since he’d visited the graveyard, he had decided to work from the highest traps to lowest. The first four traps were all empty. He made a note to consider moving them but decided not to do it just then.

As he approached his fifth trap something disturbed him—something seemed out of place. He stopped, crouching against the ground, listening carefully.

Someone was out there.

He slowly started scanning the ground below him, working his way carefully left to right, bottom to top. He spotted a disturbance of the ground near his trap. He looked up—and suddenly started. Someone was caught in his trap!

It was a little girl, no more than nine Turns old. She was staring back at him, her brown eyes locked intently on him as she hung upside down, one foot caught in the loop of his rope snare. One hand feebly held her tunic up to protect her torso from the cold wind but it flopped down enough on the other side that he could see her bulging belly and bare ribs; her legs were little more than sticks. It was also obvious, from her heaving chest and her bitter look of despair, that she’d exhausted herself in efforts to get free of the trap. On the ground below her, Pellar noted a small knife and guessed that she’d lost it when the trap had sprung. Her clothing—small, patched, and threadbare—merely confirmed his guess that she was one of the Shunned.

Pellar remained motionless for several moments, trying to decide what to do. But when he finally made up his mind to help her and stood up, she waved him down.

No sooner had he crouched back down than he heard the sound of others approaching. They came without talking but not silently, moving in a way that any tracker would be quick to notice. Pellar counted five, including a tall, wiry youth who was probably in his late teens, maybe older.

“Halla!” one of the younger ones called as they caught sight of her. “What are you doing up there?”

“Don’t ask silly questions,” the little girl snapped back, “just get me down.”

“I don’t know why,” the teenager replied. “You got yourself caught, you should get yourself down.”

In that instant, Pellar decided that he hated the young man. It wasn’t just his words, or his tone, it was the youth’s body language: Pellar knew that this teen would have no compunction, nor feel any guilt, about leaving the little girl stuck in the trap to die.

“Tenim, get me down,” Halla commanded, her irritation tinged with just the slightest hint of fear.

“I warned you to be careful about where you set your traps. It’s a pity you didn’t get your neck caught in the thing,” Tenim said. “Then you’d be dead by now.” He turned back the way he came.

“But Tenim, she’s our best tracker,” one of the younger children protested. “And Moran—”

“Leave Moran out of this,” Tenim snapped to the speaker. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him any.”

“Anyway,” and here Tenim raised one arm straight out in front of him, “she’s not our best tracker.”

Pellar was no more than five meters from Tenim and the group. Silently, he felt for the hunting knife he kept sheathed at the top of his boot, still keeping his eyes on the scene in front of him. Would they just leave her to die? Would he?

He heard a strange sound in the sky above him and noticed that Tenim’s upraised arm was covered with rough bindings of leather.

Suddenly something swooped down from the sky. For a moment Pellar feared it was Chitter come to protect him, but then he realized that the creature had none of Chitter’s sleekness, nor his thin, membranous wings.

This creature was a bird.

“She is the best tracker,” Tenim said as the bird landed on his arm. His other hand dipped into one of the pouches hung at his side and brought up a thin sliver of meat, which the bird devoured quickly. “Grief, here, is.”

“What about the food I got you?” Halla called from the tree, her tone growing desperate. “Can Grief feed you all?”

Tenim’s features hardened. “At least she doesn’t get caught.”

“Moran’ll know something’s wrong when I don’t come back,” Halla said, trying a different tack.

“So?” Tenim replied, unimpressed. “What makes you think what Moran says matters to me?”

Halla had no answer for that. Her lips quivered and she looked ready to cry.

Tenim glanced from her and back to the bird on his arm, a wicked smile on his face. With a quick command, he flung his arm upward and the bird took flight.

Pellar tensed, ready to spring, as the bird swooped onto the trapped girl, but any noise his movements made was drowned out by Halla’s fearful scream. Then, just as Pellar decided to attack Tenim, bird or no bird, Halla’s scream turned to one of surprise, followed by a yelp as the bird’s beak sliced the rope snare and she fell hard to the ground, curled into a ball and rolling to absorb the worst of the fall.

She was up again in an instant, her arms in a fighting stance.

“Thanks for nothing, Tenim,” she snarled, racing up to him. But she recoiled as Grief dropped again from the sky, screeching in her face.

“You owe me, Halla,” Tenim told her, a cold smile on his face. The smile changed to a leer as he added, “When the time comes, I’ll collect.”

The color drained from Halla’s face as his words registered. She regained her composure, saying, “If you’re still alive.”

Tenim smiled but said nothing, instead reaching up once more to retrieve his bird and feed it. He turned away from Halla, muttering soothing sounds to the bird, waved with his other hand for the troop to follow him, and started away up the hill.

Pellar stayed in his hiding place, frozen in thought and anger, with one unanswered question burning in his brain: Why hadn’t the girl turned him in?

“You’re certain that they said Moran?” Zist asked days later. Pellar had waited until he was certain that his hiding place wasn’t in danger and then, taking all his gear with him, had set off carefully, using a route he’d never before used to get to miners’ camp.

Pellar nodded firmly.

“So…” Zist’s voice drifted off as he frowned, deep in thought.

Pellar knew that Moran had been Zist’s apprentice. He dimly remembered a young man full of song and pretensions but Pellar had been still little when Moran had left on his mission to find the Shunned. Turns had passed and no one had heard from him. Zist and Murenny had sadly given him up for dead.

But rumors of a harper named Moran had cropped up in conversations at various Gathers, particularly those of Crom and Telgar Holds. In fact, Zist had chosen Crom Hold partly in the dim hope that he might find Moran, or, at least, find out more about his fate.

Pellar had heard the rumors, too, and had noted that this “harper” seemed surrounded by children, Shunned or orphaned.

When Pellar had brought it up with Master Zist, the harper had waved the issue aside dismissively. “It could be him,” he’d said. “Or it could be someone pretending to be him. We’ll never know until we find him.”

And now Pellar waited patiently, nursing his klah, and refilling it in the long silence while Master Zist reviewed his memories. It was a long while before he looked up at Pellar again.

“And only the girl saw you, you’re certain?”

Again, Pellar nodded.

“Hmm…” Zist’s attention drifted away again.

Pellar took the opportunity to refill his bowl with warm stew and had finished it, offering spare tidbits to Chitter, long before Master Zist disturbed him with another question.

“And you’re certain that this Tenim thought that the girl was the one who set the traps?”

Pellar nodded fervently.

Zist pursed his lips and stroked his chin, picking up Pellar’s stack of slates and reviewing them again.

“There were seven in the troop. Did that include the boy and the girl?”

Pellar nodded.

Zist lapsed into his longest silence. Pellar had two helpings of dessert before the harper looked up at him once more.

“I can’t ask you to stay on,” Zist began, but Pellar held up a hand, shaking his head. He pointed to Zist, then to himself, and then grasped both his hands firmly: We stay together.

“It’s too dangerous,” Zist protested.

Pellar grabbed for a slate and quickly wrote, “More dangerous alone.”

He examined the older man anxiously, saw the look of determination forming in Zist’s countenance, and wrote, “Find out about Moran.”

Master Zist looked unconvinced, so Pellar swiftly wrote, “Got old sheets?”

Zist read the slate and repeated quizzically, “Old sheets?”

“To hide in the snow,” Pellar wrote back. Taking advantage of Zist’s surprise, he wrote on another slate, “I could get close to their camp, get a real count, see what they’re doing. You know I can, Mikal said I was the best.”

“What about the girl?”

Pellar’s face took on a bleak look and he gently drew the slate back and wrote slowly, “She’s small, not fed well. May not last the winter.”

Zist sat long in silence after he read Pellar’s reply. Finally he said, “I’ve two worn sheets you can use.”

The Shunned’s camp was exactly where Pellar had guessed—a kilometer north and east of the miners’ coal dump, and past a line of suspiciously small mounds. The mounds were covered with snow so Pellar had no way of knowing how long they had been there.

Master Zist had insisted that he wait until after the first heavy snowfall and Pellar had decided that journeying as more snow was falling would further hide him and neatly erase his tracks.

He paused for a long moment beside the mounds, trying hard to convince himself that none were long enough for the bright-eyed girl, and in the end grimly continued his trek.

His first signs of the Shunned’s camp came in the form of footprints in the snow. He examined them carefully. There were two sets of prints, heading away from him, roughly paralleling his own journey from the coal dump. Both sets of prints were those of adults, both wore shoes, and both were carrying heavy loads.

Coal.

Pellar followed the backtrail far enough to see where the footprints disappeared in the snow and judged that he was half an hour behind.

He took a bearing on the tracks, then he paused for a moment, thinking. From what little he had seen of the youth, Tenim, Pellar guessed that he would be very wary and cautious. That was one reason that Pellar had decided to wait until the second heavy snowfall before he tried to find the Shunned’s camp.

The other reason was the bird, Grief. While Chitter was quite willing to pop between from a warm hiding place at Master Zist’s to a cold snowfall, he doubted that the bird would be up for scouting in the midst of a snowstorm. So, he reasoned, not only would the falling snow make it easier for him to remain hidden but he would have fewer eyes trying to spy him out.

Without the bird to watch out for him, Pellar guessed that Tenim would be extra cautious. Nodding to himself, he decided that Tenim would take a sharp turn to his camp but also double back to it. So first Pellar had to find where the two had turned, then he had to turn back to find their camp. He also had to be very careful—it was just as possible that the two would turn toward him as away from him.

He started forward, cautiously flitting from tree to tree, and then suddenly stopped.

He heard voices.

“I thought I saw someone.”

Pellar froze.

“Shards, why don’t you shout it,” another voice growled in response. It was Tenim.

“Shh,” the first speaker hissed urgently.

Pellar held his breath, letting it out again as slowly and quietly as he could. The voices were too near for his comfort.

“There’s nothing out there,” Tenim pronounced after minutes of silence. “It’s just your guilty conscience getting you, Tarik.”

“When you said I’d get rich, you never said that I’d have to haul your coal for you,” Tarik grumbled in response. “What happened to all those brats of yours?”

“If you’re complaining, why don’t you bring your own brat along?” Tenim replied. “Not that he’d be able for more than a stone or two.”

“You leave Cristov out of it,” Tarik warned. “He knows nothing of this.”

Tenim laughed cruelly. “He wouldn’t think so much of you if he knew what his father was doing.”

“It’s for him I’m doing this,” Tarik replied. “The lad has a right to expect his father to do right by him. The way Natalon’s moaning, we’ll never earn enough at this mine.”

“Not enough for you,” Tenim agreed nastily.

“All I want is a place of my own and a chance to rest at the end of my days, not always slaving away for someone,” Tarik protested. “I’ve earned it. I would have had it, too, if it hadn’t been for you and the Shunned.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about them,” Tenim said. “And I said I’d take care of you.”

Pellar shuddered, wondering how Tenim planned to take care of Tarik.

“Come on,” Tenim said. Pellar heard groaning and the sound of something heavy being lifted. “Oh, stop groaning, this is the last load. We have to get you back while it’s still dark and snowing.”

“And you’ll want me again the next night it snows,” Tarik predicted with a grumble. His voice was farther away than it had been, they were moving.

“Exactly,” Tenim agreed viciously. “After all, you want to set something by for the end of your days.”

“Why are we hiding the coal way out here? How are you going to get it to market?” Tarik grumbled.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Tenim said. “When the time comes, this’ll fetch a pretty price from the right people.”

“How can the Shunned pay for anything?”

The last words Pellar heard was Tenim’s response: “Who said anything about the Shunned?”

“I’d thought that they would have to have help from someone at the camp,” Zist remarked when Pellar reported back days later. Pellar nodded. “Tarik was my first guess,” Zist added, “although I would have preferred being wrong.”

“What now?” Pellar wrote on his slate.

Zist didn’t look at the note immediately. He acknowledged it with a wave of his hand but sat back, staring off thoughtfully into the distance.

“The boy will have to make his choice,” he murmured finally. He glanced at Pellar’s note and then at Pellar.

“It would be nice to know what this Tenim plans to do with the coal,” Zist observed.

“I could follow him,” Pellar offered.

Zist wagged a finger at him. “Only when it’s dark and there’s snow on the ground. I don’t want you caught. In the between times, you’ll have to hide here, I’m afraid.”

Pellar frowned but Zist didn’t notice, once again lost in thought.

“No sign of the younger ones?” the harper asked after a moment. Pellar shook his head.

“A pity,” Zist said. “This Crom winter is vicious.”

It was awkward, having to hide in the cottage from Kindan, Natalon, Dalor, Nuella, and even Cristov, who was occasionally assigned evening lessons with Master Zist.

When Kindan tripped up Cristov one day, Zist assigned the youngster the job of discovering three of Cristov’s virtues. Pellar had found the whole situation amusing, from his position of greater age—two whole Turns—until Master Zist challenged him to do the same when they spoke about it two days later.

“I hardly know him,” Pellar wrote in protest.

“You’ve heard enough about him, haven’t you?” Zist asked, arching an eyebrow at him challengingly.

“Words aren’t truth,” Pellar wrote back.

“Too true!” Zist agreed. “Wiser heads than yours have yet to learn that, you know.”

“I listen,” Pellar wrote in modest reply.

“Then you should know all about Cristov,” Zist replied, returning to his challenge with a twinkle in his eyes.

Pellar was about to write a response when a knock on the side door—the one nearest Natalon’s stone house—interrupted him.

“That will be my lesson,” Zist said, motioning Pellar into hiding once more.

Swallowing his unhappiness, for he had hoped that Kindan’s absence would give him more time to spend with his adoptive father, Pellar retreated to his hiding place in Zist’s study. In moments the air was filled with the sound of someone practicing on the pipes. Pellar listened, imagining the fingering and scales while hearing Zist’s patient corrections and the young piper’s self-deprecating remarks.

Pellar mentally replayed his conversation with Zist and what he’d overheard about Cristov to see if he could rise to his Master’s challenge. What did he know about the boy?

He recalled Kindan complaining about how Cristov bragged about sleeping in Kindan’s old room and wondered if perhaps Kindan hadn’t mistaken Cristov’s intent; perhaps Tarik’s son was seeking a common ground, some mutual point of interest on which to build a friendship. Pellar knew from what little he’d heard that Cristov had felt very close to Kaylek before his untimely death; perhaps the boy had hoped in a similar way to kindle a friendship with Kaylek’s little brother.

It was clear that Cristov respected and honored his father—in fact, most fights Cristov had been involved in had begun over comments about his father. Pellar couldn’t blame the lad for being loyal.

Noise of a door opening and voices speaking interrupted Pellar’s musings; Zist’s lesson had left. Before Pellar came out of hiding, he heard quick steps approaching the front door and the noises of Kindan returning.

He heard Zist quiz Kindan on what he’d learned and was pleased to hear that Kindan listed loyalty as one of Cristov’s strengths. Pellar shook his head wryly when Zist demanded that Kindan recount the contents of the cottage—he could have guessed that Master Zist would have had more than one lesson for the lad to learn.

When Zist told Kindan that there’d be a Winter’s End celebration the next evening, Pellar fought down a feeling of betrayal, for he hadn’t heard of it before and knew that he couldn’t possibly attend.

When Kindan had gone to bed, Zist brought Pellar back out of his hiding place, holding a finger to his lips for silence. Pellar gave him a sardonic look and pointed to his lips, shaking his head to remind Zist that there was no fear of him talking too loud. Master Zist glared back at him and Pellar’s teasing look faded on his face. He knew full well what Zist wanted.

“What did you think?” Zist asked quietly.

“About the house?” Pellar wrote back, referring to Kindan’s enumeration of the contents of Tarik’s house. Zist nodded. “No surprises, no more than most.”

Zist nodded in agreement.

Pellar wiped his slate and quickly added, “A sack full of marks is not hard to hide.”

“If he had one,” Zist said. Pellar gave him a questioning look, so Zist added, “I don’t see why he’d be working here if he already had enough set aside.”

“Snow’s melting, traders will be here soon,” Pellar wrote in response.

“But with the mud and patches of snow on the ground, tracks will be easy to follow,” Zist said. “Some traders might wait until later.”

“Or Tenim might create a distraction,” Pellar suggested.

“That,” Zist replied, “is a disturbing notion.”

“I could keep watch,” Pellar wrote back.

Zist mulled the suggestion over for a long time before he nodded in agreement. “Just don’t get caught.”

Pellar responded with an indignant look.

“When will you leave?” Zist asked, ignoring the look.

In response, Pellar grabbed his pack.

“It’s late enough,” Zist said by way of agreement. “Just be careful.”

Pellar would have never found Tenim if the other hadn’t been with Tarik. It was Tarik’s clumsy, irritated motion that had alerted him. Tenim slid through the trees like a wisp of smoke. At the first sign of motion, Pellar froze and slowly pressed himself against the nearest cover.

“Traders will be here soon, and then what?” Tarik muttered angrily as they walked by. “If Natalon finds out that I’ve been mining the pillars, he’ll guess—”

A raised hand from Tenim halted Tarik’s tirade.

“What?” Tarik demanded after the barest moment’s silence.

Tenim ignored him, turning slowly in a circle where he stood, carefully examining every bit of the terrain.

Pellar desperately wondered if Tenim could sight his trail; he’d been careful to take an oblique approach.

“Nothing,” Tenim said after a moment, clearly still nervous. He motioned Tarik onward. “So you’re afraid of your nephew, are you?”

“He’s too much like his father,” Tarik said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Slow, methodical, never willing to cut corners, but he always gets there in the end.”

“What has this got to do with the Traders?”

“He’ll figure that someone’s been stealing coal, that’s what,” Tarik growled back.

“Only if he finds out you’ve been mining the pillars,” Tenim observed. “Otherwise he’ll think he’s only got the coal you and the other shift leaders have reported mining.”

“It was easier when it was my own mine I was stealing from,” Tarik muttered darkly.

“You still would have had it if it hadn’t been for the accident that collapsed the roof,” Tenim replied.

“Accidents happen,” Tarik said dismissively. “Masterminer Britell’s board of inquiry never accused me of anything.”

Tenim paused mid-stride and gave Tarik a very piercing look.

“What?” Tarik demanded, sounding just a bit frightened.

“Nothing,” Tenim answered with a shrug, gesturing for Tarik to precede him. “Just, as you said, accidents happen.”

Tarik looked nervously back over his shoulder. “I’ve been good for you.”

“Indeed you have,” Tenim agreed. “In fact, I think we’ve hauled enough for this evening. Why don’t you go back home before your wife and son begin to wonder where you are?”

Tarik glared at the young man. Tenim took the glare with no change of expression, merely leaning down to tie his boots tighter, his hand casually brushing the knife hidden at the boot top. Tarik’s anger cooled visibly when he caught sight of the knife hilt and he nodded. “Perhaps I’d better, at that.”

“Good,” Tenim answered with an unpleasant smile. “You said that there’d be Winter’s End festivities tonight? In Natalon’s big house?” He didn’t wait for Tarik’s answer. “I could do with some diversion. Maybe I’ll attend—”

“You’d be recognized!”

“—from a safe distance,” Tenim finished, his eyes flashing in amusement at the other’s blatant terror.

“Don’t get caught.”

“Have I ever?”

“I found you, didn’t I?” Tarik responded.

“Yes, you did,” Tenim agreed, lowering his eyes. Considering Tenim’s woodcraft, Pellar seriously doubted that Tarik had really found the youth; probably Tenim had let himself be found.

“So be careful.”

“And you,” Tenim replied with a wave as the other turned off toward the camp. Tenim waited several minutes before starting off again—toward the camp.

Pellar followed him cautiously from far behind.

Tenim passed Zist’s cottage and then went, more slowly, beyond Natalon’s stone “hold.” The Shunned youth passed by the camp’s cemetery before heading up into the hills and circling back toward the camp.

Pellar waited until he was certain that Tenim was far away before he followed. It took a quarter of an hour of stealthy movement before Pellar reached the top of the cliff and could reinitiate his cautious trailing of the crafty young man.

A sound from the valley below startled Pellar and he froze. The noise sounded like a small rock hitting something more solid. Carefully, Pellar inched to the edge of the cliff, and peered into the valley below.

A glint of white fell—no, was thrown!—from the cliff nearby and landed with a clack on the roof of Natalon’s stone house.

What was Tenim doing?

Another stone was thrown, landing at the top of the chimney. And another, and another. The stones ricocheted off the roof, landing silently on the soft ground below. A larger stone, big enough to be a rock, was thrown. The impact made a different noise, a sliding noise.

Tenim was trying to block up the chimney! If he succeeded, the fumes from the great hearth fire would quickly overcome anyone inside, including Natalon. And then Tarik would be able to take over the camp, all because of an “accident.”

Pellar’s response was instant and unthinking. He launched himself from his hiding place and raced along the cliff edge to hurl himself wordlessly upon Tenim.

Even though Tenim was a head taller than him, and twenty kilos heavier, Pellar’s mad dive toppled Tenim off balance. They grappled for a moment and then both toppled over the cliff to fall, hard, on the muddy ground behind Natalon’s hold.

Tenim recovered first, wrapping his fists around Pellar’s throat and squeezing with a manic energy. Pellar, stunned by the fall and the ferocity of Tenim’s attack, responded slowly. He strained to pull Tenim’s hands off his neck, bucked to try to dislodge the heavier youth, tried vainly to twist to one side or the other—but all to no avail.

Spots appeared before his eyes and his vision turned gray.

Chitter, Pellar thought desperately, wondering what would happen to the fire-lizard without him. Master Zist! And then he remembered no more.

CHAPTER 4

Red eyes whirling, Chitter scratched awkwardly at the blankets covering the old harper. As gently as he could through his terror, the brown fire-lizard clawed the harper’s face. Zist sputtered and twisted, instantly awake.

“What is it?” he demanded, pushing himself up and swiveling his legs over the side of his bed. “Pellar?”

The fire-lizard’s whirling red eyes were all that Zist needed to see. He pulled down his nightshirt, slipped a robe around himself, and slid into his slippers.

He hurried into Kindan’s room. “Get up,” he called, “it’s time to change watch.”

Certain that it would be a while before the lad would be about and equally certain that Kindan would then rush off in performance of his duty, Zist left the cottage by the back door.

It was still dark outside. Chitter appeared beside him.

“Where is he?” Zist asked, looking up at the gray blur of the fire-lizard. Chitter made an uncertain noise. “Go find him, Chitter! Take me to him.”

The fire-lizard chirped an acknowledgment and blinked between. Zist cautiously looked around to be certain no one had seen their interaction, and then made his way toward Natalon’s hold.

A rustling sound nearby halted him and Zist turned toward it. Someone was moving down by the old watch-wher shed. He peered through the night, straining to see if the figure was Pellar but it disappeared from his view like a mist.

Chitter reappeared, diving to Zist’s shoulder and tugging at his robe.

“You’ve found him?” Zist asked. The fire-lizard chirped and flew off, toward the back of Natalon’s house. Zist spared one last glance toward where he had spotted the interloper and then set off after Chitter.

Chitter stopped him before he reached the kitchen door and flew off in a different direction. Zist paused, uncertain, but the fire-lizard returned and tugged at him again.

The reason for Chitter’s uncertainty became apparent as soon as Zist rounded the far western corner of Natalon’s hold. Right next to the back corner of the house was a crumpled figure.

Pellar. He lay quite still.

Tears misted Zist’s vision as he raced to the youngster’s body. He paused, swallowing nervously.

If I’ve killed him, too! Zist thought harshly, remembering his wife and child. Getting a firm grip on his emotions, he knelt down beside Pellar’s body, searching his throat for a pulse.

Pellar’s neck was red and bruised. It looked like he’d been strangled. Rage thundered through Zist’s heart and fury lit his eyes. He swore vengeance on whoever had done this.

