white stubble and his hair was still sleep-mussed.
Kindan placed the tray down carefully, then immediately opened his mouth to start his report, but Murenny restrained him with an upraised hand.
“Eat,” Murenny ordered. He poured two mugs of
klah
and handed one to Kindan. “Drink.”
Kindan complied and was surprised to discover how hungry and thirsty he really was. The Masterharper observed him silently throughout their meal with a kindly expression. When at last Kindan had leaned back from the tray, Master Murenny said, “Now, are you ready to report?”
Kindan nodded.
“First let me say that while I’m glad you’re here, I would have hoped that perhaps you hadn’t returned,” Master Murenny said.
Kindan shrugged; Master Murenny wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t already heard.
“I’m happy to be a harper,” Kindan said.
Master Murenny smiled. “You could still be a harper and ride a dragon, you know.”
“Only if I finish my training.” Kindan had been at the Harper Hall over a Turn and a half. Apprentices normally didn’t “walk the tables” to become journeymen until they been at the hall for at least three Turns, and more often, four.
Murenny nodded and motioned for Kindan to continue.
“I was present at the Hatching,” Kindan began and leaned back into his chair, getting comfortable. As he got deeper and deeper into the report, he found himself wondering how to set it to song and altered his sentences to be more melodic. In moments, all of Kindan’s fears and worries had faded away to be replaced only by the spoken song he was relaying.
“Well done, well done,” the Masterharper said when Kindan had finished. He sat briefly, lost in thought. When he looked up again, he murmured, “Well, Jessala has her rest at last. I imagine it won’t be long before B’ralar seeks his.”
“Why, Master?” Kindan asked, surprised that any dragonrider would consider such an act.
“Sometimes the heart gets so heavy that living is impossible,” Murenny told him. “Unless there’s something to replace a loss, a person just gives up.”
He leaned forward, looking Kindan in the eye. “‘Without hope, there is no future.’”
Kindan had heard that before. “Can’t we give him hope?”
Murenny shook his head. “We can only give him choices. Hope is something you find for yourself.”
Kindan nodded bleakly. Master Murenny noted his expression and smiled wryly. He leaned back, his eyes drifting to the ceiling. When he spoke again, his words were distant but heartfelt. “I hope you never feel that way.”
There was a moment’s silence finally broken by the Masterharper, who jumped up out of his chair decisively. “But now there’s work to be done, a tray to go back to the kitchen, and you to get to your classes.”
“Yes, Master,” Kindan agreed, glad to see the end of gloomy musings.
But it turned out, as the days rolled into seven, and the sevendays into months, that Kindan found himself lost in gloomy musings. He was distracted, wondering about Kisk—called Nuelsk, now—the green watch-wher he’d bonded with and then had released into Nuella’s care. At the time, his bonding with Kisk had seemed like imprisonment, but from the distance of memory, Kindan found himself remembering how kind the awkward, ugly green watch-wher had been, and how brave she had been at the end, to take Nuella on a never-before-attempted ride
between
to rescue the trapped miners. And he found himself wondering again what it would have been like to Impress a dragon, to have a pair of great, faceted eyes whirling anxiously for his well-being, to ride a dragon, to feed it firestone and watch it breathe flame.
His days were filled with feeling overwhelmed by his classes and his various inadequacies; he had neither Nonala’s skill at crafting song, nor the fierce dedication to the dry, dusty Records that made Verilan’s eyes bright with excitement. Oh, he could thwart silly pranks from older