Free Dragon's Kin by Anne McCaffrey Page B

as the mine caved in. He knew what he was doing, Kindan. They both did. But they pushed me back. They pushed me back . . .” Zenor’s voice faded into sleep as the fellis juice he’d been given earlier took effect.
    Kindan held his hand until Margit noticed him, hours later, sprawled beside his friend in sleep. Wiping away more tears from her own face, she fetched a blanket and draped it over him.

CHAPTER IV

    I am too big to cry
And my voice is too shy
To sing my sad, sad song
Or say the words I long
To say to you—good-bye, good-bye.
    The air was cold and the wind swept it through Kindan’s clothes with a sharp bite. Winter was driving out fall, but Kindan was sure that it was always cold in the graveyard. The last words had been said, the rest of the Hold was drifting back down to the main Hall for a toast to the dead but Kindan held back, a small shape at the edge of the new graves.
    His father had never said too much to him. As the youngest of nine children, Kindan had been one face among many. His elder brothers had always been remote, larger than life—nearly like Master Natalon.
    All the same, Kindan felt that he should have said something more, should have left some remembrance. Jakris had made a carving, and Tofir had left a drawing, before they had both gone off with their new families.
    Terra and her husband, Riterin, already had four children of their own and all of them young, so they had been willing to take Jakris, the eldest. Besides, Riterin was a woodworker, so Jakris’s gift of carving would be well-appreciated in their household.
    Tofir had been fostered to Crom Hold itself, where his gift with drawing would be encouraged and he might even take up mapping, a skill that was always needed in the mines.
    “Kindan!”
    Kindan turned his head toward the caller. It was Dalor. He ran up to Kindan.
    “Father said you’d still be up here. He told me that you’re to come down before you catch your death of cold.”
    Kindan nodded solemnly and set off behind the younger boy. Kindan had seen more of Dalor in the past sevenday than he had in many months, but he suspected it was Natalon’s way of looking out for those beholden to him. Not that Kindan minded; Dalor was okay in a distracted sort of way.
    Dalor cast a backward look at Kindan, partly to see if he was really following and partly out of sympathy for the youngest of Danil’s sons.
    “There’s some mulled wine down at the hold”—only Dalor and his family called their large cottage “the hold”—“and father said we’d get some as soon as we got in.”
             
    “Nine, can you believe it?” Milla was saying to Jenella, Dalor’s mother, as they made their way into the hold kitchen. “Most of them Danil and his sons, more’s the pity. And what’s going to happen to poor Kindan now? They’ve placed the other two, and I don’t see why they haven’t placed him, too. It must be spooky sleeping in his place all by himself, poor lad.”
    Jenella, Dalor’s mother, saw the boys and coughed pointedly at Milla. But Milla, who had her back to them rolling dough, didn’t pick up on the hint. “Is that your cough come back? It’s got chill enough now, but you don’t want it what with you finally expecting another,” she said.
    She went on blithely: “Nine dead, three injured, and poor Zenor demanding his place in the mines for his father, not that I blame him, the way Norla, his mother, is dealing so poorly with it all.” She placed the dough in rising tins. “And a shift leader short—what are they going to do?”
    “Dalor, Kindan, you look chilled to the bone,” Jenella said loudly, cutting across anything more that Milla might think to say. “Milla, could you be a dear and pour them some of the mulled wine that’s on the stove? Getting up’s so tiring for me right now.”
    Jenella was seven months pregnant. Kindan had heard that she’d been pregnant before but had lost the baby. Silstra had gone to help that night