“You feel it too,” Rhemy said. As Fiona drew breath to protest, the young girl blurted out, “Maybe not as much but you feel it.” Fiona let out her breath in surprise.

“You do, don’t you?” Rhemy persisted.

“Not as much as Lorana,” Fiona said. She was sure hers was only an echo of the dark-eyed woman’s feeling.

Finally, the Thread fell elsewhere, outside of Telgar’s borders and the Weyr rested, the dragonriders trained, and more recovered to gladly rejoin their Wings. Even so, the Weyr flew only five Wings—and one of those Wings light by four dragons.

While Telgar rested, the other Weyrs were busy. Ista Weyr flew Falls over Igen Hold, then Ista Hold, while High Reaches Weyr flew their Fall over High Reaches Hold and then Fort Weyr flew Fall over Ruatha Hold.

The dragonriders of Telgar Weyr—and the weyrfolk—kept up to date with the losses of every Fall.

“Fort’s down to four full Wings,” F’jian remarked glumly that evening.

“One hundred and forty fighting dragons,” H’nez said. “That’s nearly five full Wings.”

“Ista’s worse, they’ve got three and a half Wings,” brown rider J’gerd pointed out.

“There’ll be eggs on the Hatching Grounds soon enough,” Terin said, trying to improve F’jian’s mood.

“Not too soon,” H’nez said. “Another fortnight yet.” “They might clutch early,” J’gerd said.

H’nez shook his head. “An early clutch is a light clutch. We need all the dragons we can get.”

“I think I’d prefer some sooner than too many later,” Jeila said.

Fiona listened to the discussion silently. For herself, the sooner Talenth clutched, the happier she’d be. Oh, she didn’t want a small clutch, but she’d be glad when Talenth wasn’t so bogged down with the weight of the eggs, especially the way her gravid state seemed to give her such distressing dreams—dreams that Fiona sensed in a garbled way.

“You are not going to lose your eggs,” Fiona had told her that very morning. “You’re doing fine.”

Talenth rumbled in disagreement.

“It’s your first clutching, you can’t expect everything to be perfect,” Fiona assured her, raising her hand once more to scratch Talenth’s eye ridges, her hands still slippery from her morning oiling of Talenth’s stretched hide.

It just doesn’t feel right, Talenth complained, gently angling her head so that Fiona could reach to a particularly itchy spot on her eye ridge.

Fiona continued scratching and made no response. She’d felt enough of her queen’s dreams to understand Talenth’s words—the dreams had been unnerving—always predicting that something would happen, something horrible.