every Pernese approved of harpers.
When they were settling into Pierie Hold, his misgivings about this assignment returned. There were only three rooms for their quarters: the baby would have to sleep in with them, at the foot of the bed which took up nearly all the room, though there were storage compartments cut into the rear wall of the cliff. The larger room was clearly for daily affairs including kitchen work, with an outer wall hearth. The third was more of a cubicle than a room and served the purpose of toilet and bath, though merelan said gaily that most everyone bathed in the sea. Petiron gazed askance at the long flight of steps which led down to a sandy crescent of a beach where some of the hold's fishing sloops were moored.
He was soon to learn that people here were more accustomed to doing everything outside, either in the wide- open patio where various work stations were situated, or under the shade of a vine-covered arbour which was larger than all the individual accommodations put together. There were even two sections fenced off for toddlers and the slightly older children, complete with a little pond where they could safely wade, sand to play in, and a rather extensive collection of toys. Already, Robinton was tottering about carrying one of the stuffed toys.
'That can't be a dragon he's been playing with, is it?' Petiron asked Merelan. Dragons were never toys: it would have been blasphemy to play with one.
'No, silly. It's supposed' – Merelan grinned reassuringly up at her astonished spouse – 'to be a fire-lizard.'
'A fire-lizard? But they died out centuries ago.'
'No, not entirely. My father saw one, and Uncle Patry said he'd seen one this past year.'
'He's sure?' Petiron had a pragmatic streak that required proof.
'Indeed he is. And we've empty shells gathered from flotsam to prove that they exist, even if they aren't much in evidence.'
'Well, if they've shells ...' And Petiron was mollified. Merelan turned her head away so that he wouldn't see her smile.
She was quite aware of Petiron's opinions about everything here in Pierie Hold, but there was no sense in arguing with him about his misconceptions. In general he was a fair man, and she was sure he'd come round. He might even get to like living here, away from all the bustle and over-stimulation of the Harper Hall. She had been so pleased with his thanks to Sev, Dalma and the other traders.
He'd meant every word he'd said to them, about learning so much on the route and how he had enjoyed the evenings and the teaching.
He'd learned to feel comfortable on a runner-beast, so she knew she could talk him into taking trips to the other nearby holds where her brothers and sisters lived. Especially as she would have to leave Robinton behind so as not to irritate Petiron by his son's constant presence. Not only was he weaned now, but Segoina was almost panting to have a chance to tend him. If only Petiron could learn to like his son a little for his own sake, and Robinton's, rather than see him as a rival for her attention ...
Teaching came first, and Petiron divided up the forty-two prospective students into five groups. The beginners, novices, middle and advanced were of mixed ages, since some had had a little more training from a parent than others; the final group was made up of the five who were much too old to be included in the regular classes. Those he'd teach in the evenings by themselves – not that anyone was embarrassed.
'Living up in the mountains, never had the chance to learn nothing,' Rantou said, unabashed. The stocky timberman had glanced over at his young spouse who was visibly pregnant. 'That is, until I met Carral here.' Then he blushed. 'Really like music, even if I doan know much. But I gotta learn so the baby won't have no stupid for a father.'
Despite having had no formal training at all, Rantou could produce the most amazing sounds out of a multiple reed-pipe, although he waved aside Petiron's earnest desire to teach him to read music.
'You just play it all out for me oncet, and that'll do me.'
When Petiron paced about that evening in the privacy of their little home, terribly upset that an innate musician of considerable talent was risking talented fingers with saw, ax and adze on a daily basis, Merelan had to calm him.
'Not everyone sees the Harper Hall as the most preferential occupation, love.'
'But he's--'
'He's doing very well for a young man with a family on the way,' she said, 'and he'll always love music, even if it is not his life the way it has always been yours.'
'But he's a natural. You know how hard I had to work at theory and composition, to get complicated tempo – and he manages cadenzas after one hearing that it would take you, good as you are, days to command. And Segoina told me he makes ... makes the guitars, the flutes, the drums, all the instruments in use here...' He raised both hands high in exasperation and frustration.
'When I think how hard I had to work to walk the tables for journeyman for what he just picked up listening to me, I ...
I'm speechless.'
'Rantou doesn't want to be a musician, love. He wants to do what he does do, manage forestry. Even the instruments he makes are just a hobby with him.'
'That may be very true, Mere, but what you fail to realize is that the Harper Hall needs more young folk to train up than come to us.
Pierie needs a full-time journeyman, not a vacationing one.' Petiron was pacing and robbing his hands together, a sure sign to his spouse of his rising agitation. 'Everyone has the right to learning -that is the traditional duty of the Harper Hall. We are desperately short of harpers.'
'But people do learn the Teaching Ballads and Songs, as they have here,' merelan said. 'As I did.'
'Only the usual ones, but not all the important ones,' Petiron said sternly with a scowl. When he frowned like that, his heavy eyebrows nearly met over the bridge of his aquiline nose. Though she'd never tell him, Merelan adored his eyebrows. 'They don't know the Dragon Duty Ballads, for instance.'
Merelan suppressed a sigh. Was it only people brought up in strict Harper Hall tradition who believed that Thread would, not just might, return in the next fifty or so turns? Or was their belief merely an extension of the traditions of the Hall?
'You are teaching those, as I am. And I don't think anyone here, now that they've met you and seen me again, would take it amiss if you did suggest that one of the more talented youngsters looked towards the Harper Hall as a life's work.'
Petiron gave her a strange look. 'You don't?'
She pursed her lips. That tone was his driest and most repressive: the one he reserved for apprentices who had not studied hard enough to suit his exacting standard.
'There was plague, you know, as well as that storm which took many lives from this hold,' she said as casually as she could. 'This may be a small hold, but to do all that is required properly also takes a fair-sized population. Sometimes there are none to be spared.'
'Yet they spared two lads to the Weyr,' Petiron said begrudgingly.
Merelan tried to hide her laugh behind her hand but failed, the look of him was so jealous.
'And I suppose you wouldn't have accepted being Searched for the Weyr?'
'I wasn't.'
'I know, but if you had been Searched by Benden Weyr, would you not have gone?'
'Well,' he said, hedging, 'I certainly don't dispute the honour of being Searched... but not everyone Searched Impresses a dragon.'
'They Impressed greens,' Merelan replied.
'Then they were lucky indeed.'
'Neither of them would have been good as harpers,' she added, with a twinkle in her eye.
'Now that's not fair, Mere,' Petiron replied stiffly.
'Think on it a bit, my darling,' she said, and continued neatly folding the clothes which she had laundered that afternoon.
It was Petiron who was almost apoplectic with fear when he heard that Merelan was teaching Robinton to swim.
'But he's only just started walking,' he protested. 'How can he swim?'
'All our children learn to swim in their first year,' Segoina told him. 'Preferably before they learn to walk,
