'On my hope of riding a dragon!' Falloner said fervently. 'Now let me up. I've a stone digging in my ribs.'
Robinton gave his friend a hand up and then brushed him off.
'Just don't let me catch you breaking your word.'
'I gave it to you!' Falloner said in a surly tone. 'Don't know what's got into you.'
'I just don't like to hear them scream.' Robinton gave a convulsive shake. 'Goes right through my ears and down to my heel-bones. Like chalk on a slate.'
'It does?' Now Falloner gave himself a shake at the thought of that sound. 'Doesn't me, but ...' He held up his hands defensively as Robinton made a fist again. I'll keep my word.' He shook his head, though. Robinton's unexpected behaviour was beyond his comprehension.
There were, of course, other teachers at the Hold to cope with the basic reading, writing and figuring which all children were obliged to learn before their twelfth year. After that, they would take up apprenticeships to whatever Hall their inclination suited them, or go on in their family Hold's work. With a large Hold like Benden, there were enough pupils to be divided by age and ability. But all had their hour of daily musical training with the MasterSinger.
Without ever calling attention to the assignment, Merelan had her son teaching some of the younger children their scales and how to read music, since he was actually well ahead of whatever Falloner and Hayon had learned from the Hold's previous harper.
Robinton never minded such duties. He liked seeing the little ones learn more quickly because he knew exactly how to get them to do it – the way he had with Lexey. In the privacy of their own quarters, his mother tutored him at his own pace and encouraged him to use one of the instruments when he was composing. For he still wrote music. He couldn't not write. Tunes, especially when he saw dragons in the sky, just pushed against his temples until he had to put them down. And, accustomed as he had become to not mentioning this activity, no one – not even Falloner – knew that the songs merelan was teaching them had been composed by Robinton.
'This isn't like the Harper Hall, Robie,' she explained carefully the day before she introduced the first of his melodies, 'where everyone knows you. I don't want to put you at a disadvantage. Do you understand what I mean?'
Robinton thought a moment. 'Yeah, Maizella would go all tissy about having to sing something I wrote.' And he made his grin as understanding as he could. 'Can we tell her someday, though, Mother?' he added wistfully.
She ruffled his hair. 'I can promise you that, my love. When it seems auspicious.'
'That means 'favourable', doesn't it?'
She chuckled. 'It does ...'
'Harpers use that word a lot.'
'Harpering is not just knowing the words and melody to a lot of songs ...
'And not just knowing when to sing them, either.' He finished the saying for her.
She tilted his face up to her and regarded him with a very pensive expression on her face. 'I think, my darling son, that you are going to make a splendid harper.'
'I plan to,' he said, grinning impishly at her.
She gave him a quick hug and then asked to see the lessons she had set him in contrapuntal theory.
A few evenings later, Merelan asked Maizella to sing a new song after dinner. At first the conversations didn't abate, but gradually a respectful silence rewarded the noticeable improvement in both tone and volume. Maizella sat down flushed with achievement and didn't notice that the applause was more from relief than approval.
Then Merelan had her and Robinton sing the duet they had practised in class.
By now, Merelan had identified other good voices in the Hold, and gradually the evenings featured four-part harmonies and the addition of several more instruments, as well as more new songs and a far larger chorus.
Then, about six seven-days after their arrival at Benden, Falloner told Robinton that the Weyrleaders were coming to the Hold with some of the wingleaders and their women.
'They come often?' Robinton asked, awed. Would his mother ask him to sing for the dragonriders? There would surely be music after dinner.
Falloner shrugged. 'Often enough. S'loner and Lord Maidir get along really well because Benden believes in the dragonriders and Carola, who's Weyrwoman, is the daughter of Hayara's oldest sister. So they're kin.'
'S'loner?' Robinton couldn't help gawking at his friend. He knew how weyrfolk named children – generally using some part of the father's as well as the mother's name. 'Your father's the Weyrleader?'
'Yeah.' Falloner gave an indifferent shrug. Then he grinned at Robinton's startled expression. 'That's one reason why I'm sure to Impress a bronze, and why I'll get the chance to stand on the Hatching Ground as long as there're eggs clutched. There've been a lot of Weyrleaders in my lineage.' He straightened up proudly.
'And I'm here because I'm supposed to learn more than I'd get taught at the Weyr since we don't have a Hall- trained harper. If I'm going to lead the Weyr in the next Fall, I've got to know more than the average bronze rider, haven't I?'
'I guess you have,' Robinton murmured, still trying to cope with the status of his friend.
'Ah, don't go looking at me like that, will ya, Robie?' And Falloner gave his shoulder a friendly buffet.
When they were in their own quarters, Robinton had to tell his mother.
'I knew that, dear, and it's one reason I encourage your friendship with him. Falloner's a good-hearted lad and intelligent enough to want to learn. I feel that it's very important for you to have this chance to get to know something about how the Weyr operates.
Especially as we only have the one now.' She looked off into the middle distance for a long moment.
'Isn't that what the Question Song is about?'
'I didn't know you knew about that one,' she said almost sharply, staring at him. 'How did you come across it?'
'Oh, when I was copying out some of the worm-eaten music in the Archives. Master Ogolly says I write with a good, neat hand, you know.' He preened slightly.
'Yes, I do know, love.' She finger-stroked a parting into his thick dark hair. 'Do you know the music?'
'Of course I do, Mother,' he said, mildly indignant. She, of all people, should know that he memorized music after one hearing or one reading.
'Yes, you would, wouldn't you, dear.' She gave a final pat to his hair. 'Well, run over it in your mind. It might be suitable for tonight. And a treble voice would make it more poignant, I think. Yes, rehearse it, Robie.'
Falloner was not at the head table as Robinton had thought he might be, since S'loner was his father. Carola was not his mother and, as Falloner took his usual place next to Robinton, he muttered something about her disliking S'loner's weyrlings.
'Aren't weyrlings small dragons?'
'Yes,' Falloner said with a little snort. 'Applied to us,' he explained, sticking his thumb into his chest, 'it's not a compliment.
All she can get is girls... when she has anything.'
Robinton nodded and decided maybe now wasn't the time to ask more questions about the Weyr. Besides, the special dinner was being served: special even for those at the lower table, since Nerat had sent up fresh red-fruits and other delicacies, transported a-dragonback.
Robinton watched with awe as the great beasts, having deposited riders and burdens in the courtyard, rose to the top of Benden's cliff, spacing themselves along the fire heights. The golden queen, Feyrith, settled in the exact centre, the other ten dragons, including her weyrmate, settled on either side of her, like guardians. Which was silly, because there wasn't anything on the entire planet that would attack a queen, much less eleven dragons.
Robinton thought they were the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen as they peered down at the courtyard, their beautiful faceted eyes gleaming in the late spring evening. He hadn't thought 'bronze' could come in so many different shadings.
Cortath ? Kilminth ? Spakinth ? he thought daringly.
No one answered his tentative query. Well, maybe none of the bronzes he had spoken to before were on the heights. He could scarcely pick out individual features from this distance. Or maybe because they were guarding the queen, they couldn't talk to a little boy.
The evening entertainment was almost more splendid than the meal which had preceded it. Not only were there acrobats, but a man who made things disappear – and reappear from behind Raid's ear or Maizella's sleeve – or produced the world's smallest canine from his cloak or a tiny tunnel snake from under the cap on his head.