He bent down to give Pellar one last fatherly kiss—and felt the faintest of breath.

“You’re alive!” Zist cried out, scooping Pellar up and cradling him in his arms.

Pellar came awake surrounded by darkness and fought as best he could, only to discover that he was flailing against Master Zist. He stopped suddenly and looked up. Zist’s cheeks were wet with tears.

“Can you walk?” the harper asked. “It’s not far to the cottage.”

Pellar nodded and regretted it. His throat hurt, his neck ached, and his head throbbed from lack of oxygen. With Zist’s help he stumbled up to his feet and back to the cottage.

“In my room,” Zist said, guiding the youngster through the front door, guessing that Kindan would be having a cup of klah before departing from the kitchen.

After getting Pellar settled into his bed and pulling off his muddy boots, he went to the kitchen to grab cold water and warm klah.

“Fire! Help, help! Fire!” Zist heard Kindan’s shout from the kitchen and rushed out, fearing that Pellar’s attacker had returned and caught the other boy instead.

“Chitter, stay with Pellar,” Zist ordered as he left.

Pellar woke to find Chitter resting against his side. The fire-lizard stirred and stared at him warningly. Pellar felt awful and was slow to move. Then he remembered—the chimney! He had to warn the miners. He tried to rise, but Chitter jumped up and sat heavily on his chest. Pellar tried batting the fire-lizard away but he was still too weak and his movements were disjointed and feeble. Chitter nipped at his hand and then grabbed it with his forepaws.

“How’d you find us?” a voice from the kitchen asked. Pellar recognized the voice—it was Dalor, Natalon’s son.

“You were late for watch,” Kindan replied. Pellar listened intently as Kindan explained how he’d realized the chimney was blocked, had shouted out the alarm, had opened all the doors and windows to the large hold, and had gone in search of Dalor.

Pellar gave a silent sigh of relief and relaxed. Chitter gave him a satisfied look and curled back into his resting spot, clearly convinced that Pellar was going to rest as well. He was right: In moments, Pellar fell into a dreamless sleep.

Pellar woke hungry. The room smelled of cooling soup. He sat up carefully and—as his sore muscles registered—slowly. The room was dark. A small glow was uncovered near the table, its light reflected by the two faceted eyes of Chitter, perched on the back of Zist’s chair, keeping vigil.

Pellar’s slate was on the table beside the bed. Beside it was a small bowl of soup and a spoon. Written on Pellar’s slate in Zist’s hand was a note: “Winter’s End festivities. Eat slowly.”

Winter’s End. Pellar’s ears picked up the sound of music coming from Natalon’s hold. Whoever was playing the pipes was quite good, he decided after listening for a moment. Chitter cocked his head warningly and Pellar ducked his head in wry acknowledgment of the fire-lizard’s nursemaiding. Obediently, he picked up the spoon and fed himself.

Swallowing was misery but he was too hungry not to finish the entire bowl. When he had, Chitter flew off his perch and nestled onto the bed in an unmistakable intimation of his expectations for Pellar. Pellar was too tired to argue, and the rich soup was already settling in his stomach. He lay back down and was asleep in minutes.

Pellar woke in the middle of the night to the sound of a commotion.

“Master Zist! Master Zist!” Dalor shouted. Nervously, Pellar wondered if Tenim had returned to finish his job.

Zist snorted and stirred from the chair in which he’d fallen asleep.

“Eh? What is it?” he called out.

“It’s my mother,” Dalor replied. “The baby’s coming early.”

Zist wagged a finger at Pellar, ordering him to remain, then shucked on his robe and slippers and left the room.

Pellar heard his muffled order to Kindan: “Go run to Margit’s and get her up here.” To Dalor he promised, “I’ll be along as soon as I get some clothes on. You get on back. Start the cook boiling water, if she hasn’t already.” He continued a softer tone. “It’ll be all right, lad. Now off with you!”

Pellar looked around the room for Zist’s clothes, wondering what the harper would need, and rose from his bed, assembling a kit for him, dimly aware that Zist and Kindan were conferring outside the door.

“Get off, now! We’ll cope!” Zist called as he opened the door to his room. His eyes lit as he saw Pellar standing and the clothes laid out, ready for him to put on.

“You’ll have to stay here,” he told Pellar as he quickly donned his clothes. He gave the boy a warm, worried look. “Lad…”

Pellar shook his head and put a hand, palm flat, over his head, then brought it next to Zist’s—he was nearly as tall as the harper.

Zist shook his head and grabbed Pellar into a tight hug.

“Man or lad, if I’d lost you…” Zist broke off. Pellar patted Zist’s back and then broke out of the embrace, firmly steering the harper to the door and gesturing for him to hurry.

“You stay here,” Zist called back from the doorway. “Send Chitter if you need.”

Pellar nodded firmly and made a brushing motion to hurry Zist along. But the harper had to have the last word. “Chitter, I’m counting on you to keep him from overtaxing himself.”

Pellar was miffed that the harper had let him sleep through until morning, but he couldn’t deny that he’d needed it. As it was, he was much relieved to hear that the baby had been born healthy and without undue complications.

“I’ll keep watch tonight,” Pellar wrote by way of apology.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Zist told him emphatically. “You’ll need at least a sevenday to recover. Anyway, there’s a trader caravan due soon and among the apprentices there’s supposed to be one with a watch-wher.”

Pellar gave him a questioning look.

“With a watch-wher, the miners will be able to start a full night shift again,” Zist explained. “With a crew bustling about at night, I suspect it’ll be much harder for your friend Tenim to try anything.”

“Not my friend,” Pellar wrote, pointing to his throat for emphasis.

“And you’re to stay away from him.”

Pellar gave him a stubborn look.

“You’ve learned what I wanted to know,” Zist responded.

“He might try something else,” Pellar wrote.

“He might,” Zist agreed. “And we’ll have to be careful.” He looked sternly at Pellar. “But you would have died if Chitter hadn’t alerted me.” He took a deep breath and admitted, “And I don’t think I could live with that on my conscience.”

Pellar looked at the old harper for a long time. Finally, he nodded, realizing that further argument would be pointless; it would only cause the harper further pain and worry.

The traders came that afternoon, only there was no watch-wher with them.

“Apparently someone scared the apprentice off,” Zist explained as he prepared for the second celebratory Gather in two days, donning fresh clothes in harper blue and quickly buffing up his boots.

“Tenim,” Pellar wrote, cocking an eyebrow at the harper.

“It could be,” Zist answered. “But probably not.”

Pellar looked surprised.

“The first time anyone noticed that the lad was missing was yesterday, although he might have left sooner; Trader Tarri said he kept to himself.”

“Moran?” Pellar wrote.

Zist frowned as he read the slate. “I hope not,” Zist said. “It could be, but then why would he not want the watch-wher to come to the mine?”

“Same reason,” Pellar wrote.

“I’m not sure that Moran and Tenim have the same reasons,” Zist said.

Pellar gave him a questioning look.

“Moran was very worried about the Shunned,” Zist explained. “That’s why Murenny and I agreed to let him try to make contact.” He shook his head. “From what you’ve described of this Tenim character, I don’t think he cares for anyone but himself.”

As it was obvious to Pellar that Master Zist didn’t want to entertain dark thoughts about his old apprentice, Pellar decided to drop the matter.

“Still need a watch-wher,” Pellar wrote, changing the subject.

“Yes, we do,” Zist agreed.

“Where do we get one?” Pellar wrote.

“I shall have to think on that,” Zist replied, turning to the door. “If you’re still awake when the Gather’s through, we can talk some more.”

Pellar nodded and Zist gave him a probing look. The harper wagged his finger at the youngster. “Stay here. We’ll be all right.”

Pellar waited until he was certain that everyone had entered the large hall in Natalon’s hold. Then he carefully dressed himself in bright clothes, grabbed a well-used cloak, and went out through the cothold’s front door. Regardless of Zist’s warnings or even how sore his raw throat still felt, Pellar was going to make sure that there were no more accidents.

Rather than gliding silently past the entrance to Natalon’s stone hold, Pellar strode purposely beyond it, looking exactly like someone who was lost but unwilling to ask for directions.

He headed toward the camp’s graveyard, planning to find a place beyond it where he could climb to the cliff above and backtrack to a good vantage point near Natalon’s hold but away from any possible sighting by the camp’s lookouts.

He was just past the graveyard when Chitter appeared from between. Pellar gave the brown fire-lizard a fierce admonishing look. He thought he had made it clear that the fire-lizard was to stay in the harper’s cothold. Chitter hovered in front of him, wings beating slowly until Pellar understood that, as far as Chitter was concerned, if Pellar felt no compulsion to obey orders, neither would Chitter.

Pellar sighed in reluctant acceptance. Just before Pellar started off again, a noise startled him. Pellar froze. Someone was coming.

He sank to the ground in a crouch, hoping that the cloak would cover him sufficiently.

It did. The person, a small boy, passed him by, moving quickly and purposefully but without taking any particular pains to move quietly.

From the short-cropped blond hair, Pellar reckoned that the boy was either Dalor or Cristov. More likely it was Cristov, he decided, as Dalor would have a difficult time getting away from the evening’s festivities.

But what was Cristov doing here?

Pellar followed him quietly from a safe distance. The blond boy made his way to the graveyard, where he stopped in front of one of the graves. Pellar wasn’t certain, but he guessed that it was Kaylek’s grave.

“Miners look after each other.” Cristov’s words drifted softly across the night air to Pellar.

Was he making a promise or repeating something he’d been told? Pellar wondered. Or both?

The youngster stood by the grave for a long while in silent communion. Just as Pellar decided that he had no choice but to find an alternate way to the cliff, Cristov stepped back, turned, and moved off quickly—toward the cliff.

Pellar followed him easily, both relieved at not having to lose time sneaking around Cristov and intrigued by the boy’s motives. Was it possible that Cristov had been suborned by his father to finish Tenim’s task?

Cristov started climbing, following the same route Pellar had taken the other night.

Climbing the cliff was more effort than Pellar remembered. His shoulders and stomach were still sore from his fall, but worse was the torment in his throat as he gulped down the air needed for his exertions. He tried his best to be quiet, but it wasn’t good enough.

Suddenly he noticed a pair of eyes staring down at him from the cliff above.

“Who are you?”

For an instant Pellar considered fleeing back down the cliff and eluding Cristov in the forest—he knew he had more woodcraft than the boy—but before he could put his plan into action, Chitter appeared and started scolding Pellar and Cristov with equal intensity.

“Is he yours?” Cristov asked, his voice full of amazement and yearning.

Pellar nodded. Chitter caught his eye and looked back and forth rapidly between him and Cristov. Pellar knew that the fire-lizard was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t decide what.

“Did you block the hold chimney?” Cristov asked, his voice cold with outrage.

Pellar shook his head firmly. Cristov peered at him and reached forward to touch his neck.

“Someone tried to choke you,” the blond boy declared, his fingers brushing Pellar’s throat gently. He gave Pellar another intense look. “Did you try to stop someone from blocking the chimney?”

Pellar nodded.

“And they tried to choke you?” Cristov asked rhetorically. “And now you can’t talk?”

Pellar nodded and then shook his head to answer both questions. Cristov looked confused.

Pellar reached to his side, then paused, looking questioningly at Cristov who, in his turn, looked confused. Pellar held up both his hands to show that he had nothing in them and then flattened one hand and poised the other over it in an imitation of writing.

“You want to write something?” Cristov asked. “I’ve got nothing to write with—oh! You do.”

Pellar nodded, smiling, and reached for his slate. He was bigger than the boy and older by at least two Turns, but if Cristov grew afraid or alarmed, his shouts could easily bring the entire mining camp out, and Pellar didn’t even want to think about what might happen then.

“It’s dark, I don’t know if I’ll be able to read,” Cristov began, only to stop when he saw that Pellar had a slate and stick of white chalk. “Maybe if you write big, then.”

Pellar wrote carefully, “Name Pellar.”

“I’m Cristov,” the other replied, holding out his hand. Pellar pocketed his chalk and let go of his slate which dropped around his neck, held in place by the ever-present string, and solemnly shook Cristov’s hand. Cristov pursed his lips for a moment, then asked, “You aren’t Shunned, are you?”

Pellar shook his head emphatically, reached again for his slate and chalk, and wrote, “Shunned blocked chimney.”

“And you stopped them?” Cristov asked, his eyes brilliant with awe.

Pellar shook his head and held up a finger.

“There was only one of them?”

Pellar nodded.

“What about your voice? Will it come back?” Cristov blurted, obviously overwhelmed with curiosity.

Pellar shook his head.

“Oh,” Cristov said, crestfallen. “Does it bother you that you can’t talk?”

Pellar shrugged, then waggled a hand in a so-so gesture. Then he smiled at Cristov and tapped his ear meaningfully.

“You listen more?” Cristov guessed. Pellar nodded. “I’ll bet you do. And so that’s why you were here? To listen?” Pellar nodded, surprised at how quickly Cristov had guessed. “For the Shunned, right?”

Pellar’s nod merely confirmed Cristov’s suspicions.

“So you’re listening for the Shunned,” Cristov murmured to himself thoughtfully. “Do you work for Master Zist?”

Pellar’s startled look was answer enough for Cristov. Pellar grabbed his slate and hastily wrote, “Secret!”

“From whom?”

“Everyone,” Pellar wrote back.

“Why?”

“Shunned,” Pellar wrote back. He pointed to his throat, rubbed his slate clear, and wrote, “Hurt people.”

“If they found out, they might hurt more people?” Cristov asked, trying to guess at Pellar’s meaning. Just as Pellar started to shake his head, Cristov shook his own head, dismissing the thought. “No, that doesn’t make sense.”

Pellar waved a hand to get the boy’s attention and wrote, “Watch now. Think later.”

Cristov gave him a sheepish grin. “You’re right,” he said, extending a hand to Pellar to help him up the cliff.

Shortly they were in the same position Pellar had seen Tenim occupy the previous night. Pellar leaned forward and painfully craned his still-sore neck over to peer down into the valley below.

Light from the great room of the stone hold outlined the far corner at the east and dimly lit the western corner, but the nearest corner was barely distinguishable. After a while, Cristov said, “I think I can see the chimney.”

Pellar followed the boy’s outstretched arm and peered carefully into the night. It took him a moment to make out the shape of the chimney.

Cristov looked around where they were sitting and picked up a fist-sized rock. Pellar turned at his motion and grabbed Cristov’s hand, shaking his head.

“He threw rocks, right?” Cristov asked, dropping the rock from his hand. Pellar nodded. “They pulled one of the chimney bricks out of the chimney. If Kindan hadn’t come by—” Cristov’s voice broke. “—they’d all be dead.”

Pellar grimaced in agreement.

“And the baby wouldn’t have been born,” Cristov added quietly. He was silent for a longer moment. When he spoke again, it was in a slow, uncertain tone. “If they had died, my father would have been the head miner.”

For the barest instant, Pellar froze. Then he felt Cristov’s eyes on him and he shrugged carelessly, gesturing for the boy to sit down and doing the same himself, sitting on his butt, his knees raised and legs splayed to provide extra stability. Cristov’s gaze intensified, so Pellar wiped his slate clean and wrote a response. To read the slate, Cristov sat down beside him.

“I watch,” he wrote.

“So we’re safe?” Cristov guessed, then added, “As long as no one attacks you.”

Pellar gave him a pained look as he nodded in agreement.

“What would the Shunned want here?”

“Coal,” Pellar wrote.

“But we’d notice, we’d know it when someone stole coal from the dump,” Cristov protested. “And they wouldn’t try to sneak into the mine.”

Pellar nodded in agreement. Chitter, who had flown out over the cliff for his own inspection, flew back and perched on one of Pellar’s knees.

“Could I touch him?” Cristov asked shyly. Pellar glanced at Chitter. The fire-lizard inclined his head toward Cristov and then stretched out his neck in invitation. Pellar indicated his agreement with a beckoning wave of his hand.

Slowly Cristov brought up his hand and gently touched the side of Chitter’s head. The fire-lizard rubbed his head against Cristov’s outstretched fingers enthusiastically.

“He’s beautiful,” Cristov said. “A regular dragon in miniature, not at all like a watch-wher.” He glanced up at Pellar. “My father had a fire-lizard egg once, but the fire-lizard went between when it hatched. My father says that Danil’s watch-wher, Dask, frightened it.”

Pellar gave Cristov a dubious look and the boy shrugged.

“My father says that fire-lizards would be far more useful in the mines than watch-whers,” Cristov said. “He says that he’s going to get another egg soon and he’ll let me keep it.” His voice fell uneasily. “But he says that I’ll have to keep it a secret.”

He looked down at Chitter, stroking his head firmly. “I don’t think I’d like that.”

They sat in silence for a while, and then Cristov stood up.

“I think I’d better get back,” he said. “Will you keep watch?”

Pellar nodded.

“I’ll keep your secret,” Cristov promised as he strode off.

Master Zist was extremely annoyed with Pellar’s disobedience, even after he read Pellar’s painstakingly detailed account of his meeting with Cristov.

“You can’t imagine how I felt,” Zist scolded him fiercely when Pellar returned the next morning, well after dawn. “I didn’t know where you’d got to, or whether you’d gone on your own free will, and even Chitter wasn’t here to send after you.”

“Had to keep watch,” Pellar wrote in his defense. It was a feeble defense and he knew it.

So did Zist, who snorted angrily. “What sort of watch did you keep? You were caught and then, later, you fell asleep.”

Pellar nodded miserably.

“If you can’t do as you’re told, and you won’t rest when you need it, then I shall have to send you back to the Harper Hall,” Zist said.

“Can’t make me,” Pellar wrote defiantly, his eyes flashing angrily as he shoved his slate under Zist’s nose.

Zist bit back an angry response and let out his breath in a long, steadying sigh.

“Well, at least we now know what the Shunned are trading for coal,” he said, forcing himself to change the topic.

Pellar gave him a quizzical look.

“Fire-lizard eggs,” Zist told him. He looked fondly at Chitter. “I should have thought of it myself. Any holder or crafter would exchange top marks for a chance at a fire-lizard.”

Pellar nodded in agreement, one hand idly stroking Chitter’s cheek. The fire-lizard luxuriated in the attention, preening his head against Pellar’s fingers.

“I wonder if that’s how they got to Moran,” Zist said to himself thoughtfully.

Pellar shook his head and wrote, “Tenim has bird.”

Zist looked at him thoughtfully. “You think that Tenim wouldn’t have a bird if Moran had a fire-lizard?”

Pellar nodded.

“And a hunting bird at that,” Zist said. “I suppose—they wouldn’t need a bird if they had a fire-lizard. So Moran wasn’t offered a fire-lizard. Although perhaps he was, and Tenim couldn’t Impress a fire-lizard. From your description, the bird seems a better match for his personality.”

Pellar nodded, his expression bitter.

“And now we know at least one reason Tarik has to hate watch-whers,” Zist said. Pellar gave him an inquiring look, so Zist explained, “He blames the watch-whers for the loss of the fire-lizard.”

Pellar frowned and held up two fingers. He wrote, “Watch-whers awake at night.”

Zist grunted in agreement to Pellar’s correction, then his expression changed. “Maybe we should find a watch-wher.”

“Where?” Pellar wrote, his eyebrows raised questioningly.

Zist pursed his lips thoughtfully for several moments and then he looked Pellar square in the eyes.

“I think it’s time for you to disappear,” Zist replied, his eyes twinkling with mischief. It took Pellar only a moment to guess his master’s thinking. Pellar grinned.

Pellar returned to Crom Hold with the trader caravan, his passage arranged by Master Zist and secured by his agreement to use Chitter as a messenger in case of emergency—and his willingness to help spread gravel to shore up the roadway.

Trader Tarri ordered the caravan to set out slowly, with the domicile caravans in the rear, which not only made good sense but made it easier for Pellar to creep on board the last one, which happened to be Trader Tarri’s.

“Put these on,” she said as soon as she saw him scramble aboard. “And join in the work the next time we stop.”

Pellar nodded mutely and waited until the trader had left before donning the loose-fitting tunic and trousers she’d tossed him.

He found his brawn called upon almost immediately, when the caravan stopped at the next bend.

Tarri had arranged that the foremost dray be filled with gravel and discarded rock from the miners’ diggings. She ordered the larger stones to be laid down first and packed with the backs of the shovels, then covered by a thinner layer of the light gravel be shoveled out to cover it.

After half an hour, Tarri was satisfied and sent the first dray carefully over the repaired road.

From that point on, Pellar found himself at the forefront of the workcrews, patching and filling the road as the caravan made its slow, cautious way back downhill to Crom Hold.

When they stopped for the night it was all he could do to find the rearmost wagon and crawl in.

“No, you don’t!” Tarri barked at him when she saw his muddy boots. “There’s food to eat first.”

She led him back to the communal fire and made sure that he, and everyone else, ate before she did. None of the traders spared a glance in his direction, acting as though he didn’t exist.

The next morning, with the sky still gray, Pellar woke to the sound of someone moving beside him and the smell of fresh hot klah.

“Brought you something to break your fast with,” Tarri said, pushing a roll and a mug of klah into his hands. “I’ll be up front as soon as it’s light. You can stay here but listen for my call, or come if the caravan stops.”

Pellar nodded.

Tarri gave him a thoughtful look, then patted his arm. “You did good work yesterday.”

Pellar nodded in acknowledgment of the compliment, for he knew that was the best he could hope for from the gruff trader.

“With luck, we’ll see Crom Hold before this evening,” Tarri added. Pellar looked surprised and the trader laughed. “The journey’s faster going downhill than up.”

She turned to leave, then turned back again. “What are you going for, anyway?”

Pellar searched for a place to put his mug. Noticing, Tarri took it from him. He nodded gratefully, stuffed his roll in his mouth, and pulled out his slate. He wrote, “Secret.”

Tarri laughed. “And don’t you think I can keep secrets? Nor Master Zist? If so, why’d he ask me to take you?”

Pellar reddened and shrugged apologetically. Tarri laughed again and waved off his embarrassment. “We traders know a fair bit about trading. It seems like Zist has sent you to find something,” she said. She wagged a finger at him. “Finding things is also something we traders are good at.”

Pellar pursed his lips in thought for a long time before he wrote, “Watch-wher egg.”

“Oh!” Tarri nodded. “That makes sense, given the way the last apprentice with a watch-wher scarpered when he heard he was coming to Camp Natalon.” She gave Pellar a shrewd look. “But a watch-wher egg would be no good unless there was someone there to Impress it.”

Pellar nodded but wrote nothing in reply. Tarri gave him another appraising look and laughed. “If you won’t talk, you won’t talk.”

Pellar started to write a protest, but she laughingly waved him back to stillness.

“You know what I mean,” she said. “But I’ll do you a favor, little though it is. The only one who could get you a watch-wher egg is Aleesa, the Whermaster. She’s got a gold watch-wher she sometimes breeds.”

“Where?” Pellar wrote.

Tarri shrugged. “I don’t know.” She tapped her temple. “There’s not much call to trade for watch-wher eggs, so it’s not something I keep in here. Maybe you can find out more at Crom Hold.”

The Whermaster, Aleesa, was so hard to locate that for the first month Pellar doubted her existence. It took him another two months to track her down.

His journeying had hardened him in ways he would not have imagined beforehand; when he boldly made his way into the small camp that was reputed to be Aleesa’s demesne, he was rake thin but whip tough.

He had traveled with the traders when he could, and the Shunned when he had no other choice. His fire-lizard made him a welcome guest among traders and Shunned alike, who considered the fire-lizard’s Impression a character reference. The small groups of traders or Shunned were particularly grateful, seeing the fire-lizard as a source of communications in an emergency.

