Dragonsong - Энн Маккефри 2 стр.

When the fleet was in, Yanus would stop by the Little Hall where Menolly held her class. Hed scowl at her from the back of the Hall. Fortunately, hed only stay a little while because he made the children nervous. Once she actually saw his foot tapping the beat; he scowled when he realized what he was doing and then he left.

He had sent the message sloop to Igen Hold three days after the burial. The crew brought back news of no interest to Menolly but the adults went around looking black: something about the Oldtimers and Menolly wasnt to worry her head, so she didnt. The crew also brought back a message slate addressed to Petiron and signed with the imprint of Masterharper Robinton.

Poor old Petiron, one of the aunties told Menolly, sighing and dabbing affectedly at her eyes. He always looked forward to slates from Masterharper, Ah well, itll keep til the new Harper comes. Hell know what to do with it.

It took Menolly a while to find out where the slate was: propped up conspicuously on the mantel in her fathers Records room. Menolly was positive that the message had something to do with her, with the songs that Petiron had said hed sent to the Masterharper. The notion so obsessed her that she got bold enough to ask her mother why Yanus didnt open the message.

Open a sealed message from the Masterharper to a man dead? Mavi stared at her daughter in shocked incredulity. Your father would do no such thing. Harpers letters are for Harpers.

I only remembered that Petiron had sent a slate to the Masterharper. I thought it might be about a replacement coming. I mean

Ill be glad when the new Harper does come, mgirl. Youve been getting above yourself with this Teaching.

The next few days were full of apprehension for Menolly: she conceived the idea that her mother would make Yanus replace her as Teacher. That was, of course, impossible for the same reasons that had forced Yanus to make her the teacher in the first place. But it was a fact that Mavi found all the smelliest, most boring or tedious jobs for Menolly once her teaching duty was done. And Yanus took it into his head to appear in the Little Hall more frequently.

Then the weather settled down into a clear spell and the entire Sea Hold was kept at a run with fish. The children were excused from the Teaching to gather seaweeds blown up by the high tides and all the Hold women set to boiling the weed for the thick juice in the stalks: juice that kept back many sicknesses and bone ailments. Or so the old aunties said. But theyd find good out of any bad and the worst of any blessing. And the worst of the seaweed was its smell, thought Menolly, who had to stir the huge kettles.

Threadfalls came and added some excitement: the fear in being Holdbound while the dragons swept the skies with their fiery breath, charring Thread to impotence. (Menolly wanted to see that grand sight one day, instead of just singing about it, or knowing it was taking place outside the thick stone walls and heavy metal shutters of the Holds windows.) Afterward she joined the flamethrower crews that checked for any possible Thread that might have escaped dragon flame. Not that there was much for Thread to eat on the windswept bare marshes and bogs around Half-Circle Sea Hold. The barren rock palisades that made Half-Circle bore no greenery at all, winter or summer, but it was wise to check the marshes and beaches. Thread could burrow into the seagrass stalks, or slide down the marshberry and seabeachplum bushes, burrow into the roots, multiply and eat anything green and growing until the coast was as bare as rock.

Flame-crewing was cold work, but it was a distinct pleasure for Menolly to be out of the Hold, in the rough air. Her team got as far as the Dragon Stones to the south. Petiron had told her that those stones, standing offshore in the treacherous waters, had once been part of the palisade, probably hollowed with caves like all this stretch of cliff.

The crowning treat for Menolly was when the Weyrleader, Flar, himself, on bronze Mnementh, circled in for a chat with Yanus. Of course, Menolly wasnt near enough to hear what the two men said, but she was close enough to smell the firestone reek of the giant bronze dragon. Close enough to see his beautiful eyes catching all colors in the pale wintry sunlight: to see his muscles knot and smooth under the soft hide. Menolly stood, as was properly respectful, with the other flamethrower crews. But once, when the dragon turned his head in a lazy fashion to peer in her direction, his eyes whirled slowly with their changing colors and she was certain that Mnementh looked at her. She didnt dare breathe, he was so beautiful!

