Chapter 10

H'llon came quickly at the request of Elissa; she sent a message to him via little brown Mellow.

"Problems?" he asked laconically.

"Yes….H'llon, we need to be discrete about calling you in on a logicating problem in case it offends Benden."

H'llon sniffed.

"Logicators need often to look at the ground… some of the Benden er, people, find it hard to get their noses out of the air long enough to look down" he commented.

Elissa grinned; then her face tightened again as she outlined the situation.

Leichalle's term 'incandescent fury' almost covered H'llon's reaction. He got himself under control with an effort, white faced and furious.

"Yes Elissa, you need the instant transport. The longer you hang about travelling, the worse it could be for the other kid. Do you know exactly where to go?"

Elissa shook her head.

"Only a general area. I thought we could ask who was training, or purporting to train, woodcraft apprentices."

"I've a better idea. Sniffer is really good at visualisations." He stroked his little bronze firelizard. "and he might pick out pictures from the girl's fever dreams. It's worth a shot."

Gerney and Elissa both nodded approvingly. Gerney said,

"Good lad, H'llon. Practical head on his shoulders" as Lusya led the Bronze Rider into the healing hall.

"Bronze lizards are less flighty than most" Elissa explained. "Your little Maple will be capable too."

"Hmmmph. If he ever grows out of chewing on my earlobe."

"It's a sign if affection. Nibbler does that to H'llon."

H'llon rejoined them, his face even more flinty once he had seen the child's condition for himself.

"I have something tentative" he said. "I'm loath to try to use it directly because it's too unclear; and the time keeps hopping about in her thoughts. However, I can get Sniffer to send it to those of you with lizards as a starting point when we search."

The cot visualised was not atypical; but had a lean-to wood store built of slate.

"I'll circle over and see if I can pick it out. You can all keep your eyes skinned too" said H'llon. "Alright, climb up everyone!"

Big Melth could easily accommodate five passengers; and H'llon had fitted extra straps. Both Sadvia and Kyal had been dragonback before, though only on the much smaller blues or greens; Gerney and Lusya had never had occasion to travel.

"He's BEAUTIFUL!" whispered Lusya, touching Melth's soft bronze skin.

H'llon grinned a soppy grin, love for Melth momentarily displacing thoughts of their grim mission.

"He says you have taste, cousin" he informed her. "Watch Elissa get up, then you'll see how. She can pull and I'll push."

Elissa scrambled up Melth's straps with practised ease, thanking the young Bronze for his courteously extended foreleg. She hauled up a bubbling Lusya, followed by Kyal and Sadvia; then extended a willing hand to Master Gerney.

"There's as much dignity to this as being a sack of tubers" the master grumbled as he settled behind her.

Elissa giggled.

"You're not as knobbly" she said, cheekily. "You climbed up just fine! And it has to be easier than chimneying…"

"I thought we'd agreed to forget that, you cheeky brat" he grunted as H'llon leaped expertly into the saddle in front.

Elissa tossed a smile over her shoulder; and shouted a general warning.

"Hold tight!" she admonished. "Melth goes off very fast – it's a bit teeth-jerking!"

Melth's skyward leap threw them all backwards as far as the straps allowed; and Elissa leaned comfortably back against Gerney, enjoying the flight. Then they were between; she heard the twins and Lusya yelp, startled, the sound suddenly cut off in the black nothingness. Three heartbeats and they were above a rural pasture. Elissa was aware of Gerney's body trembling behind her and turned her head.

"Cold, isn't it?" she remarked. "Nothing ever prepares you for it. I'm sorry, maybe I should have warned you to wear an extra jacket. But you'll soon warm up when we land."

"Yes. Indeed" he spoke stiffly, through clenched teeth. "It is, however, most exhilarating. Most exhilarating. And, um, stimulating" he looked around, fascinated beyond any bodily sensations or discomfort.

"OH! I love it!" cried Lusya. "Cousin H'llon, please take me on another trip some time – anywhere!"

Melth backwinged and dropped to circle as H'llon called back,

"Perhaps you should come try for Impression, Lusya. We're expecting a clutch, you know."

"Oh yes! Please! Even if I don't Impress, it would be wonderful to visit!" cried Lusya enthusiastically.

"I hate to interrupt with business" said Gerney, regretfully, "But would that be it?" he pointed to a cot tucked back from the stream, with a slate outbuilding against it.

