Harper Hall - Dragonsong Page 5

  Now that she had Old Uncle settled, Menolly’s curiosity got the better of her and she slipped over to the windows. There was no sign of the sail in the harbor now, but she could see the cluster of men, glows held high, as they walked around the shore from the Dock to the Hold proper. Keen though her eyes were, Menolly could not pick out the new faces and that was that.

  Old Uncle began one of his monologues in a high-pitched voice, so Menolly scooted back to his side before her mother could notice she’d left her post. There was so much bustle, putting food on the tables, pouring the welcoming cups of wine, all the Hold arranging itself to meet the guests, no one noticed what Menolly was or wasn’t doing.

  Just then, Old Uncle came to himself again, eyes bright and focused on her face. “What’s the stir today, girl? Good haul? Someone getting spliced? What’s the lay?”

  “There’s a new Harper coming, everyone thinks, Old Uncle.”

  “Not another one?” Old Uncle was disgusted. “Harpers ain’t what they used to be when I was Sea Holder, not by a long crack. I mind myself of one Harper we had…”

  His voice fell clearly in the suddenly quiet Hall.

  “Menolly!” Her mother’s voice was low, but the urgency was unmistakable.

  Menolly fumbled in her skirt pocket, found two sweet-balls and popped them into old Uncle’s mouth. Whatever he’d been about to say was stopped by the necessity of dealing with two large round objects. He mumbled contentedly to himself as he chewed and chewed and chewed.

  All the food had been served and everyone seated before Menolly got so much as a glimpse of the new arrivals. There had been a new Harper. She heard his name before she ever saw his face. Elgion, Harper Elgion. She heard that he was young and good-looking and had brought two gitars, two wooden pipes and three drums, each carried separately in its own case of stiffened wherhide. She heard that he’d been very seasick across Keroon Bay and wasn’t doing justice to the lavish dinner spread in his honor. With him had come a craftmaster from the Smith-crafthall to do the metal work required on the new ship and other repairs beyond the metalman in the Sea Hold. She heard that there was urgent need at Igen Hold for any salted or smoked fish the Sea Hold might have to spare on the return voyage.

  From where Menolly sat with Old Uncle, she could see the backs of heads at the high table and occasionally a profile of one of the visitors. Very frustrating. So was Old Uncle and the other elderly relatives whose old bones rated them a spot near the fire. The aunts were, as usual, squabbling over who had received the choicer portions of fish, and then Old Uncle decided to call them to order, only his mouth was full at that moment and he choked. So the aunts turned on Menolly for trying to stuff him to an early death. Menolly could hear nothing over their babble. She tried to content herself with the prospect of hearing the Harper sing, as he surely would once the interminable meal was ended. But it was hot so close to the big fire and the heat made Old Uncle smell worse than ever, and she was very tired after the day’s exertions.

  She was roused from a half doze by a sudden hall-wide thudding of heavy seaboots. She jerked fully awake to see the tall figure of the new Harper rising at the head table. He had his gitar ready and was taking an easy stance, one foot on the stone bench.

  “You’re sure this Hall isn’t rocking?” he asked, strumming a few chords to test the instrument’s pitch. He was assured that the Hall had been steady for many, many Turns, never known to rock at all. The Harper affected not to be reassured as he tuned the G-string slightly higher (to Menolly’s relief). He made the gitar moan then, like a seasick soul.

  As laughter rippled through the eager audience, Menolly strained to see how her father was taking this approach. The Sea Holder had little humor. A Harper’s welcome was a serious occasion, and Elgion did not appear to realize this. Petiron had often told Menolly how carefully Harpers were chosen for the Hold they were assigned to. Hadn’t anyone warned Elgion about her father’s temperament?

  Suddenly Old Uncle cut across the gentle strumming with a cackle of laughter. “Ha! A man with humor! That’s what we need in this Hold—some laughter. Some music! Been missing it. Let’s have some rollicking tunes, some funny songs. Give us a good rib-popping ditty, Harper. You know the ones I like.”

  Menolly was aghast. She fumbled in her skirt pocket for some of the sweetballs as she shushed Old Uncle. This was exactly the sort of incident that she was supposed to prevent.

  Harper Elgion had turned at the imperious order, bowing with good respect to the old gentleman by the hearth.

  “I would that I could, Old Uncle,” he said most courteously, “but these are serious times,” and his fingers plucked deep sombre notes, “very serious times and we must put lightness and laughter behind us. Square our backs to the problems that face us…” and with that he swung into a new exhortation to obey the Weyr and honor the dragonrider.

