Dragonsinger (harper Hall, #2)

The second book in Anne McCaffrey's Harper Hall Trilogy, set on the planet Pern, a world where deadly spores called Thread periodically fall from a neighboring planet called the Red Star, follows fifteen-year-old Menolly as she finds her place at the Harper Craft Hall, the center of musical education and knowledge on Pern. In the previous book, Dragonsong, Menolly's father, Yanus, ruler of the remote coastal Half-Circle Sea Hold, forbade her from composing music, believing it improper for a girl. After her hand was badly cut gutting fish and her family let it heal wrong to prevent her from playing, Menolly ran away. Living alone in a cave, she bonded nine newly hatched fire lizards, rare miniature dragon-like creatures, to herself. Masterharper Robinton, the most powerful musician on Pern, had been searching for the unknown composer of songs sent to him by Half-Circle's old Harper, Petiron, and brought her to the Hall.

Menolly arrives at the Harper Craft Hall aboard a bronze dragon, escorted by dragonrider T'gellan and Robinton himself. Silvina, the Hall's headwoman, takes charge of the exhausted girl, and T'gellan carries Menolly upstairs because her feet, injured from outrunning a Threadfall, are still tender. Menolly learns that her beloved teacher Petiron was Robinton's own father, a fact the old man never revealed. The next morning, her fire lizards sing along with an apprentice chorus, their descant rising above the male voices. Robinton tells Menolly her songs matter deeply and orders her to write down every tune that comes to mind, explaining that the Hall needs music to help people accept change.

Menolly undergoes a series of evaluations. In Master Jerint's instrument workshop, she selects a gitar, a guitar-like stringed instrument, from among many options, rejecting poorly made ones and choosing an older instrument with a warm tone that turns out to be Robinton's own journeyman gitar. Master Domick, the stern Composition Master, tests her on multiple instruments and grudgingly acknowledges her ability. Master Morshal, the ill-tempered Craftmaster in Musical Theory, grows visibly annoyed as she answers his rapid questions correctly, then dismisses her contemptuously when her scarred hand cannot manage certain chord stretches, declaring that girls presume to be harpers. The fire lizards dive at him in response to his hostility. Master Shonagar, the enormously fat Voice Master, teaches her proper breathing technique, pronounces that Petiron wisely left her natural voice untouched, and dismisses her by falling instantly asleep.

Social tensions mount as Menolly navigates the Hall's complex hierarchy. Piemur, a small, curly-haired apprentice with a brilliant treble voice, becomes her guide and defender. The girls at meals, led by Pona, granddaughter of Boll's ruling Lord Holder, treat Menolly with cold disdain. Audiva, daughter of a Weaver Craftmaster, is the only girl willing to be friendly. Silvina installs Menolly at the cottage of Dunca, a plump cotholder who houses the Hall's female students. Dunca is terrified of the fire lizards, especially Beauty, Menolly's queen, a rare gold breeding female. On Menolly's second day, Dunca deliberately fails to pass along a message from Domick, causing Menolly to miss a lesson. Journeyman Sebell, a quiet, brown-haired man recently promoted, finds Menolly and explains that as the oldest journeyman under the Masterharper, he is responsible for her. He privately asks her to teach him seamanship skills for undisclosed "Harper business."

A Threadfall day transforms Menolly's standing. That morning, Domick, Sebell, and Talmor, a journeyman harper, rehearse a complex quartet with her, and Menolly sight-reads the difficult second gitar part with such facility that Domick is stunned. When the Threadfall alarm sounds and the Hall is sealed, journeyman Brudegan, the Hall's chorus leader, asks Menolly to conduct "Moreta's Ride," a ballad about a heroic queen rider who sacrificed herself delivering medicine during a plague. The fire lizards provide a piercing descant, and a stunned silence follows the performance. Silvina then moves Menolly out of Dunca's cottage and into a room in the Harper Hall itself, near the Masterharper's quarters, making clear she will not tolerate the treatment Menolly has been receiving.

That night, Menolly wakes to her fire lizards' escalating terror. She receives overwhelming mental impressions: churning gray masses, deadly heat, and an anguished scream, "Don't leave me alone!" The fire lizards vanish into between, the freezing void dragons and fire lizards use for instantaneous travel. Robinton bursts into her room, followed by other harpers. The next morning, Silvina explains that F'nor, rider of brown dragon Canth, attempted to travel between to the Red Star. Fire lizards across Pern sensed the catastrophe. What Menolly heard was Brekke, a queenrider who had lost her dragon, crying out telepathically as Canth and F'nor nearly died. Both survived.

While watching over Robinton's fire lizard eggs, Menolly composes a song built around the refrain "Don't leave me alone." Robinton praises it as exactly what is needed to explain the fire lizard echo that swept across Pern. The eggs hatch: Robinton Impresses, or bonds with, a bronze he names Zair, and Sebell Impresses a queen he names Kimi.

The next day brings a gather, a festive market day. Piemur reveals that Menolly is Robinton's special apprentice, meaning the Masterharper has taken direct responsibility for her training, a distinction many in the Hall had competed for. At a tanner's stall, Pona appears with Benis, a fosterling son of Lord Groghe of Fort Hold, and accuses Menolly of stealing her money. When Benis seizes Menolly's arm, Piemur kicks him and is tripped and kicked in return by the other fosterlings. Menolly punches Benis in the face, and her fire lizards swoop down to attack Pona and her companions. Robinton arrives and restores order with stern authority.

Afterward, Menolly breaks down and reveals the full extent of her past: her father beat her for composing, her family let her hand heal wrong, and they forbade her from singing lest the new Harper discover her talent. She ran away preferring death to another night in Half-Circle. Sebell tells her that her songs reach everyone and help change the rigid attitudes that nearly destroyed her. That evening, Robinton accompanies Menolly on gitar as she sings "The Fire Lizard Song" for the gather crowd, with Beauty providing a descant. She follows with an old sea song, and the audience applauds.

In the days that follow, Pona is sent home for her pattern of causing trouble, and Audiva becomes openly friendly. Silvina provides Menolly with new clothes appropriate to her station, including trousers of wherhide, a leather crafted from the hides of whers. T'gellan delivers blue boots from Benden Weyr, a dragonrider stronghold, and Menolly realizes she is dressed in harper blue from head to toe. Domick asks her to copy her songs for journeymen being posted across Pern, and Sebell explains that her accessible music and Domick's complex compositions serve equally vital purposes.

At the evening meal, Robinton announces the posting of eight journeymen across Pern. Then he declares that the Hall does not hold anyone back from the rank earned by knowledge, ability, and talent. Sebell and Talmor rise and walk to Menolly's seat. She is paralyzed with shock until Piemur kicks her shin and hisses that she must walk the tables, the ceremony of moving from apprentice seating to the journeymen's section. The apprentices chant her name. Sebell and Talmor offer to help her, but she insists on walking under her own power, declaring she has harper boots and can walk anywhere. As a journeyman, she has rank enough to fear no one. The fire lizards sweep in through the windows, trilling, as Menolly walks to the oval tables of her new station in the Harper Craft Hall of Pern.