The Masterharper of Pern Read online

  “Not everyone would find that as productive as we do, Petiron,” she said gently but so firmly that Petiron saw he would offend her with further comment. Indeed, she thought wryly, remembering Rochers, the woodsie, not every Pernese approved of harpers.

  When they were settling into Pierie Hold, his misgivings about this assignment returned. There were only three rooms for their quarters: the baby would have to sleep in with them, at the foot of the bed which took up nearly all the room, though there were storage compartments cut into the rear wall of the cliff. The larger room was clearly for daily affairs, including kitchen work, with an outer wall hearth. The third was more of a cubicle than a room and served the purpose of toilet and bath, though Merelan said gaily that most everyone bathed in the sea. Petiron gazed askance at the flight of steps that led down to a sandy crescent of a beach where some of the hold’s fishing sloops were moored.

  He was soon to learn that people here were more accustomed to doing everything outside, either in the wide open patio where various workstations were situated, or under the shade of a vine-covered arbor larger than all the individual accommodations put together. There were even two sections fenced off for toddlers and the slightly older children, complete with a little pond where they could safely wade, sand to play in, and a rather extensive collection of toys. Already, Robinton was tottering about carrying one of the stuffed toys.

  “That can’t be a dragon he’s been playing with, is it?” Petiron asked Merelan. Dragons were never toys; it would have been blasphemy to play with one.

  “No, silly. It’s supposed”—Merelan grinned reassuringly up at her astonished spouse—“to be a fire-lizard.”

  “A fire-lizard? But they died out centuries ago.”

  “No, not entirely. My father saw one, and Uncle Patry said he’d seen one this past year.”

  “He’s sure?” Petiron had a pragmatic streak that required proof.

  “Indeed he is. And we’ve empty shells gathered from flotsam to prove that they exist, even if they aren’t much in evidence.”

  “Well, if they’ve shells . . .” And Petiron was mollified. Merelan turned her head away so that he wouldn’t see her smile.

  She was quite aware of Petiron’s opinions about everything here in Pierie Hold, but there was no sense in arguing with him about his misconceptions. In general he was a fair man, and she was sure he’d come round. He might even get to like living here, away from all the bustle and overstimulation of the Harper Hall. She had been so pleased with his thanks to Sev, Dalma, and the other traders. He’d meant every word he’d said to them, about learning so much on the route and that he had enjoyed the evenings, and the teaching. He’d learned to feel comfortable on a runnerbeast, so she knew she could talk him into taking trips to the other nearby holds where her brothers and sisters lived. Especially as she would have to leave Robinton behind so as not to irritate Petiron by his son’s constant presence. Not only was he weaned now, but Segoina was almost panting to have a chance to tend him. If only Petiron could learn to like his son a little for his own sake, and Robinton’s, rather than see him as a rival for her attention.

  Teaching came first, and Petiron divided up the forty-two prospective students into five groups. The beginners, novices, middle, and advanced were of mixed ages, since some had had a little more training from a parent than others; the final group was made up of the five who were much too old to be included in the regular classes. Those he’d teach in the evenings by themselves—not that anyone was embarrassed.

  “Living up in the mountings, never had the chance to learn nothing,” Rantou said, unabashed. The stocky timberman had glanced over at his young spouse who was visibly pregnant. “That is, until I met Carral, here.” Then he blushed. “Really like music, even if I doan know much. But I gotta learn so the baby won’t have no stupid for a father.”

  Despite having had no formal training at all, Rantou could produce the most amazing sounds out of a multiple reed-pipe, although he waved aside Petiron’s earnest desire to teach him to read music.

  “You just play it all out for me once, and that’ll do me.”

  When Petiron paced about that evening in the privacy of their little home, terribly upset that an innate musician of considerable talent was risking talented fingers with saw, ax, and adze on a daily basis, Merelan had to calm him.

  “Not everyone sees the Harper Hall as the most preferential occupation, love.”

