"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.