Anne and Todd McCafrey
Sky Dragons
For Janis Ian
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Usually, I insist upon putting the acknowledgments at the end of the book. My thinking is that, like the credits of a film, they belong at the end—they’re like taking a bow at the end of a play or other performance, where those who have made it all possible are singled out and honored.
Sadly, the circumstances of this book are not “usual.”
To some of you—and I’m so sorry!—this news will come as a shock. After we had finished this book but before it was copyedited, my mother, Anne McCaffrey, passed away. She was eighty-five, she died “in the arms of a handsome man” (her son-in-law, Geoffrey), she died at home, quickly.
So, firstly, let me acknowledge Anne McCaffrey for her brilliant work as author, mother, cook, equestrian, friend to famous singers, astronauts, and everyone in between.
Speaking on her behalf as well as my own, I would also like to thank our editor at Del Rey, Shelly Shapiro, for all her brilliant efforts over too many decades to count, in keeping the Dragonriders of Pern® alive. She followed gamely in the footsteps of Betty Ballantine and Judy-Lynn Del Rey and never stopped challenging us to create the best possible books we could.
Additionally, Martha Trachtenberg has followed up with the copyediting for too many years to count—keeping our numbers accurate, asking great questions, offering brilliant suggestions.
I’d also like to thank Judith Welsh of Transworld Publishers—our U.K. publisher—for all her support in this and all the other books we’ve published together.
Diana Tyler, Mum’s literary agent, was a bastion of support through this very difficult time, as was my agent, Donald Maass. Thank you both.
Anne McCaffrey’s long years and peaceful passing would not have been possible without the loving care and support of her daughter—my sister—Georgeanne “Gigi” Kennedy. She’s been a brick throughout everything and continues so, even now.
And, again speaking on Mum’s behalf, we would like to thank you all, for journeying with us to that amazing place that is Pern.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE SECOND INTERVAL/THIRD PASS
DATE (AL) EVENT BOOK
492.4 Marriage: Terregar and Silstrar Dragon’s Kin
493.10 Kisk Hatches Dragons’ Kin
494.1 Kindan to Harper Hall Dragon’s Kin
495.8 C’tov Impresses Sereth Dragon’s Fire
496.8 Plague Starts Dragonharper
497.5 Plague Ends Dragonharper
498.7.2 Fort Weyr riders arrive back in time at Igen Weyr Dragonsblood, Dragonheart
501.3.18 Fort Weyr riders return from Igen Weyr Dragonheart
507.11.17 Fiona Impresses Talenth Dragonheart
507.12.20 Lorana Impresses Arith Dragonsblood
508.1.7 Start of Third Pass Dragonsblood, Dragonheart
508.1.19 Arith goes between Dragonsblood, Dragonheart
508.1.27 Fort Weyr riders time it back ten Turns to Igen Weyr
Dragonsblood, Dragonheart
508.2.2 Fort Weyr riders return from Igen Weyr Dragonsblood, Dragonheart
508.2.8 Telgar Weyr jumps to nowhere Fiona, T’mar, H’nez to Telgar Weyr Kindan, Fiona to Telgar Weyr Dragongirl
On Pernese time:
The Pernese date their time from their arrival on Pern, referring to each Turn as “After Landing” (AL).
The Pernese calendar is composed of 13 months, each of 28 days (four weeks, or sevendays) with a special “Turnover” day at the end of each Turn for a total of 365 days.
BOOK ONE
Sky Weyr
ONE
A Dark Dream in Blue
This was not how it happened.
For one, the two moons were not in the sky: Belior and Timor had set long ago and it was early morning. But here, now, in her dream, the moons bathed the plain with their eerie light and awkward double shadows.
In her dream she could see under the ground. She could see tunnels and hives, teeming with life as the six-legged, slithering tunnel snakes dug their way to their prize—the dragon eggs nestled on the surface in sand-filled beds that were not nearly as safe as their guardians had believed. The dragon eggs that were the hope of Pern.
She wanted to shout, to scream a warning, but she was ghostlike, standing horrified sentinel over her sleeping form.
Above in the night sky, the Red Star pulsed malignantly far beyond the two pale moons. When the Red Star drew closer, Thread would fall.
Thread. Voracious, all-consuming. A touch of it burnt through flesh and clothing, even tough dragon-hide. It could drain a lush valley of all life in a day. Unchecked, it would consume all life on Pern. It drowned in water, froze on ice—and perished by flaming dragon’s breath.
Without the dragons these eggs held, there would be too few dragons left to protect the world from Thread.
Even in her dream, Xhinna felt her blue dragon, Tazith, stir and try to follow her feelings. She turned to where he lay sprawled nearby and smiled. She was the first woman to ride blue in all memory, and as she looked at him, her heart swelled with love and pride.
Brown dragons and bronzes always chose male riders, just as the gold queen dragons chose female riders. According to Tradition, the blues and greens were also ridden only by males. But times had changed.
A sickness had risen, a sickness that killed dragons. They had fallen by the hundreds even as the first Fall of Thread in the new Third Pass required dragons to fly and flame to save Pern. It was only through the genius of Lorana that a cure had been found, created in an unprecedented cross-time collaboration with the original colonists. The price of Lorana’s success had been her own queen dragon.
When a dragon died … “It is like having your soul ripped apart.” The thought was so terrible that Xhinna whimpered. She turned in surprise to see her sleeping self whimper and then—
She was awake, shivering.
“Are you okay?” Taria asked sleepily. “You were having a nightmare.”
“I’m okay,” Xhinna said.
Taria wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close. “You’re freezing.”
“Just a bad dream.”
In the morning the eggs were gone. Their shattered remains had been dumped in the sea, empty. Only twenty-three of the two hundred and fifty-three eggs had hatched; the rest had been ruptured, their contents devoured by tunnel snakes burrowing up from the ground.
This never would have happened in the high rocky Weyrs where the dragons usually lived, but here, on the uncharted plains of the Eastern Isle, the ground was too soft, the way too easy, and the tunnel snakes were too greedy.
The sun warmed her as she scanned the now-empty plain, but Xhinna shivered as she saw once again, in her memory, cluster after cluster of lifeless, dead eggs, their vitals destroyed by the voracious tunnel snakes. She remembered the desperate fight, the cries, the screams of agony, and the few—very, very few—triumphs in this onesided disaster.
She turned as a baby dragonet gave a plaintive cry that was instantly answered by a consoling voice. Qinth, the only green to hatch, had been severely mauled by the tunnel snakes before it was freed by Jeriz—J’riz, now that he’d Impressed the grievously wounded dragon.
“It’s okay, shh, little one, you’ll do fine!” blond-haired Bekka said soothingly to both dragon and rider. She was small and young for a healer, but she made up for lack of stature and age with a fierce determination and a stubborn resolve never to lose a ward. Her mother was a midwife; her father had been a dragonrider, until the dragon sickness had taken his blue Serth.