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land beyond the courtyard.
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"That's N'ton. I've got to speak to him, Menolly, about our teaching trip.
I'll be right back." He was out of the room at a trot, and she could hear him
taking the steps in a clatter.
She looked at the music they'd been playing, and
Sebell's words echoed through her mind. "He has the discipline; you have the
originality." "Everyone's been humming it." People liking her twiddles? That
still didn't seem possible, although Sebell had no more reason to lie to her
than the Masterharper when he'd said that her music was valuable to him. To
the Harper Craft. In-
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credible! She struck a chord on the gitar, a triumphant, incredible chord, and
then modulated it, thinking how undisciplined that musical reaction had been.
They were still twiddles, her songs, unlike the beauti-
ful, intricate musical designs that Domick composed. But if she studied hard
with him, maybe she could improve her twiddles into what she could honestly
call music.
Firmly she turned her thoughts toward the gitar duet and ran through the
tricky passages, slowly at first and then finally at time. One of the chords
modulated into tones that were so close to the agonized cry of the previous
night that she repeated the phrase.
"Don't leave me alone" and then found another chord that fit, "The cry in the
night/Of anguish heart-striking/
Of soul-killing fright." That's what Sebell had said: that
Brekke would not want to live if Canth and F'nor died.
"Live for my living/Or else I must die/Don't leave me alone./A world heard
that cry."
By the time Menolly had arranged the chords in the plaint to her satisfaction,
Beauty, Rocky and Diver were softly crooning along with her. So she worked on
the verse.
"Well, you approve?" she asked her fair. "Perhaps I
ought to jot it down on something . .."
"No need," said a quiet voice behind her, and she whirled on the stool to see
Sebell seated at the sandtable, scribing quickly. "I think I've got most of
it." He looked up, saw the startled expression on her face and gave her a
brief smile. "Close your mouth and come check my notation."
"But... but..."
"What did I tell you, Menolly, about apologizing tor the wrong things?"
"I was just tuning ..."
"Oh, the song needs polishing, but that refrain is poignant enough to set a
Hold to tears." He beckoned again to her, a crisp gesture that brought her to
his side.
"You might want to change the sequence, give the peril first, the solution
next . . . though I don't know. With
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that melody ... do you always use minors?" He slid a glass across the sand so
the scribbling couldn't be erased.
"We'll see what the Harper thinks. Now what's wrong?"
"Leave it? You can't be serious."
"I can be and usually am, young Menolly," he said, rising from the stool to
reach for his gitar. "Now, let's see if I put it down correctly."
Menolly sat, immersed in acute embarrassment to hear
Sebell playing a tune of her making. But she had to listen. When her fire
lizards began to croon softly along with SebeU's deft playing, she was about
ready to con-
cede privately that it wasn't a bad tune after all.
"That's very well done, Sebell! Didn't know you had it in you," said the
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Masterharper, applauding vigorously from the doorway. "I'd rather dreaded
transferring that incident to music..."
"This song, Master Robinton, is Menolly's." Sebell had risen at the Harper's
entrance, and now he bowed deferentially to Menolly. "Come, girl, it's why the
Harpers searched a continent for you."
"Menolly, my dear child, no blushes for that song."
Robinton seized her hands and clasped them warmly.
"Think of the chore you just saved me. I came in halfway through the verse,
Sebell, if you would please . . ." and the Harper gestured to Sebell to begin
again. With one long arm, Robinton snaked a stool out from under the
flat-bottomed sandtable, and still holding Menolly by the hand, he composed
himself to listen as Sebell's clever fingers plucked the haunting phrases from
the augment-
ing chords. "Now, Menolly, think only of the music as
Sebell plays, not that it is your music. Learn to think objectively, not
subjectively. Listen as a harper."
He held her hand so tightly in his that she could not pull away without giving
offense. The clasp of his fingers was more than reassuring: it was
therapeutic. Her em-
barrassment ebbed as the music and Sebell's warm bari-
tone voice flowed into the room. When the fire lizards hummed loud, Robinton
squeezed her hand and smiled down at her.
IJ3
"Yes, a little work on the phrases. One or two words could be altered, I
think, to heighten the effect, but the whole can stand. Can you scribe. . . .
Ah, Sebell, well done. Well done," said the Masterharper as Sebell tapped the
protecting glass. "I'll want it transferred to some of those neat paper sheets
Bendarek supplies us with, so
Menolly can go over it at her leisure. Not too much leisure," and the
Masterharper held up a warning hand, "because that fire lizard echo swept
round Pern, and we must explain it. A good song, Menolly, a very good song.
Don't doubt yourself so fiercely. Your instinct for melodic line is very good,
very good indeed. Perhaps I should send more of my apprentices to a sea hold
for a time if this is the sort, of talent the waves provoke. And see, your
fair is still humming the line .. ."
Menolly drew out of her confusion long enough to realize that the fire
lizards' hum had nothing to do with her song: their attention was not on the
humans but...
'The eggs! They're hatching!"
_ "Hatching!" "Hatching!" Both master and journeyman crowded each other to get
through the door to the hearth and the fire-warming pots. "Menolly! Come
herel"
"I'm getting the meat!"
"They're hatching!" the Harper shouted. "They're hatching. Grab that pot,
Sebell, it's wobbling!"
As Menolly dashed into the room, the two men were kneeling at the hearth,
watching anxiously as the earthen pots rocked slightly.
"They can't hatch XN the pots," she said with a certain amount of asperity in
her voice. She took the pot from the protecting encirclement of Sebell's
curved fingers and carefully upended it on the hearth, her fingers cushioning
the egg until the sand spilled away from it. She turned to
Robinton, but he had already followed her example. Both eggs lay in the light
of the fire, rocking slightly, the stria-
tions of hatching marking the shells.
The fire lizards lined up on the mantel and the hearth, humming deep in their
throats. The pulsing sound seemed to punctuate the now violent movements ot
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the eggs as the tatchlings fluttered against the shells for exit.
"Master Robinton?" called Silvina from the outer room.
"Master Robinton?"
"Silvina! They're hatching!" The Harper's jubilant bellow startled Menolly and
set the fire lizards to squawking and flapping their wings in surprise.
Other harpers, curious about the noise, began to crowd in behind Silvina, who
stood at the door to the Harper's sleeping quarters. If there were too many
people in the room, Menolly thought...
"No! Stay out! Keep them out!" she cried before she
realized she'd said anything.
"Yes. Stay back now," Silvina was saying. "You can't all see. You've got the
meat, Menolly? Ah, so you have.
Is it enough?"
"It should be."
"What do we do now?" asked the Harper, his voice rough with suppressed
excitement as he crouched above the egg.
"When the fire lizard emerges, feed it," Menolly said, somewhat surprised, for
the Harper must have been a guest at numerous dragon hatchings. "Just stuff
its mouth with food."
"When will they hatch?" asked Sebell, washing his fingers in his palms with
excited frustration.
The fire lizards' hum was getting more intense: their eyes whirling with
participation in the event. Suddenly a second little golden queen erupted into
the room, her eyes spinning. She let out a squeal which Beauty answered,
lifting her wings higher, but in greeting, not challenge. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]