  “But he’s—”

  “He’s doing very well for a young man with a family on the way,” she said, “and he’ll always love music, even if it is not his life the way it has always been yours.”

  “But he’s a natural. You know how hard I had to work at theory and composition, to get complicated tempi—and he manages cadenzas after one hearing that it would take you, good as you are, days to command. And Segoina told me he makes . . . makes the gitars, the flutes, the drums, all the instruments in use here . . .” He raised both hands high in exasperation and frustration. “When I think how hard I had to work to walk the tables for journeyman for what he just picked up listening to me, I—I’m speechless.”

  “Rantou doesn’t want to be a musician, love. He wants to do what he does do, manage forestry. Even the instruments he makes are just a hobby with him.”

  “That may be very true, Mere, but what you fail to realize is that the Harper Hall needs more young folk to train up than come to us. Pierie needs a full-time journeyman, not a vacationing one.” Petiron was pacing and rubbing his hands together, a sure sign to his spouse of his rising agitation. “Everyone has the right to learning—that is the traditional duty of the Harper Hall. We are desperately short of harpers.”

  “But people do learn the Teaching Ballads and Songs, as they have here,” Merelan said. “As I did.”

  “Only the usual ones, but not all the important ones,” Petiron said sternly with a scowl. When he frowned like that, his heavy eyebrows nearly met over the bridge of his aquiline nose. Though she’d never tell him, Merelan adored his eyebrows. “They don’t know the Dragon Duty Ballads, for instance.”

  Merelan suppressed a sigh. Was it only people brought up in strict Harper Hall tradition who believed that Thread would, not just might, return in the next fifty or so Turns? Or was their belief merely an extension of the traditions of the Hall?

  “You are teaching those as I am. And I don’t think anyone here, now that they’ve met you and seen me again, would take it amiss if you did suggest that one of the more talented youngsters looked toward the Harper Hall as a life’s work.”

  Petiron gave her a strange look. “You don’t?”

  She pursed her lips. That tone was his driest and most repressive: the one he reserved for apprentices who had not studied hard enough to suit his exacting standard.

  “There was plague, you know, as well as that storm that took many lives from this hold,” she said as casually as she could. “This may be a small hold, but to do all that is required properly also takes a fair-sized population. Sometimes there are none to be spared.”

  “Yet they spared two lads to the Weyr,” Petiron said begrudgingly.

  Merelan tried to hide her laugh behind her hand but couldn’t, the look of him was so jealous.

  “And I suppose you wouldn’t have accepted being Searched for the Weyr?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I know, but if you had been Searched by Benden Weyr, would you not have gone?”

  “Well,” he said, hedging, “I certainly don’t dispute the honor of being Searched . . . but not everyone Searched Impresses a dragon.”

  “They Impressed greens,” Merelan replied.

  “Then they were lucky indeed.”

  “Neither of them would have been good as harpers,” she added, with a twinkle in her eye.

  “Now that’s not fair, Mere,” Petiron replied stiffly.

  “Think on it a bit, my darling,” she said and continued to neatly fold the clothes that she had laundered that afternoon
.

  It was Petiron who was almost apoplectic with fear when he heard that Merelan was teaching Robinton to swim.

  “But he’s only just started walking,” he protested. “How can he swim?”

  “All our children learn to swim in their first year,” Segoina told him. “Preferably before they learn to walk, because they remember swimming from their womb days.”

  “They what?”

  Merelan put a warning hand on Petiron’s arm, for his body was rigid with shock at the dangers his son had just been exposed to.

  “It’s true,” Segoina went on. “Ask at the Healer Hall when you return.” Petiron recoiled slightly, but Segoina continued affably. “It is the best time to remind a child of what it knew in the womb. And then we don’t have to worry so constantly, with us so near the sea as we are.” She pointed down the steps to where a gentle surf made white scallops on the equally white sand. “There is a rite of passage that requires a lad to dive from that height,” and she pointed to the headland that jutted out a fair distance into the sea, “to prove he is a man.”