Then, suddenly, the magic moment was over. Flar gave a graceful leap to the dragons shoulder, caught the fighting straps and pulled himself into place on the neck ridges. Air whooshed around Menolly and the others as the great bronze opened his fragile-looking wings. The next moment, he seemed to be in the air, catching the updraft, beating steadily higher. Abruptly the dragon winked from view. Menolly was not the only one to sigh deeply. To see a dragonrider in the sky was always an occurrence: to be on the same ground with a dragon and his rider, to witness his graceful takeoff and exit between was a marvel.

All the songs about dragonriders and dragons seemed inadequate to Menolly. She stole up to the little cubicle in the womens dormitory that she shared with Sella. She wanted to be alone. Shed a little pipe among her things, a soft, whispery reedpipe, and she began to play it: a little whistle composed of her excitement and her response to the days lovely event.

So there you are! Sella flounced into the room, her face reddened, her breath rough. Shed obviously run up the steep stairs. Told Mavi youd be here. Sella grabbed the little pipe from Menollys fingers. And tuning, too.

Oh, Sella. Its an old tune! Menolly said mendaciously and grabbed her pipe back.

Sellas jaw worked with anger. Old, my foot! I know your ways, girl. And youre dodging work. You get back to the kitchen. Youre needed now.

I am not dodging work. I taught this morning during Threadfall and then I had to go with the crews.

Your crews been in this past half-day or more and you still in smelly, sandy clothes, mucking up the room I have to sleep in. You get below or Ill tell Yanus youve been tuning.

Ha! You wouldnt know a tune if you had your nose rubbed in it.

But Menolly was shedding her work clothes as fast as she could. Sella was just likely to slip the word to Mavi (her sister was as wary of Yanus as Menolly) about Menolly piping in her rooma suspicious action on its own. Though Menolly hadnt sworn not to tune at all; only not to do it in front of people.

However, everyone was in a good mood that night: Yanus, because hed spoken to Flar the Weyrleader and because thered be good fishing on the morrow if the weather held. Fish always rose to feed from drowned Thread, and half the Fall had been over Nerat Bay. The Deep would be thick with schools. With Yanus in a good mood, the rest of the sea holders could also rejoice because thered been no Thread on the ground at all.

So it wasnt any wonder that they called on Menolly to play for them. She sang two of the longer Sagas about dragons; and then did the Name-Song for the current wingleaders of Benden Weyr so her Sea Hold would know their dragonmen. She wondered if thered been a recent Hatching that Half-Circle mightnt have heard about, being so isolated. But she was certain that Flar would have told Yanus if that were so. But would Yanus have told Menolly? She wasnt the Harper to be told such things as courtesy.

The sea holders wanted more singing, but her throat was tired. So she played them a song they could sing, bellowing out the words in voices roughened by wind and salt. She saw her father scowling at her, though he was singing along with the rest of them, and she wondered if he didnt want hera mere girlto play mens songs. It galled her because shed played them often enough when Petiron was alive. She sighed at this injustice. And then wondered what Flar would have said if hed known that Half-Circle Sea Hold was dependent on a mere girl for their harpering. Shed heard everyone say that Flar was a fair man, a farseeing man, and a fine dragonrider. There were even songs about him and his Weyrwoman, Lessa.

So she sang them, in honor of the Weyrleaders visit, and her fathers expression lightened. She sang on until her throat was so tight that not a squeak would come out. She wished that someone else could play to give her a rest but, as she scanned the faces of the holders, there wasnt any of them who could beat a drum properly, much less finger a gitar or pipe.

That was why the next day it seemed only logical for her to start one of the children learning the drum rolls. Plenty of songs could be sung just to drumbeat. And one of Soreels two children still in Teaching was sensitive enough to learn to pipe.

Someone, Sella perhaps, Menolly thought bitterly, informed Mavi of Menollys activity.

You were told no tuning

Teaching someone drum beats is not tuning

Teaching anyone to play is Harper business, not yours, mgirl. Just your good fortune Sea Holder is out in the Deep or youd have the belt across your shoulders, so you would. No more nonsense!

But its not nonsense, Mavi. Last night another drummer or piper would have

Her mother raised her hand in warning, and Menolly bit shut her lips.

