“Oh, I want to teach you, Sebell. I want to do everything I can, if it’s gutting fish or teaching you to sail. I may be only a girl, but I’m going to be the best harper in the entire Hall…”
“Easy, Menolly,” said Sebell, laughing at her excess. I believe you.”
“I do, too!” said Piemur in a low, intense tone of reassurance. “I never knew you’d had that kind of hold life. Didn’t anyone ever listen to your songs?”
“Petiron did, but after he died…”
“I can see now why it’s been so hard for you, Menolly, to appreciate how important your songs are. After what you’ve been through,” and Sebell gently squeezed her left hand, “it would be hard to believe in yourself. Promise me, Menolly, to believe from now on? Your songs are very important to the Harper, to the Hall and to me. Master Domick’s music is brilliant, but yours appeals to everyone, holder and crafter, landsman and seaman. Your songs deal with subjects, like the fire lizard and Brekke’s call to F'nor and Canth, that will help change the sort of set attitudes that nearly killed you in your home hold.
“There’s something wrong in not appreciating one’s own special abilities, my girl. Find your own limitations, yes, but don’t limit yourself with false modesty.”
“That’s what I’ve always liked about Menolly: she’s got her head on right,” said Piemur with all the sententiousness of an ancient uncle.
Menolly looked at her friend and then began to laugh, as much at Piemur as at herself. Her outburst had at long last lifted a weight of intolerable depression. She straightened her shoulders and smiled at her friends, flinging out her arms to signal her release.
They all heard the happy warbling of the fire lizards. Beauty crooned with pleasure, rubbing her head against Menolly’s cheek, and Kimi gave a drowsy chirp that made the trio of harpers laugh.
“You are feeling better now, aren’t you, Menolly?” said Piemur. “So we’d better follow orders, because it doesn’t do to keep a Lord Holder waiting, much less Master Robinton. You’ve got your belt and I’m washed up, so we’d better get to the wineman’s stall.”
Menolly hesitated just a moment.
“Well?” asked Sebell, raising his eyebrows to encourage her to answer.
“What if he finds out I’m the one who hit Benis?”
“Not from Benis he won’t,” replied Piemur with a snort. “Besides, he’s got fifteen sons. And only one fire lizard. He wants to talk to you about her. Not even the Masterharper knows as much about fire lizards as you do. Come on!”
Chapter 10
Then my feet took off and my legs went, too,
And my body was obliged to follow.
Me with my hands and my mouth full of cress
And my throat too dry to swallow.
To Menolly’s intense relief, all Lord Groghe did want to talk about was the fire lizards—his in particular and in general. The four of them, Robinton, Sebell, Lord Groghe and herself, sat at a table apart from the others, on one side of the square, each of them with a fire lizard. Menolly was torn between amusement and awe that she, the newest of apprentices, should be in such exalted company. Lord Groghe, for all his clipped speech and an amazing range of descriptive grimaces, was very easy to talk to, once she got over her initial nervousness about the fracas with Benis. She heard, in detail, about the Hatching of Merga, smiled when Lord Groghe guffawed reminiscently over his early anxieties about her.
“Could’ve used someone with your knowledge, girl.”
“You forget, sir, that my friends broke shell at about the same time Merga did. I wouldn’t have been much help to you then.”
“You can be now, though. How do I go about teaching Merga to fetch and carry for me? Heard about your pipes.”
“She’s just one. It took all nine of mine to bring me the pipes. They’re heavy,” Menolly considered the problem, seeing the disappointment on Lord Groghe’s features. “For just Merga alone, it would have to be something light, like a message, and you’d have to want it very badly. It was…well, my feet still hurt and it was such a long walk to the cot…”
His eyes, which were a disconcertingly light brown, fixed on hers. “Got to want it badly, huh? Humph. Don’t know as I want anything badly!” He gave a snort of laughter at her expression. “You want things badly when you’re young, girl. When you’re my age, you’ve learned how to plan.” He winked at her. “Take the point, though, since Merga’s a bundle of emotion, aren’t you, pet?” He stroked her head with a remarkably tender touch for a big, heavy-fingered man. “Emotion, that’s what they respond best to. Want’s sort of an emotion, isn’t it? If you want something bad enough…Humph.” He laughed again, this time with an oblique look at the Harper. “Emotion, then, Harper, not knowledge, is what these little beasties communicate. Emotion, like Brekke’s fear t’other night. Hatching’s emotional, too. And today…” he turned his light eyes back to Menolly.
“Today…that was all my fault, sir,” Menolly said, grabbing at a remark of Piemur’s for excuse. “My friend, Piemur, the little fellow,” and Menolly measured Piemur’s height from the ground with her free hand, “stumbled in the crowd. I was afraid he’d be trampled…”
“Was that what that was all about, Robinton?” asked Lord Groghe. “You never did explain,” but Lord Groghe seemed more interested in the lack of wine in his cup. Robinton politely topped the cup from the wineskin on the table.
“It never occurred to me, Lord Groghe,” said Menolly with genuine contrition, “that I’d be alarming you or the Masterharper or Sebell.”
“The young of every kind tend to be easily alarmed,” remarked the Harper, but Menolly could see the corners of his mouth twitching with amusement. “The problem will disappear with maturity.”
“And increases now with so many fire lizards about her,” added Lord Groghe with a grunt. “How much more d’you think they’ll grow, girl, if yours are the same age as Merga?” He was frowning at Beauty and glancing back to Merga.
“Mirrim’s three fire lizards at Benden Weyr were from the first clutch, weren’t they? They’re not more than a fingertip longer,” said Menolly, eagerly seizing on the new topic. “They’d be older by several sevendays, I think!’ She glanced at the Masterharper who nodded in confirmation. “When I first saw F’nor’s queen, Grall, I thought it was my Beauty.”
Beauty squeaked indignantly, her eyes whirling a little faster. “Only for a moment,” Menolly told her in apology and stroked Beauty’s head, “and only because I didn’t know the Weyrs had also discovered the fire lizards.”
“Any notion how old they must be to mate?” asked Lord Groghe, scowling in hopes of a favorable answer.
“Sir, I don’t know. T’gellan, Monarth’s rider, is going to keep a watch on the cave where my fire lizards hatched, to see if their queen will come back to clutch there again.”
“Cave? Thought fire lizards laid their eggs in sand on the beaches?”
Master Robinton indicated that she was to speak freely to the Lord Holder, so Menolly told him how she’d seen the fire lizard queen mating near the Dragon Stones, how she’d happened to be back that way, looking for spiderclaws (“Good eating, those,” Lord Groghe agreed and gestured for her to get on with the tale)…and helped the little fire lizard queen lift the eggs from the sea-threatened strand into the cave.
“You wrote that song, didn’t you?” Lord Groghe’s frown was surprised and approving. “The one about the fire lizard keeping the sea back with her wings! Liked that one! Write more like it! Easy to sing. Why didn’t you tell me a girl wrote it, Robinton?” His scowl was now accusatory.