“No trouble,” said Toric, dismissing that consideration with a wave of his hand. “They learn to cope holdless, or stay holdbound without the additional privileges of being ranked as holders here. Some have adapted rather well,” he admitted grudgingly. Then he noticed Menolly’s anxious glances toward the entrance. “Oh, I told her to give the
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forests a good raking, too. The fire lizards’ll take a while if my queen has followed her orders. Now that drink is not enough to soothe a sea thirst; there’s sure to be ripe fruit cooling in the tanks.” He rose and went to the kitchen area of the cavern where he scooped a huge green-rinded fruit from a tank set in the wall. “Generally we save heavier eating for the evening, when the heat has eased.” He sectioned the fruit and carried a platter of the pink-fleshed slices to the table, “Best fruit in the world for quenching thirst. It’s mainly water.”
Sebell and Menolly were licking their fingers for the last of the succulent juices when a twittering fair of fire lizards swooped in. Beauty and Kimi made immediately for their friends’ shoulders. Rocky and Diver settled near Menolly on the table, but Toric’s queen hovered, chirping out a message, her eyes whirling with the orange-red of distress.
“I told you he might not survive,” said Toric. “My queen really looked for any trace of a human, too.”
Menolly hid her face on the pretext of reassuring her fire lizards, who were imaging to her endless distances of forest and deserted stretches of beach and sandy wastes.
“You sent them west,” said Sebell, grasping at any theory that would give them hope, “to the place where the egg shells were discovered. If I know Piemur, he wouldn’t have stayed anywhere that he had left clues. Could he have worked his way east? And be further down this side of the Southern Weyr?”
Toric gave a snort of laughter. “He could be any bloody where in the whole great southlands, but I doubt it. You Northerners don’t like to be holdless in Threadfall.”
“I managed quite well, thank you,” said Menolly, her face bleak despite the sharpness of her reminder.
“There are undeniably exceptions,” said Toric smoothly, Inclining his head to indicate he meant her no insult.
“Piemur avoided discovery by fire lizards at Nabol, he told me, by thinking of between,” said Sebell. “He could have tried that trick again today. He’d have no way of knowing they were our friends. But there’s one call he won’t ignore or hide from.”
“And what would that be?” asked the skeptical holder.
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Sebell caught Menolly’s suddenly hopeful expression. “Drums! Piemur will answer a call on drums!”
“Drums?” Toric threw back his head in an honest guf-faw of surprise.
“Yes, drums,” said Sebell, beginning to find Toric’s attitude offensive. “Where’s your drumheights?”
““Why would we need drumheights in Southern?”
It took the astounded harpers a little while to understand that drumheights, traditional in every hold in the north, had never been installed in the Southern’s single hold. Granted, there were now small holdings established as far to the east as the Island River, but messages came back and forth either by fire lizard or by ship.
To Sebell’s impatient query for any sort of drums in the hold, Toric said that they had a few to aid rhythm in dances. These were found in the quarters of Saneter, the hold’s harper, who roused from his midday rest to show them to Sebell and Menolly. They were, as Sebell sadly found, no better than dance drums, with no resonance to speak of.
”Still and all, message drums would be handy to have nowadays, Toric,” Saneter said. “Easier than sailing down the coast to discuss something. Just drum ‘em up here. Safer, too. Those Oldtimers never learned drum measures. Come to think of it, I’m not sure how much I remember myself.” Saneter regarded the journeymen harpers with an abashed surprise. “Haven’t had to use drum talk since I came here with F’nor.”
“It wouldn’t be hard to refresh your memory, Saneter, but we must have proper drums. And that would take time with all the Master Smith has on his plate right now,” said Sebell, shaking his head with the disappointment he felt. He’d been so sure. …