Dragon Harper (11 page)

“He’s changed,” Nonala remarked one evening. Kindan glanced at her and she corrected herself, speaking directly to Vaxoram, “You’ve changed.”

Vaxoram grunted in surprise, then nodded in agreement.

“But why, though?” Kelsa wondered later when she was alone with Kindan, helping him oil Valla’s patchy skin. “Why has he changed?”

Kindan thought for a moment. “Master Murenny said that Vaxoram had come to the Harper Hall with a great voice as a child. When it broke wrong, he couldn’t find any new talent to replace it. He came from a small hold, Master Murenny said.”

“So he was afraid,” Kelsa guessed, nodding sagely. “And now he’s got something to do, guarding you.”

“Maybe,” Kindan agreed. Kelsa cocked her head at him questioningly. “Maybe there’s more to it. Perhaps because the worst has happened to him, he’s realized that he has nothing to be scared of.”

“Maybe,” Kelsa replied, but she didn’t sound convinced. She changed the topic. “What about this girl?”

“What girl?” Kindan asked innocently.

“The holder girl who impressed the gold, Kindan,” Kelsa responded tetchily.

“Who told you about her?” Kindan demanded. “Vaxoram?”

Kelsa shook her head. “This is a harper hall, news travels, silly.”

“Does everyone know?”

“Yes, everyone,” Kelsa replied with a wave of her hand to include the whole Harper Hall. “So what about it? Are the rumors true?”

“I haven’t heard the rumors,” Kindan returned heatedly, “so I can’t say.”

“The rumors are that you and she were all sparks together, that her fire-lizard scared any other suitors away, that she pines for you every night, and that her evil mother and father won’t let her see you no matter what she says.”

Kindan rolled his eyes in disgust. “The trouble with rumors is that they’re mostly wrong,” he declared.

“Mostly?” Kelsa pounced. “What’s right about them, then?”

“Kelsa,” Kindan growled warningly.

“Oh, Kindan, come on,” she pleaded, making big eyes back at him and looking pitiful. “You can tell
me.
”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Kindan said. “It’s true that the other fire-lizards were frightened
between
and it may be that Koriss did it. Koriana was upset and her brother demanded that Issak or I give him our fire-lizards—”

“The brat!” Kelsa interjected.

“And I don’t think Lady Sannora likes me very much,” Kindan finished lamely.

“She doesn’t like harpers, you mean,” Kelsa corrected him.

Kindan glanced at her in surprise.

“Rumor has it,” Kelsa told him excitedly, “that she fell in love with a harper when she was younger but he spurned her.”

“Which harper?” Kindan demanded. He’d never heard such a rumor.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kelsa asked him, shaking her head at his obtuseness. “Why do you think Lord Bemin never visits?”

Kindan thought about that for a moment. “Not…Master Murenny?”

Kelsa nodded approvingly. “Right the first time.” She patted his arm condescendingly. “You’ll make a harper yet.”

CHAPTER 5

Harper, treat your words with care
For they may cause joy or despair
Sing your songs of health and love
Of dragons flaming from above.

H
ARPER
H
ALL
,
AL 496.11

I
t seemed to Kindan at the start of his third year at the Harper Hall that everything went wrong. He blamed it on the food at first. If they hadn’t fed him so well, he wouldn’t have grown so quickly.

If he hadn’t grown so quickly he wouldn’t have been moving so awkwardly, nor, come to think of it, having to beg for new clothes so frequently. If he didn’t move so awkwardly he wouldn’t be knocking over everything in his path. If he hadn’t outgrown his clothes so quickly, he wouldn’t have found himself in oversized clothes—“with room to grow in, you’ll need that”—which exacerbated his awkwardness by making it hard to find the ends of things, like sleeves.

If there was an accident waiting to happen in the Harper Hall it only needed Kindan’s presence to complete it. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t see the latest stock of dyes as he blundered through the Archive room overladen with Records. Someone else, it was admitted later, shouldn’t have placed them there. But, miraculously, it
was
his fault that he tumbled over them, breaking the dyes all over the newer Records and rendering so many permanently illegible.

“You’re to work with the instrument maker, Kindan,” Master Resler said. He sighed as he retrieved and classified the last of the legible Records.

“Just because you’re now taller than me doesn’t mean I can’t handle you,” Caldazon grumbled in warning the moment Kindan presented himself to the small instrument maker.

“You duck your head and don’t knock any of the woods that are curing above you,” Caldazon continued, pointing to the various lumps of wood hanging down from the cavernous instrument maker’s room.

“Of course, Master,” Kindan replied, bobbing his head—and accidentally bumping it against a stout beam of wood when he straightened.

Caldazon wheezed a dry laugh. “Maybe the wood’ll knock some sense into you.”

Kindan certainly hoped so, particularly as the days went by. He worked with the other apprentices and made a passable drum, but he’d been making those Turns before he’d left Camp Natalon to become a harper. He had less luck with pipes—the spacing of his holes made them awkward to play.

“A waste of wood, that,” Caldazon grumbled, tossing Kindan’s first effort onto the scrapheap. “Luckily it’s bamboo; the stuff grows like crazy down Boll way.”

Kindan knew that until he could master the making of pipes, he’d never be allowed to use the precious wood required to make a guitar. Still, he showed a skill at sanding and polishing.

“Those big muscles of yours are good for something,” Caldazon opined, assigning all the sanding to Kindan. Kindan didn’t grumble—he knew better—but he went to bed with sore shoulders every night for two sevendays.

Even so, he was learning and he knew it. By sanding the work of others, Kindan started to get a feel for the wood and how to work it.

“You’re to help make glue and polish today,” Caldazon barked at him one morning not long after. As he made to leave, he added, “And be certain you don’t confuse the two.”