  Petiron visibly swallowed and blinked furiously.

  “Do you swim?” Segoina asked blandly.

  “Yes, actually I do. We had the Telgar river to learn in.”

  “It’s much easier to swim in the sea than in a river. More buoyancy.” Segoina turned away before she could catch the apprehensive expression on Petiron’s face.

  Merelan controlled her amusement. If he hadn’t been able to answer positively, it was obvious he feared that she would have immediately appointed herself his instructor. He swam well enough, and the midsummer races were months away. By then they would be safely back at Harper Hall. She sighed, for she would have liked to stay for the Full Summer Gather when the entire Peninsula gathered for races, both in and on the water as everyone tested his or her skills at swimming and sailing.

  It was as well, Merelan thought as they continued on to their quarters, that he was over the age when he would have been required to make the high dive. That was also a feature of the Full Summer Gather. Maybe she could talk him into it . . .

  He’d learned so much about himself, as well as how the ordinary people lived. As a lad at Telgar, he had been more inclined to scholarship, which was why he had been sponsored to go to the Harper Hall in the first place. So he had had little chance, as an adult, to expand his horizons—until now. And he’d never looked fitter, or more handsome. Hair down to his shoulders, skin tanned, he was more secure on the back of a runner, could walk a good day’s journey, and had done more harpering than his duties at the Hall had ever required of him. If only he could be more in harmony with his own child . . .

  When Robinton began to talk, she told herself, when he needed to learn things a father should teach his son, then the affection and pride would develop. At least Petiron had shown himself nervous about his child’s safety with the swimming business.

  That much was obvious when Petiron accompanied spouse and son to the cove beach the next First Day. By then, Robinton was paddling happily, not the least bit concerned if he fell under the water, though a white-faced Petiron snatched the sun-browned little body up into his arms, startling Robinton. Wide-eyed with surprise, the boy struggled to be released back into the water that was such fun, the waves lapping bubblingly around his ankles and pushing treasures of flotsam for him to examine. He even gave the next smooth pebble, a very pretty red one with white intrusions making a pattern, to his father to be admired. And Petiron did, without any prompting from Merelan.

  When it was handed back to him, Robinton toddled off to place it with the growing pile of unusual objects he had retrieved. Then he was off in another direction, running as fast as his legs would take him to see what his cousins had discovered among the seaweed they had just hauled up onto the beach.

  “Sit, love,” Merelan said softly, patting the woven reed mat beside her, where the sunshade cast a shadow. “He isn’t far from help, should it be needed.”

  “Isn’t he younger than the lad of Naylor’s?” he asked with the first bit of paternal pride he had ever exhibited.

  “By two months,” Merelan said nonchalantly.

  “He’s a full hand taller,” Petiron said, his tone almost smug.

  “He’ll be a tall man when he gets his growth,” she said. “You’re not short, nor were my parents. How were you in height against those brothers of yours?”

  “I suspect Forist will be taller, but the other three won’t make his height,” said Petiron, who had never liked his brothers at all.

  “Nor yours.” Idly she brushed sand out of his heavy dark brown hair, flicking it off his shoulder and giving herself the excuse to touch his warm smooth skin. She liked his back. He had muscled up a great deal. Not that he would ever carry much flesh; he was too intense to put on weight. But he looked better than he ever had and she loved him more than ever.

  He glanced up at her, saw her look, and responded to it. Catching up her hand to his lips, he nibbled at her fingers, never breaking eye contact.

  “When Robie takes his afternoon nap, can we find shade somewhere?” he asked, his breath coming a trace faster.

  “We can indeed,” she murmured, feeling her own ardor rising to meet his. “Segoina has given me a potion that will make it safe all the time for us.”

  When they did return to the Harper Hall, everyone remarked on the tremendous improvement in Merelan’s health, on how big Robinton had grown in six months, and how much the change had improved Petiron’s temperament.