No tuning, Menolly!

And that was that.

Now girl, see to the glows before the fleet gets back.

That job took Menolly inexorably to the Harpers room: swept clean of everything that had been personal to Petiron. She was also reminded of the sealed message on the Record room mantel. What if the Masterharper were expecting a message from Petiron about the songmaker? Menolly was so very sure that part of that unopened message was about her. Not that thinking about it did Menolly any good. Even knowing it for a fact would be no help, Menolly decided gloomily. But that didnt stop her from going past Yanuss Record room and peering in at the tempting package on the mantel.

She sighed, turning from the room. By now the Masterharper would have heard of Petirons death and be sending a new Harper. Maybe the new man would be able to open the message, and maybe, if it was about her, maybe if it said that the songs shed sent were good ones, Yanus and her mother wouldnt put such restrictions on her about tuning and whistling and everything.

As the winter spun itself out, Menolly found that her sense of loss when she thought of Petiron deepened. He had been the only person in the Sea Hold who had ever encouraged her in anything: and most especially in that one thing that she was now forbidden to do. Melodies dont stop growing in the mind, tapping at fingers, just because theyre forbidden. And Menolly didnt stop composing themwhich, she felt, was not precisely disobeying.

What seemed to worry Yanus and Mavi most, Menolly reasoned to herself, was the fact that the children, whom she was supposed to teach only the proper Ballads and Sagas, might think Menollys tunes were Harper-crafted. (If her tunes were that good in her parents ears, what was the harm of them?) Basically they didnt want her to play her songs aloud where they would be heard and perhaps repeated at awkward times.

Menolly could, therefore, see no harm in writing down new tunes. She played them softly in the empty Little Hall when the children had left, before she began her afternoon chores, carefully hiding her notations among the Harper records in the rack of the Hall. Safe enough, for no one but herself, til the new Harper came, would discover them there.

This mild deviation from the absolute obedience to her fathers restriction about tuning did much to ease Menollys growing frustration and loneliness. What Menolly didnt realize was that her mother had been watching her closely, having recognized the signs of rebellion in her. Mavi didnt want the Hold to be disgraced in any way, and she feared that Menolly, her head turned by Petirons marked favor, was not mature enough to discipline herself. Sella had warned her mother that Menolly was getting out of hand. Mavi put some of that tale down to sisterly envy. But, when Sella had told Mavi that Menolly had actually started to teach another how to play an instrument, Mavi had been obliged to intervene. Let Yanus get one whisper of Menollys disobedience and thered be real trouble in the Hold for the girl.

Spring was coming and with spring, the quieter seas. Perhaps the new Harper would arrive soon.

And then spring did come, a first glorious day. The sweet scents of seabeachplum and marshberry filled the seaward breezes and came in through the opened shutters of the Little Hall. The children were singing loudly, as if shouting got them through the learning faster. True, they were singing one of the longer Sagas, word perfect, but with far more exuberance than was strictly needed. Perhaps it was that exuberance that infected Menolly and reminded her of a tune shed tried to set down the day before.

She did not consciously disobey. She certainly was unaware that the fleet had returned from an early catch. She was equally unaware that the chords she was strumming were notofficiallyof the Harpers craft. And it was doubly unfortunate that this lapse occurred just as the Sea Holder passed the open windows of the Hall.

He was in the Little Hall almost at once, summarily dismissing the youngsters to help unload the heavy catch. Then he silently, which made the anticipation of the punishment worse, removed his wide belt, signaled to Menolly to raise her tunic over her head and to bend over the high harpers stool.

When he had finished, she had fallen to her knees on the hard stone flags, biting her lips to keep back the sobs. Hed never beaten her so hard before. The blood was roaring in her ears so fiercely that she didnt hear Yanus leave the Little Hall. It was a long while before she could ease the tunic over the painful weals on her back. Only when shed got slowly to her feet did she realize that hed taken the gitar, too. She knew then that his judgement was irrevocable and harsh.