Over time, his nervousness with the Shunned had faded. He discovered that they were very much like the traders, with one vital difference: The traders were aloof of Hold and Crafthall from choice, the Shunned by decree.

Still, with the Shunned Pellar found himself called upon more often to prove himself, either by providing for the communal pot, prescribing for the sick, or, more often than he liked, proving his strength.

His fights were always with those near his own age who looked upon him as an easy challenge and a good way to improve their standing in the community. After painfully losing his first several encounters, Pellar got quite adept at seeking quick solutions and less concerned about any bruises he gave his assailants.

Even though food was not plentiful and he was expected to share, Pellar thrived, filling out and growing tall. So tall, in fact, that as time progressed he found himself challenged by older, taller lads, many Turns older than his own thirteen.

Upon taking his leave of Trader Tarri at Crom Hold, Pellar found passage on one of the barges heading downstream from Crom Hold, continuing his search for Master Aleesa. He worked the passage, helping pole the barge when necessary and tying it up at night. The family who owned the boat didn’t trust him and made him sleep on deck, although by the end of the sevenday journey, they had grown so fond of him and his fire-lizard that they pressed a well-worn half-mark on him.

A bad piece of advice sent Pellar eastward, to Greenfields, and then on to Campbell’s Field, a journey that took over a month.

It was only at the small hold in Campbell’s Field that Pellar heard that Aleesa had set up a hold of sorts somewhere around Nabol Hold. That was all the way back west of where he was. He sent word to Master Zist, returned to Crom Hold, and took passage once more on a barge downriver. This time he left at Keogh, a minor hold at the bend of the Crom River.

At Nabol Hold he learned that Aleesa’s hold was north in the mountains, but no one quite knew where.

The mountains north of Nabol were mostly forested and uninhabited. Pellar found himself slowed by the necessity of having to forage for food. After three sevendays of searching without success, his strength ebbing, and the last days of summer fast approaching, Pellar was just about ready to give in when he remembered that watch-whers flew at night.

So he ate early, put out his fire, found a clearing at the top of a nearby hill, and waited, eyes eagerly scanning the horizon.

It wasn’t until the middle of the night, when Pellar’s body was so bone cold that he could no longer shiver, that he caught the merest glimpse of something darting in the sky high above him.

He quickly woke Chitter, pointed to the watch-wher, and launched the fire-lizard into the sky.

As soon as Chitter and the watch-wher were out of sight, Pellar crouched down to the stack of wood he’d piled up before him and carefully sparked a small—and oh, so joyously warm—fire.

Chitter returned, quite pleased with himself, late that morning. Shortly thereafter, with a stomach freshly full of jerked beef, Chitter led Pellar to the Whermaster’s hold.

Pellar hadn’t known what sort of reception to expect, but he didn’t count on having an arrow whiz toward him to strike the ground just in front of his foot.

“That’s far enough!” a voice in the distance shouted in warning. “State your business.”

Pellar looked crestfallen, not at a loss for words but at a loss for a way to convey them. He held his hands up, palms out, to show that he was unarmed and waited.

Another arrow answered him. “I said, state your business!”

Pellar pointed to his throat and shook his head, making a face.

“You won’t talk?” another voice suggested. This voice belonged to an old woman, while the other had clearly been a man’s.

Pellar shook his head and pointed to his throat again.

“You can’t talk?” the woman asked, this time sounding intrigued.

Pellar nodded vigorously and smiled as broadly and kindly as he could.

“Do you trust him?” the man called to the woman.

“I don’t know,” the woman shouted back.

“Maybe we shouldn’t take any chances,” the man replied. “If he’s one of the Shunned and he reports back—”

Pellar’s eyes widened. They were talking about killing him.

Pellar stood stock-still for a moment, concentrating on Chitter. The fire-lizard chirped nervously in response but finally, if reluctantly, went between.

“Where’d he go?” the man called angrily.

“He could have gone anywhere,” the old woman responded. When she spoke again, her tone held a grudging respect. “That’s what you intended, isn’t it?”

Pellar nodded firmly.

“If he’s trained his fire-lizard well, the little one could lead others back here,” the old woman continued. There was a silence, then she spoke again. “You can come here, to me. Just remember that Jaythen has a bow trained on you.”

Pellar took a deep steadying breath, hitched up his pack, and carefully walked toward the sound of the woman’s voice.

He had been walking for several moments before the woman’s voice, near but now to his right, called out, “Stop.”

Pellar, still very aware of a bowman somewhere out there, obeyed, standing motionless. For several moments, nothing happened. Then he heard a movement behind him and rough hands grabbed him, pulling him backward off his feet.

He fell back, mouth open in an O of silent surprise. When he landed on his pack, his look was both angry and confused—hadn’t he done everything they’d asked?

Instinctively, he grabbed for his slate. Someone stooped over him from behind, pressing a knife against his chest.

“Don’t,” the man, Jaythen, said.

Pellar let his hands go limp.

“Let him up, Jaythen,” the old woman said. Another shadow fell over Pellar; he looked up and saw a thin old woman with white hair woven into a braid that hung down her back. “He told the truth; he can’t talk. If he could, he would have made some noise when you pulled him over like that.”

His pack weighing him down, Pellar rolled onto his side before shakily standing up. The woman was taller than him. Jaythen stood behind him, doubtless with his knife ready.

Gingerly, Pellar reached for the strap around his neck and was first surprised and then horrified at how easily it moved. Forgetting everything, he felt in his clothes for his slate and was devastated when he found that it had cracked in half from his fall.

“Is that what you write on?” the old woman asked, her voice sounding more kindly than before. “And it’s broken?”

Pellar nodded miserably to both questions.

“Well, we’ll replace it, then,” the woman declared. She held out her hand. “I’m Aleesa.”

Pellar shook it and then pointed to himself and regretfully to his broken slate. He fished out his chalk and wrote his name on one of the pieces.

“Pellar, eh?” Aleesa repeated when she read it. She nodded to herself. “I’ve heard about you.”

“So have I,” Jaythen growled menacingly from behind. “The Silent Harper, everyone calls you. Jaythen spat in disgust, then added, “But the traders said you were a good tracker.”

Aleesa’s eyes flicked beyond Pellar to the man standing behind him and she said, “He walked in here, there’s no other way out.”

“Unless his fire-lizard went to fetch a dragonrider,” Jaythen growled.

Aleesa frowned and then shrugged. “We’ll be moving again soon enough,” she declared. “If the dragonriders come, they’ll find another empty camp.”

She gestured for Pellar to follow him. “Come along, youngster, there’s klah and something warm at the fire.”

Pellar was still somewhat dazed by the turn of events, but he remembered his manners and bowed politely to the old woman, then crooked his elbow toward her in an invitation to hold on to his arm.

Aleesa laughed, a deep hearty laugh that brought out the crow’s-feet around her eyes. She latched onto Pellar’s arm and called over her shoulder, “See, Jaythen? This one has manners!”

Behind them, Jaythen grumbled.

Aleesa’s camp was hidden behind a hillock and nestled against the rising Nabol Mountains. Pellar suppressed a shiver as they went into shadow deeper than the early morning. Beside him, Aleesa shook herself and shivered.

“My bones don’t like this cold,” she admitted to him. “I’m too old.”

At the foot of the mountain there was a small opening, and Aleesa led him inside. To the right side there was a small crevice; on the left, a larger opening with the smell of klah and stew. Aleesa led him to the left.

The opening widened to a natural cave that reminded Pellar of the cave he’d found up by Camp Natalon, except that this cave was far more spacious and had several alcoves. Young children played noisily in the center of the cave, while around them a couple of women bustled, washing, cooking, or keeping the children out of the worst of the mischief.

“Those that aren’t resting are on watch,” Aleesa said. She gestured to the women. “These are just the child minders.”

One of the women looked up at the oblique introduction, smiled at Pellar, but was instantly distracted by the movements of a baby crawling toward the open fire.

Pellar nodded at Aleesa’s explanation, keeping his expression neutral. He got the impression that Aleesa wanted him to believe that the camp had many inhabitants, but a quick glance at the food stored in the pantry and the size of the pots told him that there could be no more than two or three others in the whole place—and that with them all on short rations.

Aleesa herself served him up a cup of klah. Pellar nodded and smiled in thanks, cupping his hands gratefully around the warmth. The klah was thin and watered down.

Aleesa gestured toward a pile of furs placed to one side of the cave and took a seat on the largest pile. Pellar found another fur nearby and sat.

“I’d heard that you’ve been looking for us for several months now,” Aleesa said.

Pellar nodded.

“You found our old camp over by Campbell’s Field?”

Pellar shook his head, his surprise obvious.

“I told Jaythen no one would find it,” she said with a bitter laugh. Her look turned sour. “Except maybe the dragonriders.”

Pellar carefully schooled his expression to be neutral but he didn’t fool the old woman.

“They don’t like us,” Aleesa continued bitterly. “They say that watch-whers steal food meant for their dragons.” She snorted in disgust. “That D’gan! Him with his high airs. He’s got it in his mind that the watch-whers ate him out of Igen Weyr.”

Pellar looked surprised. He knew that D’gan was the Weyrleader of Telgar Weyr, and that Igen Weyr had been combined with Telgar a number of Turns back, but he hadn’t heard anything about watch-whers being involved.

“He says that they are abominations and shouldn’t exist,” Aleesa said with a sniff. She looked up at Pellar. “I know they’re no beauties on the outside, but they’ve hearts of gold when you get to know them, hearts of gold.” Her eyes turned involuntarily toward the entrance to the cave and the crevice beyond.

“And there are so few left,” she added softly.

“So few,” she repeated, nodding to herself, her gaze turned inward. After a moment, she glanced back up at Pellar and told him conspiratorially, “I think she’s the last one, you know.”

Then her tone changed abruptly and she demanded, “So what do you want and why should I let you live?”

It was then that Pellar realized that the Whermaster was quite insane.

In the course of the next few days, Pellar discovered that Aleesa’s camp was a desperate place full of desperate people. It took of all Pellar’s tact, winsome ways, and hard work to earn their grudging acceptance—and his continued existence. For, unlike the Shunned, these people were not only desperate, they were fanatics dedicated to the continued existence of the watch-whers.

Realizing how desperate the camp was for game, Pellar offered to set and tend traps, which he was allowed to do, though he was often shadowed by Jaythen or one of the other men of the camp. He gladly accepted even the worst jobs and did his best at them all, to the point where even Aleesa commented on how brightly he’d shined the pots assigned him.

Good as her word, Aleesa had one of the men find suitable pieces of slate to replace Pellar’s broken one and help with the difficult task of boring holes on which to string it. Pellar took advantage of the supply to lay aside other pieces for the future.

Because he was not trusted, Pellar often found himself stuck entertaining the camp’s three young children, none of them more than toddlers. It was difficult, particularly as he couldn’t tell them what to do, but he quickly found that they were entranced by his expressive ways, charming games, and magical pipes.

As soon as he could, he gathered enough reeds to fashion three more pipes, each a different note, and taught the children how to play one of the more popular Teaching Songs. The mothers were pleased and vocal in their pride of their children; Aleesa was not.

“Teaching Songs!” she snorted when she heard it. “What do we need of those? ‘Honor those the dragons heed!’” She shook her head disgustedly.

Pellar gave her a quizzical look, surprised by her vehemence.

“Dragonriders care nothing for us,” Aleesa continued in a bitter voice. “It was D’gan himself, Weyrleader of Telgar, who sent us packing from our last camp.”

“‘Your beasts will eat all the herdbeasts and leave nothing for the fighting dragons,’” she quoted. She shook her head, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“Fighting dragons!” she snorted. “No Thread has fallen any time in over a hundred Turns! What do they fight?” She shook her head dolefully.

“And he turfed us out, just like that, like we were Shunned.” She sniffed. “One of the babies died on the way here, for want of food.” She shook her head again. “Anything the watch-whers ate, they earned. They kept watch at night for nightbeasts eager to devour the herds, they caught and killed tunnel snakes, frightened away wherries—even the herders were glad to have us—but he sent us packing.

“No,” she said, looking at Pellar, “I’ll hear nothing of dragonriders in my camp. They sent us out to die, and the last queen watch-wher with us.”

The look of shock on Pellar’s face was so obvious that Aleesa, when she saw it, gave him a sour laugh. “You think all dragonriders are perfect and can do no harm?” She shook her head derisively. “You have a lot to learn, little one, a lot to learn.”

She turned away from him, toward her sleeping alcove. Her gaze rested briefly on the youngsters all snuggled together, surrounded by their parents.

“This place is too cold,” she declared, shivering. She nodded to the children. “Come winter, there’ll be less of them.”

She looked at Pellar.

“You’ve the watch,” she told him. From a corner, Jaythen looked up sharply at her declaration. “You wake Jaythen next.”

Pellar nodded.

“Don’t bother the watch-wher,” Aleesa warned him. “If you hear any noise, send your fire-lizard to tell her.” She rolled her eyes in disbelief. “For some reason, she likes him. She’ll check anything out; she’s got the best night eyes on Pern.”

Pellar waved in acknowledgment, strode to the entrance of the cave, and settled down cross-legged, with his back to the distant fire.

Chitter made a quick tour of the surroundings and returned to curl up near Pellar, resting his head on the youngster’s leg. Pellar smiled and idly stroked his fire-lizard, his mind turning over his conversation with Aleesa.

He had heard enough rumors about D’gan, the Weyrleader of Telgar, on his journeying. His trip from Crom Hold to Keogh had been through lands looking to Telgar Weyr for protection when Thread came again. Also, Campbell’s Field. He remembered that the holders, particularly the herdsmen he met at Campbell’s Field, had been very wary of talking about Aleesa and her watch-whers. When he’d convinced them that he wasn’t working for D’gan and they found themselves comfortable talking to him—usually after a few glasses of wine—they told Pellar exactly what Aleesa had said, though in different words.

“Best thing against a nightbeast I’d ever seen,” one herder said of the watch-whers, shaking his head sadly. “We lost more herdbeasts the first sevenday after they left than we gave for the protection of the watch-whers in the last half Turn.” Hastily, he added, “Not that I mean any disrespect to our Weyrleader.”

Pellar’s opinion of D’gan had been formed earlier, when he’d heard how Telgar Weyr had repeatedly won the Weyr Games. The gossip around the Harper Hall had not been very flattering.

“He’s such a bad winner, I hope he never loses,” was the one comment Pellar had heard most often from the older journeymen.

A noise from behind, followed immediately by something butting against his back, caused Pellar to startle and jump. When he turned back, he saw the large glowing eyes of a watch-wher staring back at him. It butted him again, politely. Beside him, Chitter leaped up and hovered near the watch-wher.

Pellar looked curiously at the watch-wher, and realized that it was the gold. He wondered what the watch-wher wanted and was at a loss for some way to communicate when Chitter landed on his shoulder and started tugging at him.

Oh, you want to go out, Pellar thought to himself. He stood aside, and the watch-wher lumbered out of the crevice into the dale. You’re welcome, Pellar thought, just as he did with Chitter.

The gold turned back for a moment and nodded her head toward Pellar before turning back, taking one giant stride, and jumping into the air.

Well, they’re related to dragons, Pellar mused, so why wouldn’t they move well in midair?

He was still trying to absorb this new thought when a voice behind him cried out and he felt a rush of air. Suddenly there was a second watch-wher in the air, climbing frantically after the queen.

A rush of feet behind him alerted him in time to turn and see Aleesa come pelting toward him.

“You! Send your fire-lizard away!” she ordered. As Pellar’s brows furrowed questioningly, she added, “It’s a mating flight! You’ll not want him around.”

A mating flight? Like dragons? Pellar grabbed for Chitter and locked eyes with his brown. Chitter protested twice but finally agreed and, just after Pellar released him, vanished between.

“Have you ever seen a mating flight?” Aleesa asked, her voice filled with a reverence that made Pellar uneasy.

Pellar shook his head.

“Have you ever felt a mating flight?” Aleesa asked with a hint of a leer in her voice.

Reluctantly Pellar nodded. Others were awake now and rushed out of the cave. Jaythen approached Aleesa with a wild light in his eyes and Pellar realized that the bronze watch-wher was bonded to him.

“Do you want to do this, Aleesa?” Jaythen asked, his voice rasping with barely controlled emotions. “She’s old.”

“She’ll outfly your bronze if you keep jabbering,” Aleesa replied, turning toward the younger man. She spared one last glance at Pellar. “Have Polla get the children and the others prepared and stay with them.”

Pellar nodded and ran back to the cave. He found Polla, one of the older women, already organizing the children into groups. He was surprised to see some of the younger women eyeing him consideringly.

“It’d only be for the flight,” the woman said when she caught his gaze. “Nothing more than that.”

Pellar nodded, not sure of his own feelings, and wondered how many of the children were the results of previous mating flights—he’d heard enough about them during his time at the Harper Hall.

“They’ll be needing food and warmth after the flight,” Polla warned, brusquely setting the children to play near the fire.

Who, Pellar wondered, the watch-whers, Aleesa, or the children?

“How many Turns have you, anyway?” Polla asked, regarding Pellar carefully.

Pellar hastily pulled out his slate and wrote 13.

Polla read it and laughed, nodding toward the younger woman. “Arella’s nearer your age, she’s only three Turns older.”

Pellar found it hard to believe that the other woman had only sixteen Turns; he would have guessed her nearer to thirty. Life with the watch-whers was clearly very demanding.

“Come sit by me, then,” Arella called, patting a spot near her.

Pellar crossed around the fire and had just sat, nervously, when the watch-whers mated.

Much later, Arella whispered in his ear, “Now you are one of us.”

“He is not one of us,” Jaythen declared loudly the next day, staring angrily at Pellar and Arella but directing his speech to Aleesa.

The old woman looked very tired. She shook her head slowly. “Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps not.” She cast a secretive glance toward Arella. “Time will tell.”

“Mother,” Arella said, “it was a mating flight. He knows.”

Knows what? Pellar wondered. That watch-whers mated? That they were enough like dragons that people felt the intensity of their emotions?

“It might be her last mating flight,” Aleesa said, her voice betraying her own fatigue and sorrow. “If there’s no queen egg…”

Pellar looked up at the mention of eggs. Jaythen and Aleesa both noted it.

“You’re here for an egg?” Jaythen demanded, towering menacingly over Pellar.

Pellar nodded.

“You would steal an egg, why?” Aleesa asked.

Pellar shook his head. He slowly drew out his slate, very aware of Jaythen’s menacing presence, and wrote, “Not steal. Trade.”

“Trade what?” Jaythen growled derisively. He turned to Aleesa. “We’ve been through his pack; he’s got nothing of value.”

Pellar kept a neutral look on his face; he’d known that they had searched his pack the first night he arrived. He had guessed that they would.

“He’d’ve hidden anything of value, Jaythen,” Arella said to the older wherhandler, not attempting to keep her sense of derision from her voice.

“What’s valuable enough for a watch-wher’s egg?” Jaythen demanded.

Pellar felt all eyes on him. Hastily he wrote, “Warmth. Fire. Fuel.”

He passed his slate to Aleesa, who looked at it and frowned, passing it on to Polla.

“Warmth, fire, fuel,” Polla reported.

It was then that Pellar realized that Aleesa couldn’t read. All the other times, he hadn’t realized that she’d let someone else read his slate because she couldn’t; he’d thought she’d done it to prove her authority.

Pellar gestured urgently for the slate. Polla passed it back to him, her brow creased in concern. Pellar made sure that no one else saw what he wrote before he passed it to Aleesa.

Aleesa frowned at it, then passed it to Polla. Polla read it, gasped, and gave Pellar a hard look. Pellar gestured for her to read it. Polla glared at him, then glanced nervously at Aleesa.

“Well?” Aleesa demanded.

“It says, ‘lessons,’” Polla reported.

Aleesa snorted. “In return for which, I’m supposed to teach you how to talk, I presume?”

Pellar stood up, backing away from Jaythen, whose attitude, if anything, had grown more frosty during the exchange. He bowed low to Aleesa, stood up again, and gestured to the children. From inside his tunic, he pulled out his pipes, mimed putting them to his lips, put them back in his tunic, and then made like he was holding a guitar.

“You claim you’re harper-trained just because you can make pipes?” Jaythen asked incredulously. He laughed derisively. “A pretty poor excuse you are for a harper if you can’t speak!”

Pellar nodded and then shook his head, cupping his ear and frowning intently.

“He hears better than those who talk,” Aleesa guessed. She laughed, and not bitterly.

“And he’s got a fire-lizard, Mother,” Arella pointed out. “If he can keep one of those, he’ll be able to bond with a watch-wher.”

Pellar shook his head emphatically and made a waving-off gesture with one hand. He retrieved his slate from Polla and wrote, “Not me.”

“Who, then?” Aleesa asked. “Would you bring a horde upon us?”

Pellar gave Aleesa a long, thoughtful look. “Good idea,” he wrote finally.

“Good idea?” Jaythen snorted when he read the slate. “What makes that a good idea?”

“Sell the eggs,” Pellar wrote. “Herdsmen, miners.”

Polla’s eyes widened when she read his response, and her tone was very thoughtful when she told Aleesa, “He’s thinking you could sell the eggs to herdsmen and miners.”

“Sell them?” Aleesa repeated. She looked at Pellar and frowned. “And what would we sell them for?”

“A year’s coal,” Arella answered immediately. She looked defiantly at her mother and then at Pellar. “The chance of an egg for a year’s supply of coal.”

“Chance?” Jaythen repeated.

“They’d have to get by Aleesk,” Arella pointed out.

Aleesa barked a laugh. “I like it!”

“The herdsmen could offer a year’s supply of food,” Polla added, looking at the youngsters huddled together by the fire.

“Or gold,” Jaythen said, his eyes glowing thoughtfully. “Better than marks: You can buy anything with gold.”

Aleesa raised a hand, silencing the group. She gave Pellar a long, appraising look.

“It’s a deal,” she said finally. Pellar’s eyes brightened until she raised her hand. “If you stay here, make the arrangements, and provide for your replacement as harper when the time comes.”

She held out her hand to him. “Will you do it?”

Pellar thought for a moment and then, slowly, took her hand and shook it firmly.

“Heard and witnessed!” Arella declared. From the watch-whers’ cave came a chorus of acknowledgment.

Pellar’s new duties, it seemed, didn’t absolve him of his old duties; he found himself working twice as hard. Arella’s behavior toward him was much warmer and full of playful banter, which was good, as Jaythen seemed to grow more distrustful with every new day.

So it was more than a month before Pellar found the time and the timber with which to fashion the frame of a decent drum. He started with a well-formed section of tree trunk, carefully carved out the center, and slowly expanded the hollow until the frame was only a few centimeters thick. With all the other work he had, the process took him two sevendays.

“What are you doing?” Arella asked him late one night as she watched him carefully rub a rough stone against the outside of the frame. She peered curiously around the fire in the middle of the largest cavern.

Pellar paused, carefully placing his stone tool and work to the side before dragging out his slate, on which he wrote, “Sanding.”

Arella made a face. “I see that, but why?”

Pellar looked at her, picked up the frame, and mimed pounding on the hole where a skin should be. Arella looked at him with a creased brow before she relaxed in comprehension. “You’re making a drum?”

Pellar nodded. Arella crossed around the fire in quick strides and sat down close by him. She leaned in to peer at the drum in his hands and begged, “Teach me how.”

Pellar thought for a moment, nodded, and handed her the frame and rough stone.

Arella looked down at both in awe and then looked up at Pellar. “What do I do?”

“Sand,” Pellar wrote in reply.

The next morning, Pellar set out in search of a good hide for the drum. As he trotted from one trap to the next, he suppressed his irritation at Jaythen trailing him. Grinning, he glanced back over his shoulder to where Jaythen was hiding. Rather, where Jaythen was trying to hide, for Jaythen’s skills were only slightly better than none at all.

