Dragon's Fire by Anne McCaffrey Page A

I’d get rich, you never said that I’d have to haul your coal for you,” Tarik grumbled in response. “What happened to all those brats of yours?”
    “If you’re complaining, why don’t you bring your own brat along?” Tenim replied. “Not that he’d be able for more than a stone or two.”
    “You leave Cristov out of it,” Tarik warned. “He knows nothing of this.”
    Tenim laughed cruelly. “He wouldn’t think so much of you if he knew what his father was doing.”
    “It’s for him I’m doing this,” Tarik replied. “The lad has a right to expect his father to do right by him. The way Natalon’s moaning, we’ll never earn enough at this mine.”
    “Not enough for you,” Tenim agreed nastily.
    “All I want is a place of my own and a chance to rest at the end of my days, not always slaving away for someone,” Tarik protested. “I’ve earned it. I would have had it, too, if it hadn’t been for you and the Shunned.”
    “Well, you don’t have to worry about them,” Tenim said. “And I said I’d take care of you.”
    Pellar shuddered, wondering how Tenim planned to take care of Tarik.
    “Come on,” Tenim said. Pellar heard groaning and the sound of something heavy being lifted. “Oh, stop groaning, this is the last load. We have to get you back while it’s still dark and snowing.”
    “And you’ll want me again the next night it snows,” Tarik predicted with a grumble. His voice was farther away than it had been, they were moving.
    “Exactly,” Tenim agreed viciously. “After all, you want to set something by for the end of your days.”
    “Why are we hiding the coal way out here? How are you going to get it to market?” Tarik grumbled.
    “Don’t you worry about that,” Tenim said. “When the time comes, this’ll fetch a pretty price from the right people.”
    “How can the Shunned pay for anything?”
    The last words Pellar heard was Tenim’s response: “Who said anything about the Shunned?”

    “I’d thought that they would have to have help from someone at the camp,” Zist remarked when Pellar reported back days later. Pellar nodded. “Tarik was my first guess,” Zist added, “although I would have preferred being wrong.”
    “What now?” Pellar wrote on his slate.
    Zist didn’t look at the note immediately. He acknowledged it with a wave of his hand but sat back, staring off thoughtfully into the distance.
    “The boy will have to make his choice,” he murmured finally. He glanced at Pellar’s note and then at Pellar.
    “It would be nice to know what this Tenim plans to do with the coal,” Zist observed.
    “I could follow him,” Pellar offered.
    Zist wagged a finger at him. “Only when it’s dark and there’s snow on the ground. I don’t want you caught. In the between times, you’ll have to hide here, I’m afraid.”
    Pellar frowned but Zist didn’t notice, once again lost in thought.
    “No sign of the younger ones?” the harper asked after a moment. Pellar shook his head.
    “A pity,” Zist said. “This Crom winter is vicious.”

    It was awkward, having to hide in the cottage from Kindan, Natalon, Dalor, Nuella, and even Cristov, who was occasionally assigned evening lessons with Master Zist.
    When Kindan tripped up Cristov one day, Zist assigned the youngster the job of discovering three of Cristov’s virtues. Pellar had found the whole situation amusing, from his position of greater age—two whole Turns—until Master Zist challenged him to do the same when they spoke about it two days later.
    “I hardly know him,” Pellar wrote in protest.
    “You’ve heard enough about him, haven’t you?” Zist asked, arching an eyebrow at him challengingly.
    “Words aren’t truth,” Pellar wrote back.
    “Too true!” Zist agreed. “Wiser heads than yours have yet to learn that, you know.”
    “I listen,” Pellar wrote in modest reply.
    “Then you should know all about Cristov,” Zist replied, returning to his challenge with a twinkle in