“They do seem to be,” she said, temporizing slightly, but neither debater noticed.

“Then where are they now?” Brolly wanted to know, slightly sneering.

“In Master Domick’s study.”

The meat reached them and further discussion was suspended. Today Menolly blithely speared four slices of juicy meat to her plate. She reached for bread, beating Brolly’s grab for some. And she dished Piemur some of the redroots, which he wasn’t going to take. He was much too small not to eat properly.

Whether it was Piemur’s company or the absence of the girls, or both, Menolly didn’t know, but suddenly she was included in the table conversations. The boys opposite her had question after question about her fire lizards: how she had accidentally discovered the queen’s clutch in the sand; how she’d saved the hatchlings from destruction by Thread; how she had found enough food to support their voracious appetites; how she’d dragged a wherry from the mire to provide oil for her fire lizards’ patchy skins. She sensed that the boys gradually became reconciled to her possession of so many fire lizards because it was obviously no gather day to take care of them. They had the most bizarre theories about fire lizards and a few unsubtle queries about when would her queen fly to mate and how soon would there be a clutch and how many in it.

“The masters and journeymen would get first crack anyhow,” Piemur said, disgruntled.

“It ought to be free choice, the way the dragons choose their riders,” said Brolly.

“Fire lizards aren’t quite the same as dragons, Brolly,” said Piemur, glancing at Menolly for support. “Look at Lord Groghe. What dragon would've picked him if it had had another choice?”

The boys shushed him, glancing nervously about to see if anyone had overheard his indiscreet remark.

“The Weyrs have control of the fire lizards any road,” said Brolly. “You can just bet the Weyrs’re going to hand ’em out where they’ll keep the Lord Holders and Craft Masters happy.”

Menolly sighed for the truth of that surmise.

Yes, but you can't make a fire lizard stay with you if you’re mean to him,” said Piemur flatly. “I heard that Lord Meron’s disappears for days.”

“Where do they go?” asked Brolly.

As Menolly didn’t know, she was just as glad that the eerie sound, which Domick had said was the Thread alarm, sounded, effectively ending the conversation.

“That means Thread is directly over us,” said Piemur, hunching his shoulders and pointing toward the ceiling. “Look at that!” And Brolly’s startled exclamation made everyone turn about.

On the mantel behind her were ranged all nine fire lizards; their eyes sparkling with rainbow reflections of intense agitation, their wings spread, talons unsheathed. They were hissing, retracting and extending their tongues as if licking imaginary Thread from the air.

Menolly half rose, glancing toward the round table. She saw Domick nodding permission to her as he, too, got to his feet. He was gesturing to someone at the journeymen’s tables.

“The alarm chorus would be appropriate, Brudegan,” he called as he crossed to the hearth, a wary eye on the fire lizards.

Menolly motioned to Beauty, but the little queen ignored her, rising to her haunches and starting to keen a piercing series of notes, up and down an almost inaudibly high octave. The others joined her.

“For the sake of our ears, Menolly, can you get your creatures to sing with the chorus now? Brudegan, where’s your beat?”

Feet began to stamp, one, two, three, four, and suddenly the fire lizards’ keen was covered by the mass chorus. Beauty fanned her wings in surprise, and Mimic backwinged himself off the mantel, only missing a drop to the floor by claws biting into the wood.

“Drummer, beat, and piper, blow,

Harper, strike, and soldier, go…”

sang the massed voices. Menolly joined in, singing directly to the fire lizards. She was aware of Brudegan, then Sebell and Talmor coming to stand beside her, but facing the boys. Brudegan directed, cueing in the parts, the descant on the refrain. Above the male voices, pure and piercingly thrilling, rang the fire lizards’ tone, weaving their own harmonies about the melody.

The last triumphant note echoed through the corridors of the Harper Hall. And from the doorway to the outer hall, there came a sigh of pleasure. Menolly saw the kitchen drudges, an utterly entranced Camo among them, standing there, every face wreathed with smiles.

“I’d say that a rendition of ‘Moreta’s Ride’ might be in order, if you think your friends would oblige us,” Brudegan said, with a slight bow to Menolly and a gesture to take his place.

Beauty, as if she understood what had been said, gave a complacent chirp, blinking the first lids across her eyes so that those nearest laughed. That startled her, and she fanned her wings as if scolding them for impudence. That prompted more laughter, but Beauty was now watching Menolly.

“Give the beat, Menolly,” said Brudegan, and because his manner indicated that he expected her obedience, she raised her hands and sketched the time.

The chorus responded at the upstroke, and she experienced a curious sense of power as she realized that these voices were hers to direct. Beauty led the fire lizards in another dizzy climb of sound, but they sang the melody, octaves above the baritones who introduced the first stanza of the Ballad, to the muted humming of the other parts. The baritones, Menolly felt, were not really watching her: she signaled for more intensity because, after all, the Ballad told of a tragedy. The singers gave more depth to their part. Menolly had often led the evening sings at the Half-Circle Sea Hold, so conducting was not new to her. It was the quality of the singers, their responsiveness to her signals, that made as much difference, as chalk from cheese.

Once the baritones had finished telling of the dread sickness in the land, which had struck with incredible speed across the breath of Pern, the full chorus quietly introduced the refrain, of Moreta secluded with her queen, Orlith, who is about to clutch in Fort Weyr, while the healers from all holds and Weyrs try to isolate the form of the disease and find a cure. The tenors take up the narration, with increasing intensity, the basses and baritones emphasizing the plight of the land, herdbeasts left untended, wherries breaking into crops as holders, crafters, dragonfolk alike are consumed by the dread fever.

A bass sings the solo of Capiam, Masterhealer of Pern, who isolates the illness and suggests its cure. Those dragonriders who are still able to stay on their beasts, fly to the rain forests of Nabol and Ista, to find and deliver to Capiam the all-important seeds that contain the cure, some riders dying with the effort as they complete their task.

A dialogue between baritone, Capiam, and the soprano; Moreta was sung, Menolly was only vaguely cognizant, by Piemur. Excitement builds as Moreta, once Orlith has clutched, is the only healthy dragonrider at the Fort and one of the few immune to the disease. It is up to her to deliver the medicine. Moreta, pushing herself and her queen to the limits of their endurance, flies between from hold to hold, crafthall to cot, from Weyr to Weyr. The final verse, a dirge with keening descant, this time so appropriately rendered by the fire lizards that Menolly waved the humans silent, ended in the sorrowful farewell of a world to its heroines as Orlith, the dying Moreta on her back, seeks the oblivion of between.

Such a deep silence followed the soft final chord that shook off the spell of the song with difficulty.

“I wonder if we could ever repeat that again,” Brudegan said slowly, thoughtfully, after a further moment of almost unendurable silence. A sigh of release from the thrall of the music spread through the hall.