And unjust! Shed only played the first few barshummed alongand that only because the last chords of the Teaching Ballad had modified into the new tune in her head. Surely that little snitch wouldnt have done any lasting harm! And the children knew all the Teaching Ballads they were supposed to know. She hadnt meant to disobey Yanus.

Menolly? Her mother came to the classhall door, the carrying thong of an empty skin in her hand. You dismissed them early? Is that wise Her mother stopped abruptly and stared at her daughter. An expression of anger and disgust crossed her face. So youve been the fool after all? With so much at stake, and you had to tune

I didnt do it on purpose, Mavi. The songjust came into my mind. Id played no more than a measure

There wasnt any point in trying to justify the incident to her mother. Not now. The desolation Menolly had felt when she realized her father had taken the gitar intensified in the face of her mothers cold displeasure.

Take the sack. We need fresh greens, Mavi said in an expressionless voice. And any of the yellow-veined grass that might be up. There should be some.

Resignedly, Menolly took the sack and, without thinking, looped the thong over her shoulder. She caught her breath as the unwieldy sack banged against her scored back.

Before Menolly could avoid it, her mother had flipped up the loose tunic. She gave an inarticulate exclamation. Youll need numbweed on some of those.

Menolly pulled away. What goods a beating then, if its numbed away first chance? And she dashed out of the Hall.

Much Mavi cared if she hurt, anyhow, except that a sound body works harder and longer and faster.

Her thoughts and her misery spurred her out of the Hold, every swinging stride she took jarring her sore back. She didnt slow down because shed the whole long track in front of the Hold to go. The faster she went, the better, before some auntie wanted to know why the children were out of lessons so soon, or why Menolly was going green-picking instead of Teaching.

Fortunately she encountered no one. Everyone was either down at the Dock Cave, unloading, or making themselves scarce to the Sea Holders eyes so they wouldnt have to. Menolly charged past the smaller holds, down aways on the marshroad, then up the righthand track, south of the Half-Circle. Shed put as much distance between herself and Sea Hold as she could: all perfectly legitimate, in search of greenery.

As she jogged along the sandy footpath, she kept her eyes open for fresh growth, trying to ignore the occasional rough going when shed jar her whole body. Her back began to smart. She gritted her teeth and paced on.

Her brother, Alemi, had once said that she could run as well as any boy of the Hold and outdistance the half of them on a long race. If only she had been a boyThen it wouldnt have mattered if Petiron had died and left them Harperless. Nor would Yanus have beaten a boy for being brave enough to sing his own songs.

The first of the low marsh valleys was pink and yellow with blooming seabeachplum and marshberry, slightly blackened here and there: more from the low-flying queens catching the odd Thread that escaped the main wings. Yes, and there was the patch that the flamethrower had charred: the one Thread infestation that had gotten through. One day, Menolly told herself, shed just throw open a windows steel shutters and see the dragons charring Thread in the sky. What a sight that must be for certain!

Fearful, too, she reckoned, having seen her mother treat men for Threadburn. Why, the mark looked as if someone had drawn a point deep groove with a red-hot poker on the mans arm, leaving the edges black with singed skin. Torly would always bear that straight scar, puckered and red. Threadscore never healed neatly.

She had to stop running. Shed begun to sweat heavily and her back was stinging. She loosened her tunic belt, flapping the soft runner-beast hide to send cooling draughts up between her shoulder blades.

Past the first marsh valley, up over the rocky hump hill into the next valley. Cautious going here: this was one of the deep, boggy places. No sign of yellow-veined grasses. There had been a stand last summer two humpy hills over.

She heard them first, glancing up with a stab of terror at the unexpected sounds above. Dragons? She glanced wildly about for the tell tale gray glitter of sky-borne Thread in the east. The greeny blue sky was clear of that dreaded fogging, but not of dragonwings. She heard dragons? It couldnt be! They didnt swarm like that. Dragons always flew in ordered wings, a pattern against the sky. These were darting, dodging, then swooping and climbing. She shaded her eyes. Blue flashes, green, the odd brown and thenOf course, sun glinted golden off the leading, dartlike body. A queen! A queen that tiny?

