“Denol, you say?” the Master Harper exclaimed. “A crop picker from South Boll?”

There was such amusement in his voice that Perschar, who was busily sketching the scene around the collapsed cave roof, looked up in surprise.

Breide gave him a quelling stare. “My remarks were addressed to Master Robinton,” he said haughtily, gesturing with his free hand for the artist to go back to his business. He handed Toric’s message to the Harper.

“Well, that’s a facer for Lord Toric, to be sure,” Perschar went on, ignoring Breide.

The Harper grinned. “I don’t think Lord Toric will be over-faced, however. A man of his infinite resourcefulness will soon put matters right. And the diversion at this particular moment in time is fortuitous.”

“Yes,” Perschar replied, a speculative gleam in his eye. “You may be right at that.” He resumed his deft quick lines, a broad smile on his face.

“But Master Robinton,” Breide went on, mopping the sweat running down his temples. “Lord Toric has to be here.”

“Not when matters of Hold importance come up abruptly.” Robinton turned to Piemur, who had listened with great interest, especially since Breide was so patently distressed. “Ah, here comes Benden,” the Harper added, pointed skyward. “I’ll see that the Weyrleader gets his message from Toric.” He nipped the other roll from Breide’s hand before the man could protest, then walked across the well-trampled field to greet F’lar and Lessa.

More ladders had been lowered and a quantity of glowbaskets placed below to enable the Weyrleaders and Craftmasters to explore easily. A number of people were already doing just that, and the Masterharper and the Weyrleaders joined them.

It was then that Piemur noticed Jancis coming down. “Hi, there,” he said. “We’re not supposed to go off on our own, so how about I go with you?” He helped her down the last step.

“I’m here officially,” she said with a grin. She opened her shoulderbag to show him a board and writing materials. “To measure and diagram the corridors before you get completely lost.” She handed him a folding measuring stick. “You just got seconded to help.”

Piemur did not mind in the least. “The door’s back this way,” he said. “I think that would be a good starting point.” He cupped his hand under her elbow and guided her in the right direction.

While she was diligent about measurements, both took time to peek into crates and examine a variety of the stores.

“Mainly things that they either had plenty of or didn’t immediately need,” Jancis remarked, looking through a large case of encrusted soup ladles and jumping back as one disintegrated in her hand.

“You always need boots!” Piemur replied. “And they’re in an excellent state of preservation. I make this chamber twenty paces by fifteen.” They had moved some distance from the original chamber, through interconnecting caves, some of which showed evidence of having been reshaped and squared off.

“How could they manage to shear through solid rock like a carver through roast wherry?” Jancis asked, running one hand over an archway.

“You’re the smith. You tell me.”

She laughed. “Even Grandfa can’t figure that one out.”

“You haven’t actually worked metal, have you?” Piemur finally blurted out, unable to contain himself any longer. She was not a fragile-looking girl, but neither did she have the bulging muscles of most male smiths he knew.

“Yes, the Crafthall required me to, but not the heavy stuff,” she answered absently, more intent on measuring the archway than on his questions. She gave him the measurements. “There’s a lot more to smithing than working hot metal or glass. I know the principles of my Craft, or I’d not have walked the tables.” She cocked her head at him, the dimple appearing with her grin. “Can you craft every instrument a harper plays?”

“I know the principles,” Piemur said with a laugh and then held up the glowbasket to see into the next chamber. “What have we here?”

“Furniture?” Jancis added her glows to his, and the dark shadows took on form, light shining off smooth metal legs. “Chairs, certainly, tables, all of metal or that other stuff they used so much of.” She was running knowledgeable hands down legs and across surfaces.

“Hey, drawers!” Piemur exclaimed, wrestling with a tier down one side of a desk. “Look!” He held up a handful of thin cylinders with pointed ends. “Writing sticks? And these?” He held up clips and then a transparent stick, a nail thick, a finger wide, and more than a handspan long, both edges covered with fine lines and numerals. “What standards were they measuring by?”

He gave her the stick, and she turned it over and over. “‘Handy enough, since you can see through it,” she remarked and then put it in her shoulderbag, making a notation on her diagram. “Grandfa will want to see it. What else have you found?”

“More of those useless thin plaques of theirs. If all the drawers are full of th—” He stopped complaining as he opened the deepest drawer and saw the neat arrangement of hanging files. He removed one. “Lists and lists, on that film of theirs. And color-coded—orange, green, blue, red, brown. Numbers and letters that don’t mean a thing to me.” He passed the file to her and picked up another one. “All red and all crossed out. Records my Master wants, and records I can now give him! For all the good it does.”

“Aren’t there these sorts of bandings, numerals, and letters on those crates?” Jancis asked.

Piemur groaned, thinking of the piles of crates and boxes and cartons they had seen. “I have no wish to cross-check. Couldn’t they have left anything in plain language for us?”

‘What upsets Grandfa,” Jancis went on, exploring more of the accessible drawers, “is that we’ve lost so much of their knowledge over the hundreds of Turns. He calls that criminal.”

“Not just inefficient?” Piemur grinned, hoping no unexpected summons would interrupt them and that somehow he could get her mind off their main reason for being here.

Jancis had just opened the wide shallow drawer in the center of the desk and removed some very thin loose sheets of the same durable material on which the maps had been printed. She peered at the letters across the top. “E-V-A-C-U-A– funny shape to these letters…Ah, evacuation plan. More numbers.” She folded the top sheet back and gasped. “A plan of the Plateau, with names, and—HOS-PI-TAL, WA-RE-HOUSE, VET, LAB, ADMIN, AIVAS. They have everything named as to function,” She turned to him, her eyes glowing as she passed the sheets to him.” I think this is an important document, Piemur.”

“I think you’re right. But let’s see what else we can find.” The furniture was packed so carefully that in the end they were able to reach only a few more drawers without unstacking things—and there was no space for that. Not all the drawers were as full as the one Piemur had first opened, but each contained interesting detritus in the form of brief notes, more obscure lists, and the thin rectangular plaques that appeared to have no obvious function. Jancis made the final discovery: an oblong of black material with raised buttons, twelve bearing numbers and four arithmetic signs, all flanked and topped by buttons, but they both agreed that her grandfather should see. Most of the furniture was in remarkably good condition as the cave complex was dry and the material impervious to penetration by tunnel snakes, though excretal evidence of those creatures marked the surfaces.

“Poor hungry critters,” Jancis said in mock sympathy. “All this for centuries and not one thing edible!”

“Or long since consumed.” Piemur noticed that their glowbaskets were getting dim. “How long have we been down here?”

“Long enough for me to get hungry,” she replied, her dimple showing.

They had already started on their way back to the entrance when they heard their names echoing down the corridors. When they got back to the entrance, they found Master Esselin halfway down one ladder in an urgent discussion with F’lar, who was a few rungs up another, peering more at the sky than at the man he was talking to.