The Master Harper of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

  Lexey had told him once – Lexey talked a lot to Rob because he would listen to him – that his mother kept telling him that if he didn't behave better, they'd leave him out for Thread to get.

  "You know so much, Rob. Would it?" Lexey asked plaintively, sufficiently scared of the threat that most times it achieved the object of making him more obedient – at least for a few days.

  "I never heard of it being done to anyone, no matter how bad you are. And "sides, there isn't any Thread in the skies right now." "But, if I was bad enough, would it come to get me?"

  "Hasn't yet, has it?" was Robinton's logical reply. "You were awful bad yesterday, making a mess with the colours when you were told to clear them up."

  "Yes, I was." Lexey grinned in retrospect, thoroughly pleased with himself. "But it was so fun." He'd smeared every surface in the classroom while Kubisa was out on an errand. She'd made him clean it all up – which was almost as much fun for Lexey as doing it – but he'd had a real scolding from her and his mother for the state of his clothes. "Mother was real mad at me last night." But that seemed to give him a satisfaction which Robie couldn't understand.

  He always tried very hard not to upset either his mother or his father – especially his father.

  Lexey's paint-smearing occurred the day before the dragons came, so they were at the forefront of Robie's mind when they came circling down into the big Harper Hall courtyard. His parents were busy packing for their trip to Nerat, so he'd been told to go outside and play. He always missed his mother, but it would be nice to stay with Kubisa and her daughter Libby, where he could sing and play his pipe or his drum without worrying about annoying his father. It was his turn to hop-it without smudging the chalk lines on the flags and his attention was utterly focused on the movement of his feet – until Libby made him miss the longest hop by suddenly pointing skywards in astonishment.

  "Oh, look, Robie!" she cried.

  "That's not fair ..."

  His complaint died as he realized that the dragons soaring above were coming closer to the Harper Hall, rather than the Hold where they usually landed. Half a wing of dragons – six of them. As they swept closer, backwinging, their hind legs stretched downwards to land in the Harper Hall rectangle, Robie, Libby and Lexey pressed themselves tightly against the wall to stay out of the way. As it was, two of the dragons had to land outside, since the four made the big quadrangle suddenly appear very small.

  The ridged tail of a bronze was so close to Robie that he could reach out and touch it. Which he did, greatly daring, while Lexey regarded him with staring eyes, aghast at his impudence.

  "You'll get left out for Thread for sure, Robie," Lexey whispered hoarsely, pressing his sturdy body as close to the stone wall as he could, well away from the dragon's tail.

  "He's soft," Robie whispered back, surprised. Runner-beasts were soft, and the spit canines, but watchwhers had hard hides, sort of oily. At least the Harper Hall's o1' Nick did. Were watchwhers another kind of dragon, the way runner-beasts were another kind of herd-beast?

  No, not precisely, a voice said in his mind. The dragon turned his huge head to see who had touched him, causing Lexey to hiss in alarm and Libby to whimper in terror. There are many differences.

  "I do apologize. I didn't mean to insult you, bronze dragon," Robie said, giving a jerky little bow. "I've never seen one of you up close before."

  We do not come as often to the Harper Hall as we used to. It had to be the dragon speaking, Robie decided, because the deep voice couldn't have come from anyone else near by. The rider had dismounted and was standing on the steps talking to his mother and father.

  "Are my mother and father going to ride on you to Nerat?" Robie knew that was why the dragons had come, to take all the harpers to Nerat for the espousal. His mother had told him that. Nerat Hold had asked the Weyrleader to provide dragon transport. Going a-dragonback meant they didn't have a long land journey to make, so they wouldn't be away long. And besides it was a great honour to go a-dragonback.

  They are harpers? the dragon asked.

  "Yes, my mother's MasterSinger Merelan and my father is Master Petiron. He writes the music they're going to sing."

  We look forward to hearing it.

  "I didn't know dragons liked music," Robie said, greatly surprised. That had never been mentioned with all the other things he'd learned about dragonkind.

  Well, we do. So does my rider, M'ridin. Robie could not miss the affection with which the dragon named his rider. He asked especially to convey your mother and father. It will be an honour for us to take a MasterSinger to Nerat.