Pellar had taken pains to remain easily tracked in the past several sevendays—although he occasionally applied more of his craft just to learn the limits of Jaythen’s skill. He was always careful never to lose Jaythen for too long, lest the older man guess Pellar’s true abilities.

So far, after three traps, Pellar had nothing to show for his efforts. What he really wanted was a wherry foolish to fly into one of his large aerial traps—wherhide would make an excellent drumhead—but he’d settle for one of the larger furbeasts. What he didn’t expect was half a furbeast and a busted trap. He had barely time to recognize what he was looking at before an arrow flew by his shoulder and landed near the broken trap. Pellar whirled around to see Jaythen waving at him frantically and gesturing for him to run. Pellar had only taken his first confused step when Jaythen stiffened, notched another arrow to his bow, and let it fly—straight at Pellar.

Pellar dived to the right out of the arrow’s path, landing hard on his shoulder, curling up as soon as he hit the ground, and turning around to face the sounds coming from behind him. He pulled his knife from the top of his left boot and cradled it in both hands close to his chest while coming up to a crouch, for the volume of the sound told him he was facing something big and fast. And the grunting noise told him it was a wildboar—one of the most dangerous creatures on Pern.

Pellar only had an instant to spot Jaythen’s arrow sticking out of the wildboar’s left eye before he dove to the side and flung himself atop the wildboar. It lurched under his weight and squirmed to dislodge him. Pellar wrapped his numb right arm around the beast’s haunches and dug deeply into the wildboar’s neck with his knife. The boar squealed and bucked, throwing Pellar off.

Pellar fell hard, banging his head on a rock and rolling over another with his sore shoulder. He would have screamed out loud if he could. His face pinched in pain, he grabbed the rock his head had hit on the way down and threw it at the wildboar.

“Are you mad?” Jaythen yelled in the distance. “Run!”

But Pellar shook his head, knowing that even as injured as the wildboar was, he was too slow to outrun it.

The wildboar charged toward him, its good eye blazing balefully.

Pellar dodged to the left just in time, grabbing at his knife as he did. The knife wouldn’t dislodge, but that was fine with him: He was hoping to drive it deeper. With a sudden squeal, the wildboar’s legs splayed out from under it and it fell to the ground.

Jaythen rushed up. “Did you kill it?”

Pellar shook his head. Jaythen threw him a puzzled look, which cleared up as he saw that the beast was still breathing.

“You cut its spine,” Jaythen surmised, drawing his own blade and deftly delivering the mercy blow. The wildboar gave one last surprised sigh and collapsed.

Pellar exhaled heavily, carefully wiped his blade, returned it to his boot, pulled out his slate, and wrote, “Hide mine.”

Jaythen snorted when he read the note. “It’s yours,” he declared. He gestured at their kill and said with a broad grin, “There’s a sevenday’s eating here.”

Pellar nodded, smiling in return. Wildboar made great eating.

With a laugh, Jaythen patted him on the shoulder and declared, “Now you’re one of us.”

Arella took charge of the carcass as soon as Pellar and Jaythen brought it in. Pellar was surprised to see how deft she was with a knife, even more so when she presented him with a perfectly cut hide. She also took great pains to get as much blood on Pellar as herself, dragging him off to the nearby bathing pool as soon as she’d set the meat to smoking.

Pellar played and cavorted with her but refused to be drawn into anything more serious, pointing to his various injuries. Arella’s angry frown was immediately replaced by a tender look and she insisted on bandaging him when they were done with their ablutions and had returned to the main cave of what Pellar had started to think of as the wherhold.

“So when are you going to arrange these trades?” Aleesa demanded at dinner that evening. Her abrupt manner was as close to praise as he’d ever heard from her.

Pellar held up a hand politely, finished chewing his food, fished out his slate, and wrote, “Eggs.”

“You know I can’t read,” Aleesa told him curtly, sliding the slate toward Arella. Pellar grabbed her hand, caught her eyes, and shook his head slightly. Gently he pulled the slate back and carefully drew three small ovals piled on top of each other. He slid the slate back to Aleesa and gave her a challenging look.

“Eggs?” Aleesa said, glancing at the drawing. Then she glanced up at the letters above. “That says eggs?”

Pellar nodded. Aleesa glanced down at the writing once more, her gaze intent on absorbing and remembering every aspect of the letters before her.

After a moment, Pellar touched her hand and gestured to get the slate back. He carefully rubbed out the letter “s” and two of the three ovals and slid the slate back to Aleesa.

“Egg?” Aleesa guessed. When Pellar nodded, she squinted at the slate, examining it carefully. “That little squiggle at the end, that makes the ‘sss’ sound?”

Pellar nodded, smiling encouragingly.

“That’s the letter ‘s,’ Mother,” Arella told her.

Pellar nodded and gestured for the slate again. Aleesa released it with just a hint of reluctance. Pellar acknowledged her expression and carefully erased the letters and drawing. He wrote the letter “s” and handed the slate back to her, this time handing her the chalk as well.

“You want me to write the letter?” Aleesa asked. Pellar nodded. Aleesa frowned, then bent over the slate, carefully sliding the chalk on the slate. She muttered to herself as she drew and finally looked up, holding the slate toward Pellar with a sour look.

“Mine doesn’t look as good as yours,” Aleesa said.

Pellar held up one finger.

“You’re saying that it’s my first?”

Pellar nodded.

Aleesa pursed her lips, but Pellar’s face burst into a smile as he danced his finger up and down in front of her and cocked his head invitingly. He held up two fingers, then three, four, and finally five.

“You want me to try five more times?”

Pellar nodded.

Aleesa’s lips thinned rebelliously, and Arella smiled at her and mimicked, “‘Five times to learn, Arella.’”

Aleesa frowned and stuck her tongue out at her daughter playfully. She turned back to Pellar, bit back some comment, and carefully drew four more copies of the letter.

When she was finished, Pellar examined her handiwork carefully and then nodded emphatically, not failing to note the slight sigh of relief that Aleesa tried to keep hidden from him.

And so began Aleesa’s education.

In the days that followed, though both she and Pellar found themselves exasperated by their mutual difficulty in communicating—his in speaking and hers in reading—neither one would permit it to sour or break their bargain.

“‘I go soon,’” Aleesa repeated nearly ten sevendays later. She shook her head at Pellar. “Shouldn’t it be: I’ll be going soon?”

Pellar nodded in agreement but pointed at the slate.

“Oh, I see,” Aleesa said. “The slate’s too small.”

“Be sure not to use that drum of yours until you’re far away,” Jaythen warned.

“And be prepared to run—you’re likely to draw every one of the Shunned upon you,” Aleesa added.

Pellar nodded understandingly. They had discussed his plans in detail over the past several sevendays. Jaythen had been the first to point out that if in the watch-wher eggs they had something to trade, they also had something for the Shunned to steal.

“I’m convinced they get a lot of their money from trading in fire-lizards’ eggs,” he had said.

“Hunting birds,” Pellar had written in response, opening himself to a long line of questioning from Aleesa, Jaythen, and Arella in which he explained his encounter with Halla, Tenim, and Tenim’s hawk. Arella had drawn him out, and Pellar had found himself explaining about the flowers and the tragedy at Camp Natalon. Tears welled in his eyes as he recounted how he’d found the small snow-covered mounds.

“Working underground!” Jaythen exclaimed when Pellar explained the expected watch-wher’s role.

Aleesa took on the abstracted look that Pellar had come to recognize meant she was communicating with her watch-wher. “Aleesk says that watch-whers like the dark and would enjoy it,” she reported a moment later.

“Dask did,” Pellar wrote in response.

“Very well,” Aleesa said. “You may tell this Zist of yours that we’ll trade. A winter’s worth of coal for a chance at an egg.”

“Chance?” Pellar wrote back.

“Whoever wants it has to get it from Aleesk,” Aleesa replied with an evil grin. “I’ll let her have the final say.”

“Fair enough,” Pellar had written in reply.

“When will you go?”

“Tomorrow,” Pellar wrote back.

“Tomorrow it is, then,” Aleesa agreed. Beside her, Arella gave a sob and raced out of the main cavern. Aleesa followed her daughter’s anguished departure with her eyes and looked back to Pellar. “She is hoping that when you come back, you’ll stay.”

Pellar nodded.

“And?”

Pellar shook his head sadly.

“It’s a hard life with the watch-whers,” Aleesa said with a sigh. Her eyes twinkled as she added, “It has its compensations, like mating flights, but I won’t deny it’s hard.”

She caught his gaze and held it with her own.

“You could make it better, though,” she told him.

Pellar’s mouth quivered, but finally, he shook his head, wiped his slate clean, and wrote on it, “Shunned.”

Aleesa read it and nodded slowly. “You don’t like putting flowers on graves.”

Pellar nodded.

“You’re a good lad, Harper Pellar,” Aleesa said. “I’ll not force you, but remember this—you’ve a home here if you want.”

Pellar grabbed her hand and squeezed it in thanks, rose, and bowed slightly, then sprinted off after Arella.

He found her outside of the main compound, up near a stand of trees.

“I’m not staying,” Arella told him as he approached. He arched an eyebrow at her. Whether she saw it in the dark or guessed at it didn’t matter. She was crouched on the ground, cradling her knees with her arms, her chin rested on one knee. “I’ll be here when you get back, but I’m not staying.”

Pellar sat down beside her. She sidled up next to him and laid her head on his shoulder.

“One of those coming for an egg will want help, I’m sure,” she said. “I’ll go with him. There’s more than watch-whers, worry, and empty bellies in this world, and I want it.”

Arella pulled away from him and stood up. Pellar stood up beside her. She looked at him half-defiant, half-hopeful. He shook his head slowly—no, he did not love her.

“I knew that,” Arella said. But Pellar could hear the lie in her voice.

He tugged at her, gesturing toward the cave. Arella followed reluctantly. Her resistance grew when he turned toward their sleeping quarters, but he waved aside her objections with a hand and begged her with his eyes to wait. Suspiciously, Arella followed him.

From under his sleeping furs, he pulled out a small, perfect drum and presented it to her solemnly.

“For me?” Arella asked, carefully turning the drum over in her hands.

Pellar nodded and wrote quickly. “‘Arella. Emergency.’ I come.”

He had taught her how to drum her name and the emergency signal several sevendays before.

“If I need you, I can call for you?” Arella asked, her eyes gleaming again.

Pellar nodded firmly.

Arella smiled and drew him toward her for a kiss. Not the kiss of lovers, but the kiss of friends who once had been.

Pellar took the most difficult route out of Aleesa’s wherhold: He went straight over the mountains. It took him a full day to get to the far side. He pressed on at first light the next morning and was glad to find himself within sight of Keogh, a minor hold of Crom, before the sun set that evening. He found a good camp but did not wait to set up before unlimbering his drum, checking the bindings of the wildboar hide, and rolling out the quick beat of “Attention.”

A huge grin split his face as he heard no less than three drums return the “Ready” signal.

His grin slipped a little as he sought to compose his message. He finally settled on: “For Zist. Aleesa will trade.”

He would send Chitter on with a longer explanation.

As the drums pounded back their acknowledgment, Pellar spread out his sleeping roll and gestured for Chitter. His note to Master Zist was terse but explained the most of the details.

Chitter waited patiently for Pellar to roll the small piece of paper and tie it onto his harness, but Pellar could tell that the fire-lizard was increasingly eager at the thought of the tidbits he’d find at Master Zist’s table—just as Pellar had hoped.

With a final chirp, the fire-lizard bade Pellar farewell, leaped into the air, and blinked between before he was more than head high above Pellar.

Greedy guts, Pellar thought with a grin as he pulled off his boots and socks and settled in for a well-earned rest.

Chitter was back the next morning with a small breadroll, a note from Zist, and a belly that had clearly been stuffed to the gills.

Pellar merely smiled and shook his head; he intended to keep Chitter working for his food. The fire-lizard caught his mood and did a quick twirl in the air, standing almost on his tail, before returning to Pellar’s shoulder with a satisfied chirp.

At Keogh, Pellar earned his meal and a place to sleep with his pipes and his slowly told tales of watch-whers and watch-wher eggs. He left before first light, certain that on his return he would not only get another night’s food and board, but also at least two holders committed to trade for the privilege of a watch-wher egg.

But Keogh wasn’t his primary goal. He had in mind, instead, the herders he’d met near Campbell’s Field, and some of the wiser traders he’d met along the way.

The herders’ need for watch-whers was obvious, and Pellar felt a small twinge of satisfaction at the notion of arranging things so that D’gan would have no choice but to accept the creatures—he couldn’t argue that they were useless if they were set to protect the very herdbeasts his dragons dined on.

He traveled fast, prepared to get rides where he could and ready to steal them where he couldn’t. Aleesa had told him that Aleesk had already clutched and that it would be only four sevendays before the watch-wher eggs hatched. He planned to be back at least a sevenday beforehand, ready to acknowledge those with whom he’d set up trades and fight off those with whom he hadn’t.

What he hadn’t counted on was the dragonrider. He was three days out of Keogh and worried that he was falling behind on his schedule when he noticed a strange shadow on the ground before him. Chitter squawked and flew up out of sight. As Pellar craned his neck up to follow the fire-lizard, he found his eye distracted by the sight of a large bronze dragon, wheeling downward on its wingtip, circling right above him.

Pellar froze, unable to react. The dragon was huge. Its eyes whirled the blue of contentment. Did that mean that the dragon was happy to find him, or glad to have caught an intruder?

Pellar was not at all sure how a dragonrider of Telgar Weyr would react if they knew his mission.

He forced himself to relax—the dragonriders wouldn’t know his mission unless someone had told them. And the only people who knew were Aleesa’s people and Master Zist.

Pellar waved. The dragon was low enough now that Pellar could make out the dragon’s rider and he waved back.

Shortly the dragon landed and Pellar realized once again how huge bronze dragons could be. The dragon’s head was nearly twice as tall as Pellar and its body could easily have circled three, maybe four, of the traders’ large workdrays.

Pellar bowed low, first to the dragon, and then to the rider who quickly dismounted and pulled off his headgear.

“Are you Pellar?” the rider called out, striding quickly toward him.

Pellar nodded.

“Master Zist sent me for you,” the rider said. “I’m D’vin of High Reaches.” He gestured back to his dragon. “This is Hurth.”

He saw Chitter hovering near the dragon’s left eye and added with a laugh, “I see that your fire-lizard has introduced himself already.”

D’vin eyed Pellar carefully. “Master Zist asked me to bring you back.”

Pellar gave him a questioning look.

“Isn’t it true that the watch-whers are living on land that looks to High Reaches?” D’vin asked.

Could High Reaches want the watch-whers to leave? Pellar wondered in horror.

D’vin must have guessed his thoughts. “Master Zist asked Weyrleader B’ralar to extend the protection of the Weyr to Master Aleesa and the watch-whers.

“He said that you’d told him about Master Aleesa being driven out of Telgar lands by D’gan,” the bronze rider added, in an odd tone, one that strived not to be disapproving.

Pellar nodded.

“Let me bring you to Zist,” D’vin said. Pellar looked startled—what about his mission?

“Afterward, I’ll help you on your way.”

Pellar bowed in thanks and then looked back at the dragon, trying to keep his eyes from going wide. He had never ridden a dragon before.

The dragon, Hurth, swiveled his long sinewy neck so that both eyes peered down at Pellar. For a moment, Pellar was lost in those huge, whirling eyes that were nearly as large as he was tall. He felt the same keenness of attention that he got from Chitter, only more so. He had a sense that something about him amused and intrigued the dragon.

Hurth inclined his head slightly and Pellar heard a voice in his head tell him with a laughing lilt, You think that you can’t talk to people. You do it all the time.

Could the dragon hear his thoughts? Pellar wondered, eyes wide in amazement.

Yes, came the reply. Pellar noticed the crispness of the voice, strangely devoid of tone yet still full of inflection and meaning. So can your little one.

Chitter chirped and flew a quick circuit between Pellar and the huge dragon.

He can? Pellar asked, both awed and thrilled. He had always thought that he had a special relationship with the fire-lizard, he’d felt and hoped that Chitter understood him but—to have a dragon confirm it! Pellar looked at his small friend and thought hard. Chitter flipped in the air and flew straight into Pellar’s arms, made a satisfied noise, and stroked Pellar’s chin with his face.

He is very lucky, your little one, Hurth said. Pellar felt that he both knew and didn’t know what the dragon meant by the remark, but before he could reply, he got the distinct impression that the dragon was occupied elsewhere, listening to a voice Pellar could not hear.

D’vin—the name was spoken with a warmth that awed Pellar—says that we should go. He is glad you can hear me. He asks if you can give me the image for Master Zist and Camp Natalon.

Image? Pellar asked himself, bewildered. Then he remembered that dragons were like fire-lizards, and that they needed to visualize their destination first. Pellar had never ridden a-dragonback. Image, he thought. He scanned the sky for the sun and then visualized as clearly as he could the fork of the road leading into Camp Natalon, Zist’s stone cothold, the larger stone hold of Natalon, the shed where Danil’s watch-wher had lived, the other road curving right and uphill toward the coal dump.

You give good coordinates, Hurth complimented. Very clear, very clean.

“You’ll want to put these on,” D’vin said, pulling a pack off his back and removing something blue. He shook it out and handed it across to Pellar.

Pellar shook his head and waved the offer aside, appalled that the dragonrider would offer him the clothes of a full apprentice harper.

“They’ll fit,” D’vin said, extending his hand again. “Master Murenny swore on it.”

Pellar gave the dragonrider a questioning look.

“He said that they’re yours,” D’vin told him in reply. For a moment the confident rider looked uncomfortable as he asked, “You’re not upset that there’s no proper ceremony, are you? Master Murenny seemed assured that you’d take these from a dragonrider.”

Harper clothes? Apprentice? A full apprentice? Proper? Pellar dodged past the clothes and grabbed the rider in a fierce hug, clapping him firmly on the back.

Even though Master Murenny and Zist had said he could be an apprentice, he had always been half-afraid that they didn’t mean it, that maybe they were just humoring him—until now. Proper clothes! He really was a harper!

I have told D’vin that you are honored, Hurth said, adding a low rumble to Chitter’s high, happy warbling.

Pellar stepped back and bowed apologetically to D’vin.

The bronze rider smiled, drew himself up to his full height, steadied his expression, held out the blue garments in both hands to Pellar and said formally, “Pellar, I have been requested by Murenny, Masterharper of Pern, to present you the formal garb of a harper apprentice. Do you accept?”

With equal formality, Pellar nodded and gave the dragonrider the same half-bow he’d seen other apprentices give on their induction into the Harper Hall. Then he took formal delivery of the precious blue garments.

D’vin excused himself to inspect Hurth’s riding harness while Pellar changed into his harper blue. He was sorry that he couldn’t clean himself up better; it had been days since his last bath. Inside the new blue-stained wherhide boots Pellar was quite pleased to find clean socks.

He was surprised to notice that his trousers and tunic both contained several large pockets—not standard.

D’vin, alerted by Hurth, turned and told him, “Master Murenny told me that you’d wonder about the pockets. He said to tell you that he expects you to carry more burdens than most.”

Pellar looked surprised.

“He also said that he was sure you’d be up to them,” the dragonrider added. “From the little I’ve seen of you, I’d say he underestimates you.”

D’vin gestured to Hurth’s shoulders. “This time, however, Hurth stands ready to carry you.”

The bronze dragon snorted and nodded in agreement.

A dragon. Pellar looked again at the huge beast. He felt uneasy.

You’re not afraid of me, are you? Hurth asked, sounding slightly hurt.

No, Pellar responded immediately. But you are rather big.

I am as big as I need to be, Hurth replied. If I were smaller, how would I be able to carry you and D’vin?

Pellar smiled at Hurth’s logic. His smile was echoed by D’vin’s laugh.

“Come, Harper,” D’vin declared, holding out his hand. “Let me get you up on the big one before he decides he really is too small for both of us!”

D’vin sat in front. When he was settled, he turned back to Pellar, both hands in fists with the thumbs up. Pellar returned the thumbs-up gesture with a nervous grin. He was actually on a dragon! He was actually going to fly! No, he was flying! He looked down for a moment as the ground shrank slowly away from him. A moment’s dizzying sense of perspective sent a thrill of fear through him and then Pellar realized that this was the most amazing moment of his life.

Thank you, Pellar thought to Hurth.

My pleasure, Hurth responded. There was that pause again as the dragon spoke with his rider and then Hurth continued, Remember, between only takes as long as it takes to cough three times.

Only? Pellar thought to himself. And then he was engulfed in blackness. He couldn’t feel the dragon beneath, D’vin in front of him, or anything around him. His heart beat loudly in his body, he felt his blood coursing through his veins—nothing else. He realized that he was holding his breath and never remembered doing so. He wondered how long he could hold it. He felt cold, a bone-numbing cold, so cold, so very cold, worse than the coldest night in winter. Would his skin freeze?

And then they were in the sunlight again, Pellar’s breath came in a rush, and the cold became a swiftly fading memory.

Pellar looked around. They were at Camp Natalon.

You give good coordinates, Hurth said again. Very clean. D’vin wonders why you were never Searched.

Searched? Pellar mused. Him? For Impression? To be a dragonrider? But dragonriders have to talk, to be heard.

I hear you quite well, Hurth told him.

Me, a dragonrider? Pellar thought. Chitter burst out in the sky beside them, gave a satisfied warble, and banked tightly to close in to Pellar’s side.

Good for you, Chitter, Pellar thought fondly. You followed us just fine.

Chitter chirped smugly.

Zist does not want me seen, Hurth said. Is there a place I can drop you?

Pellar thought that a bronze dragon was pretty hard to disguise, but then he realized that Hurth had come in close to the east mountain and flown back behind it almost instantly.

There’s a plateau, he responded, remembering the small grave site. He had a sudden wish to see how it had survived through the spring thaw—and an echoing curiosity about the other mounds he’d seen when tracking Tenim and Tarik.

I see it, Hurth replied, veering toward it. I can land there. The dragon started a precipitous descent. What makes you so concerned about little mounds?

Pellar found himself overwhelmed by the question and its answer, his mind awash with many different memories—of Cayla and Carissa, of little Halla hanging upside down, of the yellow flowers.

Dragons go between to die, Hurth responded. He sounded sad and somewhat confused. I suppose earth is like going between for people.

Pellar was startled by the comparison and stunned by Hurth’s astute observation. He didn’t have much time to consider it, as D’vin was already helping him down onto Hurth’s huge leg.

Once Pellar had scrambled to the ground, D’vin told him, “Let Hurth know when you want to be picked up.”

Pellar nodded, and waved in acknowledgment.

Step away, Hurth cautioned. Pellar moved a dragonlength away. With a great bound of his hind legs, Hurth leapt in the air, his huge wings beating mightily to gain altitude, and then dragon and rider winked out of sight, between.

Pellar was surprised to see only a faint bubble of mist where the dragon and rider had been moment before. He stared for a moment longer, then shook himself from his musings and started off over the hill and down to Camp Natalon.

He was surprised to find Master Zist waiting for him at the bottom of the hill.

“We haven’t much time,” Zist said brusquely. “I’ve already heard that the Shunned know about the sale of the watch-wher eggs.”

Pellar nodded grimly. He had guessed that something as rare and valuable as watch-wher eggs would attract the attention of anyone desperate enough to become Shunned.

“Murenny has asked B’ralar, the High Reaches Weyrleader, to provide protection for Aleesa and her watch-whers,” Zist continued. He put a hand on Pellar’s shoulder and shook him gently. “I need you to convince Aleesa to accept the protection and arrange some signal that either you or the watch-whers can send to the dragons if the need arises.”

