Master Shonagar did roar and bellow and carry on, but, buoyed by Silvina’s courtesies, Menolly took the berating in silence until he made her promise faithfully that whatever else happened to her during the morning hours, the afternoon was his, otherwise he’d never make a singer of her. So she was to report to him, please and thank you, through Fall, fog or fire, for how else was she to be a credit to his skill or the Craft Hall that had been pleased to exhibit its secrets for her edification and education?

The restlessness of the fire lizards about her woke Menolly from a deep sleep. She wished irritably that they didn’t insist on sleeping with her; it had been an exciting and trying day, and she’d had a hard enough time getting to sleep. Her hand ached so from the day’s playing that she’d had to slather the scar with numbweed to dull the pain. Beauty’s tail twitched violently against Menolly’s ear. She nudged the little queen, hoping to stir her out of whatever dream disturbed her. But Beauty was awake, not dreaming: her eyes, yellow and whirling with anxiety. All the fire lizards were awake and unusually alert in the dark of the night.

Seeing that Menolly’s eyes were open, Beauty crooned, a half-fearful, half-worried sound. Rocky and Diver minced up Menolly’s legs and crouched on her stomach, extending their heads toward her. Their eyes, too, were whirling with the speed and shade of fear. The rest, cuddling close against her, crooned for comfort.

Propping herself up on one elbow, Menolly peered toward the open windows. She could just distinguish the Fort Hold fire heights, black against the dark sky. It took her some time to locate the dark bulk of the watch dragon. He was motionless, so whatever distressed the fire lizards did not apparently concern him.

“Whatever is your problem, Beauty?”

The little queen’s croon increased its intensity. First Rocky, then Diver, added their notes. Aunties One and Two crept up and nuzzled to get under Menolly’s left arm. Lazy, Mimic and Uncle burrowed into the fur at her right side, their twined tails latching fiercely onto her wrist while Brownie piteously paced across her feet. They were afraid.

“What’s gotten into you?” Menolly couldn’t for the life of her imagine anything within the Harper Craft Hall that would menace them. Covet them, yes; injure them, no.

“Shush a minute and let me listen.” Beauty and Rocky gave little spurting sounds of fear, but they obeyed her. She listened as hard as she could, but the only sounds on the night air were the comfortable murmur of men’s voices and an occasional laugh from the Hall beneath her. It wasn’t as late as it had first seemed to her then, if the masters and older journeymen were still chatting.

Gently disengaging tails, Menolly slipped from her sleeping furs to the window. Several rectangles of light shone on the stones of the courtyard, two from the Great Hall and one above it, from Robinton’s quarters, beyond hers.

Beauty gave a worried cheep and flew to Menolly’s shoulder, wrapping her tail tightly around the girl’s neck and burrowing into her hair, the slender little body trembling. The others set up an anxious clamor from the furs, so Menolly hurriedly returned to them. They were panic-stricken. The Masterharper might not approve of Silvina’s moving her into this room if her fire lizards disturbed his studies at night. She tried to quiet them with a soft song, but now Beauty’s voice rose querulously above her lullaby. Menolly gathered all of the fire lizards against her. Their tails twined about her arms so firmly that she couldn’t use her hands to stroke them.

Now she felt a confused sense of imminent danger; clearly all the fire lizards were responding to a mutually experienced threat. Menolly fought against the panic their fear stirred in her.

“You’re being ridiculous. What can harm us in the Harper Hall?”

Beauty on one side, Rocky on the other, stroked her face urgently with their heads, cheeping in mounting distress. Through their touch and minds, she got the distinct impression that they were reacting to a fear beyond them, beyond the walls, at a distance.

“Then how could it hurt you?” Suddenly their terror erupted in her with such intensity that she cried out.

“Don’t!” Her injunction was spontaneous. She tried to throw up her arms to protect herself from this unknown danger, but her hands were lizard-bound. Their fear was completely and utterly hers. And, incoherently, she repeated the cry, “Don’t! DON’T!”

In her mind, out of nowhere, Menolly received an indelible impression of turbulence: savage, ruthless, destructive; a pressure inexorable and deadly; churning masses of slick, sickly gray surfaces that heaved and dipped. Heat as massive as a tidal wave. Fear! Terror! An inarticulate longing!

A scream, heard in her mind, a scream like a knife upon raw nerves!

Menolly didn’t think she had cried out. She was, as far as she could think sanely, certain that she hadn’t heard the cry, but she knew that the words had been spoken at the extreme of someone’s anguish.

Simultaneously the door to her room burst open, and the watch dragon on the Hold fire heights let out a shriek so like the one in her mind that she wondered if the dragon had called before. But dragons don’t speak.

“Menolly! What’s wrong?” Master Robinton was striding across the floor to her. The fire lizards took wing, darting out one window and back in the next, maniacal with fear.

“The dragon!” Menolly pointed, diverting Robinton’s eyes to the window, to prove that she wasn’t alone in alarm.

They both saw the watch dragon launching himself, riderless, into the sky, bulging his distress. Robinton and Menolly heard, on the night air, the faint echo of answering bugles, a moment of silence and then the eerie screech of an hysterical watchwher from the Fort Hold court.

“Is every winged thing in the Hold out of its mind?” asked Robinton. “What made you scream, Menolly? ‘Don’t’ what?”

“I don’t know,” Menolly cried, tears streaming down her face. She experienced a profound grief now and hugged herself against the chill of an awe-filled panic she couldn’t explain and yet had experienced so profoundly. “I just don’t know.”

Robinton ducked as Beauty, leading the others, swooped past him and out the window. The queen was screaming at the others to follow. Menolly saw them outlined briefly by the light of the Masterharper’s window and then the entire fair disappeared. Before Menolly, frightened for fear the fire lizards had gone completely from her, could tell Master Robinton, Domick came charging into the room.

“Robinton, what’s going on—”

“Quiet, Domick!” The Masterharper’s stern voice interrupted. “Whatever has frightened Menolly has also alarmed the watch dragon, and even the dead could hear that watchwher’s howling. Furthermore, the dragon went between, without his rider!”

“What?” Domick was startled, no longer angry.

said Robinton, his hands warm and firm on her shoulder, his voice kindly calm, “take a deep breath. Now, take another…”

“I can’t. I can’t. Something terrible is happening,” and Menolly was appalled at the sobs that tore at her, the cold terror that made her tremble so violently in the grip of this unknown disaster. “It’s something terrible…”

Others were crowding into her room now, roused by her involuntary cries, Someone said loudly that there wasn’t anything stirring in the court or on any of the roads. Another remarked that it was ridiculous to be startled out of a sound sleep by an hysterical child, trying to attract attention.