“…to here. That would make a good, deep, long-carrying sound when the hide is stretched.”

Saneter, who had come with them, stooped to pick up a thick, knobby-ended branch and pounded the tree trunk experimentally. Everyone was surprised at the hollow boom that resulted. The fire lizards, who’d been perched on the surface, lifted with shrieks of protest.

Grinning, Sebell held out his hand to Saneter for the stick. He beat out the phrase “apprentice, report!” He grinned more broadly as the majestic tones echoed through the forest and started a veritable shower of tree-dwelling insects and snakes, shaken from their perches by the unexpected loud reverberations.

“Why move it?” asked Toric. “You could hear this at the back of the mountains.”

“Ah, but site this on that landing over your harbor, and a message would carry to that Island River of yours,” said Sebell.

“Then we’ll cut your drum, Harper,” said Toric, gesturing for another man to take the opposite handle of the big saw. He held the blade for the initial cut. “Then we shall…take the rest…out in sections…as big as we…can carry them,” he said, thrusting mightily at his end of the saw.

With a man of Toric’s brawn and the willing help of the other holders, the first drum section was quickly detached from the trunk. A long pole was cut, vines quickly laced to secure the section to the carrier, and the party was soon making its way back to the Southern Hold.

By the time they had arrived, Sebell and Menolly were dripping with sweat, tortured by scratches and insect bites, which did not seem to bother the tougher, tanned hides of the Southerners. Sebell wondered if he could find the energy to cover the drum that day. Toric had firmly assured him that there were hides large enough—since herdbeasts also grew larger here in the south—to fit this mammoth drum. But the journeyman was determined to work as long and hard as the Southern Holder if he had to. And he had to, to find Piemur.

They had positioned the drum in front of the cavern “for the sun to dry up the insects,” so Toric announced, when the big holder frowned at his guests.

“Man, you will die an early death if you work this hard all the time.” Toric waved toward the westering sun. “The day is nearly over. This drummaking can wait till morning. Now we all need a wash,” and his gesture went seaward. “That is, if you harpers swim…”

Menolly gave a sigh, partly composed of relief that Sebell was not going to insist on finishing the drum tonight and partly of disgust since Toric would never remember that she had not only lived holdless but had been a sea-holder’s daughter and could outswim him. Sebell hesitated briefly before he surrendered to Toric’s suggestion.

The seawater, not as warm as Sebell had anticipated, was indeed refreshing as well as relaxing. The four fire lizards zipped in and out of the gentle evening waves, chittering with delight to frolic with their friends, though if Menolly disappeared for long beneath the waves, her three fire lizards dove after her, pulling her surfacewards by her hair.

Suddenly Toric’s queen, who had held herself aloof from the antics of the visitors, hovered above Toric’s head, twittering urgently. Toric glanced around. Following his gaze, Menolly and Sebell saw three red-sailed sloops, their sides lined with people, rounding the arm of land that protected the southern harbor.

“The harvesters have returned,” said Toric to the harpers. “I’ll just see if all is well. Stay on and enjoy yourselves.”

With strong strokes of his powerful arms, he made a diagonal line to the shore that would intercept the landing of the lead ship.

“Sometimes that man is too much,” she said, shaking her head at this latest exhibition of the southerner’s strength.

“Which is as well for me,” said Sebell, laughing, and pulled her under just to let the fire lizards rescue her.

They played that game bit, reveling in the freedom of the water and its coolness until Menolly suddenly wondered if she had enough energy left to swim back to shore. But they got there safely, fire lizards escorting, and paused to lean against the seawall to catch their breaths before continuing back up to the hold.

Toric was now directing the unloading, his tall figure moving here and there. Abruptly, they saw a tall, dark-haired girl, only a head shorter than the big Holder, approach him and hold him in a long conversation.

“That must be Sharra,” Menolly said, noticing several fire lizards converge over the girl’s head. One of them landed on her shoulder, and Menolly gave a snort. “Toric certainly has his queen well-trained, hasn’t he?”

Suddenly a sound paralyzed them: the sharp thudding of a practiced hand against what could only be the newly acquired drum round. A practiced hand that beat a measure, “Harper here, anyone else?” and the staccato that was a question.

“It has to be Piemur!” Menolly’s cry was half-gasp half-scream, but the words weren’t quite out of her mouth before both harpers were on their feet and running toward the ramp up from the harbor.

“What’s the matter?” they heard Toric yelling after them.

“That was Piemur!” Sebell managed to gasp out as he charged a bare stride ahead of Menolly. But when they skidded to a halt on the shell-strewn area before the cavern, there was no one about.

Sebell cupped his hands about his mouth. “PIEMUR! REPORT!”

“Beauty! Rocky! Where is he?” gasped Menolly, half-angry with Piemur for that heart-stopping shock.

“SEBELL?”

The harper’s name echoed and re-echoed coming from the cavern. Sebell and Menolly were halfway there when a tanned, bare-legged, shock-haired figure ran straight into them.

Menolly, Sebell and Piemur were entangled in mutual cries and thumpings of rediscovery when a tiny fire lizard queen began attacking Sebell, and a small runner beast tried to butt Menolly’s knees from under her. Beauty, Rocky and Diver immediately drove off the little queen, but it wasn’t until Piemur, dashing tears of relief and joy from his eyes, called Farli to order and reassured Stupid, that any sort of coherent conversation was possible. By that time, Sharra, Toric, and half the Southern Hold were aware that the lost had been found.

A celebration for the successful return of the harvesters would have been held in any case, but the evening was certainly crowned by Piemur’s appearance, especially after he was reassured that his absence would be forgiven by the Masterharper in view of the extraordinary outcome of the initial folly of stealing the queen egg from Meron’s hearth.

Sebell and Menolly listened intently when Piemur accounted for his continued absence once Farli had been Impressed.

“He was wiser not to come back right then, anyhow,” said Sharra before Toric could speak. “If you remember, Mardra was in a taking over that unclosed sack and ready to flay the hide off the back of the culprit. Though what she wants with more to wear here, I don’t know!”

“The wilderness has its own thrall,” said Toric, eyeing Piemur so closely that the boy wondered what he’d done wrong now. “Tell me, young apprentice harper, how did you survive Threadfall the day your queen hatched?”

“In the water, under a ledge in the lagoon,” said Piemur as if that ought to have been obvious. “Farli didn’t hatch until after Threadfall.”

Toric nodded approval. “And the other Threadfalls?”

“Under water. Only by that time I’d sort of found a camp by the river, above the numbweed meadows…” He glanced at Sharra, whose eyes twinkled at the truth he now chose to speak, “where I found a submerged log to hold onto and a long reed to breath through.”

“Why didn’t you come back after the second Fall?”

“I found Stupid, and I couldn’t travel far or fast until he was grown up.” Sharra bubbled with laughter then, for the ingenuous expression of Piemur’s face was just short of impudence. “You were certainly making tracks eastward to the sea when our paths crossed,” she said.