She felt Xhinna’s hand grip her thigh tightly and realized that she wasn’t the only one who felt the pall that had fallen on the Weyr below them. She wondered if Xhinna also recognized the great importance of this Weyr. Without Telgar, the center of Pern could not survive against Thread.

Who, she wondered suddenly, was flying the Fall now raining at Upper Crom?

Talenth, check with Lyrinth; there’s a Fall at Crom, Fiona said.

Lyrinth says that it is all right and asks you to stay at Telgar, Talenth responded a moment later.

“We’ll land,” Fiona announced to the others.

“This must be the very worst for them,” Bekka said sympathetically. She glanced up at her father’s back, then turned back to Fiona, sharing her feelings with her eyes. Fiona had no trouble interpreting the look: The very worst was even worse than Seban losing his dragon.

“Yes, it must be,” Fiona agreed. “Our job is to make it better.”

Talenth descended smoothly into the Weyr Bowl. Just as she was ready to pull up and land, she let out a great bellow that echoed once around the Weyr, and then she repeated it, modulating her tone to a keen, a warble of pain and anguish.

Fiona was surprised at Talenth’s behavior, but quickly comprehended her purpose: The queen had returned, the Weyr would live, it would prosper—she declared it.

My beautiful, beautiful love! Fiona cried in praise.

This is our Weyr now, we will do well here, Talenth told her.

“Talenth has declared this to be her Weyr,” Fiona told the others as she threw her right leg over her queen’s neck and slid full-tilt toward the ground, certain that Talenth would cushion her fall with a well-placed leg. And so she did.

Xhinna was next, then Bekka, lowered down gingerly by Seban, who followed her with their baggage and then leaped nimbly down himself.

Fiona looked around, trying to decide what to do next. Talenth decided for her. With another loud bugle, the gold dragon took to the air, climbed steadily, passing by each and every opening until she arrived at the Star Stones, and with a sorrowful cry, took station: watch dragon for a mourning Weyr.

“We’ll need some klah,” Fiona said, spotting the Kitchen Cavern and setting off toward it. “And then some food and then—”

“A fitting ballad,” a grim voice spoke up from the distance. Fiona and the others turned to see a middle-aged man, stooped and stricken, dressed in harper’s blue, approaching from near the Hatching Grounds.

Fiona nodded to her companions, and Seban and Bekka continued on toward the Kitchen Cavern, intent on providing sustenance for the doubtless weary weyrfolk. Xhinna elected to wait for the harper, who said as he approached, “Norik, Weyr Harper.”

“Xhinna of Fort Weyr,” Xhinna replied. Then she shook her head. “Of Telgar now.”

“There is no Telgar,” Norik said.