Pellar shook his head, drew out his slate, and hastily wrote, “When.”

“When the need arises,” Zist agreed solemnly. Pellar raised a hand palm up to stop Zist from saying anything more, cleaned off his slate, and wrote, “Must move.”

Zist read the note and nodded. “You’re saying that they’ll have to move after the eggs are distributed?”

Pellar nodded, wiped his slate clean, and wrote, “Want harper.”

“They want a harper?” Zist guessed. Pellar nodded. Zist stroked his chin thoughtfully for a moment, then looked back up speculatively at Pellar.

Pellar shook his head, pointed to himself, and followed that gesture immediately by waving both hands in front of himself—his way of saying “no” since he was a baby.

“Not you,” Zist gathered. He cocked an eyebrow at his adopted son. “Is that your choice or theirs?”

Pellar raised both hands, one with a single figure raised and the other with all fingers outstretched.

“All of you, then,” Zist guessed. He shrugged. “Well, I won’t say I’m not relieved, but I can’t say when we’ll have a replacement.”

“I stay until,” Pellar wrote.

“That’s probably for the best,” Zist agreed. “Your Chitter can tell us when they move and where.” He waved aside Pellar’s rising reaction. “The dragonriders will need to know so that they can provide protection.”

Pellar mulled on Zist’s words for a moment and then nodded.

“Good lad,” Zist said, slapping him once more on the shoulder. This time he released his grip on Pellar and pushed him lightly away. “Now, go to Master Aleesa and get her to agree to the protection. Tell her that Natalon will provide the coal.”

Pellar turned to leave, but then turned back and wrote, “D’vin bring you?”

“When it’s time for the hatching?” Zist asked. Pellar nodded. Zist shook his head. “No, we’ll have to get a rider from a different Weyr, so that we don’t give away Aleesa’s location.”

Pellar frowned for a moment before nodding slowly in agreement—the lands protected by a Weyr were vast, but not so large that a determined group couldn’t locate Aleesa and her watch-whers if they knew which Weyr protected them.

“Telgar,” Pellar wrote as a suggestion, knowing that D’gan would never let the watch-whers back under his protection.

Zist caught on to the implications immediately and snorted in laughter. “Great idea!”

Pellar bowed slightly, waved, and turned back the way he’d come.

He was so immersed in his thoughts that it seemed only moments before he was back on the plateau. He paused instinctively and scanned for any sign of others. When he was certain that he was alone, he thought of signaling Hurth but stopped, deciding first to visit the little grave.

It was right where he remembered. The mound had shrunk a little as the snow had thawed into mud and the mud had settled, but it was still unmistakably a grave.

They were no flowers. It looked forlorn and sad. Barren.

Pellar decided that it would have been more pleasant with a blanket of snow. He closed his eyes for a moment and imagined a small bundle of yellow flowers, the image being the only gift he could leave. He turned north and west and imagined the other mounds he’d seen in the snow following Tarik and Tenim; he closed his eyes again, imagining flowers on each of them and wondering once more which one was occupied by Halla, the girl with the flashing eyes and bark shoes.

He felt a spasm of anger run through him as he remembered Tenim and their fight. Unconsciously his hand went up to his throat and massaged it.

With a deep sigh, Pellar opened his eyes again. One day, he swore to himself. He knew he would meet Tenim again one day.

He scanned the plateau once more and then walked carefully to where he’d last seen the great bronze dragon.

Hurth, I’m ready.

CHAPTER 5

Pellar was careful to send Chitter on ahead to the camp before he approached. The fire-lizard returned immediately, eyes whirling with fear, and wrapped himself around Pellar’s neck, clutching tightly and painfully.

I’m going in, Pellar thought to his frightened friend. Chitter gave a plaintive but resigned mewl in response.

It was still daylight and so not at all hard for Pellar to spot Jaythen’s hiding place before Jaythen spotted him. He was sure that if he hadn’t he would never have avoided the arrow Jaythen sent whizzing his way. The arrow buried itself up to the shaft in the hard-packed dirt where Pellar had been walking.

It will be hard to hide in blue, Pellar decided, abandoning any notion of using his woodcraft to elude Jaythen.

Pellar broke into a run, zigzagging and moving in a wide arc to the far side of Jaythen. He dodged another arrow, and another. He was running blindly, without any plan, his only thought to get to Jaythen, to convince him somehow that he meant no harm.

“Did you sell us out for finery?” Jaythen yelled as the fourth arrow missed. He threw his bow aside and pulled a long dirk from his belt. “How good do you think it’ll look when your blood’s on it?”

Pellar dodged again, only to find himself gape-mouthed in unvoiced pain. He looked to his left and noticed an arrow sticking out of his left forearm. Someone else had shot him. He caught the sight of Arella rising up from her hiding place, eyes streaming with tears as she notched another arrow and aimed for his heart.

“I trusted you,” she yelled at him as she shot at him.

Aleesk! Pellar cried in his head as the arrow flew at him. Chitter launched himself—too late—toward the stone-tipped missile.

Time slowed for Pellar and suddenly the arrow was stuck in the air, crawling toward him. Chitter was hovering in place, getting nearer to the arrow as slowly as the arrow was approaching Pellar, and Pellar could see that the arrow would hit him before his fire-lizard could intervene.

But none of that mattered. What mattered was Aleesk, the gold watch-wher. For in that instant, Pellar felt himself a part of another in a way that he’d never felt before. He found himself in touch with Aleesk in a way he’d only imagined, even more than he’d felt with Hurth.

And he only felt. He was feeling: pain in his arm, pain in his laboring lungs, fear in his heart, sadness, grief, anger, loss, defeat, and above all that a burning shame and anger that this need not be, that if only Pellar had done something different, if only, if only—

Time moved again and the arrow whizzed toward him. Chitter’s cry of anguish filled the air and Pellar looked at his own death, a mere instant away.

Then suddenly the air was full of gold, of noise, of movement, and of anger, of understanding, of contrition.

Aleesk shielded Pellar with her body. The arrow struck her in the side, penetrated, and bounced out again. Aleesk bellowed, more in defiance than in pain, her head and eyes turning to Pellar, her mouth open, fangs bared.

She cried out to Pellar, then closed her mouth and nuzzled him, crying again in supplication, sorrow, concern.

I’m all right, Pellar told her. He found power he’d never known he’d had and stumbled over to her, grabbed her around the neck, and hugged her tightly. I’m all right.

The air was rent by a loud, outraged bellow, and suddenly the sky above was dark as a fully grown bronze dragon burst into existence above them.

I’m all right, Hurth, Pellar called to the dragon, fearing the wrath implied in the bronze’s huge red whirling eyes.

Jaythen lurched for his bow and notched it, aiming at the dragon.

No! Pellar cried in his head. Aleesk shrieked, and the sky darkened again as a bronze watch-wher emerged above them, its cries directed at Jaythen, its body shielding the dragon.

“Jaythen, stop!” Aleesa’s shouted.

Jaythen dropped his bow, his eyes wide in shock and horror.

“We do not attack dragons,” Aleesa declared, moving forward stiffly toward Aleesk. “Aleesk has said so.”

Jaythen looked at her in astonishment.

“She spoke?”

“She made me feel,” Aleesa said, holding her side at the same place as Arella’s arrow had hit the gold watch-wher.

Aleesa looked over to Pellar, her eyes hard as flint.

“You played your game well, little one,” she told him, her voice broken. She glanced up at the dragon hovering above her. “Now they will kill my Aleesk and there will be no more watch-whers, just as they wanted.” She shook her head, tears rolling unchecked down her cheek. “I trusted you, I truly trusted you.”

A sound from behind caused them all to turn sharply. D’vin had jumped off his dragon. He landed in a ball and rolled, jumping up quickly, his hands outstretched.

“You were right to trust him,” the dragonrider declared.

Jaythen snorted derisively. “He’s even ensnared the watch-whers.”

“Has he?” D’vin asked, turning to Aleesa. “What does your watch-wher tell you?”

“Watch-whers don’t talk, dragonman,” Aleesa responded, raising her head and glaring at him. “They feel, and act.”

“What did her actions tell you, then? What do her feelings tell you?”

Aleesa frowned thoughtfully. She looked at the gold watch-wher in an abstracted way, communing with her.

“Watch-whers are simple, uncomplicated beings,” she said after a moment. “She trusts him.” She glared at Pellar, hatred in every fiber of her being and then said to D’vin, “And he’s sold her to you.”

“I trust you, Pellar,” a voice called from the distance. Arella trotted in from her hiding place. She patted Aleesk apologetically, then threw her bow down to the ground and looked at her mother. “I felt you, I felt you and—”

“We are not your enemies,” D’vin declared, glancing from Arella to Aleesa and back. “Your watch-whers know this.” He glanced at Jaythen. “They know not to harm dragons.”

“And how do dragons think of them?” Jaythen demanded angrily.

They are our cousins, Hurth declared. Pellar looked up at the dragon and then noticed that Jaythen, Aleesa, and Arella were also staring up at the dragon, mouths open wide in surprise. They are our kin, as are the fire-lizards.

“Cousins?” D’vin echoed. He looked over at Pellar. “Do the harpers know this?”

Pellar shrugged.

“Cousins?” Aleesa repeated, turning her gaze from the bronze watch-wher to the bronze dragon.

And they do not like the light, Hurth added. You are to believe them. They are leaving now.

Suddenly the watch-whers were gone.

They are very nimble, Hurth remarked in a surprised tone. They are in their weyr; they like the dark.

Into the silence that followed this last draconic announcement, D’vin spoke. “I am D’vin, rider of bronze Hurth, wingleader at High Reaches. I have been sent by Weyrleader B’ralar to offer the protection and aid of High Reaches Weyr.”

“Dragonrider,” Arella said, bowing low, “on behalf of our watch-whers and the last of the golds on Pern, I accept your offer.”

“I am sorry for our behavior,” Aleesa said, shaking herself out of her shock.

“She’s the last gold?” D’vin asked, turning to the watch-wher with a horrified look on his face. He turned back to Arella. “And you shot at her?”

Arella flushed and gestured angrily at Pellar. “I shot at him,” she declared, “to protect her.”

Pellar strode over to the two, waved his hands for attention, grabbed their hands and pulled them together, forcing them to shake.

Hurth, Pellar thought to the dragon hovering still above them, tell them to stop bickering, and that I’m about to faint.

Pellar says that you are to stop bickering and that he is going faint, Hurth dutifully reported just as Pellar crumpled to the ground.

“So, when will you be ready to continue?” Arella asked Pellar as his eyes fluttered open.

Pellar gave her a look of outrage and Arella laughed. “I thought that’s what you’d do.”

Pellar closed his eyes again and felt for Chitter.

He is sleeping here with me, Hurth reported. Pellar got the impression of a small brown fire-lizard curled on the forearm of a large bronze dragon. I am glad you are well. He was quite upset. D’vin says that we can go whenever you wish. Aleesa says that the hatching will come any day now.

“Are you able to stand?” Arella asked. It was then that Pellar realized that she was lying next to him, her body’s heat warming him. Arella guessed his thoughts from his expression and smiled wryly at him. “Don’t go getting any ideas, Harper Pellar. There’s no mating flight for months yet. I am here because it was my arrow in your arm, and I owe you.”

Arella’s eyes were bright as they looked deep into his. He reached over and stroked her cheek. She leaned into it and then drew back again, all business. “Are you ready to earn your keep?”

Pellar nodded and rolled over, trying to rise and finding himself terribly weak. His left arm was sore and stiff, and his mouth opened vainly to cry in pain.

Arella’s strong arms grabbed at him, steadied him, and lifted him up.

“You’re as weak as a hatchling,” she told him, helping him up to a stool.

Pellar looked around for his slate. When he didn’t find it, he spread out his hands imploringly to Arella, then brought them together frantically, one flat like a slate, the other fisted like someone holding chalk.

“Your slate’s broken. You’ll have to talk through the dragon,” Arella informed him.

Hurth? Pellar thought to the dragon.

Tell me what you want and I will tell her, the dragon responded. D’vin is ready to help if you need.

Pellar glanced quickly down at his naked body, blushed, and decided that he would wait before taking the dragonrider up on his offer.

Arella bustled about him efficiently, throwing undergarments at him and helping him with them only when his attempts failed piteously. Trousers and his bloodstained tunic went on next, then Arella pushed him back onto the stool and gently slid socks onto his feet. She tugged his boots on carefully, keeping her eyes on his face for any signs of pain, but Pellar only winced twice as her movements jostled his arm.

“I would have killed you for betraying the watch-whers to their deaths,” Arella told him softly. “You understand? Wouldn’t you do the same if someone tried to kill Chitter?” She turned her head toward the watch-whers’ quarters. “And she’s the last of her kind.”

Pellar stared at her for a long while before nodding slowly. Tears rolled down Arella’s cheeks and she grabbed his right hand tightly. Pellar clenched back, and pulled her toward him. Surprised, Arella looked up from her kneeling position and crawled forward until her torso was cradled between his legs. Pellar pulled her hand back more, drawing her head toward him, and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Arella let out a sob and dropped her head against his shoulder.

“Besides,” she sobbed against his chest, “you left me. I loved you and you left me.”

Pellar let go of her hand and wrapped his free hand around her back, hugging her tight against him. He patted her soothingly. He knew he loved her, too, and he tightened his arm, but even as he did so he closed his eyes and saw a small mound with a thin bundle of yellow flowers.

Tears rolled down his face, dropped onto Arella’s cheeks, mingled with her tears, and rolled with them onto his stained blue tunic.

With Hurth’s wings, D’vin’s assistance, and Arella’s support, Pellar managed to find candidates for all the twelve other eggs that Aleesa said Aleesk had clutched.

“She’ll outlive me,” Aleesa had confessed to Arella when they were ready to leave. “And then what happens? Will you bond with the last watch-wher on Pern or let her go between, the last of her kind with no queen to follow?”

Arella pursed her lips tightly and shook her head indecisively.

Aleesa decided not to press the issue and turned her attention to Pellar. She gave him a piercing look, like the first look she’d ever given him but weaker, a pale imitation of the one mere months before. For the first time Pellar realized how frail the thin Whermaster was and how tired she was of her old body, how worn out and sore she felt.

“Make sure you get some joint-ail medicine, Harper,” she told him firmly, as though guessing his thoughts. “I don’t move like I used to.”

Pellar nodded and then surprised himself, leaning forward and hugging her with his good arm. Awkwardly Aleesa patted him back and then pushed him away, spreading her gaze between him and Arella.

“Go now, or it’ll be too late.”

They returned three days later. Hurth bellowed a warning that Chitter repeated in quieter counterpoint. From within the watch-whers’ cavern came an echoing response.

“You’ve reason to be proud, you know,” Arella murmured in Pellar’s ear as they spiraled down toward the ground. She was perched behind him, while D’vin was in front. She reached forward and squeezed his thigh for emphasis. Pellar nodded and covered her hand with his.

“Some of them are already here,” D’vin noted as they circled down for their landing. Above him, a dragon bugled; he peered back over his shoulder. “Those are Benden colors. The Weyrleader!”

Hurth suddenly lurched sideways, clearing a path for the great bronze dragon bearing Benden’s Weyrleader. As the bronze descended, Pellar caught a glimpse of three passengers: Natalon with his eyes scrunched firmly tight, Zist, and Kindan. The youngest son of Camp Natalon’s last watch-wher handler looked a little green with fear, but his eyes were wide with excitement.

“I need to get down,” Arella muttered from behind. “I need to help Mother.”

As if in response, Hurth tucked into a steep dive, backwinging only a dagger’s length above the ground and landing firmly. Arella was in motion immediately, nimbly scrambling down the dragon’s front leg. She patted him absently before darting into the crowd gathered in the hollow.

D’vin turned in his seat and said, “Pellar, I think it might be a good idea to keep you out of sight. As long as those down there don’t know that you’re here, they won’t know if you know the location of the watch-wher’s lair.”

Pellar nodded. He and Arella had bargained well for the watch-wher’s eggs, and the Whermaster and the rest of the camp would find their lives easier for Turns to come, but news of their riches would certainly spread to the Shunned, who would have the double incentive of those goods and the watch-wher eggs that could be traded for more.

“I, on the other hand,” D’vin continued, “have to mingle amongst our guests. They don’t know where this camp is, all having come a-dragonback, but Zist is hoping they’ll draw the obvious conclusion.”

Pellar quirked an eyebrow at the bronze rider. D’vin smiled and waved a finger at him. “You’re a harper—surely you’ve noticed the only Weyr not represented here?”

Pellar looked around at the other dragons, some aloft on watch, some perched on top the hill below. He found the riders and their markings—Fort, Ista, Benden, and High Reaches. Suddenly he found himself holding his sides in silent laughter. Only Telgar was not present. Any devious mind would quickly conclude that Master Aleesa’s camp was still on Telgar lands!

“So where are they?” Tenim shouted, angrily pounding his fist on the table. A sudden hush filled the tavern. Hold Balan had grown up as natural stopping point for barges and drays on their journey between Miner’s Hold and Campbell’s Field. The holders earned much of their trade providing the bargemen and draymen with lodgings and meals, so they were used to a raucous, constantly changing crowd. Even so, patrons turned nervously toward him. Some tossed back the last of their drinks and made their exit with indecorous haste.

Moran made calming gestures with his hands. “They’re checking.”

“Checking? Checking?” Tenim roared, the veins in his neck standing out like ropes. He pounded the table again, ignoring the worried expressions of the few remaining patrons and the cowed look of the owner with whom he’d already shared harsh words and short jabs, concentrating instead on Moran’s worried face. Oh, he thinks he hides it, Tenim thought, but I know. I know who’s in charge here, and it’s not this fat old fool.

“Checking,” Moran repeated firmly. “Halla’s report is from Crom; we’ve still Telgar to hear from, and Miner’s Hold to the east—who knows?”

“We don’t,” Tenim growled. “There’s a fortune changing hands and we don’t even know where.” He gave the harper a cunning look. “Think of the children you could help with that sort of money.”

Tenim smiled to himself as he saw his remark hit home. Oh yes, I know your loyalties, he thought, wondering how he could have ever thought of the older man as anything but a weakling.

Sure, it was true that Moran had found him, fed him, nursed him back to health when no others would so much as raise a hand for the son of a Shunned father and no one had the time for his spineless mother. He never wondered anymore what had happened to her; the last he’d seen of her was the night she’d turned on his father and he’d struck her down. Tenim had learned not to argue with his father at an early age; in fact, at the same time that Tenim had learned that even if she’d had a will, his mother would have never used it in his defense.

“If you hadn’t sold all the coal we’d stolen for your brats, we’d have enough now to pay for decent information,” Tenim added. “I told you to hold on to it.”

“Who would we sell the egg to?” Moran asked. He wondered again how he had come to this pass, how the boy he’d succored so long ago had turned into this sour young man, and again he remembered the many petty compromises, lies, wheedles, and thefts that the harper had made to provide the next day’s food, to feed just one more helpless mouth, make one more small difference, only to find himself repeating the effort the next day, this time to feed even more mouths with even more theft and lies.

“Anybody,” Tenim replied sourly. “Think of what we could get. They say that Tarik’s camp promised a whole winter’s supply of coal for their chance at an egg. What would they pay for the real thing in their hands, no questions asked?”

“Somebody would ask questions,” Moran protested. “There aren’t that many watch-whers—”

Tenim cut him off. “What makes you so certain? Why would they care where it came from?”

“I suppose they might not,” Moran said, unwilling to press the point. “Not that it matters—we don’t know where they are. The eggs might have been distributed already.”

Tenim snorted. “If they had, then Tarik would have told us.” He took a sip of his ale. “You didn’t hear how much he complained about the waste.” He frowned thoughtfully and took another long pull on his drink, then threw it back altogether, draining the mug and slamming it on the table. He rose and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Moran asked. “We have to wait for the rest of the children.”

Tenim snorted. “You wait if you want. I know where one egg will be, and I know what’ll be paid for it. I’ll get that for certain.”

“There’s an egg left,” Aleesa announced as the last of the party left.

“Is there anyone else who wanted to trade?” D’vin asked Pellar. Pellar thought for a long moment before shaking his head. He stifled a yawn, gave everyone a sheepish look—which grew deeper as others yawned in succession—and then shook his head again firmly to be certain he was understood.

“Aleesk won’t move until the last egg’s gone,” Aleesa told the others.

“If she doesn’t move, there’s a good chance you may be found out by some of the Shunned,” D’vin replied.

“So now we’ll see the worth of a dragonrider’s word,” Jaythen responded, eyeing the bronze rider challengingly.

For a moment it looked as though the young dragonrider would respond to Jaythen’s barb, then D’vin relaxed and smiled. “Yes, you will.”

Aleesa slapped Jaythen on the arm. “You apologize, Jaythen. They’ve kept their word and more.”

Jaythen’s jaw clenched as he locked eyes with the dragonrider. Then he drew himself up to his full height and gave D’vin a low bow. “Aleesa’s right, dragonrider. You’ve done everything you’ve said you would; I had no call to doubt you.”

D’vin waved the apology away. “We’ve all been working hard, we’re tired.”

“It’s not just that,” Jaythen replied as he stood up. “We—” He waved a hand to include Aleesa, Arella, and the rest of the wherholders. “—have had to be wary for so long that it’s hard to trust anyone.”

“No problem, I understand,” D’vin told the man, his eyes full of warmth at Jaythen’s candor and integrity.

“I think it is a problem, bronze rider,” Jaythen disagreed mildly. “We have fewer friends when we treat them like enemies.”

“Hmm, I imagine that’s so,” D’vin replied. He held out his hand to Jaythen. “Will you be friends with a rider from High Reaches?”

Jaythen nodded and took the hand, shaking it firmly.

“There’s still an egg left,” Arella reminded them. “If we’re to trade, we’ll need to act fast.”

Aleesa shook her head. She looked over to Pellar. “That boy, Kindan, he was a worthy lad,” she said. “If his egg doesn’t hatch, we’ll give him this one.”

“And what if his egg hatches, Mother?” Arella demanded.

Aleesa sighed. “Then the hatchling will decide what’s necessary.”

Arella and Jaythen both paled, and Pellar looked inquiringly at them.

“It’ll go between,” Arella explained.

“Forever?” D’vin asked, aghast.

Arella nodded.

Aleesa looked Pellar straight in the eyes and said, “You go, be sure that egg hatches, and come back to help us move and keep your part of the bargain.”

Pellar nodded. D’vin gestured for the harper to follow him. In moments Pellar was airborne, and an instant later, between.

They arrived in daylight, hovering over the grave plateau, hidden from the miners by the mountain peak to the east.

After Pellar dismounted, D’vin looked down at him and said, “You know that if this lad’s egg hatches, Aleesa will be expecting you to bond with the other hatchling.”

Pellar nodded, grimacing.

D’vin pursed his lips thoughtfully before continuing, “Don’t forget that your future is your own to choose, not hers.”

Pellar shook his head, pulled out his slate, and wrote, “Oath.”

D’vin craned down to read the slate. “Your oath was to teach her and be harper, not to become a wherhandler.”

Pellar felt that D’vin wasn’t saying all he thought. With a sudden insight he pointed his finger at D’vin and at Hurth and then back at himself and shook his head firmly—there was no way that he could become a dragonrider.

D’vin says that you should know that dragons choose whom they will, Hurth informed him. You are the right age, the bronze added on his own.

Pellar threw up his hands. Thank you, thank D’vin, please. I must go now.

Call when you have need, Hurth said. I like the sound of your voice.

Pellar waved and turned to the path around and down the hill. He had been marching a long time before he realized that Hurth had referred to his “voice.” He stopped, momentarily stunned that anyone had ever heard his voice. Hurth could hear him. Really hear him. Pellar’s face split into a huge grin. The rest of his journey to the miner’s camp disappeared behind that amazing thought.