  The sticky sweetballs had got warmed and stuck to the fabric of her pocket, but Menolly finally got some out and into Old Uncle’s mouth. He chewed angrily, fully aware that his mouth was being plugged and resenting it. He chewed as fast as he could, swallowing to clear his mouth for more complaints. Menolly was only just aware that the new tune was forceful, the words stirring. Harper Elgion had a rich tenor voice, strong and sure. Then old Uncle began to hiccup. Noisily, of course. And to complain, or try to, through the hiccups. Menolly hissed at him to hold his breath, but he was furious at not being allowed to talk, at getting hiccups, and he started to pound the arm of his chair. The thumps made an out-of-tempo counterpoint to the Harper’s song and brought her furious glances from the head table.

  One of the aunts gave her some water for the old man, which he overturned on Menolly. The next thing, Sella was beside her, gesturing that they were to take the old man back to his quarters instantly.

  He was still hiccuping as they put him back to bed, and still beating the air with punctuated gestures and half-uttered complaints.

  “You’ll have to stay with him until he calms down, Menolly, or he’ll fall out of bed. Whyever didn’t you give him the sweetballs? They always shut him up,” Sella said.

  “I did. They’re what started him hiccuping.”

  “You can’t do anything right, can you?”

  “Please, Sella. You stay with him. You manage him so well. I’ve had him all evening and not heard a word…”

  “You were told to keep him quiet. You didn’t. You stay.” And Sella swept out of the room, leaving Menolly to cope.

  That was the end of the first of Menolly’s difficult days. It took hours for the old man to calm down and go to sleep. Then, as Menolly wearily got to her cubicle, her mother arrived to berate her soundly for the inattention that had given Uncle a chance to embarrass the entire Hold. Menolly was given no chance to explain.

  The next day, Thread fell, sequestering them all within the Hold for hours. When the Fall was over, she had to go with the flamethrower crews. The leading edge of Thread had tipped the marshes, which meant hours of plodding through sticky marsh mud and slimy sand.

  She was tired enough when she returned from that task, but then they all had to help load the big nets and ready the boats for a night trawl. The tide was right then.

  She was roused before sunrise the next morning to gut and salt the phenomenal catch. That took all the live-long day and sent her to bed so weary she just stripped off her dirty clothes, and dropped into her sleeping furs.

  The next day was devoted to net-mending, normally a pleasant task because the Hold women would chat and sing. But her father was anxious for the nets to be repaired quickly so that he could take the evening tide again for another deep-sea cast. Everyone bent to his work without time for talk or singing while the Sea Holder prowled among them. He seemed to watch Menolly more often than anyone else, and she felt clumsy.

  It was then that she began to wonder if perhaps the new Harper had found fault with the way the youngsters had been taught their Ballads and Sagas. Time and again Petiron had told her that there
was only one way to teach them and, as she had learned properly from him, she must have passed on the knowledge correctly. Why then did her father seem to be so annoyed with her? Why did he glare at her so much? Was he still angry with her for letting Old Uncle babble?

  She worried enough to ask her sister about it that evening when the ships had finally set sail and everyone else could relax a little.

  “Angry about Old Uncle?” Sella shrugged. “What on earth are you talking about, girl? Who remembers that? You think entirely too much about yourself, Menolly, that’s your biggest problem. Why should Yanus care one way or another about you?”

  The scorn in Sella’s voice reminded Menolly too acutely that she was only a girl, too big for a proper girl, and the youngest of a large family, therefore of least account. It was in no way a consolation to be insignificant, even if her father was, for that reason, less likely to notice her. Or remember her misdeeds. Except that he’d remembered about her singing her own songs to the youngsters. Or had Sella forgotten that? Or did Sella even know that?

  Probably, thought Menolly as she tried to find a comfortable spot in the old bed rushes for her weary body. But then, what Sella said about Menolly thinking only of herself applied even more to Sella, who was always thinking about her appearance and her self. Sella was old enough to be married to some advantage to the Hold. Her father had only three fosterlings at the moment, but four of Menolly’s six brothers were out at other Sea Holds, learning their trade. Now, with a Harper to speak for them all again, perhaps there’d be some rearrangements.

  The next day the Hold women spent in washing clothes. With Threadfall past, and a good clear sunny day, they could count on fast drying. Menolly hoped for a chance to speak to her mother to find out if the Harper had faulted her teaching, but the opportunity never arose. Instead, Menolly came in for another scolding from Mavi for the state of her clothes, unmended; her bed furs, unaired; her hair, her sloppy appearance and her slothfulness in general. That evening Menolly was quite content to take a bowl of soup and disappear into a shadowy corner of the big kitchen rather than be noticed again. She kept wondering why she was being singled out for so much misunderstanding.

  Her thoughts kept returning to the sin of having strummed a few bars of her own song. That, and being a girl and the only one who could teach or play in the absence of a real Harper.

