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.
Sharra was amazed that Piemur had traveled so far with a runt of a runnerbeast and one fire-lizard as his only companions. Over a midday meal, Piemur told them at some length how he utilized Farli’s wings and Stupid’s sturdiness to make them a team. That led into a discussion of how to interpret a fire-lizard’s sometimes incoherent imagery, and to theories about the wild fire-lizards’ adoration of Ruth. Until Jaxom had fully recuperated from fire-head, the three of them might be forced to remain in the cove, but they were by no means out of touch. Ruth kept them current with news of the Masterharper’s recovery. And Sharra had another, more impatient, note from her brother, which she showed to Piemur but did not mention to Jaxom.
“If he really needed you, Sharra, it’d be one thing,” Piemur told her. “Fire-head season’s over. Tell him you’re helping me with the mapping. Besides, if it is urgent, his new Weyrleader’s one of the few who knows exactly where the cove is.” In an absurd way, he was enjoying being a third wheel. “Of course, maybe Toric doesn’t want to ask that sort of a favor of D’ram. And it’s not long now, is it?”
Mindful of his own duty to Toric, he enlisted Jaxom’s aid in translating his travel notes into maps. Sharra bleached wherhide skins into usable form and concocted a good ink from local plants. They fished, they swam, they got to know the cove and the little streams feeding into it, and they explored the eastern horn of the cove until they came to a less passable rockstrewn region. At mealtimes, Piemur regaled them in his best harper fashion with tales of hazards and unusual things he had seen.
“Those big spotted felines, by the way,” he told Sharra, “are not local to Southern. I saw them all along my way.” He tapped his elongated map. “Farli always warned me soon enough to avoid a direct encounter, and I’ve also seen some huge canines no cook would ever want to use as a spit turner.”
As a further diversion, the three of them hiked westward to collect a queen fire-lizard’s clutch that Piemur had noticed on his way to the cove. The eggs of a queen fire-lizard were much prized in the north, and both Jaxom and Sharra had been trying to find a clutch. So they carefully packed the eggs they found in baskets filled with hot sand and struck off, Piemur whacking a way through the underbrush. But heat and unaccustomed exercise took their toll on Jaxom’s returning health. He was exhausted by the time they reached the cove, and Piemur was soberly repentant. He really had not meant to jeopardize the Ruathan’s recovery. Magnanimously he went so far as to admit that the trip had tired him, too, and he was going to go to bed as soon as it was dark. The maps could wait—and, clearly, so could the planned trip to the mountain.
They were all awakened the next morning by Ruth’s bugling announcement of the imminent arrival of Canth and F’nor from Benden Weyr, along with some dragons and riders. Immediately Ruth’s adoring circle of wild fire-lizards disappeared; only Meer, Talla, and Farli remained to greet their immense cousins.
When F’nor told them why he and the other riders had come, Piemur had mixed reactions. He was delighted by the plans to build the Masterharper a convalescent home right there in the cove that he had found so beautiful and restful. But he did not like the idea of the incredible place becoming too well known—at least not until he had had the chance to discuss Paradise River with someone. He could just imagine Toric’s reaction to the wonderful surprise for the Masterharper. Sharra seemed unperturbed, but then, she was far more involved with Jaxom than with her brother’s aspirations.
Up until the day of the Masterharper’s arrival in the newly named Cove Hold, there was little peace there. Sharra, disabusing F’nor of the suitability of the plans he had brought, promptly drew new ones, designed for living in Southern, where it was more important to encourage breezes and mitigate the summer heat than to keep out cold or Thread.