Perhaps he could be a dragonrider. Chitter burst forth from between a short distance above him and made it clear that he was sure that Pellar could be a dragonrider. After all, Pellar was his mate, so why not something bigger?

Pellar gave Chitter a shushing gesture—they were too near the camp and he didn’t want to attract attention. In fact, he thought with a sudden chill, he wasn’t sure how Master Zist would feel about his sudden arrival.

Reflecting on that, Pellar decided to wait until dusk before approaching the camp. Chitter wasn’t happy with the decision, projecting more and more pointed images of mouthwatering food and warm fires as the bitter evening chill drew down upon them.

All the same, Pellar held out until dark. If his approach to the camp afterward was perhaps more influenced by his grumbling stomach than his caution, he felt Chitter was to blame.

Whatever the reason, Pellar was surprised when he stumbled across someone crouched in a bush outside of the shed that had housed the late watch-wher.

Believing the worst, Pellar grabbed his victim around the throat, determined to repay his attacker for every bruise and indignity.

“It’s me,” a young voice gasped out hoarsely. Pellar let go instantly and sprang back, dropping into a defensive crouch as he revised his estimate of the situation. The other person was smaller than him and younger—neither Tenim nor Tarik. But the voice sounded vaguely like Tarik’s.

Cristov.

What was he doing here? Pellar wondered. It didn’t matter. He moved close and carefully massaged the boy’s throat the same way he’d done his own after Tenim’s assault.

“Sorry,” Pellar wrote after Cristov recovered.

“You—” Cristov stopped, swallowed, and massaged his throat before continuing. “You thought I was Tenim.”

Pellar nodded.

“Are you afraid he might steal the egg?”

Pellar’s eyes widened at the thought. It was a good idea that neither he nor Aleesa had had. Certainly Tenim knew where Camp Natalon was and would have no trouble finding the watch-wher egg. It would be easy for him to steal it before it hatched. In all the efforts of his dealings to find homes for the eggs, Pellar hadn’t considered the possibility that, once placed, the egg might still be in danger from the Shunned.

“Father says it’s a waste of a winter’s coal,” Cristov said. He looked Pellar straight in the eyes. “Even if it is, it’d be worse if the egg was stolen, wouldn’t it?”

Pellar nodded in agreement with the boy’s logic.

“I decided I could help and keep an eye on it,” Cristov explained. Pellar got the distinct impression that Cristov was not telling him all of his reasons; in that moment he got the distinct impression that Cristov was a rather lonely youngster, someone looking for an older friend. Pellar knew the feeling well, and recalled how well his suggestion that Zist get Kaylek to mentor the youngster had worked. Could it be that Cristov was hoping to see Pellar again? The thought made the young harper feel confused—both flattered and embarrassed.

Chitter appeared at that moment, hovering nearby. Pellar got the impression that the fire-lizard had seen everything but had been confused by both Pellar’s actions and Cristov’s reactions.

“He’s beautiful,” Cristov exclaimed, tentatively holding his hand up to Chitter. Pellar gestured to Chitter and sent the fire-lizard a thought; Chitter chirped an assent and dropped down to hover just in front of Cristov’s outstretched hand.

“Can I touch him?” the boy asked Pellar, eyes wide with awe. In answer, Chitter snaked his head forward, jaw canted so that the Cristov’s fingers were touching his favorite scratching spot. Cristov needed little prodding and was soon happily scratching Chitter’s jaw and rubbing over his eye sockets, totally absorbed with the fire-lizard’s enthusiastic responses.

“Will the watch-wher be the same?” Cristov asked, taking his eyes off the fire-lizard just long enough to look at Pellar.

For a moment Pellar wondered whether Cristov was asking about the watch-wher’s appearance or its behavior. Guessing that he meant the behavior, he nodded in agreement, remembering Aleesk’s staunch defense.

“It won’t be as pretty as you, though,” Cristov told Chitter, fearing that he might offend his newfound friend. Chitter agreed with everything Cristov said, especially when the miner boy brought up his other hand and scratched both sides of Chitter’s face.

After a long time, Cristov looked back to Pellar. “Are you here to guard the egg, too?”

Pellar thought quickly, and made his decision. He shook his head and wrote, “No. Ask you.”

Cristov’s eyes got very big. “Me? You want to ask me to guard the egg?”

Pellar nodded.

The younger boy swallowed hard. “I’m not very big,” he admitted.

Pellar grinned and wrote, “Big enough.”

Cristov still looked dubious, so Pellar cleaned his slate and wrote, “Trust you.”

As the young miner absorbed this, a woman’s voice called out, “Cristov!”

Cristov shook himself out of his reverie and his eyes lost their shine. “I can’t stay up late,” he confessed sadly. “My mother would find out.”

“Only day,” Pellar wrote hastily.

“And you’ll watch at night?” Cristov said. “You and your fire-lizard?”

Pellar nodded.

Cristov mulled this over, the shine returning to his eyes.

“Cristov!” his mother called again.

“Deal,” Cristov said, holding out his hand to Pellar. Pellar took it and shook it firmly, convinced that Cristov was nothing like his father.

“Gotta go,” Cristov explained, then turned quickly and shouted, “Coming!”

Pellar waved at the retreating form and then wiggled into the bush Cristov had been using.

Pellar’s improvised guard schedule worked perfectly over the next three days. Cristov’s “guard” was unnoticed by the rest of the camp as he lived right next to the shed where the watch-wher egg had been placed, and his presence made it easy for Pellar to sneak into place for his night watch and sneak away in the morning.

When Pellar arrived for his watch on the fourth evening, Cristov was there to greet him, his face clouded.

“It hatched,” he said in a dull voice. “I haven’t seen it yet.”

Pellar gestured for Cristov to say more.

“You’re going to leave now, aren’t you?” Cristov asked with a deep sigh. Pellar nodded. Cristov screwed up his courage to ask, “Will I ever see you again?”

It was obvious to Pellar that Cristov was looking for a friend, a surrogate older brother, someone to train him in what was right and how to live in the world. Pellar was amazed that the boy had already decided that Tarik was no such guide, had decided to abandon the teaching of his father and look instead for some other mentor. He understood Cristov; a wave of sympathy and regret swept over him. He’d promised Aleesa. He was needed back with the Whermaster.

“Not soon. Turns,” Pellar promised on his slate, not wanting to set the boy hoping for his early return even though he wasn’t sure how long it would be before Masterharper Murenny or Master Zist arranged for his replacement at the wherhold.

“Turns?”

“Promise,” Pellar wrote in response.

“Turns,” Cristov repeated, eyes downcast. He looked up at Pellar. “How will you recognize me? How will I recognize you?”

Pellar smiled and pointed to Cristov’s heart and then his own.

Cristov nodded slowly in response, but Pellar felt that the boy was still disheartened. He held up a hand for a moment, then shrugged off his backpack and rummaged through it.

Cristov watched wide-eyed as Pellar searched his pack. His eyes got even bigger when Pellar pulled out a lovely pipe and ceremoniously handed it to him. No one had ever given him something before.

“Is this for me?” Cristov asked in disbelief.

Pellar nodded. He wiped his slate clean and wrote on it, “Zist teach.”

“You want me to ask Master Zist for lessons?” Cristov squeaked in surprise. When Pellar nodded, Cristov confessed, “I don’t know if I’d be any good.”

“Try,” Pellar wrote in response.

“Okay,” Cristov promised. Pellar sealed up his pack and shouldered it once more. As he turned to go, Cristov said, “I’ll try real hard.”

Pellar turned back and grabbed the youngster in a big hug. Then as quick as he could, Pellar vanished into the darkness.

Two hours later, Pellar stood again in the plateau clearing.

Hurth, I’m ready, he thought.

We come, the dragon responded immediately. You sound sad.

I am, Pellar responded. How many children on Pern, he wondered, were like Cristov—trying to do their best without example?

CHAPTER 6

Master Zist was surprised when Cristov stayed behind after the end of the morning class. He was even more surprised by the boy’s request to be taught the pipes.

“I don’t know if I have any spare pipes,” Zist said, not sure why he’d want to do Tarik’s son any favors.

“Someone gave me one,” Cristov replied, his face a mix of sorrow and surprise.

“May I see it?” Zist asked, holding out a hand. The pipe that Cristov reluctantly gave him was immediately familiar to the Master. He had made it himself not too many Turns before. In fact, Pellar had been just about Cristov’s age when Zist had presented him with this very pipe.

“Did Pellar give this to you?”

Cristov looked surprised but nodded. “He said he’d see me again but it would probably be Turns,” he explained.

“Well,” Zist replied, “if he said it, then it will be so.”

Zist twirled the pipe in his hand. The Ancients would have called it a recorder. The mouthpiece was at the top of the pipe, not at the side as with the more common flute. A recorder was much easier to learn than a flute, but at the expense of the dynamic range it could produce.

Zist nodded to himself in sudden decision. He looked at Cristov. “I’ll teach you.”

“Thank you,” Cristov said, smiling. Then his smile faded as another thought crossed his mind. “Can we not tell my parents?”

Zist considered the question carefully. “I see no reason why we can’t wait until the appropriate time to surprise them,” he allowed, his eyes twinkling with a sense of mischief that Cristov had never seen before.

“Thank you,” Cristov said.

“Let’s see if you thank me after your first lesson,” Zist replied. He handed the pipe back to Cristov. “And your first lesson will be on breathing.”

Breathing? Cristov thought to himself in dismay. He’d heard how Kindan and Zenor had both been as limp as rags after an hour of Zist’s “breathing” lessons! Well, he had asked.

“Egg?” Tarik repeated to Tenim in disbelief. “What would you want with an egg?”

“Not me,” Tenim said. “Others. They’d pay full marks, too.”

“The egg hatched two days ago,” Tarik replied. “It’s bonded with the brat now.”

“Bonded?”

“Yes, the thing bit the boy and now it follows him everywhere.”

Tenim’s features soured as he scowled. They were in the kitchen of Tarik’s new cothold and it was dark. Tenim’s journey had taken two more days than he had planned: profitable days, to be sure, considering the increased bulk of his well-hidden purse, but perhaps not profitable enough to make up for missing a chance at the egg.

“Hmmph,” Tenim snorted in disgust. “It’s no good to me now.”

“It’s a green,” Tarik said thoughtfully. “That means it’ll mate someday.” He smirked at the thought of how young Kindan would deal with that.

“Greens aren’t as good as golds,” Tenim snapped, having absorbed that much lore from Moran’s teachings. “Not green fire-lizards, nor green dragons. I’m sure it’s the same for those uglies, too.”

“Then the best price would be paid for a gold egg, wouldn’t it?” Tarik suggested, carefully keeping his tone neutral. Tarik would breathe easier if Tenim took up the wild watch-wher chase.

Tenim cocked his head quizzically at the suggestion. It was a good idea, so good it surprised him. He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow while he examined Tarik, wondering what thoughts were going on in the older man’s head. Still…it was a good idea.

“No one knows where the queen watch-wher is,” Tenim said.

“No one?” Tarik asked. “From what I’ve heard, there were several buyers vying for watch-wher eggs.”

“No one’s told me anything,” Tenim said, gazing intently at the miner.

Tarik returned Tenim’s intent look with a bland one of his own, waiting with growing anxiety that he worked desperately to hide. As the silence grew uncomfortable, he suggested, “Perhaps your harper friend might learn more?”

“Him!” Tenim snorted at the suggestion.

“What’s he doing now, I wonder,” Tarik said, sounding as though he were talking to himself.

Tenim nodded thoughtfully and rose from his seat, heading for the door.

At the door, he stopped and said, “I’ll find out.” He waved a finger at Tarik. “When I come back, I’ll expect you to have more coal set aside.”

Tarik nodded, knowing that there was nothing else he could do—except hope that perhaps Tenim wouldn’t come back.

Halla said nothing as she watched Moran scan the landscape in front of them, just as she’d said nothing when Moran announced their sudden departure from the environs of Hold Balan, even though some of the older boys had grumbled about missing Tenim.

“He’ll find us, no worries,” Moran had replied lightly. Halla had been the only one close enough to see his face in the dark night, and she’d seen the deep lines and worry written on it. To her it had looked like Moran was more worried about Tenim finding them than not, but perhaps she was just assigning her own feelings to the harper.

Little Tucker bumped into her. He did that often to get attention. Halla ignored him this time, knowing that the child was still half-asleep.

“We’ll need food soon,” she said to Moran. Moran gave her a surprised look; usually children told him that they were hungry. It was a sign of Halla’s forced maturity that she thought the way she did.

“It looks pretty barren,” he replied, but he eyed the girl hopefully. After Tenim, Halla was the best hunter. Astride his shoulders, little Nalli stirred.

“I’ll take her for a while,” Halla said, holding up her arms to grab the toddler.

Although he still wore a backpack, Moran’s step grew more energetic after Halla had taken Nalli from him. After a few more steps carrying Nalli, Halla could see why—there was so little in their packs that the weight of an undernourished toddler more than doubled the load. Little Nalli, who had roused slightly during the transfer, soon fell back to sleep, resting her small head on Halla’s and providing warmth for the back of her neck and shoulders.

At a sound from behind them, Moran stopped and turned.

“Perri,” Moran said in a tone that was equal parts exhaustion and worry.

Halla half turned and warned, “There’s no more feverroot.”

Moran rushed back to the fallen youngster. Perri had been bitten by a tunnel snake when he was playing at the outskirts of Hold Balan—or that’s what Halla guessed, for the toddler had never been much of a talker and refused to say anything about his injury. The wound had festered in the past several days, and he’d walked through the night in a half-fever.

Some noise or sigh caused Halla to stop and turn all the way back to the others. Instead of trudging after her, they were grouped in a semicircle. Moran was kneeling in the center.

As soon as Moran lifted his head up and looked at Halla, she knew. She sighed, too tired for anything else, wordlessly passed Nalli back to Moran, and grabbed at the handle of the shovel that hung down from her backpack. She was getting too good at digging graves.

A half hour later they trudged on, Halla more grimy than she liked, and only a few withered yellow flowers for the mound she left behind. She’d liked Perri, he’d just started to smile.

They look to you, Moran thought to himself as he led the group of children away from yet another grave, and you let them down.

How many graves did that make? He wondered idly and realized with dull relief that he couldn’t remember. This isn’t how things were supposed to be, Moran told himself. I was to find the Shunned, to set up meetings, to help them, Moran recalled. He had always wanted to make a difference, have ballads composed about him, make up for his unknown origins. Instead, somehow, he’d found himself only surviving one crisis to fall into another, never seeming to find the right place, the right answers, and always coming up with more complications. Every time he’d sworn that he’d locate the next harper, report in to the Harper Hall, something had happened to change his mind. He wanted to report his success; he could not bring himself to report failure. And so the Turns had passed. Turns, and Moran’s dreams had gone from saving the Shunned to simply finding food enough for those waifs he’d found along the way. Worse still, at times he’d squandered their spare marks for drink, or an evening’s comfort. Always, at the time, Moran had told himself that he deserved it—the drink or the warm company—and after, seeing the mute looks of the hungry children, had sworn never again. But again and again, he would give in to his base desires. With such dismal failures, how could he face Murenny or Zist?

He shifted Nalli on his back, looking hopefully back at Halla in hope of a trade. Her face was streaked with tears.

Moran swore at himself for his selfishness and trudged on.

“Egg hatched—green,” were the words written on Pellar’s slate as he met with Aleesa and the rest of the wherhandlers when he arrived at the wherhold that evening.

“So did ours,” Arella replied. “She was a green, too.”

A small form butted its head up from under her skirt. Chitter flittered down to the young watch-wher and gave it a polite chirp. The watch-wher sniffed back at the fire-lizard, then ducked behind Arella’s skirt once more.

“You’ll be first watch come morning,” Jaythen told him. “There’s a bit left in the pot, so get some food and get some rest. Aleesk will wake you.”

Pellar nodded once more, stifled a yawn, and wandered over to the cooking fire. Polla smiled at him as he found a clean dish and served himself.

“I’ll bet you’re glad to be home, aren’t you?” she asked, her grin more gap than teeth.

Again Pellar nodded but his heart wasn’t in it, any more than his stomach was enticed by the smell of his dinner. He ate quickly, spread out his bedroll in his old place, and quickly fell asleep. Tomorrow he would see about looking for reeds or wood for a new pipe.

When Arella came to bed later, she set her roll apart from his.

The next day was no different; neither the next sevenday, nor the next month. Pellar found himself overcoming the difficulty of teaching others to read when he could not speak, Aleesa grew proudly proficient in her abilities and took to writing a journal, the watch-whers grew older, and the camp slowly found its supplies dwindling once again to their old meager levels.

Pellar grew and thickened up. The last of his childish looks sloughed away; his chest grew wiry from his work with trap, drum, and knife. He improved his tracking, always remembering his encounter with Tenim, now several months past.

Polla had flirted with him, but he’d ignored the older woman, just as he and Arella found themselves ignoring each other—although with increasing difficulty. Some of the older girls Pellar had been teaching had started flirting with him, too. Pellar politely redirected their attention, while he worried about what might occur the next time Aleesk rose to mate. His best hope was to be far away before then.

Halla didn’t like Conni or her daughter, Milera, but Moran had decided to accept them into their band when they passed through the meeting of the three rivers between Telgar and Crom Holds.

Halla didn’t need for Conni to part her hair to guess at the big blue “S” that had been painted there with bluebush ink. Young as she was, Halla had a good idea of what had caused Conni to be Shunned by her Lord Holder, and she liked neither the way that Conni looked at Moran—like a tunnel snake ready to pounce on its prey—nor, worse, the way Milera slavishly emulated her mother. And while Conni might be a few Turns past her prime, Milera had just gone from child to woman.

Halla had been around Moran too long not to guess that there was more to the harper’s acceptance of the two than just the kindness of his heart. Even with the death of Perri behind them by a sevenday there were still too many mouths to fill and nothing with which to feed them, despite Halla’s best efforts with her traps.

And Conni’s offer to share her food did not warm Halla to the pinch-faced, sharp-eyed woman with her long straggly hair, nor to her simpering doe-eyed daughter.

Conni’s food lasted no more than a meal. A meal, Halla had noted, which fed Conni and Milera more than the rest of the troop put together. That meal had been three days since, and still Conni and Milera always seemed to get the best or the most of what meager pickings Moran’s band acquired.

Conni, Halla decided, would be better matched with Tenim than with Moran. Although, Halla conceded, perhaps Conni would find herself losing out to the younger Milera in winning Tenim’s affections.

Whichever way it was to be, Halla was certain that neither Conni nor Milera would have tolerated Halla or anyone of the littler ones were it not for their ability to gather food, either by trapping it or stealing it from local cotholders.

Although she preferred hunting and trapping, it never bothered Halla much to steal from a wealthy holder or crafter, but none of the holdings they’d seen in the last sevenday were wealthy; Halla was certain that their thefts had meant empty bellies for the rightful owners. It bothered her to steal from those who worked as hard for their food as she did.

Her line twitched and she tugged at it. Another bite. She gently played the line with her free hand, gauging the size of the fish by its heft on her line.

It had been Conni or Milera who had secured their passage on the small riverboat. Halla was not sure which and didn’t want to think long on it—both because she hated being beholden to either in any fashion, and because of the satisfied smirk both had displayed the morning after they’d spent the night in the little cabin below deck with Moran and Geffer, the grizzled old man who owned the boat.

Halla finished her battle with the hapless fish at about the same time as she finished her thoughts about the night before. She deposited the fish in the bucket where two more vainly circled. There, that was enough for a good meal. She looked forward to gutting the fish, a smellier task than dressing land animals, but all the better to wash the stench that the presence of Conni and Milera lent their party.

“That one’s too thin,” Milera’s whiny voice piped up just behind Halla. “You ought to throw it back—it’s as skinny as you are.”

Halla did not betray her surprise that she had been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard Milera’s approach. She merely threw her line back over the side of the boat and trawled it out carefully.

“The sun’s just barely past nooning; I didn’t think you’d be up,” she said carelessly, keeping her attention on the line.

“I get up when I’m hungry or bored,” Milera answered. “I’m both now. Moran says that you’re to feed me.”

“I’ll share my catch,” Halla replied, “when the time comes.”

“The time’s for Moran to say,” Milera snapped.

“Yes,” Halla agreed, with a slight incline of her head. “Until he does, I’ll go on fishing.”

“And I told you that Moran said to feed me,” Milera returned venomously. “The two big ones ought to do. You can fish for more when you’ve finished cooking mine.”

Halla’s eyes flashed and she set her jaw, prepared to give Milera a piece of her mind when she heard footsteps climbing up from the cabin.

“Are you getting fed, Milera?” Geffer called as he approached. He cackled. “Wouldn’t want you to lose your strength, would we?”

Halla felt her whole face turn red with anger, embarrassment, betrayal, and a sense of shame.

“Halla’s just about to gut the fish,” Milera purred back. “She’s only caught three, but I suppose that’s as good as she can, being still a child.”

Halla turned back to her fishing to hide her anger.

“She’s a good fisher to get three in such a short time,” Geffer allowed.

“It’s good that she’s got so many talents,” Milera agreed. “A plain girl’s got to have some craft to trade on.”

Geffer laughed agreeably. “Will you come back down when you’re finished eating?”

“Whatever you want,” Milera replied.

Geffer laughed again and Halla heard him pat the girl, mutter something that caused Milera to giggle, and then turn back to go below.

Milera was silent only until Geffer was out of earshot, when, in icy tones, she declared, “I’ll take my fish now.”

Halla bit her tongue and nodded sullenly. Times had changed; they would change again.

It took another fortnight for Halla’s predictions to come true, though not in the way she’d imagined. When the boatman, Geffer, pulled in to the wharf at the highest part of the River Crom, Milera remained behind, much to Conni’s evident disgust. “You can do better than that.”

At least that’s how it seemed—until Milera met up with them on the far outskirts of the small river hold, her cheeks red with exertion and face bright with mischief.

“I got his money,” she crowed to her mother when she found the group. “Just waited until he fell asleep, is all.”

“That’s my girl,” Conni said, patting Milera on the back and holding out her hand. “How much did you get?”

“All of it, of course,” Milera said, pulling out her purse and gleefully emptying it into Conni’s hands. “You know I can’t count.”

“Thief!” a voice—Geffer’s—shouted.

Other voices took up the cry. “Thief!” “Thief!”

Milera’s gloating look dissolved into one of worry, then outright fear as Conni clenched her hands and scarpered off, calling over her shoulder, “Fool! He wasn’t supposed to wake up!”

“Scatter!” Halla told the other youngsters. She took her own advice, dissolving into the crowd and then circling far around to come up behind their pursuers.

But someone grabbed Halla before she could slip away, a tall man with bad breath and a strong grasp. “There’s one!”

“She was with them,” Geffer said, as the crowd gathered around. “She didn’t steal nothing—’twas the prettier one.”

Halla flushed.

“Put an ‘S’ on her just so others know, then,” someone in the crowd shouted.

“Yes, Shun her!”

“Shun the thief!”

Halla struggled against her captor, kicking and squirming futilely until she collapsed into a pathetic heap, sobbing silently with uncontrollable terror and despair.

“She didn’t steal nothin’,” Geffer shouted over the crowd. “It was the other one, the tart, that did it.”

“Let her go, then,” a deep voice chimed in.

“Should mark her just to know,” someone muttered in the crowd.

“I see them!” the deep voice called. “They’re over there!”

The crowd surged forward, around Halla, and charged off.

“Here, let me take her,” the deep voice spoke to Halla’s captor. “She’s scared and needs a rest.”