"Could be. Looks enough like." H'llon called, his voice grim again. "Let's go down see."

Elissa looked at the squat building, and felt it had a brooding look. She told herself that it was merely her imagination that gave her a feeling of chill as she slid off Melth's shoulder weyrlings style, more in haste than grace. But she headed purposefully for the woodstore in any case.

A girl some turns younger than their patient was tied to a ring inside the doorway. The rope was too short to permit her to sit or lie; a baulk of timber above her head prevented her from standing. Her own soil stained her legs. Elissa, lips compressed, cut the rope with her belt knife and Gerney caught the child as she fell. Feeling how cold her skin was, he quickly took off his jacket to wrap her half naked body.

"Sadvia" he said "Stay with her. She will have pins and needles as her limbs return to feeling. You will have to rub her legs and hands."

Sadvia gulped and nodded; and loosened her own belt knife as well, a grimly protective look on her face.

"My cousin's going to be furious that anyone under his Hold can be so ill-treated!" she said.

"Aye, and Bendarek too" added Gerney. He and H'llon headed purposefully for the cot door; and it was a moot point whose boot crashed it in.

A frightened looking girl stirred something on the fire; another, naked, swept sawdust by the simple pole lathe worked by the fat woman whose bulk and presence dominated the cot. She had the sort of face that should have been jolly; but something made it frightening and threatening instead. She stared for a moment open-mouthed. Then she laughed. It sounded like a saw with bent teeth.

"Why, little lovelorn Gerney! Come to look up an old flame?"

Gerney changed colour several times.

"Sandrina. When the child reached us, I wondered if it were you. It has the mark of what you were expelled for. Your sick mind at least has not changed, though I'd have been hard put to recognise you now."

Her eyes flashed anger at his words; but she shrugged.

"You mealy mouthed prigs couldn't take away my skills. And I managed to make a simple lathe. It may not be as fancy as your cog-turned wheels but it works well enough. Do you still specialise in lathe?"

"I do" he said grimly. "Not that it's of any moment to you. You're coming back to the Woodcrafter Hall to stand trial before Bendarek."

"I think not. You see, I think you're still a sentimentalist."

She grabbed the child at her feet by the hair, and held her razor sharp chisel at the girl's throat.

"You wouldn't dare" said Gerney.

"Try me."

Elissa slipped away. She was fairly certain that the woman had not noticed the youngsters past H'llon and Gerney; and beckoning to Kyal she slipped to the other side of the cot.

"Boost me in the window, Kyal." she commanded. He did so; and with a minimum of scrambling she found herself in a bedroom. A ladder led up to what must be a loft; presumably the little girls slept up there. Elissa picked up a poker from the bedroom fireplace and with infinite pains opened the door she had seen behind Sandrina. She winked outrageously at Gerney and H'llon and mouthed 'keep her talking!'

Gerney asked

"Which one of these is the sister of the one who ran away?"

Sandrina shrugged again. Elissa wrinkled her nose as the excess flesh at the top of her arms wobbled. The woman said,

"I tied her in the woodshed because she wouldn't tell me where the little slut had gone. She's still alive, I think. Last one I had to do that to died in just a couple of days."

Gerney blinked.

"But where do you get them from? How do you get away with it?"

She sniffed.

"Cot holders don't want girl children anyway. They're happy to give them up as apprentices. If they ask awkward questions, I tell them their brat has gone on to the Crafthall. Now take your young relative and get out."

H'llon found his voice.

"His relative witnesses. As Bronze Rider" he said coldly. "Now, Elissa."

Elissa brought the poker down hard on Sandrina's neck before she could press the chisel home. The child, released as Sandrina fell heavily, scrambled into a corner and cowered.

Elissa stared down at the recumbent form, a look of horrified surprise on her elfin features.

"I think I killed her" she said in a tone of disbelief. "I heard something snap, and her head shouldn't be at that angle, should it?"

H'llon came swiftly over.

"Well – I guess that may solve things all round" he said philosophically, patting Elissa on the shoulder.

"Yes – but the child has to live with it though!" Gerney rounded on him with barely suppressed fury.

H'llon shrugged.

"It's not going to be easy. But at least she has the comfort of knowing that a menace like this won't be hurting anyone else because our master or Lord Asgenar can't think of anything better to do with her than make her holdless to live as a renegade and carry on her filthy habits. Elissa is weyrbred; and weyrfolk are trained to protect. And she's a practical girl. Aren't you Elissa?"

