Dragonriders of Pern 6 - Dragondrums Read Online Free PDF Page A

fooled. Though, he told himself hastily, he was very sorry he wouldn’t be singing Domick’s music. And he was sorrier that Tilgin was!

    “Your voice? Your voice is changing?”

    Piemur heard the regret and dismay in Silvina’s hushed tone. It occurred to him that women’s voices never did change, and that she couldn’t possibly imagine his feelings of total loss and crushing disappointment. More tears followed the first.

    “There, lad. The world’s not lost. In a half-Turn or less your range’ll settle again.”

    “Master Domick’s music was just right for me…” Piemur did not need to fake the ragged tones.

    “To be sure, since he wrote it with you in mind, scamp. Well, wouldn’t you know? Though I can’t for the life of me believe you could contrive to change your voice to spite Domick—”

    “Spite Master Domick?” Piemur widened his eyes with indignation. “I wouldn’t do such a thing, Silvina.”

    “Only because you couldn’t, rascal. I know how you hate singing female parts.” Her voice was acerbic, but her hand under his chin was gentle. She took a clean corner of her apron and blotted the tears on his cheeks. “As luck would have it, I seem to be prepared with an easement for your tragedy.” She propelled him before her, motioning toward the trays of cooling pies. Piemur rapidly wondered if he ought to dissemble. “You can have two, one for each hand, and then away with you! Have you seen Master Shonagar yet? Watch those pies! They’re just out of the oven.”

    “Hmmmm,” he replied, biting into the first pie despite her admonition. “It’s the only way to eat ’em,” he mumbled through a mouthful so hot that he had to suck in cool air to ease the burning of his gums. “But…I’m to get wherhide clothes.”

    “You? In wherhide? Why would you need wherhide?” She frowned suspiciously at him now.

    “I’m to study drum with Master Olodkey, and Menolly asked me could I ride runners, and Master Robinton said I was to ask you for wherhide.”

    “All three of them in it? Hmmm. And you’d be apprenticed to Master Olodkey?” Silvina considered the matter and then eyed him shrewdly. He wondered should he tell Menolly that Silvina hadn’t been taken in by their stratagem of making him a drummer. “Well, I suppose you’ll be kept out of mischief. Though I, for one, doubt it’s possible. Come on then. I do have a wherhide jacket that might fit.” She cast him a calculating look as they moved toward the storage section of the kitchen level. “Let’s hope it’ll fit for a while because sure as eggs hatch, I shan’t be able to pass it on to anyone else the way you mangle your clothes.”

    Piemur loved the storerooms, redolent with the smell of well-cured hides and the eye-smarting acridity of newly dyed fabrics. He liked the glowing colors of the cloth bales, the jumble of boots, belts, packs hanging from hooks about the walls, the boxes with their odd treasures. Silvina rapped his knuckles with her keys several times for opening lids to investigate.

    The jacket fit, the stiff new leather bucking against his thighs as he pranced about, swinging his arms to make the shoulders settle. It was long in the body, but Silvina was pleased: he’d need the length. Fitting him with new boots showed her how ragged his trousers were, so she found him two new pairs, one in harper blue and the other in a deep gray leather. Two shirts with sleeves too long, but which no doubt would fit him perfectly by midwinter, a hat to keep his ears warm and his eyes shaded, and heavy riding gloves with down-lined fingers.

    He left the stores, his arms piled high with new clothes, boots dangling from their laces over his shoulder and bumping him front and back, his ears ringing with Silvina’s promise of dire things happening to him if he snagged, tore, or scuffed his new finery before he’d had it on his back a sevenday.

    He happily employed the rest of the morning by dressing in his new