Dragon's Fire

by Anne McCaffrey

  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 trade
rs 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.”