“More than we need right now,” Ara said, swatting at Jayge affectionately when he winked at Piemur. Though her figure was not yet distorted, the harper had suspected she might be pregnant again. There was a luminous quality to her eyes and face that Sharra had told him often enhanced the beauty of a gravid woman. “Twelve rooms, but some would be awfully small to house a whole family. We had to shovel out the sand in the front rooms. The walls were filthy; I was afraid we’d have to scrub them clean, but the dirt sort of slid off when we washed them. I haven’t quite got the stains completely off, but now you can see what pretty colors they used.”
“We fixed this roof with slabs taken from the other ones,” Jayge said. “I’ve never seen material like this before. And we shouldn’t have been able to nail it, but Ara found a keg of nails that would penetrate and hold.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Ara went on with an air of confession. “The house is unusual, but the thick walls keep us cool in the heat of the day and warm enough on cold ones. We found the strangest-looking containers, most of them empty. Jayge laughs at me, but I know we’ll find something to tell us who lived here before we did.”
“I’d like to know when you do,” Piemur said. “Did you find those colored fishnets here?”
They both grinned, exchanging glances, and Jayge explained. “We found lots of empty nets stored in one corner of the largest building. It had neither porch nor windows but it did have vents along the roof, so we figured it may have been a storehouse. Snakes and other insects had destroyed whatever was in the crates and barrels and those nets, but the material they were made of seems indestructible.”
“It’d have to be, to last any length of time here in the south,” Piemur said casually, though he was more excited about the settlement than he dared express. The Harper should know about it. He wondered if he should send Farli with a message to Master Robinton but decided that it could wait until morning. “So you’ve fished, and you’ve stock…”
“I’ll have to introduce you to the dogs tomorrow,” Ara said. “We have them against snakes and big spotted cats.”
“You have them here, too?” Piemur asked eagerly. Sharra had thought those cats a local sport—she would be interested to know that they inhabited other parts of the Southern Continent.
“Enough so that we don’t hunt without the dogs,” Jayge said. “And we carry spear or bow and arrow once we pass the clearings.”
“But there’s wild rice,” Ara put in enthusiastically, “and all kinds of vegetables—even a grove of the oldest fellis trees I’ve ever seen!” She waved to the east of the hold. “We’ve floods of wild wherry, and runner and herd beasts grazing in the river valley, a day’s good run from here. Jayge is a good spearman.”
“And you’ve never missed with bow and arrow,” Jayge said proudly. “‘And—” Jayge grinned at Piemur. “We’ve a fair home brew.” He went to a wall cupboard, fashioned out of one of the crates he had mentioned, and opened it to display two small barrels, their shape reminiscent of much larger ones Piemur had seen at the Benden Mastervintner’s. “We’ve been experimenting,” Jayge went on, pouring three cups and serving them. “And it’s improving!”
Piemur sniffed and found its aroma odd, not as fruity as he had expected. He took a sip.
“Ooooh, that’s great stuff!” His appreciation was genuine as he felt the shock of it coursing pleasantly through him. He raised his cup to the smiling Ara and Jayge in a toast. “To friends, near and far!”
“I think it’ll improve with age,” Jayge remarked with quiet satisfaction after he and Ara had solemnly returned the toast. “But for a trader’s brew, it’s passable.”
“I could be prejudiced, or maybe I’ve just lost my palate, but Jayge, this’s smooth to lip, mouth, and throat, and a tonic to blood and bone.”
They talked long into the crystal clear, chill early hours of the morning until sheer fatigue slowed both question and answer. If Piemur had extracted from them an account of their establishment there, he had replied with eagerly received news of the North—expurgated, of course, and embellished when the incident deserved his harper’s touch. Piemur had introduced himself with rank, craft, and hold affiliation and explained that his current task was to explore the coast. Jayge had responded that he was a trader by craft and that Ara was from Igen. There was something that they were not revealing, Piemur was quick enough to realize, but then, he had not told them the entire truth either.
Piemur remained with Jayge and Ara for longer than he should have. Not only did he admire their fortitude and industry—even Toric would consider them resourceful and diligent—but also he wanted time to delve into the mystery of the buildings there on the far edge of nowhere. In the oldest of the Harper Hall Records, there had been elusive fragments, which Piemur, as Master Robinton’s special apprentice, had been allowed to see. When man came to Pern, he established a good Hold in the South, one fragment had begun, only to conclude ambiguously, but found it necessary to move north to shield. Like Robinton, Piemur had always wondered why anyone would have left the beautiful and fertile Southern Continent and settle the far harsher north. But it must have happened—the discovery of the ancient mine had been evidence of that. And now these incredible buildings!
Piemur could not imagine how building materials could have lasted so long. It could only be more of those forgotten methods and lost secrets that Mastersmith Fandarel had complained about so often, and which his Crafthall was trying to revive.
That first morning, with young Readis toddling when he could and carried when he tired, Jayge and Ara showed Piemur around what had clearly once been an extensive settlement.
“We’ve torn down most of the creepers and shoveled out some of the blown sand,” Jayge said, leading the way into a one-room building. The two big, rangy canines—the black one was Chink and the brindle, Giri—always preceded their masters into buildings and rooms, an exercise to which they had clearly been trained. A snap of fingers brought them back to heel, or sit, or stay. “We found this.” Jayge pointed to a piece of enameled metal, a man’s hand wide and two arms long, leaning against the inside wall.
“There’s lettering on it,” Piemur said, angling to one side to read it. “P A R…can’t read the next one…D I S…nor the next.” He hunkered down and fingered the metal. “ ‘RIVER’ is perfectly legible!” He grinned at Ara, then tried to decipher the final word. “Looks like ‘stake’ to me.”
“We think the first word is ‘Paradise,’ ” Ara said shyly.
Piemur glanced out the open door to the idyllic surroundings, peaceful, private, beautiful with blossom and fruit. “I’d say that was a fair description,” he said.
“I’m positive this was a teaching room,” Ara went on in an embarrassed rush. “We found these!” She hefted Readis into his father’s arms and beckoned Piemur to a corner where she lifted the cover of a box of the ubiquitous opaque material. She held up a short, fat record, neatly squared off like one of Lord Asgenar’s newly bound leaves.