The Renegades of Pern (39 page)

“Look, I’ve got to get back to Ruatha,” Jaxom said as the smith concluded his instructions. “Sharra’s going to be disgusted with not being able to travel right now. She’s pregnant again, you see.” His grin was both embarrassed and proud.

For the first time, Piemur discovered that he felt no pain at Jaxom and Sharra’s happiness. “Nuisance, that,” he said, grinning back. “Listen, would Ruth mind dropping Jancis and me off at Cove Hold? Master Robinton will want a full report on this.”

Ruth did not mind at all.

“Another marvel?” Master Robinton asked. His workspace was littered with examples of the cavern artifacts. “It’s going to take us till the end of the Pass to document what we’ve already got.” Almost irritably, he shoved at the mess around him. “Things! The ancients had so many
things
!”

Piemur chuckled as he automatically refilled the Master’s empty wineglass.

“A building is not a thing, Master Robinton. D’ram, have you or Lord Lytol come across any reference to the ‘aivas’?” he asked.

“It was not listed on the evacuation plan,” Lytol said, reaching over to find the relevant notes.

“Maybe an aivas couldn’t be evacuated,” Jaxom suggested. “They did leave some heavy equipment behind. Not that you could guess its purpose from the slag it is now. But those remains were left in a special room with no doors or windows, only ventilation grills. And thicker walls than usual. We’ll have to go through the
ADMIN
building.”

“If we can,” Piemur said gloomily.

“That’s a double thickness of the heaviest gauge of their material,” Jancis said thoughtfully. “So far Grandfa cannot find a way of penetrating it, even using the ancients’ drill bits.”

“Aivas, aivas, aivas,” Master Robinton mused. “It doesn’t sound like a real word. An aiva, the aiva, many aivas!” He flicked one hand in a gesture of defeat. “You will stay the night, won’t you, Jancis? Our current cook has a way with fish that’s magical.” His charming smile brought an answering one from Jancis. “Then we can all get up to the Plateau in plenty of time for yet another revelation.”

After dinner, when Piemur went to check on Stupid, he invited Jancis to come along.

“That’s a terrible name to call any creature,” Jancis chided him as he led the way, glowbasket overhead, toward the fenced clearing where the little runnerbeast was accommodated.

“It’s an old joke,” Piemur said lamely, but even Jancis was impressed when Stupid nickered in response to his name and trotted over, thrusting out his nose to nuzzle his master. “You don’t mind, do you, Stupid? If I called you anything else, you wouldn’t answer, would you?”

Stupid waggled his ears and nickered again as Farli joined them, settling, as usual, on the little runner’s rump. He switched his tail, and she scolded him.

“They really like each other,” Jancis exclaimed. “I didn’t think runners liked fire-lizards or dragons.”

Piemur chuckled, leaning against the top rail of the enclosure, idly rubbing Stupid’s soft nose. By the light of Belior moon, Jancis looked slightly mysterious, the planes of her face touched by the white light.

“Well, it’s a fact Stupid shies away from any dragon, even Ruth. You haven’t been dragon food yet, have you, friend?” he teased. “But he and I and Farli make a pretty good team.”

“They say,” Jancis said, scratching just the right spot on Stupid’s neck and causing him to lean into her fingers, tilting his head, eyes half-closed, “that you and Stupid and Farli walked the entire coast of Southern.”

“Only from Southern Hold to Cove Hold. I got excused the rest of it.”

“Even that much took a lot of courage.”

“Courage?” Piemur snorted at the notion. “Courage had little to do with it. I was born naturally inquisitive. And,” he added in a sudden spurt of honesty, “it was one way to keep Toric from exiling me from Southern.”

“Why would Lord Toric do that?”

“He didn’t fancy me as marriage kin.” Piemur had shifted position so that he was closer to her, though still ostensibly leaning indolently on the rail.

“You? And Sharra?”

Piemur grinned. “For that matter, he didn’t fancy Jaxom as marriage kin, but he got talked into it.” Finally Piemur could appreciate the full irony of that confrontation. “He didn’t fancy his sister married to the lord of a table-sized hold.”

“What?” Jancis, appropriately indignant, ceased scratching Stupid’s neck and turned toward Piemur. “Why, Ruatha has one of the oldest Bloodlines on Pern. Everyone with marriageable daughters was hoping to attract Lord Jaxom.”

“Toric had bigger plans for Sharra.” Piemur worked his way a little closer to her as Stupid swung his head back to nip at a nightfly.

