“Your sister, the one who’s missing. She wrote those songs. She taught the children, not that conveniently dismissed f osterlingl”
“Menolh/s not playing any pipes, Elgion. She sliced her left hand, gutting packtail, and she can’t open or close her fingers.”
Elgion sank back to the deck, stunned but still hearing the clear tone of pipes. Pipes? You’d need two whole hands to play multiple pipes. The music ceased and the wind, rising as they tacked past the Dragon Stones, covered his memory of that illusive melody. It could have been the land breeze, sweeping down over the cliffs, sounding into holes.
“Menolly did teach the children, didn’t she?”
Slowly Alemi nodded. “Yanus believed the Sea Hold disgraced to have a girl raking the place of a Harper.”
“Disgraced?” Once again Elgion was appalled at the obruseness of the Sea Holder. “When she taught so well? When she can turn a tune like the ones I’ve seen?”
“She can play no more, Elgion. It would be cruel to ask now. She wouldn’t even sing in the evenings. She’d leave as soon as you started to play.”
So he’d been right, thought Elgion, the tall girl had been Menolly.
“If she’s alive, she’s happier away from the Holdl If she’s dead …” Alemi didn’t continue.
In silence they sailed on, the Dragon Stones falling away, back into violet indefiniteness as each man avoided the other’s gaze.
Now Elgion could understand many things about Menolh/s disappearance and the general reluctance at the Hold to discuss her or find her. There was no doubt in his mind that her disappearance was deliberate. Any—
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one sensitive enough to compose such melodies must have found life in the Sea Hold intolerable: doubly so with Yanus as Sea Holder and father. And then to be considered a disgrace! Elgion cursed Petiron for not making the matter plain. H only he had told Robinton that the promising musician were a girl, she might have been at the Harperhall before that knife had a chance to slip.
4*There’d be no clutches on the Dragon Stones’ cove,” Alemi said, breaking into Elgion’s rueful thoughts. “Water’s right up to the bluff at higji tide. There is one place … Ill take you there after the next Threadfall is past A good long day’s sail down the coast You can Impress a fire lizard, you say?”
“IT! set the signal for N’ton to talk to you after FaH.” Elgion was happy enough to use any subject to break the restraint that had fallen between them. “Evidently you or I can Impress, though lowly Harpers and young Sea Men may be far down on the list for available eggs.”
“By the dawn star, when I think of the hours I spent as a small fellow…”
“Who hasn’t?” Elgion grinned back, eager too for the chance.
TTiis time their silence was companionable, and when they exchanged glances, it was for remembered boyish fancies of capturing the elusive and much desired fire lizard.
As they tacked into the Dock Cavern late that afternoon, Alemi had a final word for Elgion.
“You understand why you’re not to know it was Menolly who did the teaching?**
“The Sea Hold is not disgraced.” Elgion felt Alemi’s hand tighten on his arm so he nodded. “But I would never betray that confidence.”
If his solemn response reassured the Sea Man, it reinforced Elgion’s determination to find out who had made that pipe music. Was it possible to play multiple pipes with one hand? He was convinced that he’d heard
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music, not wind over blowholes. Somehow, whether on the pretext of searching for fire lizards or not, he must get close enough to examine that cave in the Dragon Stones’ cove.
The next day was rainy, a thin soft drizzle that did not deter the fishermen but that made both Elgion and Alemi unwilling to take a long and possibly fruitless journey in an open boat
That same evening Yanus asked Elgion to excuse the children from lessons the following morning as they’d be needed to gather seaweed for the smoke-cave. Elgion granted considered permission, masterfully suppressing a desire to thank the Sea Holder for a free day, and determined to rise early and be off to seek the answer to the music mystery. He was up as soon as the sun, first in the Great Hall, so that he had to unbar the metal doors, little realizing as he did so that he would be following an unnerving precedent With fish rolls and dried fruit in his pouch, his own pipe slung across his back, a stout rope about his middle (for he rather thought he might need it climbing down that cliff face), Elgion was away.