not as inhibited as most holders and, whether they had the voice for the song or not, they were lusty in their singing.
C’gan took turns with him and then called forth some of the solo voices. Maizella sang, as did R’yar, who had an excellent light baritone and hadn’t forgotten any of his repertoire in his turns as a rider.
Robinton never knew when Lord Maidir and S’loner left the table, for night had fallen and, although there were plenty of glowbaskets on the poles around the Bowl, there were so many coming and going with wine or to answer nature’s requirements, and so much for him to oversee as harper, that he noticed their absence only when Lady Hayara rose and left the table, escaping a Jora slumped drunkenly across it.
No one would ever know exactly what did happen that night, but suddenly a piercing scream from Nemorth roused everyone.
Especially when every other dragon voice augmented her heart-rending, piteous scream. It seemed to go on and on, as if none of the dragons need pause for breath. It cut through the night air, worse than any tormented watchwher’s cry – a knife to the ears and to the heart. He thought his heart would stop at the anguish which reverberated in the Bowl.
He was by no means the first person to clap hands to his ears to muffle the awful screeching. It was the look of shock on drug-onrider faces that gave Robinton his clue to the tragedy which had just been announced in dragon voice. The entire Weyr was mourning the death of a dragon.
Robinton grabbed C’gan and turned the stricken rider to him.
C’gan’s nerveless fingers slipped off the gitar neck as tears sprang from his eyes.
“What is it, C’gan? What’s happened?”
Gulping to clear his throat, C’gan turned anguished eyes to the harper. “It’s Chendith. He’s dead.”
“Chendith?” Robinton whirled round, trying to spot S’loner in the crowd of shocked people. He saw F’lon, miraculously sober, running first to T’rell, the Weyrlingmaster, because the keening had aroused the dragonets and T’rell needed help in rounding up the new riders to go and comfort their distressed beasts. Not a young man himself, T’rell looked haggard with grief and staggered as he moved about the tables.
“Dead? Why? How?” Robinton demanded. “He didn’t look sick or anything during the Hatching.” He lost sight of F’lon, then saw him again, hauling the Weyr’s healer into the light.
Then Lady Hayara gave a shriek that pierced through the keening.
“Maidir? Maidir! Where are you?”
It was the watchrider, circling down on his dragon, who told them that he had seen Chendith, with two aboard him, going between. He couldn’t see too well in the darkness above the lighted Bowl, but he thought that Chendith’s passenger had been Lord Maidir. He’d caught the shine of white hair and the green of the man’s garments. Lord Maidir had been wearing green.
“But why? What could have happened to them? S’loner wouldn’t take Chendith’s life. Nor his own,” C’gan said, sunken in despair. “What could have happened? He was in such high spirits over the Impression. And twenty dragons.”
They had to try to rouse Jora from her drunken stupor, because Lady Hayara had not seen the two men leave the table.
“They have been estranged so long,” Hayara said through her tears, “and it was only after that song of yours, Rob, that they started speaking to each other. I thought it was such a good sign, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying because—” She cut off what negative comment she had been about to make, though her disgust with the Weyrwoman was plain.
F’lon, R’gul and S’lel were trying to sober up Jora with strong klah, but she was boneless and kept sliding down the chair and having to be propped up to get any of the restorative liquid down her throat.
Healer Tinamon, assisting, put forward a tentative theory.
“S’loner may have looked strong and healthy, but he was having chest pains far too frequently,” he said. “I’d given him the usual remedy, although I wanted him to call in a MasterHealer or at least visit the Healer Hall. He said he would after Impression.”