It was as though the Master’s words were a prophecy. The light in the room was not the best, even though Kindan had brought in extra glows, and—he could never figure it out—he somehow managed to mix the wrong ingredients into both mixtures.

“This is not glue!” Caldazon swore when he examined the bubbling pot after lunch. He turned to the pot that was supposed to contain finish and found that he couldn’t even lift the spoon. “And this! This has hardened! Whatever it is, it’s ruined now.”

He glared at Kindan, who hung his head.

“I guess I got muddled,” Kindan explained. “The light was—”

“It wasn’t the light,” Caldazon broke in. He pulled the first pot off the heat and gestured to the second pot. “You’ll clean this one out first, and mind you don’t damage the surface or the pot’ll be useless forever. When you’re done, you can find someplace to empty
that
”—he jerked his thumb to the other pot—“and clean it out as well.” With a final glare, Caldazon stalked off.

“Master?” Kindan called after him, not trusting himself alone with his disasters.

“I need to talk with Harper Murenny,” Caldazon replied grumpily. “And maybe take a nap.” He glanced again at Kindan and amended, “A
long
nap.”

“I could clean it,” Vaxoram offered quietly. Kindan was surprised to see him; he must have come straight from his last class and, Kindan guessed, had caught the last of Caldazon’s railings.

In the past ten months, the relationship between Vaxoram and Kindan had grown deeper, more complex, yet still no less perplexing to both of them. It was as though the older apprentice was sometimes Kindan’s older brother, other times his apprentice. Yet it worked, and Vaxoram was now an accepted member of the “outcasts,” as he had once named Kindan and his friends.

“No,” Kindan replied, shaking his head. “I made this mess, I should clean it up.”

Vaxoram nodded. Kindan hid a grin and turned to his messes.

Cleaning the failed glue out of its pot was easy and, to bolster his spirits, Kindan did that first. It was probably just as well because, try as he might, Kindan could not clean out the hardened polish without chipping Master Caldazon’s prized pot. In the end, just short of tears, Kindan returned the two pots to the instrument maker’s room only to find it empty; the Master was obviously still ensconced with the Masterharper.

Somewhat relieved, Kindan decided to honor the old adage of “leave sleeping Masters lie” and made his way to his afternoon voice lesson with Master Biddle.

Twenty minutes into his lesson, Master Biddle lowered his baton and looked straight over the heads of the other apprentices to Kindan.

“I’d say, Kindan, that today is not a good day for you to be using your voice,” Biddle told him politely.

Red-faced, Kindan could only nod. It was not just a bad day, it was a horrible day, and it was clear that it was going to be the first of many more—for Kindan’s voice seemed determined to settle at neither bass nor tenor, but merely to crack indeterminately whenever he tried even the slightest range.

“Perhaps,” Biddle suggested kindly, “you’d care to conduct?”

Kindan’s eyes widened with excitement. If there was one thing that Kindan truly enjoyed, it was conducting others in the making of music. At Biddle’s insistent gestures, Kindan made his way down to the front of the class and, with a nod of thanks, took the baton from the Voice Master.

Perhaps the day would get better.

He had just raised it to start the choir singing when a voice barked out, “Kindan!”

It was Master Caldazon. The color drained out of Kindan’s face and he reluctantly turned the baton back over to Master Biddle.

Perhaps the day would get worse.

“It’s only because you’re growing,” Nonala consoled him at the evening meal. At thirteen Turns she was still half a head taller than Kindan, but that was far less than the full head’s difference between them only a Turn before.

“You’ll find your height,” Verilan added staunchly. Kindan smiled at him but couldn’t help feeling a bit jealous—Verilan was assured a place in the Harper Hall; his skill at copying alone would guarantee it.

“Just try to stay out of trouble,” Kelsa added sagely, looking up from the slate on which she was writing.

“Eat, Kelsa,” Kindan and Nonala said in unison. The others all shared a private smile as Kelsa gave them a startled look and wistfully pushed her slate away. Kelsa was always writing. The dark-haired girl was another who Kindan was certain would find a place in the Harper Hall, even if the Hall was traditionally a man’s world; Kelsa’s songs were so original that none could forget them, and she herself had a perfect memory for not only words but notes as well.

Play her a song once and she’d know it forever; start a melody and she’d write a whole new piece from it. It was dangerous to whistle near Kelsa, for she’d often lurch to a sudden stop—to the consternation of all behind her—and start writing.

Kelsa and Pellar had an amazing affinity for each other whenever the mute Harper visited from his Fire Hold; she seemed able to take his merest notions and put them to music. Surprisingly to Kindan, Halla, Pellar’s mate, never seemed to mind the way Kelsa and Pellar acted around each other. In fact, she seemed to encourage it, when Kindan would have preferred that she be jealous and keep Pellar away from Kelsa. Despite his recent understanding that he didn’t feel that way about Kelsa, Kindan still wanted the hope that if he ever did, he’d stand some chance.

He shook his head self-deprecatingly and, noticing that Kelsa had once again dropped her fork in favor of her stylus, cocked his head at her warningly. Nonala noticed his movement and growled at Kelsa.

“Shards!” Kelsa groaned. “It’s only food.”

“But you need to eat,” Verilan told her. “Not even you can tune on an empty stomach.”

“I’m not a workbeast,” Kelsa snarled, glancing at Kindan. “I don’t need so much food that I blunder about all day.”

“Kelsa!” Nonala said in admonishment and the others all looked at Kelsa angrily.

Kindan’s face drained of all color; there was no way he could pretend that the remark hadn’t hurt.

“Well,” Kelsa said in a lame defense of her words, “maybe if you didn’t eat so much—”

Kindan rose stormily and loudly pushed his plate across the table in front of Kelsa.

“You eat my portion then,” he snarled as he rushed out of the dining hall.