She expelled the breath shed been holding in her amazement. A fire lizard queen? It had to be. Only fire lizards could be that small and look like dragons. Whers certainly didnt. And whers didnt mate midair. And thats what Menolly was seeing: the mating flight of a fire lizard queen, with her bronzes in close pursuit.

So fire lizards werent boy talk! Awed, Menolly watched the swift, graceful flight. The queen had led her swarm so high that the smaller ones, the blues and greens and browns, had been forced down. They circled now at a lower altitude, struggling to keep the same direction as the high fliers. They dipped and dashed in mimicry of the queen and bronzes.

They had to be fire lizards! thought Menolly, her heart almost stopping at the beauty and thrill of the sight. Fire lizards! And they were like dragons. Only much, much smaller. She didnt know all the Teachings for nothing. A queen dragon was gold: she mated with the bronze who could outfly her. Which was exactly what was happening right now with the fire lizards.

Oh, they were beautiful to behold! The queen had turned sunward and Menolly, for all her eyes were very longsighted, could barely pick out that black mote and trailing cluster.

She walked on, following the main group of fire lizards. Shed bet anything that shed end up on the coastline near the Dragon Stones. Last fall her brother Alemi had claimed hed seen fire lizards there at dawn, feeding on fingertails in the shallows. His report had set off another rash of what Petiron had called lizard-fever. Every lad in the Sea Hold had burned with plans to trap a fire lizard. Theyd plagued Alemi to repeat his sighting.

It was just as well that the crags were unapproachable. Not even an experienced boatman would brave those treacherous currents. But, if anyone had been sure there were fire lizards thereWell, no one would know from her.

Even if Petiron had been alive, Menolly decided, she would not have told him. Hed never seen a fire lizard, though hed admitted to the children that the Records allowed that fire lizards did exist.

Theyre seen, Petiron had told her later, but they cant be captured. He gave a wheezing chuckle. Peopleve been trying to since the first shell was cracked.

Why cant they be caught?

They dont want to. Theyre smart. They just disappear

They go between like dragons?

Theres no proof of that, said Petiron, a trifle cross, as if shed been too presumptuous in suggesting a comparison between fire lizards and the great dragons of Pern.

Where else can you disappear to? Menolly had wanted to know. What is between?

Some place that isnt. Petiron had shuddered. Youre neither here nor there, and he gestured first to one corner of the Hall and then towards the Sea Dock on the other side of the Harbor. Its cold, and its nothing. No sight, no sound, no sensations.

Youve ridden dragonback?Menolly had been impressed.

Once. Many Turns ago. He shuddered again in remembrance. Now, since were touching on the subject, sing me the Riddle Song.

Its been solved. Why do we have to know it now?

Sing it for me so Ill know that you know it, girl, Petiron had said testily. Which was no reason at all.

But Petiron had been very kind to her, Menolly knew, and her throat tightened with remembered regret for his passing. (Had he gone between? The way dragons did when they lost their riders or grew too infirm to fly? No, one left nothing behind, going between. Petiron had left his body to be slipped into the deeps.) And Petiron had left more behind than his body. Hed left her every song hed ever known, every lay, every ballad, saga, every fingering, chord and strum, every rhythm. There wasnt any way a stringed instrument could be played that she didnt know, nor any cadence on the drums at which she wasnt time-perfect. She could whistle double-trills as well as any wherry with her tongue or on the reeds. But there had been some things Petiron wouldntor perhaps couldnttell her about her world. Menolly wondered if this was because she was a girl and there were mysteries that only the male mind could understand.

Well, as Mavi had once told Menolly and Sella, there are feminine puzzles that no mere man could sort, so that score is even.

And one more for the feminine side, said Menolly as she followed the fire lizards. A mere girl had seen what all the boysand menof the Sea Hold had only dreamed of seeing, fire lizards at play.

Theyd ceased following the queen and her bronzes and now indulged in mock air battles, swooping now and then to the land itself. And seemingly under it. Until Menolly realized that they must be over the beaches. The sand was slipping under her feet. An unwary step could plunge her into the holes and dips. She could hear the sea. She changed her course, keeping to the thicker patches of coarse marsh grasses. The ground would be firmer there, and shed be less visible to the fire lizards.