“Needs a good thrashing,” Halla’s captor objected and then looked carefully at the owner of the deep voice. “Oh, Harper, I didn’t know.”

Halla’s arm was thrust into the harper’s grasp.

“That’s all right,” the harper replied. “I’ll take her now.”

“I’ll leave her to you, then.”

Halla waited until the stranger disappeared and then looked up into Tenim’s eyes. She didn’t even wonder where he’d found harper garb.

Tenim stayed silent, looking around the clearing until he was certain that they wouldn’t be overheard. When he spoke again, it wasn’t in the deep voice he’d used before but in his natural baritone. His tone was deadly. “Where’s Moran?”

At the far east edge of the river hold, Moran gathered the remains of his band and set off hastily across the path that led east toward Keogh. He could only find six of his original dozen orphans, but he dared not wait longer because Conni had never left his side. Her resemblance to Milera was too close, and only Moran’s quick thinking in throwing a spare cloak over her had kept them both from being caught.

Moran might have been able to talk his way out of the ensuing unpleasantness, but he was certain that Conni, with the blue “S” of the Shunned so prominent on her forehead, would find herself in mortal peril. Judging by her biting grip on his forearm, Conni felt the same.

She had played him for a fool, Moran realized. A sideways glance at her features, haggard, hawklike, bitter, confirmed to Moran that it was full proper that Conni had been Shunned—she was a voracious taker, stalker, and menace to all. Worse, she had raised her daughter to copy her ways. Whether Milera would escape the holders today was of no importance; one day she wouldn’t, and then she, too, would wear the blue “S” of the Shunned until her nature finally betrayed her to her death. Just as it would be for Conni.

“If I’m caught, I’ll see that you get yours, too,” Conni hissed beside him, her hard features showing that she’d guessed at Moran’s thoughts. “I’ll let them know that you’re no harper.”

Moran nodded and gave her a worried look. Her not knowing that he truly was a harper might be his salvation; he didn’t want to lose that advantage just yet.

“Whatever you say,” he told her.

“I say we lose these brats,” Conni replied, scowling at the small children following them.

Moran’s heart sank as he realized his mistake. Quickly he temporized, “Not here. They won’t survive, and then we’d be wanted for murder, as well.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Conni replied with a bitter laugh.

“Not children,” Moran said. “Shunned or not, they’ll hunt you to your death if you abandon children.”

“You’re a fool,” Conni said, lips pursed remorselessly.

“The next cothold we find,” Moran said. “We can leave them there.”

“What about the others?” Conni asked. “My daughter?”

“She’s smart, she’ll survive,” Moran said with a shrug. “The others will manage, too.”

Conni gave him a sour look and said nothing. Moran accepted his small victory without any outward sign. It was, after all, only a small victory.

He had to find a way to lose this woman before she got them all Shunned.

“I’ve found them,” Halla announced proudly to Tenim when they met in the river hold’s main concourse late the next evening. The five missing youngsters crowded close by her, eyes shining with the light of the night’s moons.

“And I’ve found her,” Tenim said, flicking his head toward the shadow at his side.

Halla nodded, keeping her expression neutral. It was obvious that Tenim valued the pretty girl more highly than he did the missing youngsters—or herself.

During the day’s searching, Halla had found herself several times looking in a still pool of water or a shiny pot. Her reflection did not displease her.

She was still young and the features of her face were still not fully formed, but they were serviceable. Probing brown eyes looked out from behind dark brown hair that could do with a wash. Her nose was straight and thin, her teeth were mostly white and strong, her lips were thin—perhaps they were too thin and that was the trouble, but she liked her smile. She had to admit that her eyes danced mischievously when she smiled, but she didn’t think that was such a horrible thing.

No, Halla decided, where she was most lacking was in the curves that Milera and, more so, Conni so proudly displayed. Halla couldn’t quite remember if she had ten or eleven Turns—Moran had insisted on teaching her to read and count, while Tenim had insisted on teaching her to hunt and track—but she was certain that she would have to be older and better fed before she’d develop any curves of her own. Anyway, she wasn’t even sure that she wanted such curves; it seemed to her that they would make running more awkward.

“Did you find Moran?” Tenim asked.

“I want my marks,” Milera added darkly from beside him. Halla gave the older girl a careful look; it was obvious that she’d grown more like her mother through the terror of the day’s events.

“We’ll find them,” Tenim said reassuringly. Halla had never heard Tenim use that tone of voice before—the same soothing tone Moran had used with Conni.

“Just the marks’ll do,” Milera said.

For nearly a month, at least three sevendays and more, they trudged along the track that skirted the Crom hills until they finally came to the edge of the Crom River, which flowed westward toward Keogh and then southward past Nabol Hold and into the Bay of Nabol.

They were lucky to get a ride with some traders. No, Halla admitted, it had not been “luck”—for once again Milera’s simpering looks earned approving glances and sparked a hurried conversation amongst the unattached traders. Halla could not understand why any trader would believe Tenim’s story that he was Milera’s half brother, given the way he hovered near her.

The traders were a cautious lot; they insisted on checking every one of the children to ensure that none bore the mark of the Shunned. Halla suppressed a shudder at the memory of the holder’s arm-wrenching grasp of her and the crowd’s fierce desire to mark her with the blue “S.” She’d no doubt that if Tenim hadn’t intervened she’d be wearing that mark now; nor did she doubt that if she’d been marked, Tenim would have cast her aside rather than lose his ride with the traders.

If the traders were disappointed with Milera and her hovering “brother,” they were more than pleased to take advantage of Halla’s good eyes, strong legs, and productive traps.

The best part of meeting up with the traders was Tarri. Tarri was much older than Halla, outspoken, sharp-eyed, with a ready laugh and smile. What was more, Tarri shared Halla’s opinion of Milera.

“Looks don’t last,” Tarri told Halla one night as the male traders vied for Milera’s attention. Halla gave her a bland look and Tarri laughed. “You don’t have to worry, you know.”

“I’ve been told,” Halla replied glumly. Her response set Tarri off into more laughter, but the trader was all the while shaking her head.

“I’ve seen many people grow up in my time,” Tarri told her. Halla had her doubts and her expression showed it. Tarri nudged Halla playfully, saying, “I’m a trader, I travel; so I see more.”

She gave Halla a considering look before continuing, “You might even have trader blood. I’ve seen your features before. Or Boll blood—they get swarthy down there.”

Swarthy? Halla thought to herself. She’d never heard the word before.

“Your skin tans faster than others,” Tarri continued. “Some find your dark hair and eyes very attractive. When you get older, your features will sharpen and you’ll be glad you’ve got strong legs to run from all the men chasing you.”

Halla snorted.

Tarri shook her head and patted Halla consolingly. “And when you’re old, really old, you’ll still have that great skin, lithe figure, and flashing eyes, while Milera will be a sagging, toothless, lardy mess.”

Halla could never imagine herself as old, but she could easily imagine Milera as toothless and lardy.

Tarri took in Halla’s expression and smiled, then rose from the fire.

“We’d best turn in,” she said. “We’ll be moving early, and they’ll want you to check your traps for breakfast.”

Halla nodded and stood, too.

“You can sleep in my wagon, tonight,” Tarri offered. “I’ve got spare sheets and a blanket.”

“But I’m dirty!” Halla protested, shocked that anyone would consider letting her near sheets.

“No more than I am,” Tarri said, grabbing Halla’s hand and dragging her along. “But we’ll solve that.

“Come on—up,” Tarri said, pointing to the stairs leading up into one of the nicer wagons. “Through the curtains.”

Halla obeyed and gave a startled gasp as she parted the curtains and entered the wagon proper. It was beautiful.

Tarri stepped up beside her and started rummaging. She carefully folded back the plush carpet that lined the floor and pulled down a large pan and a smaller bucket.

“There’s towels and clothes down there,” Tarri said, pointing to one of the many doors that lined the lower half of the wagon. “Pull out two, no, four of each while I see about this.”

Halla turned in time to see Tarri disappear back under the curtain with the bucket dangling from one hand. Mystified, Halla opened the indicated door and found herself staring at large fluffy towels. She hadn’t thought that anyone except maybe a Lord Holder knew such luxury!

She had just pulled out the towels and smaller clothes—shirts and pants—and was wondering what to do with them when Tarri returned, carefully moving the heavy bucket so as not to jostle it.

She eyed Halla appraisingly and said, “There should just about be enough.”

Enough for what? Halla thought.

“That is, if you’re willing to let me show you,” Tarri said, dimples appearing on her cheeks. Her voice sounded odd, shy. “Then we could sleep in the good sheets.”

“Show me what?” Halla asked.

“It’s not a proper bath,” Tarri continued quickly, “but it gets the job done all the same.”

“Bath?” Halla repeated blankly. The big pan was way too small for a bath, even for Halla but the thought of a bath, of getting properly clean, was appealing beyond all reason. “Can we start now?”

“Certainly!” Tarri replied, grinning at Halla’s fervor. “You first,” she said, pulling a curtain from one side to give Halla some privacy.

Halla splashed happily for several minutes and then stopped, pushing the bucket back out with a foot and poking her head out from around the curtain.

“I could do your hair, too, if you’d like,” Tarri offered, quickly dampening a washcloth in the bucket. Halla accepted the offer with a huge grin.

While Tarri worked the soapy water into Halla’s hair, Halla closed her eyes and reveled in the feeling of Tarri’s fingers running through her hair and across her scalp. A pleasured sigh escaped her lips and Tarri’s fingers stopped moving.

“When’s the last time someone did this for you?” Tarri asked her.

“Never.”

Tarri smiled and gently tweaked Halla’s nose. “Then I’ll be sure to do an extra special job.”

Halla smiled back, thrilled that the trader liked her so much. As she drifted off in the sensual luxury of having her hair washed, Halla’s last thought was of hanging upside down from a trap with a pair of bright blue eyes peering back up at her. Whatever had happened to that trapper? she wondered.

“If you decide to sleep in,” Tarri said, “I might be able to give your tunic a wash and have it dry by the time you wake up.”

“Sleep in?” Halla repeated. She was always up with the first light or sooner, either to deal with traps or a cratchety youngster.

“Yes, sleep in,” Tarri replied. She gave Halla an appraising look, adding, “I thought the concept was only foreign to traders.”

“But the traps—”

“—can wait until the sun’s properly up, I’m sure,” Tarri cut her protest short.

Before Halla could reply, Tarri pulled out a large multicolored blanket and some soft sheets, and produced a bed that was nearly the width and length of the wagon. She flicked back one corner, and with a flourish and smile, gestured for Halla to precede her. “Ladies first.”

Halla smiled back and crawled into the bed. Tarri crawled in next to her and Halla moved over to give her room, amazed to find herself with a whole half of a bed. She was asleep in an instant.

When she awoke, the wagon was moving. It took a few moments before Halla’s sense of time informed her that it was past noon. She’d never slept that late before.

She heard voices coming from the front of the wagon. One was Tarri’s, the other was a deeper voice—a man’s. Halla couldn’t make out the words they were saying because of the noise the wheels of the wagon and the rest of the caravan were making, but she could tell from the tone that the man was angry and Tarri was trying to soothe him.

The man’s voice reminded Halla of the holder who had wanted her Shunned. She got up as quietly as she could and searched in the dim light for her tunic. She found it and was surprised at how clean it smelled. She forced herself not to dwell on that for long; the man’s voice made her nervous.

When she tried the wagon’s back door she found it was locked. Were they keeping her prisoner? Was there no escape? Halla looked at the small windows gaily clad with curtains still closed to keep the light out—the windows were clearly too small.

There was no way out but through the curtains leading to the front of the wagon and the angry man.

Halla overcame her fearful shuddering with a deep, slow breath. If she came out on the far side of Tarri, she might be able to avoid the man and run away before anyone knew what had happened. None of the traders had any fleet-footed animals, and she was as good at hiding as she was at tracking. She stood a better chance at running than she did trying to deal with such anger.

She strained to distinguish the conversation over the noise of the wagon.

“For the last time, Veran, she didn’t have anything to do with it,” Halla heard Tarri say. “She was asleep here with me.”

“If you say so,” Veran replied. “But what’s to say that she wasn’t hoping to steal from you, too?”

“She wasn’t.”

“And what makes you so sure?”

“Because I asked if she’d like bangs,” Tarri replied.

“Bangs?”

“You know, hair cut across her forehead,” Tarri said with a hint of exacerbation.

“But she didn’t have the mark of the Shunned,” Veran replied. “Why would it worry her?”

“That’s not the point,” Tarri said. “If she were living with people who were Shunned she would have known immediately what I meant and would have reacted differently.”

“So you’ve reached your judgment on a hunch,” Veran declared.

“As have you,” Tarri responded, her tone gently chiding.

“Hmmph,” Veran muttered thoughtfully. There was a moment’s silence while the trader reflected on Tarri’s point. “So why do you want to let her go?”

“She could lead us to the others,” Tarri said.

Halla pushed her head through the gap in the thick curtains and said, “I can track them if they’ve stolen from you.”

Tarri glanced back at her and smiled. Before Tarri could utter a greeting, Halla’s face clouded and she asked anxiously, “My traps?”

“Checked, cleared, removed, or recovered before we set out,” Tarri told her, adding with a grin, “We’ve got breakfast and lunch thanks to you.”

Halla sighed deeply, and said with relief, “I’d hate the thought of leaving trapped animals to die.”

Veran, who was a good ten Turns older than Tarri, gave her a startled look, which settled into one of keen appraisal.

“Why would you track the others?” he asked in a deep rumble.

“Because I don’t like walking, I like running even less, and I hate the thought of spending all my time worrying that someone might brand me Shunned,” Halla told him honestly.

“How did you come to be with the others?”

“I don’t know who my parents were,” Halla said. In fact, she had only dim memories of a sad-faced but smiling mother, and none of her father. “Moran says he found my brother and me wandering around a Gather Turns ago—”

“Where’s your brother?” Tarri asked, her forehead creased in a frown.

“Dead,” Halla said. “He broke his leg and the wound festered.” She was surprised that she hadn’t thought of Jamal in so long, and ashamed that his memory had faded so much from her thoughts.

“But—” Veran started to protest and then cut himself off. “Was he Shunned, then, that he couldn’t get to a healer?”

“No,” Halla said. “But to see a healer you’ve got to be known to the holders or the crafters.

“If they don’t know you,” she continued, shrugging, “they don’t even ask if you’re Shunned.”

“A trader, then—”

“Traders want marks,” Halla said. “Or trade.” Her tone when she said “trade” made Tarri blush.

Veran blustered at her words. “We traders—”

“—were happy enough to see that girl yesterday,” Tarri interjected. “At least the men.”

Veran weighed her words; from his expression it was obvious that he couldn’t argue with them but he didn’t like the way they set on his mind either. He peered critically at Halla and demanded, “So tell me that you’ve never stolen, then.”

“I won’t lie,” Halla replied, torn between shame, anger, and a strong desire to tell the truth.

“I trap when I can, earn my food and keep like everyone else—” She met his eyes squarely. “—but when I’m starving or the little ones have gone without food so long they can’t even cry anymore, then I’m not above taking from those who’ve more and won’t share even with a starving baby.”

“I’d do the same,” Tarri admitted.

Veran frowned thoughtfully for a moment, glanced away from Halla’s intense eyes, and finally nodded in reluctant agreement.

“If there was another way, I’d do it,” Halla declared, her brown eyes flashing fiercely. “Whenever there is another way, I do it.”

Veran could only glance in her direction for a moment before the intensity of her gaze proved too much for him again.

“The little ones,” Halla asked after a moment, “where are they?”

“We’ve got them,” Veran said.

“So who left?”

“The girl and the lad,” Tarri said.

“What’d they take?”

“You don’t sound surprised,” Veran growled.

“She learned from her mother,” Halla said. “Her mother had bangs.”

Tarri gave Veran a meaningful look.

“I see you don’t name her,” Veran said pointedly.

“Her name’s Milera,” Halla replied. “Her mother’s name is Conni. We were looking for her and Moran—”

“Moran?” Veran interrupted. “That’s the second time you’ve said that name. That wouldn’t be Harper Moran, would it?”

“You mean he’s really a harper?” Halla asked in surprise. When Veran nodded, she explained, “He taught me to read but I was never sure.”

“Master Zist’s had the word out about him for Turns now,” Veran said. Tarri looked at him quizzically—obviously this was news to her, as well. Veran shrugged and sighed before continuing, “What I heard was that Zist had sent Moran to work with the Shunned—”

Halla snorted derisively and Veran nodded in agreement.

“They say,” he continued, “that the Harper Hall is worried about what will happen to the Shunned when Thread comes again.”

“Thread?” Halla peered up to the skies, wondering if the dreaded menace would fall at any moment.

“We’ve Turns before then,” Tarri reassured her. She looked to Veran. “Why would the harpers worry about the Shunned?”

“They didn’t say,” Veran replied. “But we’ve talked about it among ourselves, and it’s thought that perhaps the Shunned might cause problems when Thread falls.”

“They’ll all die,” Halla declared in a dead voice. “They’ve nowhere to go; the Thread will devour them in one Fall.” She looked up imploringly at Veran. “Would you take the little ones? They didn’t do anything wrong, you know.”

“Of course we would,” Veran declared stoutly. “We traders know what’s right and we do it, even if the holders and crafters don’t.

“Besides,” he added quietly, “there’s been dealings between traders and Shunned before.”

Halla nodded. She’d heard as much and expected as much. The Shunned were rootless and desperate, the traders were rootless by choice; it was obvious that the two groups would be in contact, sometimes to mutual advantage.

“We don’t like to admit it,” Tarri confessed. “If the holders or crafters found out we were helping…”

“Besides, some of the Shunned were traders who went bad,” Veran said. He raised his eyes to Halla’s and nodded emphatically. “Most of the Shunned were sent out for good cause.”

“I don’t know what my parents did,” Halla told him. “But my brother didn’t do anything more than he needed to survive, nor do I.”

“Then you’d make a good trader,” Veran declared.

“I’d like to settle someplace, I think.”

“That’s harder,” Veran replied, shaking his head. “Holders don’t like giving up their lands.”

“I thought Pern belonged to everyone,” Tarri said.

“That’s what the traders say,” Veran replied with a smile.

“The little ones, would you take them now?”

“We’d have to talk it over,” Veran said. “But there are some who’ve lost children recently and—”

“Of course we’ll do it,” Tarri said, overriding Veran’s caution. “You can stay, too.”

Halla shook her head. “I’ve got to find Moran.”

“What about the others?” Veran asked.

“I’d prefer to avoid them,” Halla confessed.

Veran nodded understandingly. He pursed his lips thoughtfully and then declared, “Tell us about Moran and the others, and you can go with a pack full of food.”

“The truth?” Halla asked.

“Traders don’t trade in lies,” Tarri warned her. Halla looked at her quizzically while she absorbed her words then nodded in assent.

She spoke for a good twenty minutes, surprised by what she said and how well Tarri and Veran drew her out. She was relieved to unburden herself and glad not to have to worry about shading the truth or having to decide what to leave out of her tale.

“I’ve heard of Conni,” Veran said when she’d finished. “I hadn’t heard about her daughter.”

“She’s a woman now,” Tarri said. Veran gave her a funny look and it took Halla a moment before she realized that Tarri was several Turns older than Milera and so a woman herself.

“They say some men died near the mother,” Veran said, his voice cold. “Enough was proved that she was Shunned.”

“Where was the father?” Tarri asked.

“The father was the first to die,” Veran told her. Tarri and Halla shuddered. Veran gave Halla an admonishing look. “You stay clear of both of them.”

Halla nodded in agreement.

“You could stay with us,” Tarri offered once more.

Halla shook her head again, sadly.

“You can come back if you want,” Veran told her.

“Thank you,” Halla said, smiling. “I’d like to visit again, at the least.”

“I’ll spread the word,” Tarri told her. “You’ll be welcome at any trader fire across Pern by the end of the next sevenday.”

Veran disappeared behind the curtains into the back of the wagon and reappeared some time later with a pack, full, as promised, with provisions.

“Fair trade,” he said, offering the pack to her.

“Thanks.”

“‘Fair trade’ is what you say,” Tarri corrected her.

Halla smiled. “Fair trade.”

“Fair trade,” Tenim said as he left the body lying in the gully. Milera had been a pleasant diversion, but she’d been a fool to think she could stab him while he was sleeping. She’d gotten closer than he’d liked; his shoulder was sore and hot where the dagger had scored.

She’d forfeited her purse and her life when she’d tried to take his. Now Tenim traveled by himself with a pack provisioned for two.

He turned his attention to the trail ahead. Not only had his purse profited—twice—from his stay with the traders, but he’d gained considerably on Moran and Conni. Soon his purse would be even fuller. Tenim liked the idea. A full purse could buy a full belly, a good night’s rest, even a willing partner.

Conni’s purse had bought them a good berth on the barge that sailed down from Crom to Keogh. Her mouth had bought them an abrupt dislodgement on their arrival.

“He was rude,” Conni muttered again, her face buried in a mug full of cheap wine. She was drunk and getting nastier with every sip.

Moran eyed her distastefully. He had allowed his passion to cloud his thinking—again—and, again, he was paying far too much for his error. At least, he consoled himself, the bargeman’s wife had looked upon his charges kindly, so he had reason to hope that they’d be adopted, clearly a better fate for them than remaining close to Conni. Now all he had to do was achieve a similar distance and perhaps he could return, prodigally, to the Harper Hall.

For a moment Moran imagined the look on the faces of the harpers as he returned from his impossible mission. Why, he might even gain his Mastery straight out. He was old enough, nearing his thirtieth Turn even if he looked older.

His pleasant rumination was rudely interrupted by a clatter as Conni’s fingers let slip her mug, and her head fell to the table, insensate. Moran looked at her critically for a long while, reached carefully to remove her hidden purse—at least that’s what she believed it to be—and rose in one fluid motion to head for the door.

“What about her?” a voice growled.

Moran turned and a mark flew out of his hand directly into the innkeeper’s. “She’ll need a place for the night.”

The innkeeper nodded and smiled, the gaps in his teeth showing only slightly darker than the rest of his teeth. “She’ll have one.”

As he left, Moran found himself wondering less where Conni would be sleeping than how far he would be from wherever that was when she woke.

As he made his way out of Keogh, following the river southward, he made a decision and turned sharply right, to the west hills.

Three days later he began to regret his decision. The weather was cold in the foothills, and he could see only mountains ahead of him. His food ran out that night.

The next morning, Moran wished he hadn’t always left the chores of hunting and trapping to Tenim and Halla. He wasn’t a bad trapper—he had taught Tenim when he was little, and Tenim had passed his knowledge on to Halla—but his skills were long-unused.

He caught nothing in a nearby stream, and although he’d been smart enough to remove his pack and boots and roll up his trousers, a misjudged step had sent him into the cold, snow-fed stream so now he had warm feet and a cold backside. He pressed on, knowing that his exertions would soon warm him back up and his body heat would dry his clothes.

Snow started falling before nightfall. Moran found a sheltered cave with difficulty and huddled into it.

Moran woke, shivering. It was still dark. He thrust his head out of the cave opening and looked up into the night sky. It was clear of clouds. The stars shown brightly above him. It was late; both of Pern’s moons had set. Moran paused, listening intently for whatever it was that had disturbed him.

There! Something moved overhead in the night. He cocked his head sideways, trying to track. A meteor? A pair of meteors? The lights almost looked like dragon eyes, but Moran had never heard of dragons flying at this hour. A fire-lizard? No, they were even less willing to fly at night. The brilliant lights grew larger, were coming toward him, and then, just as suddenly, were gone, whizzing over the mountain.

Moran skidded back into the cave and hastily folded his sleep roll and donned his gear. As soon as he could, he set off after the creature, hopeful of finding food or game.

