Free Dragon's Fire by Anne McCaffrey Page B

called from the tree, her tone growing desperate. “Can Grief feed you all?”
    Tenim’s features hardened. “At least she doesn’t get caught.”
    “Moran’ll know something’s wrong when I don’t come back,” Halla said, trying a different tack.
    “So?” Tenim replied, unimpressed. “What makes you think what Moran says matters to me?”
    Halla had no answer for that. Her lips quivered and she looked ready to cry.
    Tenim glanced from her and back to the bird on his arm, a wicked smile on his face. With a quick command, he flung his arm upward and the bird took flight.
    Pellar tensed, ready to spring, as the bird swooped onto the trapped girl, but any noise his movements made was drowned out by Halla’s fearful scream. Then, just as Pellar decided to attack Tenim, bird or no bird, Halla’s scream turned to one of surprise, followed by a yelp as the bird’s beak sliced the rope snare and she fell hard to the ground, curled into a ball and rolling to absorb the worst of the fall.
    She was up again in an instant, her arms in a fighting stance.
    “Thanks for nothing, Tenim,” she snarled, racing up to him. But she recoiled as Grief dropped again from the sky, screeching in her face.
    “You owe me, Halla,” Tenim told her, a cold smile on his face. The smile changed to a leer as he added, “When the time comes, I’ll collect.”
    The color drained from Halla’s face as his words registered. She regained her composure, saying, “If you’re still alive.”
    Tenim smiled but said nothing, instead reaching up once more to retrieve his bird and feed it. He turned away from Halla, muttering soothing sounds to the bird, waved with his other hand for the troop to follow him, and started away up the hill.
    Pellar stayed in his hiding place, frozen in thought and anger, with one unanswered question burning in his brain: Why hadn’t the girl turned him in?

    “You’re certain that they said Moran?” Zist asked days later. Pellar had waited until he was certain that his hiding place wasn’t in danger and then, taking all his gear with him, had set off carefully, using a route he’d never before used to get to miners’ camp.
    Pellar nodded firmly.
    “So…” Zist’s voice drifted off as he frowned, deep in thought.
    Pellar knew that Moran had been Zist’s apprentice. He dimly remembered a young man full of song and pretensions but Pellar had been still little when Moran had left on his mission to find the Shunned. Turns had passed and no one had heard from him. Zist and Murenny had sadly given him up for dead.
    But rumors of a harper named Moran had cropped up in conversations at various Gathers, particularly those of Crom and Telgar Holds. In fact, Zist had chosen Crom Hold partly in the dim hope that he might find Moran, or, at least, find out more about his fate.
    Pellar had heard the rumors, too, and had noted that this “harper” seemed surrounded by children, Shunned or orphaned.
    When Pellar had brought it up with Master Zist, the harper had waved the issue aside dismissively. “It could be him,” he’d said. “Or it could be someone pretending to be him. We’ll never know until we find him.”
    And now Pellar waited patiently, nursing his
klah,
and refilling it in the long silence while Master Zist reviewed his memories. It was a long while before he looked up at Pellar again.
    “And only the girl saw you, you’re certain?”
    Again, Pellar nodded.
    “Hmm…” Zist’s attention drifted away again.
    Pellar took the opportunity to refill his bowl with warm stew and had finished it, offering spare tidbits to Chitter, long before Master Zist disturbed him with another question.
    “And you’re certain that this Tenim thought that the girl was the one who set the traps?”
    Pellar nodded fervently.
    Zist pursed his lips and stroked his chin, picking up Pellar’s stack of slates and reviewing them again.
    “There were seven in the troop. Did that include the boy and the girl?”
    Pellar