Mavi now deftly fastened a tourniquet and then laved the wound with a pungent herbal lotion. Menolly’s hand began to numb, increasing her detachment from the injury. The bleeding ceased, but some how Menolly couldn’t bring herself to look into the wound. Instead she watched the intent expression on her mother’s face as she quickly stitched the severed blood vessel and closed the long slice. Then she slathered quantities of salve on the cut and bound the hand in soft cloths.

“There! Let’s hope I got all that packtail slime out of the wound.”

Concern and doubt caused Mavi to frown, and Menolly became fearful. Suddenly she remembered other things: women losing fingers and…

“My hand will be all right, won’t it?”

“We’ll hope so.”

Mavi never lied, and the small hard ball of sick fear began to unknot in Menolly’s stomach. “You should have some use of it. Enough for all practical purposes.”

“What do you mean? Practical purposes? Won’t I be able to play again?”

“Play?” Mavi gave her daughter a long, hard stare, as if she’d mentioned something forbidden. “Your playing days are over, Menolly. You’re way past the teaching…”

“But the new Harper has new songs…the ballad he sang the first night…I never heard all of it. I don’t know the chording. I want to learn…” She broke off, horribly frightened by the closed look on her mother’s face, and the shine of pity in her eyes.

“Even if your fingers will work after that slice, you won’t be playing again. Content yourself that Yanus was so indulgent while old Petiron was dying…”

“But Petiron…”

“That’s enough buts. Here, drink this. I want you in your bed before it puts you to sleep. You’ve lost a lot of blood, and I can’t have you fainting away on me.”

Stunned by her mother’s words, Menolly barely tasted the bitter wine and weed. She stumbled, even with her mother’s help, up the stone steps to her cubicle. She was cold despite the furs, cold in spirit. But the wine and weed had been liberally mixed, and she couldn’t fight the effect. Her last conscious thought was of misery, of being cheated of the one thing that had made her life bearable. She knew now what a dragonless rider must feel.

Despite her mother’s care in cleaning the wound, Menolly’s hand was swollen by evening and she was feverish with pain. One of the old aunts sat with her, placing cool cloths on her head and face, and gently crooning what she thought would be a comforting song. The notion was misplaced since, even in her delirium, Menolly was aware that music had now been forbidden her. She became more irritated and restless. Finally Mavi dosed her liberally with fellis juice and wine, and she fell into a deep slumber.

This proved to be a blessing because the hand had so swollen that it was obvious some of the packtail slime had gotten in the bloodstream. Mavi called in one of the other Hold women deft in such matters. Luckily for Menolly, they decided to release the coarse stitches, to allow better drainage of the infection. They kept Menolly heavily dosed and hourly changed the hot poulticing of her hand and arm.

Packtail infection was pernicious, and Mavi was dreadfully afraid that they might have to remove Menolly’s arm to prevent a further spread. She was constantly by her daughter’s side, an attention that Menolly would have been surprised, and gratified, to receive, but she remained unconscious. Fortunately the angry red lines faded on the girl’s swollen arm on the evening of the fourth day. The swelling receded, and the edges of the terrible gash assumed the healthier color of healing flesh.

Throughout her delirium, Menolly kept begging “them” to let her play just once more, just once again, pleading in such a pitiful tone that it all but broke Mavi’s heart to realize that unkind fortune had made that impossible. The hand would always be crippled. Which was as well since some of the new Harper’s questions were provoking Yanus. Elgion very much wanted to know who had drilled the youngsters in their Teaching Songs and Ballads. At first, thinking that Menolly had been nowhere near as skilled as everyone had assumed, Yanus had told Elgion that a fosterling had undertaken the task and he’d returned to his own Hold just prior to the Harper’s arrival.

“Whoever did has the makings of a good Harper then,” Elgion told his new Holder. “Old Petiron was a better teacher than most.”

The praise unexpectedly disturbed Yanus. He couldn’t retract his words, and he didn’t want to admit to Elgion that the person was a girl. So Yanus decided to let matters stand. No girl could be a Harper, any way the road turned. Menolly was too old now to be in any of the classes, and he’d see that she was busy with other things until she came to think of her playing as some childish fancy. At least she hadn’t disgraced the Hold.

He was, of course, sorry that the girl had cut herself so badly, and not entirely because she was a good worker. Still it kept her out of the Harper’s way until she forgot her silly tuning. Once or twice though, while Menolly was ill, he missed her clear sweet voice in countersong, the way she and Petiron used to sing. Yet he dismissed the matter from his mind. Women had more to do than sit about singing and playing.

There were exciting doings in the Holds and Weyrs, according to Elgion’s private report to him. Troubles, too, deep and worrisome enough to take his mind from the minor matter of a wounded girl.

One of the questions that Harper Elgion often posed concerned the Sea Hold’s attitude towards their Weyr, Benden. Elgion was curious as to how often they came in contact with the Oldtimers at Ista Weyr. How did Yanus and his holders feel about dragonriders? About the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman of Benden? If they resented dragonmen going on Search for young boys and girls of the Holds and Crafthalls to become dragonriders? Had Yanus or any of his Hold ever attended a Hatching?

Yanus answered the questions with the fewest possible words, and at first this seemed to satisfy the Harper.

“Half-Circle’s always tithed to Benden Weyr, even before Thread fell. We know our duty to our Weyr, and they do theirs by us. Not a single burrow of Thread since the Fall started seven or more Turns ago.”

“Oldtimers? Well, with Half-Circle beholden to Benden Weyr, we don’t much see any of the other Weyrs, not as the people in Keroon or Nerat might when the Fall overlaps two Weyrs’ boundaries. Very glad we were that the Oldtimers would come between so many hundreds of Turns to help our time out.”

“Dragonmen are welcome any time at Half-Circle. Come spring and fall, the women are here anyway, gathering seabeachplums and marshberries, grasses and the like. Welcome to all they want.”

“Never met Weyrwoman Lessa. I see her on her queen Ramoth in the sky after a Fall now and then. Weyrleader F’lar’s a fine fellow.”

“Search? Do they find any likely lad at Half-Circle, it will be to our honor, and he’s our leave to go.”

Although the problem had never worried the Sea Holder; no one from Half-Circle had answered a Search. Which was as well, Yanus thought privately. If a lad happened to be chosen, every other lad in the Hold would take to grumbling that he should have been picked. And on the seas of Pern, you had to keep your mind on your work, not on dreams. Bad enough to have those pesky fire lizards appearing now and then by the Dragon Stones. But as no one could get near enough to the stones to catch a fire lizard, no harm was done.

If the new Harper found his Holder an unimaginative man, hardworking and hidebound, he had been well prepared for it by his training. His problem was that he must provoke a change, subtle at first, in what he found; for Masterharper Robinton wanted each of his journeymen to get every Holder and Craftmaster to think beyond the needs of their own lands, Hall and people. Harpers were not simply tellers of tales and singers of songs; they were arbiters of justice, confidants of Holders and Craftmasters, and molders of the young. Now, more than ever, it was necessary to alter hide-bound thinking, to get everyone, starting with the young and working on the old, to consider more of Pern than the land they kept Thread-free or the problems of their particular area. Many old ways needed shaking up, revising. If F’lar of Benden Weyr hadn’t done some shaking up, if Lessa hadn’t made her fantastic ride back four hundred Turns to bring up the missing five Weyrs of dragonriders, Pern would be writhing under Thread, with nothing green and growing left on the surface. The Weyrs had profited and so had Pern. Similarly the holds and crafts would profit if they only were willing to examine new ideas and ways.