Lessa reeled, her hands wildly grabbing out for any support. She seemed to be exploding back into her body, every nerve throbbing.

“Don’t faint, you fool. Stay with her.” F’lar’s voice grated in her ear. His arms roughly sustained her.

She tried to focus her eyes. She caught a startled glimpse of the walls of her own weyr. She clutched at F’lar, touching bare skin, shaking her head, confused.

“Bring her back.”

“How?” she cried, panting, unable to comprehend what could possibly entice Ramoth from such glory.

The pain of stinging blows on her face made her angrily aware of F’lar’s disturbing proximity. His eyes were wild, his mouth distorted.

“Think with her. She cannot go between. Stay with her.”

Trembling at the thought of losing Ramoth between, Lessa sought the dragon, still locked wing to wing with Mnementh.

The mating passion of the two dragons at that moment spiraled wide to include Lessa. A tidal wave rising relentlessly from the sea of her soul flooded Lessa. With a longing cry she clung to F’lar. She felt his body rock-firm against hers, his hard arms lifting her up, his mouth fastening mercilessly on hers as she drowned deep in another unexpected flood of desire.

“Now! We bring them safely home,” he murmured.

Dragonman, dragonman,

Between thee and thine,

Share me that glimpse of love

Greater than mine.

F’LAR CAME SUDDENLY awake. He listened attentively, heard and was reassured by Mnementh’s gratified rumble. The bronze was perched on the ledge outside the queen’s weyr. All was peacefully in order in the Bowl below.

Peaceful but different. F’lar, through Mnementh’s eyes and senses, perceived this instantly. There was an overnight change in the Weyr. F’lar permitted himself a satisfied grin at the previous day’s tumultuous events. Something might have gone wrong.

Something nearly did, Mnementh reminded him.

Who had called K’net and himself back? F’lar mused again. Mnementh only repeated that he had been called back. Why wouldn’t he identify the informer?

A nagging worry intruded on F’lar’s waking ruminations.

“Did F’nor remember to . . .” he began aloud.

F’nor never forgets your orders, Mnementh reassured him testily. Canth told me that the sighting at dawn today puts the Red Star at the top of the Eye Rock. The sun is still off, too.

F’lar ran impatient fingers through his hair. “At the top of the Eye Rock. Closer, and closer the Red Star came,” just as the Old Records predicted. And that dawn when the Star gleamed scarlet at the watcher through the Eye Rock heralded a dangerous passing and . . . the Threads.

There was certainly no other explanation for that careful arrangement of gigantic stones and special rocks on Benden Peak. Nor for its counterpart on the eastern walls of each of the five abandoned Weyrs.