  "Who are you talking to?" Libby asked, her eyes still wide with fright for Robie's presumptuous behaviour towards the huge and powerful creature.

  "The dragon, o' course," Robie said, having no real sense of doing something unusual. "You'll be careful with them, won't you, dragon?"

  Of course!

  Robie was certain the dragon was laughing inside. "What's so funny?"

  I have a name, you know.

  "Oh, I know that all dragons have names, but I've only just met you so I don't know your name." Robie turned his head ever so slightly to be sure his friends were observing how brave he was.

  And courteous.

  Cortath is my name. What is yours, little one ?

  "Robie ... that is, Robinton, and you will fly my parents very carefully, won't you?"

  Of course I will, young Robinton.

  Greatly reassured by that, Robie took advantage of this unparalleled opportunity and asked, "Will you be fighting Thread when it comes back?"

  The tail gave such a convulsive twitch that it nearly swept both Lexey and Robinton, who were nearest, off their feet. The dragon swerved his body around so that his great head, with its many-faceted eyes swirling with a variety of colours rapidly turning into orange and red, came closer to Robie.

  Dragons always fly when Thread is in the sky, was the unequivocal answer.

  "You know the song then?" Robie asked, delighted.

  But, before Cortath could answer, his rider was at his head, turning it back so that he could introduce the bronze to Merelan and Petiron who were standing beside him. A nervous apprentice hovered discreetly behind them, carrying their various sacks.

  "Robinton, what are you doing back there?" his father demanded, noticing him at last and gesturing for him to get out of the way.

  "We were just playing hop-it, only Cortath landed in the middle..." At the boy's words, the great dragon Cortath courteously moved his feet. "It's all right, Cortath. You smudged the lines a bit with your tail, but we can fix it when you leave."

  "Robinton!" His father roared, scowling his amazement.

  Robinton risked a nervous glance at his mother and saw her slight smile. Why was his father angry with him? He hadn't really been doing anything wrong, had he?

  "Cortath says he's enjoyed conversing with your son, Master Petiron," M'ridin said with a reassuring chuckle. "There aren't that many children these days who will, you know."

  Robinton's sensitive ears caught the plaintive note in the tall bronze rider's voice. He opened his mouth to say that he'd be happy to talk to Cortath any time, when he saw his mother raise her finger in her signal for him to be silent and noticed the deepening scowl on his father's face. So he looked anywhere but at the adults.

  "Out of the way now, boy," his father said, gesturing urgently.

  Robinton scooted off towards the Hall, Libby and Lexey well in front of him, all too relieved to be allowed to leave.

  "Goodbye, Cortath," Robinton said. Seeing the dragon turn his head to follow him, he waved his fingers in farewell.

  We will meet again, young Robinton, Cortath said clearly.

  "Shards, Rob, you were lucky," said Lexey enviously.

  "And brave," Libby put in, her blue eyes still as wide as saucers in her freckled face.

  Robie shrugged. He was probably lucky he hadn't been close enough to his father to get a smack for bothering a dragon, but he
didn't think he'd been particularly brave. Though he should not, perhaps, have compared a dragon with a watchwher!

  He'd caught the surprised note in the dragon's voice, and he guessed he was lucky Cortath had deigned to speak with him, instead of just lashing out with his tail at the presumptuous boy.

  "Did you hear what Cortath told me?" he asked his friends.

  "They're leaving," Lexey said, pointing as the dragons suddenly leaped skywards. As the great wings swirled up dust and grit from the courtyard, the children hastily turned away to protect their faces. When they turned back, rubbing dirt from their eyes, the dragons had already risen above the high, pitched roof of the quadrangle.

  Robinton waved frantically, recognizing Cortath's bright bronze coat and his passengers, but he didn't think even his mother was looking down just then. The next moment, all had disappeared and the courtyard looked emptier than ever. He felt oddly sad that the dragon had gone – as if he had missed something very important, but didn't know what it was. He realized that he didn't really want to know if his friends had heard the dragon, too. After all, he had been the one who had done the talking, so it was his special encounter. He was not covetous by nature, but some things you kept to yourself, because they were yours, your doing and should be savoured quietly.

