“T’kul and B’zon tried to fly the Istan queen Caylith this morning,” Jaxom began. “Salth burst his heart, T’kul attacked F’lar—are you all right?” Piemur had sat down, very hard, his face ashen under the dark tan.

“F’lar’s alive, unhurt,” Sharra cried, going to Piemur’s side and slipping an arm about his shoulders. “B’zon and Ranilth will stay at Ista awhile.”

“D’ram is now Southern Weyrleader,” Jaxom added.

“Really?” Piemur’s color returned, and mischief glittered briefly in his eyes. “Toric’s going to love that. Another Oldtimer to deal with.”

“D’ram’s different,” Jaxom said encouragingly. “You’ll see.”

“Well, that’s not so bad. A change in the wind always helps.” Piemur glanced at Sharra to see if she had considered what the new development might mean to Toric’s ambitions, but the distress on her face had not lessened. He turned back to Jaxom.

“And?”

“Master Robinton has had a heart attack!”

“That arrogant, addlepated, insufferably egotistical, altruistic know-it-all!” Piemur shouted, springing to his feet. “He thinks Pern won’t manage without his meddling, without him knowing everything that happens in every Hold and Hall on the entire planet, North and South! He won’t eat properly, he doesn’t rest enough, and he won’t let us help him even though we could probably do the same job even better than he can because we have more sense in our left toenails than he does.” He knew that Sharra and Jaxom were staring at him, but he could not stop. “He’s wasteful of his strength, he never listens to anyone, even when we try to get him to see sense, and he’s got this wild idea that only he, the Masterharper of Pern, has any idea of the destiny of Weyr, Hold, and Hall. Well, this serves him right. Maybe now he’ll listen. Maybe now…”

Tears came to Piemur’s eyes, and he stared from one to the other, begging them to say that it was all some kind of hideous joke. Sharra embraced him again, and Jaxom awkwardly patted his shoulder. Above him the fire-lizards chirruped in far too happy a tone. Piemur had not wanted to understand Farli. He had not let himself understand her.

“He’s all right,” Sharra was saying over and over, and he could feel her tears on his cheek. “He’ll be fine. Master Oldive’s with him and Lessa. Brekke’s just gone. Ruth insisted on taking her. And you know that Master Robinton will have to recover if both the Masterhealer and Brekke are attending him.”

Piemur felt Jaxom’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him. “The dragons, Piemur—the dragons wouldn’t let Master Robinton die!” Jaxom spaced his words out so that their sense would penetrate the young harper’s shock and fear. “The dragons wouldn’t let him die! He’s going to live. He’ll be fine. Really, Piemur, can’t you hear how happy the fire-lizards are?”

Piemur only believed in Master Robinton’s eventual recovery when the white dragon, Ruth, burst back into the clearing, his clarion bugle sending Stupid careening into the safety of the forest. Ruth was so eager to hearten Piemur that he ventured to nudge him gently with his white muzzle, a gesture of extreme affection, while the facets of his beautiful eyes whirled slowly with their reassuring green and blue.

“You know that Ruth can’t lie, Piemur,” Jaxom said earnestly. “He says Master Robinton’s resting easily, and he tells you that Brekke told him herself that he will recover. Mainly he needs rest.” Jaxom attempted a one-sided grin. “With every dragon on Pern watching him, he won’t get away with any of his usual tricks.”

Piemur had to concede that point. Gradually he began to relax and answer his friends’ questions about his travels. He did not mention Jayge and Ara, though with Master Robinton ill, he would have to confide in someone else. Sebell was the one most likely to assume the Mastery of the Harper Hall—he had long been trained to that onerous position. He would know all Master Robinton knew, and Piemur would have no hesitation about informing his Craftmaster friend—once everything had settled down again. For the time being, the secret of Jayge and Ara’s Paradise River Hold was safe enough.

In answer to Piemur’s questions, Jaxom explained how he had found the cove. The young dragonrider had first been to the cove when searching for D’ram who had stepped down from Weyr leadership of Ista after the death of his long-time weyrmate, Fanna, and disappeared. Later, delirious with the fire-head fever he had contracted on his first visit, Jaxom had directed Ruth to bring him back to the cove.

“It’s a beautiful enough spot,” Piemur agreed. “But you were out of your shell to come here to die!”

“I didn’t know I was. In fact, neither Brekke nor Sharra here told me just how sick I’d been until I was much better.” He gave his healer an intense look that held more than simple gratitude.

“And Toric just let you come?” Piemur demanded of Sharra.

“As a favor to the Benden Weyrleaders and Master Oldive, I think.” She gave the journeyman harper a wink, then sat up straighter and stuck her nose in the air. “I do have an exceptional record of nursing fire-head victims through fever and blindness, you know.”

Piemur knew that, but he just did not like the idea of Sharra and Jaxom together. Perhaps Toric saw it another way. An alliance with the Ruathan Bloodline, and a kinship with the Benden Weyrwoman, Lessa, might prove invaluable to him.

And there was something else niggling about in the back of Piemur’s mind, especially as he noticed how many fire-lizards, mainly wild ones with no hall or hold neck markings, engulfed Ruth wherever he went. And he could not ignore the brief flashes he was getting from Farli now that she was back in the white dragon’s presence. The more the young harper twisted the matter around in his head, the more certain he became about how that stolen queen egg had gotten back to Benden Weyr Hatching Ground. But it was not something that he, for all his intimacy with Jaxom, could come right out and ask.

By the time they had settled down to eat grilled fish and fruit on the beach that night, they had caught up on the main exchange of adventures and news. Piemur was unhappily sure of Jaxom’s feelings toward Sharra. And, knowing her as well as he did, he was dismally convinced that the attraction was mutual. Even if neither of them knew it yet. Or maybe they did. But Piemur did not intend to make it easy for them. He would have to think of distractions.

The next morning Piemur told Jaxom that Stupid had eaten every nonpoisonous blade he could find near the shelter and that the runner flatly refused to emerge from the denser undergrowth when Ruth was around. “He’s a bit puny from all the traveling we’ve done, Jaxom,” Piemur said. “He needs feeding up.”

So Jaxom offered to fly him on Ruth to the nearest meadow to collect fodder for Stupid. Piemur always enjoyed riding a-dragonback; riding Ruth, who was so much smaller than the full-sized fighting dragons, added a more immediate dimension to the experience, slightly scary, though he had every faith in the amazing white beast. If he had a dragon, he thought, he would have had a much easier time exploring…or would he, having trod the ground and learned much that he had not appreciated of the shrubs, trees, and brilliant flowering plants? Flying straight on a dragon gave one other perceptions of vast and beautiful terrain.

Ruth landed them neatly in the center of an expanse of waving grasses dotted with wildflowers and, rolling carefully over, stretched out wing and limb to bask in the sun. But when Jaxom asked him to help harvest the grasses, he willingly set to with gusto.

Jaxom burst out laughing. “No, we are not feeding him up for you to eat.” Affectionately he lobbed a dirt ball at the lounging dragon. Later, as they watched Stupid munching happily away, they gazed at the giant mountain visible in the distance and discussed the possibility of trekking to the peak while Jaxom waited out his convalescence. The trip would take four or five days on foot—Ruth could not carry all three, and Jaxom could not risk flying between so soon after his bout with fire-head—but that did not daunt Piemur, nor did he mind the fact that it would keep him close by Sharra and Jaxom for a time longer.