It was a long speech for the normally reticent H'llon; the practice of shifting the responsibility for criminals by making them holdless angered him, as Elissa well knew. She nodded to his question.

"Yes, H'llon; but I'm going to be sick anyway" she told him, and promptly suited her actions to her words.

Gerney went over to her and put a protective arm around her shoulders.

"It should have been the task of one of us men. Not you" he said.

"You'd not have fitted through the window" commented Elissa prosaically. "Besides, she was having such fun baiting you, she didn't hear me. And it's not like killing someone who has a dragon to suicide. She was evil. And a rotten turner" she added, looking at the piled bowls in disgust. Then with a sob she cast herself on her master's chest and howled.

Lusya hustled the two girls up to the loft to get blankets and clothes; and finding their own to be insufficient, raided Sandrina's clothes press.

"They need immediate medical attention" she told H'llon. "You will have to take them, and the other in the shed, with me directly to the Healer Hall. When they are better will be time enough to decide their future."

"Yes ma'am" H'llon saluted her gravely; and she looked askance at him, uncertain whether he was teasing or serious! As it happened, H'llon was serious; he accepted Lusya's greater expertise in the field of healercraft and treated her therefore as he would Calla!

While Lusya, Sadvia and Elissa were getting the little girls bundled up ready for a trip between, a Green dragon landed near Melth; and a young man strode over.

"Pardon me, Bronze Rider – but I don't recognise you" his tone was respectful enough, but his demeanour seemed faintly hostile.

H'llon nodded to him.

"Green Rider. I am H'llon of High Reaches; but as my knots will tell you, I am also Journeyman woodcrafter. I am here providing transport as a favour to some of my relatives on Woodcrafter Hall business. I am not interfering in Benden's business."

"A big favour to call out a Bronze Rider" the young man tittered angrily. "And not polite of the Crafthall to call in riders from outside without consulting Asgenar."

H'llon looked at him coldly.

"LORD Asgenar has representatives along. Now, have you any more impudent questions or comments to make, Green Rider? For if the questions were your Weyrleader's, you'd have said. And I am always happy to answer any questions put by F'lar of Benden, should he concern himself with crafter business."

The rider flushed.

"I will tell F'lar I met you, H'llon of High Reaches!" he said shrilly. "And how far you were from home on some – mysterious – craft business!"

"Why not do that." Said H'llon, affably. "And while you're at it, tell him that I threatened you that if you did not report a full and accurate account I would thrust your teeth so far down your throat you'd be eating from your backside!" H'llon was feeling violent after all he had witnessed; and laid back as he usually was, the attitude of this officious little puppy got his goat!

As the self important youngster flung himself onto his dragon and took off, Elissa peered over the windowsill and managed a chuckle.

"He's very good, when someone really sets him off, isn't he?" she commented to Gerney.

"It is a relief that we had a senior weyrmember with us" the master commented dryly. "Now if he can come down off his high Bronze, he can help me bury the body."

"By the mounds there, she's buried a few herself." Said Elissa grimly. "They really should be investigated. And if, as I suspect, there are children in them, I'm not in the least bit sorry to have killed her. Indeed, it is probably meet that she should have met her end at the hands of a young girl." She stroked her two firelizards, whose whirling eyes were settling as she got control of her own agitation.

"You're an extraordinary girl" Gerney said. "I suppose I should tell you about the woman Sandrina."

She shrugged.

"Not if you don't want to. I can make some guesses from the direction of the conversation, but it's not my business."

"Guesses?" he seemed interested in what she had surmised; so Elissa told him,

"I presume she was a lathe enthusiast. It attracted you. She'd almost have to have been prettier a few turns ago. Maybe you saw that she wasn't very good, but you were young and enthusiastic and thought she'd improve. You fell in love with what you thought she was. She didn't want you; her tastes ran in another direction. She was caught hurting a younger apprentice and was thrown out. Perhaps it was you that caught her. I know that some homosexuals sneer at women, maybe she sneered at you as a man, the more because her brand of spite saw you as vulnerable. I guess you've always been a bit shy with women – like H'llon – and it confirmed for you that women are a bad thing to have in a Crafthall. Does it run something like that?"

He stared at his feet.

"More or less" he admitted. "But she's not normal. You are right – I should not be prejudiced against female apprentices because of her."