“How could he? Jaxom’s the only young Lord Holder. And they say they’re devoted to each other. She nursed him through fire-head right here at Cove Hold.”

“I know,” Piemur murmured. Smiling, he put both hands on the rail, one on either side of Jancis. When she became aware of the maneuver, he grinned down at her, waiting for her reaction. “And what do they say about Journeyman Piemur?”

She dared him, the dimple flashing in her cheek, a dark spot on her moonlit face. “What they say about any harper journeyman, of course. That they’re not to be trusted for a moment.”

Slowly, so she could escape if she really wanted to, and he hoped very much that she did not, he lowered his head and brought his arms up to hold her. “Especially not on moonlit nights like this, huh?” He touched her lips very gently with his, aware that they were parted in a smile and that she had no intention of ducking away at the last moment. Abruptly she was pushed forcefully into his arms. He tightened them to keep her from falling just as her arms went around him to steady herself. “Thank you, Stupid, that’ll do quite nicely.” And Piemur made excellent use of his runner’s headlong assistance.

If Piemur and Jancis were preoccupied with each other the next morning at the dawn breakfast that Master Robinton had ordered, the others were far too intent on arriving on time at the Plateau to notice. D’ram would convey the Harper, Piemur, and Jancis to the
ADMIN
building. Lytol had declined to go along.

“I think he’s noticeably fading,” Robinton murmured to D’ram as they strode to Tiroth’s clearing. “Jaxom remarked on it to me.”

“He’s fine, Robinton, really he is. It’s just that like all of us, he can’t do as much as he used to,” D’ram replied, his expression sad. “Jaxom’s news about a second child cheered him.”

“It cheered me, too. Ah, Tiroth, you’re very good to haul us to and fro,” the Harper said, giving the elderly bronze an affectionate clout as he climbed up to sit between the neck ridges. “Hand Jancis up to me, Piemur. I’ll see she’s safe. You can hold on to me as tightly as you wish, my dear.”

“You keep your hands to yourself, Master,” Piemur said in a mock growl, ascending first and then assisting Jancis to the position behind him. He ignored the protests from his stiff muscles and tender bruises.

“Where’s your respect for my age, my position?” the Harper demanded, laughing as he mounted just in front of the journeyman.

“Where it always has been, Master,” Piemur assured him heartily. “Where I can keep my eye on you!”

D’ram was chuckling as he mounted, and Tiroth’s powerful upward leap brought Jancis’s arms clutching at Piemur’s. He covered her hands on his chest with his, very pleased to feel her pressing so tightly against him. They all had a good view of the Dawn Sisters shining in the morning sky before Tiroth took them
between.

The Sisters were still in sight when they arrived at the Plateau and skimmed up from the landing strip to the dark shadows of the mounds and the spot where the light of many glowbaskets told them the excavation crew was all ready to go. Indeed, they learned shortly, Master Fandarel had already outlined the area to be dug and the first shovelsful had been removed.

“Master Robinton, D’ram, good morning. Jancis, Piemur. We calculate a full span’s encrustation. I also deemed it wise to remove the tiles, so obviously a temporary cover. Last night I compared them with some still in place on the flying ships, and I believe that it is the same material, though none of the ships seem to be missing any significant number. That confirms my theory that originally there were more than three ships.”

“I think that’s likely,” Master Robinton agreed, shivering a bit in the cool dawn air. “The fire-lizards’ images always suggest more than three. Twice that many, and even with six the labor of transporting all those things from the Dawn Sisters to the surface here would have been astounding.”

Someone brought stools and hot klah so that Master Robinton and D’ram could be made comfortable while the digging progressed. Jancis and Piemur stood to one side, sipping at the klah. Piemur tried to suppress the irritation he felt that their private little dig had turned so official. Jancis was rather more subdued than he liked. This was her find, her hunch. She should be directing the work. True, she could not really expect to take precedence over her grandfather, but they all seemed to have forgotten that the whole effort was due to her discovery of the ancient drawing film. It had been one thing to ask Jaxom to help, but not the whole bloody Plateau. The lumps on his head began to throb.

As the sun came up, he realized that someone had worked hard during the night to strip the tiles from the roof. The panels stood completely clear, a long finger-length above the original roof. Some of the cladding remained on the walls, but a trench had been cut through the soil, right down to the tar-based material with which the ancients had paved the walks and roadways between their buildings.

