“By the First Egg, I don’t think I’ll ever understand all the twitchiness in timing it!”

“And yet, timing it saved Pern,” M’tal replied. A moment later he added, “And High Reaches’ isolation, and Tullea’s pluck.”

He shook his head, with a sad look, before saying to Norik, “You’ll have to ask Kindan for the full words, but as I was saying, the song recalled the loss of Telgar—”

“Recalled?” Norik interrupted. When M’tal nodded in confirmation, the harper persisted, “Was not the song written before the event?”

“Hundred of Turns before and yet after,” M’tal replied. “It seems that the loss of Telgar opened a bridge back in time, a bridge across which Lorana could send one word—”

“A word?” Norik asked in disbelief.

“Why don’t you let Lord M’tal finish, then you can ask questions,” Fiona said firmly to the harper. Norik spared her a glance, then lowered his eyes as Fiona out-glared him. She turned back to M’tal. “My lord?”

“The words were clearly written by a harper—”

“A Masterharper, I think,” Kindan spoke up from the entrance.

“Kindan, are you all right?” Fiona asked, rising from her chair.

Kindan gave her a smile and a nod. “I’m so well, in fact, that your Bekka sent me here.”

Fiona laughed at the image his words invoked. She gestured for him to join them.

“You found the words to the song!” she exclaimed in delight.

“I did,” Kindan replied gravely as he sat down. He turned to Norik and began to sing softly in a minor chord:

A thousand voices keen at night,
A thousand voices wail,
A thousand voices cry in fright,
A thousand voices fail.
You followed them, young healer lass,
Till they could not be seen;
A thousand dragons made their loss
A bridge ’tween you and me.

And in the cold and darkest night,
A single voice is heard,
A single voice both clear and bright,
It says a single word.

That word is what you now must say
To open up the door
In Benden Weyr, to find the way
To all my healing lore.

It’s all that I can give to you,
To save both Weyr and Hold.
It’s little I can offer you
Who paid with dragon gold.

Kindan spared nothing of his craft in his singing and when he was done, Norik had dropped his head in his hands, tears falling freely. Shaneese, Fiona, and M’tal were no better.

It was a long time before the Telgar harper recovered and when he did, he lifted his head to be met by Shaneese’s bright eyes as she assured him, “Their loss was not in vain.”

“Please sing this song again, Kindan,” Norik said. “I must teach it to the Weyr.”

“If you like, we could sing it tonight, together,” Kindan offered.

“It would be an honor.”