  Yes, she finally decided, that was the reason for her universal disfavor. No one wanted the Harper to know that the youngsters had been schooled by a girl. But, if she hadn’t taught them right, then Petiron had taught her all wrong. That didn’t hold water. And, if the old man had really written the Masterharper about her, wouldn’t the new Harper have been curious, or sought her out? Maybe her songs hadn’t been as good as old Petiron had thought. Probably Petiron had never sent them to the Masterharper. And that message hadn’t said anything about her. At any rate, the packet was now gone from the mantel in the Records room. And, the way things were going, Menolly would never get close enough to Elgion to introduce herself.

  Sure as the sun came up, Menolly could guess what she’d have to do the next day—gather new grasses and rushes to repack all the beds in the Hold. It was just the sort of thing her mother would think of for someone so out of favor.

  She was wrong. The ships came back to port just after dawn, their holds packed with yellow-stripe and packtails. The entire Hold was turned out to gut, salt and start the smoke-cave.

  Of all the fish in the sea, Menolly detested packtails the most. An ugly fish, with sharp spines all over, it oozed an oily slime that ate into the flesh of your hands and made the skin peel off. Packtails were more head and mouth than anything else but hack the front end off and the rounded, blunt tail could be sliced off the backbone. Grilled fresh it was succulent eating: smoked it could be softened later for baking or boiling and be as tasty as the day it was caught. But packtails were the messiest, hardest, toughest, smelliest fish to gut.

  Halfway through the morning, Menolly’s knife slipped across the fish she was slicing, gashing her left palm wide open. The pain and shock were so great that Menolly just stood, stupidly staring at her hand bones, until Sella realized that she wasn’t keeping pace with the others.

  “Menolly, just dreaming…Oh, for the love of…Mavi! Mavi!” Sella could be irritating, but she could keep her wits. As she did now, grabbing Menolly’s wrist and stopping the spurt of blood from the severed artery.

  As Mavi came and led her past the furiously working holders, Menolly was seized with a sense of guilt. Everyone glared at her as if she’d deliberately wounded herself to get out of working. The humiliation and silent accusations brought tears to her eyes, not the pain nor the sick feeling in her hand.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” Menolly blurted out to her mother as they reached the Hold’s infirmary.

  Her mother stared at her. “Who said that you did?”

  “No one! They just looked it!”

  “My girl, you think entirely too much about yourself. I assure you that no one was thinking any such thing. Now hold your hand, so, for a moment.”

  The blood spurted up as Mavi released the pressure on the tendon in Menolly’s wrist. For one instant Menolly thought she might faint, but she was determined not to think of herself again. She pretended that she didn’t own the hand that Mavi was going to have to fix.

  Mavi now deftly fastened a tourniquet and then laved the wound with a pungent herbal lotion. Menolly’s hand began to numb, increasing her detachment from the injury. The bleeding ceased, but some how Menolly couldn’t bring herself to look into the wound. Instead she watched the intent expression on her mother’s face as she quickly stitched the severed blood vessel and closed the long slice. Then she slathered quantities of salve on the cut and bound the hand in soft cloths.

  “There! Let’s hope I got all that packtail slime out of the wound.”

  Concern and doubt caused Mavi to frown, and Menolly became fearful. Suddenly she remembered other things: women losing fingers and…

  “My hand will be all right, won’t it?”

  “We’ll hope so.”

  Mavi never lied, and the small hard ball of sick fear began to unknot in Menolly’s stomach. “You should have some use of it. Enough for all practical purposes.”

  “What do you mean? Practical purposes? Won’t I be able to play again?”

  “Play?” Mavi gave her daughter a long, hard stare, as if she’d mentioned something forbidden. “Your playing days are over, Menolly. You’re way past the teaching…”

  “But the new Harper has new songs…the ballad he sang the first night…I never heard all of it. I don’t know the chording. I want to learn…” She broke off, horribly frightened by the closed look on her mother’s face, and the shine of pity in her eyes.

  “Even if your fingers will work after that slice, you won’t be playing again. Content yourself that Yanus was so indulgent while old Petiron was dying…”

  “But Petiron…”

  “That’s enough buts. Here, drink this. I want you in your bed before it puts you to sleep. You’ve lost a lot of blood, and I can’t have you fainting away on me.”

  Stunned by her mother’s words, Menolly barely tasted the bitter wine and weed. She stumbled, even with her mother’s help, up the stone steps to her cubicle. She was cold despite the furs, cold in spirit. But the wine and weed had been liberally mixed, and she couldn’t fight the effect. Her last conscious thought was of misery, of being cheated of the one thing that had made her life bearable. She knew now what a dragonless rider must feel.

  Chapter 4

  Black, blacker, blackest

  And cold beyond frozen things.

  Where is between when there is naught

  To Life but fragile dragons’ wings?