Suddenly a cheer went up. Grabbing Jancis by the hand, Piemur pushed past the crowd clustering in a loose circle about the dig area. Master Fandarel and Master Robinton had been ushered to the newly uncovered door. It was not one of the common sliding doors of the ancients but had instead two equal-sized panels.

“I beg your pardon, Master Fandarel and Master Robinton, but this building was Jancis’s hunch, and she should by rights go first!” Piemur heard Jancis gasp in astonishment and felt her pull against his grip. He ignored the bemused expressions of the two Mastercraftsmen as he hauled Jancis right up to the doors. He heard Master Esselin’s indignant exclamation and Breide’s acid comment about harper arrogance, and the ripple of surprise passing back through the small crowd. Jancis tried to pull him back, tried to free her hand.

“You know, you are right, Piemur,” Robinton said, stepping to one side. “We have usurped Jancis’s prerogative.”

“After you, Jancis,” Fandarel said. He spoke with the utmost courtesy but looked thoughtfully at Piemur.

Seeing that Jancis was too dismayed to act, Piemur stepped beside her, looking for the method of opening the door. He could see none, but there was no way that he would have turned back to the Smith for assistance. He scrutinized the door more carefully. There was an unusual hinge arrangement, but no knob or latch. He put one hand on an obvious doorplate and pressed. There was the resistance of long unmoved parts, then dust and ash showered down from the gap between the doors. He pushed with both hands, and the door began to move inward. Jancis rallied from her embarrassment sufficiently to lend her weight, and suddenly the door swung completely inward, marking its path in the fine dust that had filtered inside over the Turns.

Piemur pulled the other side back, opening the doors wide to the fresh morning breeze blowing softly up the Plateau and swirling the dust in the corridor. Then he turned around, gesturing for one of the glowbaskets. Soon the sun would bring light into the hallway, but he did not want to delay a single moment. A judicious two paces behind Jancis and Piemur, Masters Fandarel and Robinton entered.

“A corridor to the right,” Piemur said, holding the glowbasket up in his left hand while he kept his right one firmly around Jancis’s wrist. She was not resisting him anymore, he thought, grinning to himself. She just needed to assert herself a little more and no one was going to do her out of her rights, not while he was around.

Now that he was making the first footprints the ashy floors had felt in who knew how many Turns, he was beginning to be appalled at his own brashness, but he had gotten away with it—again. He grinned. He turned to his right again, and with the added illumination from the glowbaskets carried by Robinton and Fandarel, he could see more tiling, whitely gleaming at the end of the short hallway. “They sure weren’t taking any chances with aivas.”

“There is an obvious door,” Master Fandarel remarked. He started to move in front of them, then paused and gestured for the two younger people to continue.

Jancis shot Piemur a look of wretched consternation, but he just grinned at her, squeezing her hand. “You found it—you get to see it first!”

The hall was wide enough for all of them to stand abreast at the reinforced wall. The door had a knob, and when Jancis declined to touch it, Piemur had no hesitation. It took all his strength to turn it, for time and dust had clogged the mechanism, but with both hands and a mighty effort, he disengaged the latch. The door did not open inward, as he had half expected, but outward.

“There is little dust on this floor,” the smith remarked, peering over their heads at the scene in front of them.

“There’s a red light on a cupboard,” Piemur observed, feeling his skin crawl with amazement.

“And more light!” Jancis said in a timorous voice.

“In fact, the whole place is lighting up,” Piemur added, feeling his feet rooted in the doorway as strange and unfamiliar sensations coursed through him. This place had not been emptied. He had never seen such cabinets and closets before; but there was no doubt in his mind that they were right for this room. For once, the brash young harper was touched with awe and reverence. This was just the sort of place they had all been hoping to find.

“The red light illuminates letters,” Master Robinton said in a hushed voice as he looked over Jancis’s shoulder.

“Remarkable, truly remarkable!” The Smith’s voice was no less reverent.

The growing light made visible some of the details within the room: the worktables on either side of the door, and the two high stools neatly placed under them. On the wall opposite the door was a large framed surface, tinted slightly green, with little red letters blinking on and off in the lower left-hand side. A chair, on a pedestal with five spokes in its base, stood in front of it and the slanting workspace. It seemed unadorned until Piemur noticed the regular squares—lighter in color than the surrounding surface—set in ranks and odd-looking protruberances in a series of rows to the right. Above them, to the right of the screen, were slots and more dial faces, one of which showed a steady green light and a needle swinging slowly from the left to a central position.