The air was freezing and his breath came in wisps, but he ignored it as he scampered up the hillside. He quickly lost sight of the flying eyes, but he continued climbing, his breath coming in increasingly faster gasps, his lungs protesting the effort, his tired legs threatening to cramp with each upward step.

Finally, just as he felt he could breathe no more or take another step, Moran reached the summit of the hill. He paused, his breath coming in white clouds and searing his lungs, his legs trembling with exertion.

He scanned the new vistas before him. His breath returned to normal and his legs stopped trembling before he finally spotted it: some imperfection in the distance, something that didn’t look natural.

It was a camp, he was sure of it. Perhaps a camp for traders or some Shunned. He doubted that it was a regular hold or temporary quarters—it was too high in the cold mountain air for that. No, whoever was there hoped not to be found. But the wisp of smoke, just barely visible in the dark of night, gave the camp away. For better or worse Moran started toward the camp; he knew he did not have enough supplies to return to Keogh.

He stepped out briskly, eager for his journey’s end and a warm fire, too briskly, his eyes on his goal and not on his footing. Whether it was the snow or the rocks underneath didn’t matter; the slip caused his left calf to spasm into a tight, painful knot, and then he was sliding down the hillside on his right side. His painful slide was finally halted when his head struck a large rock and he remembered nothing more.

Pellar was out inspecting his traps when he spotted the tracks. He checked the back trail—the tracks were headed nearly on a straight line for the wherhandlers’ camp. Pellar quickly removed his traps and started obliterating the trail, replacing it with one that led northward, away from the camp.

Pellar paused, sent a thought to Chitter and smiled when the little fire-lizard appeared directly above him from between. The fire-lizard had brought a pocket of warm, campfire air with him, and that air mixed with the cold air to produce a fine mist that dissipated almost before Pellar noticed it.

Pellar wrote a quick note, tied it to Chitter’s harness, and carefully constructed a mental image of Aleesa for the fire-lizard. Chitter chirped once—happy at the thought of returning to the warm fire—and disappeared between.

Pellar was about to start once more on his work when a nearby noise startled him. He looked around quickly and saw the trail of a rock rolling not far from him. Another rock landed nearby. It came from behind him. Pellar twirled around—and spied a small figure in the distance behind him. The figure was vaguely familiar. It raised a hand to its mouth in a shushing gesture, then held up both hands in a gesture of peace and started walking toward Pellar.

The figure stopped when it was close enough for Pellar to recognize it as a girl.

“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” the girl asked, still keeping her hands out. Pellar recognized her. She was Halla, the trapper who had been caught in one of his traps. The girl who had kept his existence a secret.

Pellar nodded in answer to her question.

She looked around and gestured to his handiwork, saying, “That’s good work you’ve done, disguising the trail.

“That’s Moran’s trail,” she continued. She looked at Pellar. “Have you seen him?”

Pellar shook his head.

Halla’s eyes narrowed as she considered his answer. Finally, she declared, “You’re changing his trail because of the direction he’s taking.”

Pellar gave the girl a long, frank look before, with a sigh, he nodded. She was too smart to fool, and he decided that trying to would only raise her suspicions further.

“That’s a good idea,” Halla said, moving cautiously closer. “I think Tenim’s after him. Moran’s got a purse full of marks, and Tenim wants it.

“What’s your name?” she asked as she drew closer.

Pellar shook his head and waved in front of his mouth to show that he couldn’t talk. Cautiously he pulled out his slate and wrote on it.

Halla noted his caution and cocked her head at him quizzically. “Do you trust me?”

Pellar gave her an appraising look. She was small, taller than when he’d met her last, but still not much more than skin and bones. He couldn’t imagine that she’d be all that tough if she chose to fight him. And she hadn’t betrayed him back at the camp. He nodded, yes, he trusted her.

He beckoned for her to come closer, lifting the strap of the slate over his head and placing it on the boulder, then moving warily away from her.

Halla raised an eyebrow in surprise. After a moment she shrugged, approached the boulder, and lifted the slate.

“Pellar,” she read aloud. She looked up from the slate to meet his eyes. “Is that your name?”

Pellar nodded.

Suddenly Chitter burst into the air. Halla ducked and stepped back, her eyes wide with fear until she identified the fire-lizard, then she cautiously stood back up, her eyes shining with excitement.

Chitter chirped when he found Pellar and quickly flew to him. The fire-lizard had a message. With one eye on Halla, Pellar carefully removed the message and read it: Come quick, need healer.

“I thought it was Grief,” Halla admitted as she stood up straight once more. Pellar looked questioningly at her. “Tenim has a falcon that spies for him.”

Pellar pursed his lips tight. If Tenim could use his bird to track, then perhaps the camp was already in danger.

“If there’s anything at your camp of value, Tenim will want that, too,” Halla told him.

Pellar nodded in agreement; he remembered too well his fight with the larger lad. He gave Halla one more frank appraisal and then passed the message over for her to read.

Halla read it quickly and glanced back up at him. “Do you want me to follow you and hide our tracks?”

Pellar nodded and grinned, glad that this little girl was so quick in her thinking.

Halla frowned. “If Tenim follows the false trail, it’ll end here and he’ll backtrack. He’ll probably find our trail no matter what we do.”

Pellar wiped his slate and quickly wrote, “Hurry, hope for snow.”

“That might work,” Halla agreed. While Pellar wrote a note and sent Chitter back, Halla worked on extending their false trail to a realistic dead end, a nearby stream that was not completely frozen over. She ended the trail opposite some wind-exposed rocks in the hope that Tenim might decide that Moran had climbed out the other side of the stream by the rocks.

When she turned back she was surprised to see Pellar watching her with great interest. He smiled oddly at her and waved a beckoning hand: “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 7

Moran woke up warm and disoriented. He was wrapped in blankets and he could smell a coal fire burning nearby. He could also smell the cold winter air billowing in from some distant entrance.

“He’s awake,” a young girl’s voice declared. Halla.

“Wh-where’s Tenim?” Moran asked, surprised at the weakness of his voice.

“Not far,” a deeper voice replied. A face came into Moran’s view. The face was hard-edged and looked bitterly upon him. “You’ve done us no favors, Harper.”

Oddly, the last words weren’t directed at Moran but at someone else. Moran swiveled his head around and regretted it as pain lanced through his joints. He guessed that he must have fallen hard. His head throbbed.

An amazingly painful sound clawed at his ears, the sound of chalk on slate. Moran winced more as he found the origin of the sound—was that Pellar?

“Your leg is broken and you have a nasty knock on your head,” an old woman told him. “Pellar here set your leg and nursed you.”

A face swam into view. The woman was old, much older than Moran.

“Why’d you come here?” she asked, eyeing him without favor.

Moran shook his head and again regretted the motion. “I was cold and saw the fire.”

“Put out the fire, Jaythen,” the woman ordered. The hard-faced man moved to obey. The woman turned to Pellar. “What are we going to do now?”

Pellar scrawled an answer on his slate. The woman read it and frowned thoughtfully. She looked back down at Moran.

“Do you know who I am?”

“No,” Moran replied feebly, having learned not to shake his head.

“I’m Aleesa and you’ve stumbled on our hold.”

Aleesa. The one who was selling watch-wher eggs. Moran tried to sit up. He could only imagine what Tenim would do if he found them.

A hand forced him back down.

“Pellar says to lie still,” Halla told him. Another scraping noise and Halla turned to peer at Pellar’s slate. “He says he’s got a plan, but you’ll have to agree to it.”

“A plan?” Moran repeated. He licked his lips and continued, “Tenim wants a watch-wher egg—”

“They’re all gone!” Aleesa declared with a derisive snort.

“But he doesn’t know that,” Halla said, rereading Pellar’s plan. She looked up at the older boy and warned him, “If he catches you—”

Moran realized he was too sick to move. If Tenim arrived, he’d want his marks, if not more. He decided it was a good idea that Pellar not be dissuaded from his plan, so he cleared his throat and asked, “What do you want me to do?”

It all depended upon Chitter. Chitter and the falcon, Grief. Tenim’s falcon had to spot Chitter, and Chitter had to lead Tenim to Pellar’s trail. But not too soon, not until Halla had managed to disguise Pellar’s original track and blend his trail in with Moran’s.

Pellar set out as soon as he could finish constructing his bait. The pack was heavy and its straps tore into his shoulders as he trudged along in the cold winter countryside, heading north and west in a large loop around Keogh.

If Tenim found him anytime in the next three days, it was likely that the older lad would corner him before he could complete his plan. At least, Pellar thought ruefully, Tenim couldn’t make him talk.

Pellar looked down at Moran’s huge shoes as he trudged along in them and regretted that part of the plan, too. His feet were already raw and chafed and he’d only traveled for a day. But it was vital that Tenim think he was following Moran.

Pellar hoped that Halla would be all right. In some ways she reminded him of Cristov, both needing a better example in their lives.

Pellar allowed himself a fond smile as he thought of the little girl waving after him as they parted. She had insisted on leading the youngest of the wherhold’s children back to the safety of Keogh despite both Moran’s and Pellar’s protests.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured them. “And with the fires out, they’ll perish here.”

She’d been right about that, Pellar realized, thinking of the small cold children all bundled up in the freezing caves of the wherhold. Moran had admitted reluctantly that Halla had a way with children, even those slightly older than herself, and that it would be best to get them out of the way of the harsh winter or any trouble that might come.

That part of Pellar’s plan—leaving Moran behind as harper—had worked out better than he’d imagined. While neither Aleesa nor Jaythen were likely to ever look upon the older harper without distrust, it was obvious that they were willing to take advantage of his presence. After all, there were some things that were best explained without chalk and slate.

Pellar stumbled on an icy patch and caught himself, berating himself for his inattention. The snowy night wind howled around him and he started forward again, hoping to spot the lights of Keogh in the distance but not really expecting to see anything until late the next day at the earliest. He paused for a moment to glance at the mountains around him before setting on again, making a slight correction in his direction. He didn’t need to get turned around in the middle of the night.

The next evening, just after he spotted Keogh to the south and west of him, Pellar allowed himself a broad grin.

It was time to start the next phase of his plan. Gratefully he built a small fire and laid some stones around it for heat. Satisfied that the fire was going well, Pellar unlimbered his pack; he rooted around in the special pocket he’d had added, pulled out his bait, and made sure that a little of the protecting sand scattered on to the ground around him before he placed the bait to warm by the stones.

Tenim swore long and slow to himself as he lost Moran’s tracks for the third time in the past several days. It was obvious to him that the harper knew he was on his trail. Tenim’s pack had grown lighter faster than he’d expected and his stomach was now emptier than his purse. He snorted to himself as he imagined Moran getting gaunter from all the exercise—the harper rarely put on such a hefty pace.

But if Moran was carrying so many marks, why didn’t he simply buy his passage? The answer came to Tenim as quickly as the question—because neither he nor Moran were willing to risk that there wasn’t someone else eager to take their hard-won marks. Just as Moran had decided he’d no further need of that useless Conni. Tenim snorted as he remembered her ranting and raving when he caught up with her at the tavern.

When he picked up the harper’s trail again, he found signs that Moran had stopped at last. A fire—a day old. Some rocks gathered around. Something placed near the fire. What? Tenim wondered and peered closer. He sifted among the ashes. Sand? Why would the harper be carrying sand? And keeping it warm?

With a curse, Tenim sprang up and broke into a steady trot. Moran had found a fire-lizard egg or, better, a watch-wher egg.

One day. If he could catch up with Moran before Crom Hold, he’d have more than a fortune. He’d have a winter’s worth of coal, or the same amount of marks.

Pellar was glad to see the great walls of Crom Hold rising up in the morning sun as he approached. So far his plan had worked—Chitter had spotted Tenim a full day behind. Now all he had to do was get to Camp Natalon and Master Zist. Faced with a camp full of miners and a harper with a complete set of drums at his command, Tenim would have to give up the chase.

He paid for some provisions and sped through the far side of Crom Hold, catching up with a trader caravan that was heading near Camp Natalon. He was surprised that the traders would risk the snowy passes in the dead of winter.

“It’s good to see you again,” Tarri said cheerfully.

“And you,” Pellar wrote. “Although, I’m surprised you’re venturing up to the camp at this time of year.”

“Cromcoal’s worth a lot,” said Tarri, the young trader who’d agreed to his passage. “Master Zist worked out a good deal and we’ve got a well-paved road—unless some of it’s washed out.”

She eyed his pack warily but said nothing as Pellar climbed aboard.

“You ride up front,” she said, crawling through the curtains to the back of her wagon. She threw him a thick blanket. “Use this against the cold.”

Pellar nodded in thanks. Tarri kept an eye on him until she was certain that he had the workbeasts well in hand and then she went back through the curtains. A while later she emerged.

“It’s only warm,” she said, handing him a mug of klah. “We keep heated rocks in a pail so’s we don’t freeze entirely.”

Pellar took the mug gratefully and drained it quickly. The residual warmth of the mug itself he used to heat his cold fingers before regretfully passing it back to Tarri.

The trader kept her eyes on him as they drove. To Pellar’s relief, she took the reins in some of the more difficult passes.

When not driving the wagon, Pellar dozed off, glad enough of the thick blanket Tarri had loaned him.

Shortly after dusk the snow picked up and was soon falling so thickly that they couldn’t see the road.

“We’ll stop,” Tarri told him, pointing to the large drays behind. “You and I are first watch.”

Pellar nodded and got down from the wagon, walking back to the end of the short column of workdrays. Tarri’s was the only sleeping wagon—everyone slept in shifts, and there were only three work drays in the caravan.

“Less to lose, better prices,” Tarri had explained when Pellar had first joined up.

In two hours Pellar was relieved and trudged back to his place at the front of Tarri’s wagon. He was freezing cold.

Tarri’s head poked out from the curtains.

“Come on inside—it’s too cold and we’ve another watch before we move out,” she told him.

Gratefully, Pellar crawled inside. He was immediately warmer. With a few gestures he asked permission to spread his sleeping roll; at Tarri’s nod, he removed his boots and socks and crawled in.

Tarri gave him an amazed look and snorted, “You’ll freeze if you try to sleep like that. You need to get out of those clothes.”

Pellar nodded and smiled back, carefully removing his clothes while modestly hidden in his sleeping roll. He pulled them out and laid them beside him.

Tarri laughed. “I’m not as deft as you, so I’d appreciate it if you looked the other way.”

Pellar nodded and rolled over.

Moments later, Tarri crawled under her pile of blankets and called out, “You can turn over now.”

She was answered by Pellar’s soft snores.

Tenim spread his marks liberally to get information. Yes, there had been a suspicious lad with a large pack. No, no signs of a harper. The lad couldn’t talk, that was odd, managed to get a ride with the traders heading up to Camp Natalon. Daft to head up the mountains in midwinter, no matter what the price of coal, even with the improvements that had been put in. Tenim had bought another round or two of drinks before disappearing into the night.

Egg or no, purse or no, this “lad” owed him. He’d taken Tenim in, convinced him for three days that he’d been following Moran and a sack of marks or, better, a watch-wher’s egg. Now Tenim was sure that he wasn’t following Moran, and he had his doubts about the egg, too.

So this “lad” had decided to play Tenim for a fool. Moran would have to know, would have been in on it, Tenim was certain. What was the harper to the lad that he’d go out of his way to protect him? Why would the lad risk his life for a broken-down man who claimed he was a harper but spent most of his time stealing?

Or was the lad protecting something else? Had Moran stumbled on something the lad felt he had to protect? Something to do with watch-whers?

Tenim had smiled coldly to himself as he strode out of Crom and up the mountain path to Camp Natalon.

He’d find out soon enough; he’d been close behind the traders all day and he knew they’d stopped for the night. The lad might not talk, but when Tenim was done with him, he’d wish he could—and he’d still tell Tenim all he wanted to know. And, after that, well, no one who made a fool of Tenim lived to tell it.

Dawn was coming. He stopped and removed his pack. It was heavy and cumbersome, but the extra weight was worth it. His sources had said the lad had a fire-lizard.

Tenim unlaced the special compartment, reached in with a well-gloved hand, and restrained the falcon resting inside. With the other hand he finished opening the compartment, exposing it to the cold morning air.

“Come on, my pet, I’ve got a job for you,” he crooned as he settled Grief onto his hand.

Pellar woke the instant the hand touched his shoulder. He twisted his head quickly and looked up to see Tarri above him.

“Our watch,” she said. “You get dressed and search for kindling. I’ll keep watch here and ready some klah.”

Pellar nodded and Tarri left the wagon. He dressed quickly, rolled up his bedroll and left the wagon, waving to Tarri.

The caravan had stopped at a bend in the road, crouching close to the mountainside. On the other side of the road the mountain fell away in a cliff. Pellar looked over and saw a stand of trees and a stream in the distance below. He shrugged to himself and started carefully down the cliffside to the only source of kindling.

Chitter joined him as he reached the plateau, chiding Pellar against the cold morning air. Pellar nodded and waved in companionable agreement—yes, it was cold and only fools would climb down cliffsides in search of kindling. He unshouldered his pack and put it down by a tree, looking around the clearing. Why, he wondered to himself, would Chitter have stirred from his warm spot in the wagon?

The thought made him go suddenly cold and still, his eyes moving over the terrain in front of him. Had something disturbed the fire-lizard?

There! Pellar spotted a movement in the trees high above him, moving very fast. It was a bird, diving. He formed a warning in his mind for Chitter and was just about to send it when the fire-lizard dove in front of him, screeching a warning of his own.

Chitter was too late. A hard fist landed behind Pellar’s ear and he stumbled in pain. His last sight was of Chitter and claws and a beak—and then the air was filled with shrieking and green ichor. And then he was falling into the stream, cold water engulfing him.

CHAPTER 8

When he didn’t show up, we sent out a search party, and we found this,” Tarri said, holding up the mangled body of a fire-lizard for Master Zist’s inspection.

“And this.” A pack, torn and shredded. There was some sand and shards still inside it.

“I need you to take me there,” Zist said.

“It’s half a day away on foot,” Tarri protested.

“Please,” Zist begged, “I’ve got to see.”

“We can take my wagon,” Tarri said. “That will save us some time.”

The day was cold and clear—the clouds that had brought snow the night before had dissipated. Tarri easily followed the trail the drays had left on their way up to Camp Natalon. When she reached the bend, she pulled the wagon to a halt.

“Right over there,” she said, pointing across Zist to the cliff on their right. “Down the ravine.”

Tarri showed Zist the way down. The site where they’d found the fire-lizard and Pellar’s pack had been trampled down by the trader’s boots as they searched.

“We think he fell in the water here,” Tarri said, pointing to a depression on the bank of the fast-moving stream. “There’s a fall just down there,” she added sadly.

Zist grunted his acknowledgment, shading his eyes against the sun to peer farther into the distance. He sighed and turned back to the trampled site, particularly examining the ground where the snow was stained green by Chitter’s ichor.

Zist remembered the brown fire-lizard’s battered body. Some sharp object had cut through Chitter’s neck just where it joined the shoulders. There were claw marks on his sides—some large bird, or a very small wherry. Zist guessed it was a bird, probably a falcon, because he’d never heard of a fire-lizard being so surprised by a wherry that it couldn’t get between to safety.

There was a large patch of sand not far away and some shards. What had Pellar been carrying in his pack? And why had someone murdered him for it? Had the attack by the bird been an unhappy accident or part of a plan? Why had Pellar been on his way to Camp Natalon?

“We may never know,” the harper said softly to himself.

“Pardon?”

Zist shook himself and rose from beside the ichor-stained snow, saying, “I’m sorry, I was talking to myself.” He pointed up to the wagon. “I’m ready to go now.”

But it seemed to Tarri as she watched the harper climb feebly up the ravine he had so vigorously descended only moments before that Master Zist was not at all ready to go—that, in fact, he left a large part of himself behind in that ravine.

They rode back toward Camp Natalon in silence and the setting of the sun.

After tens of Turns in his cave near the Harper Hall, Mikal had learned to cipher the drum codes. He always perked up when a message came in from Zist, wondering about Pellar and his fire-lizard.

But the message wasn’t good. “Chitter dead?” Mikal whispered to himself as he deciphered the message. He closed his eyes from the pain of the ancient loss of his own dragon, now relived in the loss of the fire-lizard he had been afraid to meet.

The message continued and Mikal’s face drained of all color. “Pellar?”

Wordlessly, sightlessly, he reached around for a flask of wine and remorselessly, hopelessly tried once again to blot his pain by getting drunk.

Tenim was in a foul mood as he entered the kitchen of Tarik’s cothold. He had gone up to the mine, taking the long route around to the coal dump and then out of sight beyond the crest of the hill to come back around to the mine, only to discover from the miners’ chatter that Tarik’s shift had been relieved by Natalon. If he hadn’t been on his guard he might have been caught.

The thrill of Grief’s deadly strike on the fire-lizard—Tenim had never dreamed the attack would be so successful—had completely drained from him in the ensuing events: first, the boy’s unexpected fall into the river and, second, the infuriating discovery that the boy’s pack held only a fake egg made of clay. Tenim had been led on a wild wherry chase for no profit.

“What are you doing here?” Tarik asked as Tenim let himself in. The miner was sprawled in a chair, a bottle of wine on the table in front of him and a mug in his hand.

“I might ask you the same,” Tenim said. “Let’s just say that I’m here to see how we are doing on our investments.

“Only,” he went on, gesturing toward the mine, “I discover that you’ve been relieved.” He gave Tarik a sour look. “Something about skimping on the wood joists, I hear.”

Tarik flushed angrily. “Natalon’s a fool. He’d have us use three times as much wood as we need.”

“So you decided to profit on your own initiative?” Tenim asked, glowering down at the miner. “And, instead, we stand to lose everything.”

Tarik took an angry breath, caught the murderous look in Tenim’s eyes, and let it out with a deep sigh.

“I thought you weren’t going to be back until spring,” Tarik said.

“My plans changed,” Tenim replied, dragging up a chair opposite Tarik. The miner gestured to the bottle on the table, but Tenim shook his head irritably. “One of us needs to keep his head clear enough to think.”

“Why bother?” Tarik said. “Natalon’s as good as sacked me. I’ll never find work after this.” He shook his head dejectedly. “His own uncle, and he’d throw me out.”

“You’re no use to me if you’re thrown out,” Tenim said, eyeing Tarik thoughtfully. The older man was too much in his cups to recognize his peril.

“I should be the master here,” Tarik grumbled, “not him. I’ve Turns more experience in the mine, helped train him, too.”

Tenim’s murderous look altered subtly as he listened to Tarik.

“Where’s Natalon now?”

Tarik quirked an eyebrow at him, saying querulously, “In the mine, my shaft, shoring up the joists, of course.”

Tenim rose from his seat in one fluid motion, like a bird rising to swoop on its prey.

“Stay here,” he ordered Tarik. “Don’t let anyone in the mine.”

Tarik looked up at him in confusion. “I’m not in charge.”

“Yet,” Tenim replied curtly.

“Master Zist? Master Zist?” Cristov called at the door to the harper’s cothold.

The mine had collapsed and Tarik had forbidden anyone to enter it, declaring it too dangerous. He’d even hit Kindan when the lad had insisted on going in with his watch-wher.

“That dumb animal’s no use now,” Tarik had sworn angrily.

Someone had to take charge, someone had to do something. Cristov had run down to Zist’s, hoping the harper could restore order.

“Master Zist?” he called again, inching inside the door. His resolve grew and he walked all through the cottage, calling Zist’s name.

In the kitchen, on the table, he spied the grisly remains of a brown fire-lizard. The memory of stroking that fire-lizard’s cheek woke an anger in Cristov that he had never before felt. He turned on his heel and strode out of the cottage.

He was going to get his axe.