"No; but you are right too. A lot of young girls seem to be flighty and ridiculous creations" said Elissa. "I think boys and girls actually think in different ways. Which leads to women having no trouble running cots and there are lots of bachelor jokes; and why there are more men in crafts than women."

"I'll ask you not to spread this around or cast up the folly of my youth at me" he asked tightly. She looked surprised.

"Why ever should I? I only tease you about the chimney incident because it's funny."

"Not at the time it wasn't."

"But did you get the wood?"

"Of course."

"Then it was worth it."

He laughed ruefully.

"Unlimber that lathe" he directed her. "It may be a primitive way of turning the wood, but we may as well not waste the build. It'll do for large work and training on."

"There's a kind of beauty to it, actually" said Elissa. "Utilising the spring of the natural wood to shape other wood. And it is a lathe that any journeyman could build without need for precision parts. I'd like to build one myself for the practise."

Gerney smiled approvingly at her.

"And that is the mark of the true craftsman" he said.

Back at the Woodcrafter Hall, they reported fully to Bendarek. The Masterwoodcrafter asked H'llon to write out an account and sign it to prove that Elissa had acted to save the life of the child.

"Is not my word as a Bronze Rider sufficient?" asked H'llon.

"Indeed. But if the woman has relatives or adherents that try to make trouble while, say, you are fighting Thread, the document shall stand your proxy" Bendarek explained. "And also goes into our records so that in future turns a full and true history can be compiled without hearsay or gossip."

H'llon also made a full report to T'bor; and the weyrleader managed not to groan over the stoic young man getting himself involved in trouble. T'bor made an informal invitation to F'lar to come and drink wine with him; and to smooth the incident over. That it was the right of crafters to deal with irregularities within their own craft was indisputable; but the feelings of easily hurt and volatile Green Riders could so easily distort matters! As it happened, F'lar broadly agreed when T'bor gave a much bowdlerised account; and if he thought it unusual that a Bronze Rider should run errands for his craftbred family, it was his right. And as a journeyman, H'llon had closer ties to his craft than many who Impressed from a Crafthall.

After treatment at the Healer Hall, the little girls were interviewed by Master Bendarek to see if they would prefer to become proper apprentices or be returned to their homes.

The child who had been tied in the woodshed, Lianka, very much like her sister to look at though with ginger hair where her elder's was blonde, stuck her chin out determinedly.

"I want to be with Tahnee, my sister" she declared. Weak she might be from her ordeal, but her eyes were bright and full of spirit. "And I want to learn proper woodworking. I can use a lathe. Tahnee is best at free carving. When can I see her?"

"If Master Oldive gives you leave, you may return with me." Promised Bendarek. "She is very ill, though."

"If she is like to die, I should be with her" insisted the child.

Bendarek nodded. He hoped, in fact, that the younger girl's voice would help to bring Tahnee back to consciousness, and give her something to live for. He turned to the others.

"What about you two?" he asked.

"What's to go home to?" asked the older, Amula, the one who had been kept naked as punishment. Now the immediate threat of Sandrina was gone she had regained some of her spirit, though she still had a look of hopelessness in her eyes. She added "No one wants me – nor Beka – at our old homes. We've learned some woodcraft. We might as well not waste that. And I'll look after Beka if you let her come." She volunteered as the younger child snuffled unhappily.

"Thank you, Amula. Journeywoman Isrona will look after both of you, but I would be very appreciative if you could be like a sister to her." Said Bendarek. "How old are you all?"

"Tahnee and me be twelve" Amula told him. "She'll soon be Turned thirteen, I think. Beka's eleven and a half. Lianka's nearly eleven, but she already be better than Madam on the lathe."

Lianka gave a malicious little grin.

"She didn't like it above half" she said, her tone satisfied. "Nor Tahnee being better at carving than her. I guess that be why she used to punish us sometimes."

Bendarek nodded. It was in keeping with the nature of a spiteful woman like Sandrina. He was glad the girls all decided to come to the woodcrafter hall. They had been apprenticed under false pretences; but it was woodcrafter business to care for them. And it seemed from their talk as though two at least of them would fulfil the promise of potential and cover the expense of keeping them as apprentices. Assuming of course that Tahnee lived. As to the others, if they had no skill, perhaps he could arrange for them to transfer to apprenticeships in other fields, if they showed promise; or have them fostered to train as ancillary staff.

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