Dragondrums recap

Piemur's celebrated treble voice breaks, ending the only future he had ever expected, and the Masterharper reassigns him to learn the drum code in the Harper Hall's drum tower, where the other apprentices resent him and one of them puts him out of action. The posting is partly cover: Robinton and the journeyman Sebell have been using Piemur, who is small, quick and unremarkable, for errands that need a harper nobody notices. Sent to Nabol while its Lord Holder Meron is dying, he comes away with a fire-lizard egg that hatches into a queen he names Farli. Travelling south concealed among trade goods to observe the traffic between certain northern holders and the riders exiled to the Southern Continent, he is left behind and stranded. He survives alone for months, raising an orphaned runnerbeast, exploring a vast tract of unmapped country and observing the exiles, including a glimpse of a white dragon that should not be there. When the harpers finally find him, he is given the south to explore and map, his career redirected rather than ended.

Pern's people shelter in stone holds from Thread, a spore that falls from a neighbouring planet and devours anything living; dragons and their bonded riders burn it from the sky. The Harper Craft reaches everywhere: harpers are posted in every hold, their teaching ballads carry Pern's law and history, and long-distance messages are beaten out in drum code from tower to tower, which makes the Masterharper the best-informed man alive. In Dragonsong, Menolly, a sea holder's daughter forbidden her music, ran away, sheltered from Threadfall in a cliff cave and Impressed nine fire lizards, small telepathic cousins of the dragons that nobody had known could be bonded. Rescued by a dragonrider, she was found at Benden Weyr by the Masterharper, who identified her as the author of songs already being sung across Pern and took her to the Harper Hall. In Dragonsinger she survived a week of hostile examination there and was made the craft's first journeywoman. Among the apprentices who befriended her was Piemur, a small, sharp, endlessly inquisitive boy whose treble voice had carried the solo part in every important work the Hall performed, and who assumed his voice was his whole future. Elsewhere, the riders who could not accept the modern world have been exiled to the Southern Continent, and some northern holders trade with them illicitly.

Piemur's voice breaks in the middle of a rehearsal, and with it goes the career everyone including Piemur had assumed was settled. A boy with no voice, no obvious craft aptitude and a reputation for gambling and knowing everybody's business is an awkward thing for the Harper Hall to place. The Masterharper's answer is to send him up to the drumheights to learn the drum code under Masterdrummer Olodkey. The drum apprentices, who have spent Turns resenting the Hall's celebrated soloist, are not pleased to have him among them, and Piemur arrives at the top of the tower without a friend in it.

Piemur learns the drum measures far faster than the apprentices who have been at them for Turns, which makes his position in the drumheights worse rather than better. The resentment turns physical, he is hurt, and the Masterharper deals with it in his own way. It also becomes clear that the posting was never only about drums: Robinton and the journeyman Sebell have been quietly using Piemur for errands that require somebody small, quick and beneath notice, and the drum tower is a convenient place to keep him between them. Their present concern is Nabol, whose Lord Holder Meron has obstructed Benden and the crafts for Turns, is now dying, and has left the hold's succession unsettled. Nabol has also been trading with people it should not, and the harpers want to know exactly what is moving and where it is going.

Piemur goes to Nabol with the harpers while Meron is dying, and in the confusion around the hold he comes away with a fire-lizard egg. It hatches into a gold queen, which is the rarest kind, and he names her Farli; she bonds to him completely and proves an immediate practical asset, since a fire lizard can carry a message where a boy cannot go. Meron's death leaves Nabol without an agreed heir and a good many people with an interest in the outcome, and it confirms what the harpers suspected about who has been trading with the riders exiled to the Southern Continent. Piemur, who is now both useful and unrecognizable as the Hall's former soloist, is the obvious person to send after the traffic itself.

Piemur travels south hidden among trade goods, intending to see for himself what is being exchanged with the exiled riders, and is left behind when the party goes back north. He is stranded on a continent nobody has mapped, with no way to send word, and going near the exiles or the northern settlement would give him away. So he walks. Over the following months he lives off the country with Farli hunting for him, raises an orphaned runnerbeast foal he names Stupid for its intelligence, and crosses an enormous stretch of land no northerner has ever seen: rivers, grass plains and forest running far beyond anything the maps admit exists. He keeps clear of the exiles while watching what they do, and the Harper Hall, hearing nothing, has to assume he is dead.

Piemur eventually works his way back toward the settled coast, where Toric's Southern Hold is expanding into land the northern Lords do not know about, and where the exiled riders are doing something Piemur is close enough to witness. Among what he sees is a white dragon, about half the size of a proper one, which he can identify but not explain. Then the harpers find him: Sebell, Menolly and the Masterharper come south and discover the apprentice they had given up for lost, alive, tanned, bonded to a queen fire lizard and trailing a runnerbeast. What he knows about the exiles and their trade is valuable; what he knows about the Southern Continent itself is far more so, because he has been where no map goes. Rather than being sent back to the drumheights, he is given the south to explore and chart for the Harper Craft. The broken voice that ended his career at the start of the book has redirected it instead, and his place in the craft now rests on what he can do. He also finally understands why Sebell always finds reasons to be near Menolly.

Piemur is found alive in the Southern Continent by Menolly, Sebell and the Masterharper, after months in which the Harper Hall had no idea whether he had survived. He comes back with a queen fire lizard, a half-tame runnerbeast, an eyewitness account of what the exiled riders and their northern trading partners have been doing, and, most valuable of all, first-hand knowledge of an enormous stretch of country no northerner has ever seen. Instead of being returned to the drumheights or to the Hall's classrooms, he is given the south: the Harper Craft needs the continent explored and mapped, and he is the only person who has done it. The loss of his treble voice, which began the book as the end of his career, turns out to have redirected it rather than finished it, and his standing in the craft now rests on what he can do rather than on how he sounds. Along the way he works out that Sebell is in love with Menolly. Left open are Lord Meron's disputed succession at Nabol, the exiled riders in the south, Toric's quietly expanding hold, and the fact that Piemur has seen a white dragon in the Southern Continent and cannot yet explain it to anyone.