CHAPTER I

HARPERHALL,
SECOND INTERVAL,
AFTER LANDING (AL) 490.3

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.