  If, later, Lorra noticed that Robinton wasn't as talkative as he usually was with her, she chalked it up to his parents' absence. At least, his mother's absence. Though that didn't explain the odd little happy smile on his face, as if he were enjoying some secret thought. She liked taking care of young Rob. He was no trouble at all, especially when he would, as he did now, take himself to a corner in the kitchen and play on the pipe that was always tucked into his waistband. The tune he played wasn't familiar to her, but then he was always making up tunes. She didn't have the time, just then, to find out if he'd made up a new one. But later, as she put him to bed, she asked about it.

  "Yes, about dragons," he said sleepily.

  "You were in the courtyard when they came? Of course you were, saying goodbye to your parents," Lorra said. She snuggled his bed fur up against his chin. "You must play it for me sometime."

  "No, it's all mine," he mumbled, and Lorra wasn't sure if she had heard him right. He usually couldn't wait to play her a new tune ... because, as she thought with some acidity, she listened even if his father did not. But he was asleep before she could ask him what he meant.

  Late in the autumn, when everyone knew that there was a clutch of eggs on the Hatching Sands at Benden Weyr, Robinton met

  dragons for the second time. They came on Search. He already knew about Search, since it was the subject of a Teaching Ballad about the duty of Hall and Hold to allow any person the dragons chose to go to the Weyr. Most of those who went to a Weyr became dragonriders: a high honour. If dragons liked music, as Cortath had told him they did, maybe they'd like Robinton's tunes, and no one would object to having a dragonrider who had musical training. By the time he was old enough to be Searched, he'd be at least a second-year apprentice.

  When the wing landed in Fort Hold's courtyard, he was playing – hop-it again, actually – with Lexey, Libby, Curtos and Barba.

  Barba was not his favourite playmate – she was awful bossy – but the moment the dragons landed, she started shrieking and ran into the Hall. Robinton ran, too: right for the dragons.

  "Cortath?" he called out, racing across the vast courtyard as fast as he could towards the three bronzes who had landed to one side.

  He ducked in among the greens and blues, completely unaware that it was actually the greens and blues who were sensitive to those who might make good Impressions.

  Cortath is not here today.

  Robie stopped short, breathing hard as he realized that, indeed, his good friend was not there. "But I wanted to talk to him," he said, almost in tears with disappointment.

  I will tell him a harper boy regretted his absence.

  "I'm not a harper ... yet," Robinton admitted, identifying the not-so-bright bronze as the one who had spoken to him. "Would you mind my talking to you? If you've nothing better to do for a moment? May I ask your name?" And he executed a half-bow to show he was being respectful.

  You may. I call myself Kilminth and my rider is S'bran. What is your name?

  As if you'll remember, said another dragon voice. It was the very dark bronze one. It is only a child.

  Who hears dragons when they speak, so I will talk to him while our riders are busy. It is nice to talk to a child who hears.

  He not old enough to be Searched.

  Don't mind Calanuth, Kilminth told Robie in a somewhat supercilious tone. He too young to have much sense.

  Who's talking about having some sense ?

  Oh, curl up in the sun, and then Kilminth lowered his head down to Robinton.

  Robie was a touch nervous at the size of that head, but the eye nearest him – almost bigger than his sturdy little-boy body – was green and circling idly. He could see himself reflected over and over again in the facets closest to him, making him slightly dizzy.

  The upper facets, however, reflected the sun and the sky. Did seeing all those different things make a dragon dizzy, too?

  No, but it helps us to see Thread coming from above us when it falls.

  "When is it going to?"

  The dragon seemed to consider this question for such a long moment that Robinton wondered if he should have asked it.

  The Star Stones tell us that.

  "They talk?" Robinton didn't know about Star Stones yet. He knew about the Eye and Finger Rocks, but not Star Stones.

  They are the Star Stones.

  "Oh."

  The dragon swung his head up, staring at a distant mountain-top. The manoeuvre was a bit frightening to a small boy so close to the ground, but he wouldn't have budged just then for anything. Talking to another dragon was too precious to be scared of. Have you not seen the Star Stones at Fort Weyr?