  CHAPTER II

  PETIRON WAS WORKING on his latest score when a soft noise distracted him. Listening, he could hear it coming from the other room. Merelan had stepped out on an errand; Robinton was having his nap.

  The faint noise was an echo of the theme he was hastily inscribing before he lost it—he didn’t realize that he had been humming it as he worked. Irritated, he looked around for the source of the mimicry.

  And found his son awake in the trundle bed and humming.

  “Don’t do that, Robinton,” he said in exasperation.

  His son pulled the light blanket up to his chin. “You were,” he said.

  “I was what?”

  “You hummmmdded.”

  “I may, you may not!” And Petiron shook his finger right in the boy’s face so that Robinton pulled the blanket over his head. Petiron pulled it down and leaned over the little bed. “Don’t you ever mimic me like that. Don’t you ever interrupt me when I’m working. D’you hear that?”

  “Whatever did he do, Petiron?” Merelan exclaimed, rushing into the room and hovering protectively at the head of the cot. “He was sound asleep when I left. What’s been going on?”

  Robinton, who rarely cried, was weeping, stuffing the end of the blanket into his mouth as the tears crept down his cheeks. The tears were more than Merelan could endure, and she picked up her sobbing son and cradled him, reassuring him.

  Petiron glared at her. “He was humming while I was writing.”

  “You do; why shouldn’t he?”

  “But I was writing! How can I work when he does that? He knows he’s not to interrupt me.”

  “He’s a child, Petiron. He picks up on anything he hears and repeats it.”

  “Well, I’m not having him humming along with me,” Petiron said, not the least bit mollified.

  “Why shouldn’t he if you wake him up?”

  “How can I possibly work if you’re both interrupting me all the time?” He flung his arms up and stalked out of the bedroom. “Do take him somewhere else. I can’t have him singing in the background.”

  Merelan was already halfway across the sitting room, her crying son in her arms. “Then you won’t have him in the background at all,” she said in a parting shot.

  “I don’t know when I’ve been more annoyed with him,” she told Betrice, who was fortunately in her apartment when Merelan tapped at her door.

  “I don’t suppose he noticed that the child hums on key,” Betrice s
aid in her droll fashion, clearing the mending from the padded rocker so that Merelan could calm her child.

  Merelan blinked at Betrice and then began to chuckle. “I’m certain he would have mentioned it if Robie were off-key. That would have been insult added to injury.” Then she paused. “You know, Robie hums along with me when I do my vocalizes. I hadn’t realized it before. There now, little love.” And she dried Robie’s eyes with an edge of the blanket he was still clutching to his mouth. “Your father didn’t really mean to yell at you . . .”

  “Ha!” was Betrice’s soft response.

  “But we do have to be quiet when your father’s working at home.”

  “He has his own studio . . .” Betrice put in.

  “Washell borrowed it to speak to those parents who wandered in unannounced.”

  “Only Washell could get away with that.”

  “So, my little love, we’ll just have to learn to keep our hummings to just you and me from now on. And let Father get on with his important work.”

  “Ha! More of his incomprehensible, meaningful, and significant musical conundrums. Ooops, sorry!” Betrice covered her lips with an unrepentant hand. “I know he’s the most important composer in the last two centuries, Merelan, but could he not once contrive a simple tune that anyone—besides his own son—could sing?” She rose and walked to the wall cupboard, where she opened one door.

  Merelan regarded Betrice without rancor. “He does rather complicated scores, doesn’t he?” Then she smiled mischievously. “He just likes to embellish.”

  “Oh, is that what it’s called? Give me a simple tune that I can’t get out of my mind!” Betrice said. Having found what she wanted, she returned to Merelan. “But we both know I’m a musical idiot for all the MasterHarper and I have been espoused now thirty Turns. Here you are, my fine lad. Much more appetizing than blanket to chew on.” And she handed Robinton a sweet stick. “I believe you prefer peppermint.”