She came to a slight rise, before the bluff broke off into a steep dive onto the beaches. The Dragon Stones were beyond in the sea, slightly hidden by a heat haze. She could hear fire lizards chirping and chattering. She crouched in the grasses and then, dropping to her full length, crept to the bluff edge, hoping for another glimpse of the fire lizards.

They were quite visibledelightfully so. The tide was out, and they were exceedingly busy in the shallows, picking rockmites from the tumbled exposed boulders, or wallowing on the narrow edging of red and white sand, bathing themselves with great enthusiasm in the little pools, spreading their delicate wings to dry. There were several flurries as two fire lizards vied for the same choice morsel. In that alone, she decided, they must differ from dragons, shed never heard of dragons fighting amongst themselves for anything. Shed heard that dragons feeding among herds of runner-beasts and wherries were something horrible to behold. Dragons didnt eat that frequently, which was as well or not all the resources of Pern could keep the dragons fed.

Did dragons like fish? Menolly giggled, wondering if there were any fish in the sea big enough to satisfy a dragons appetite. Probably those legendary fish that always eluded the Sea Hold nets. Her Sea Hold sent their tithe of sea produce, salted, pickled or smoked, to Benden Weyr. Occasionally a dragonrider came asking for fresh fish for a special feasting, like a Hatching. And the women of the Weyr came every spring and fall to berry or cut withies and grasses. Menolly had once served Manora, the headwoman of Benden Lower Caverns, and a very pleasant gentle woman shed been, too. Menolly hadnt been allowed to stay in the room long because Mavi shooed her daughters out, saying that she had things to discuss with Manora. But Menolly had seen enough to know she liked her.

The whole flock of lizards suddenly went aloft, startled by the return of the queen and the bronze who had flown her. The pair settled wearily in the warm shallow waters, wings spread as if both were too exhausted to fold them back. The bronze tenderly twined his neck about his queens and they floated so, while blues excitedly offered the resting pair fingertails and rock mites.

Entranced, Menolly watched from her screen of sea-grass. She was utterly engrossed by the small doings of eating, cleaning and resting. By and by, singly or in pairs, the lesser fire lizards winged up to the first of the sea-surrounded bluffs, lost quickly from Menollys sight as they secreted themselves in tiny creviced weyrs.

With graceful dignity, the queen and her bronze rose from their bathing. How they managed to fly with their glistening wings so close together, Menolly didnt know. As one, they seemed to dart aloft, then glided in a slow spiral down to the Dragon Stones, disappearing on the seaside and out of Menollys vision.

Only then did she become conscious of discomfort; of the hot sun on her welted back, sand in the waist-band of her trousers, seeping into her shoes, dried as sweaty grit on her face and hands.

Cautiously, she wriggled back from the edge of the bluff. If the fire lizards knew theyd been overseen, they might not return to this cove. When she felt shed crawled far enough, she got to a crouching position and ran for a way.

She felt as rarely privileged as if shed been asked to Benden Weyr. She kicked up her heels in an excess of joy and then, spotting some thick marsh grass canes in the bog, snicked one off at the waterline. Her father may have taken her gitar away, but there were more materials than strings over a sounding box to make music.

She measured the proper length barrel and cut off the rest. She deftly made six holes top and two bottom, as Petiron had taught her, and in moments, she was playing her reed pipe. A saucy tune, bright and gay because she was happy inside. A tune about a little fire lizard queen, sitting on a rock in the lapping sea, preening herself for her adoring bronze.

Shed a bit of trouble with the obligatory runs and found herself changing keys, but when shed rehearsed the tune several times, she decided she liked it. It sounded so different from the sort of melody Petiron had taught her, different from the traditional form. Furthermore, it sounded like a fire lizard song: sprightly, cunning, secretive.

She stopped her piping, puzzled. Did the dragons know about fire lizards?

Chapter 3

When Menolly finally got back to the Sea Hold, the sky was darkening. The Hall was bustling with the usual end of day activity. The oldsters were setting the dinner tables, tidying the great Hall and chattering away as if they hadnt met for Turns instead of only that morning.