  "No one's allowed up at the Weyr," Robinton said, eyes wide.

  Ah.

  "Why does that make you sad, Kilminth?" Robie asked.

  The dragon lowered his head again, the eye closest to him tinged with darkness: sadness, Robinton thought.

  The Weyr has been empty so long.

  "Will anyone come back to it?" That's what Robinton thought the dragon wanted to know.

  When Thread falls again.

  "So, there's one brave lad here at Ford Hold, is there?" A tall rider, skinnier than Cortath's, came up and tousled Robinton's hair.

  "I'm from the Harper Hall, bronze-rider S'bran," Robie replied.

  "Oh, my fine friend here's been chatting with you that you know my name?" S'bran hunkered down on a level with Robie. His blue eyes were twinkling. "Hall or Hold, you're a right one. Want to be a dragonrider when you grow up?"

  "I'd like to, S'bran, but I'm to be a harper."

  "Are you now?"

  Robinton nodded his head emphatically. "My mother says I'll make the best harper ever. Can one be a harper and be a dragonrider, too?"

  "C'gan is," S'bran laughed and Kilminth's eyes whirled slightly faster. Robinton's jaw dropped. Was that how dragons laughed?

  No, we laugh like this, and the sound that came from Kilminth's throat was just like S'bran's.

  Robinton was delighted and giggled. "I didn't know dragons laugh."

  The infectiousness of his giggle made both rider and dragon laugh again, the rider's a full third higher than the dragon's.

  Robinton was charmed by the harmony.

  "C'mon, S'bran," another rider yelled. "We've three more stops to make today, you know."

  "All right, all right, I'm coming," S'bran said. Unfolding from his crouch, he gave Robinton's hair a second friendly rubbing.

  Then he leaped to the short forearm Kilminth raised and was lifted high enough to throw his leg over the next-to-last ridge on the dragon's neck. "Best stand back, laddie. This big fellow of mine will raise a lot of dust."

  Robinton scurried to
one side, but swerved the instant he heard the sound of wings beating. Raising his forearm to protect his face from the sand and grit, he lifted his other arm in a farewell salute.

  Another time, young Harper, he heard Kilminth say, and then they had all spiralled high enough to go between. Once again Robinton felt the same sort of odd emptiness that had followed Cortath's departure. He sighed deeply. They hadn't told him that he couldn't be a harper and a dragonrider, since they already had one.

  Which would please his mother. She had set her heart on him being a harper, and that would take a lot of hard work and many years.

  He might even be too old the next time there were eggs on the Hatching Ground. There was only the one queen, and she didn't clutch that often.

  Scuffing his way through the neat drifts that the dragon wings had made of the dirt on the courtyard, he returned to the Hall but not to the game. He wanted to be by himself and recall every word Kilminth had said to him. And every word Cortath had said to him as well. Those two incidents were so very, very special to him, and truly his alone.

  "Did I see you out in the Fort yard when the dragons were there?" his mother asked when she joined him for supper. She'd been teaching during the Search.

  "Yes. The bronze calls himself Kilminth," he said, but that was as much as he intended to say. He filled his mouth with beans so that he wouldn't be able to answer another question.

  "That's nice," she said, nodding in approval of his eating so well.

  Sometimes he didn't have much of an appetite, but he did tonight.

  "Did you know they found two lads on Search? One from here and one from the Hold."

  "Who went from here?" The sudden notion that a harper could be Searched startled Robinton so much that he spoke with his mouth full and his father reprimanded him.

  "A second-year apprentice, Rulyar, from Nerat," his mother answered.

  "He plays gitar and sings tenor," Robie said, secretly delighted.

  Maybe he could be a dragonrider and a harper.

  "Fancy Robinton knowing that," Petiron remarked, surprised.

  "Oh, Rulyar's minded Rob a time or two during evening rehearsals," Merelan said off-handedly. "Told me that he missed his small brothers," she added, glancing at her son with the look that meant he wasn't to mention that Rulyar had been teaching him gitar fingering for the last few months. Robie would miss Rulyar; he hoped that his mother could find someone else to teach him.