Why, wondered F’nor suddenly, if he had only just seen the truth of the legend of fire-lizards, did he ache for their deaths? Surely the creatures had been hatching on lonely beaches for centuries, been eaten by wherries and their own peers, unseen and unmourned.

The strong survive, said Canth, undismayed.

They saved seven, two badly hurt. The young girl, Mirrim, Brekke’s fosterling, attached three; two greens and a brown, seriously injured by gouges on his soft belly. Brekke had a bronze with no mark on him, the green’s rider had a bronze, and the other two riders had blues, one with a wrenched wing which Brekke feared might never heal properly for flight.

“Seven out of over fifty,” said Brekke sadly after they had disposed of the broken bodies with agenothree. A precaution which Brekke suggested as a frustration for the carrion eaters and to prevent other fire-lizards from avoiding the beach as dangerous to their kind. “I wonder how many would have survived if you hadn’t called us.”

“She was already far from the others when she discovered us,” F’nor remarked. “Probably the first to hatch, or on top of the others.”

Brekke’d had the wit to bring a full haunch of buck, though the Weyr might eat light that evening. So they had gorged the hatchlings into such a somnolent state that they could be carried, unresisting, back to the Weyr, or to Brekke’s Infirmary.

“You’re to fly home straight,” Brekke told F’nor, in much the way a woman spoke to a rebellious weyrling.

“Yes, ma’am,” F’nor replied, with mock humility, and then smiled because Brekke took him so seriously.

The little queen nestled in his arm sling as contentedly as if she’d found a weyr of her own. “A weyr is where a dragon is no matter how it’s constructed,” he murmured to himself as Canth winged steadily eastward.

When F’nor reached Southern, it was obvious the news had raced through the Weyr. There was such an aura of excitement that F’nor began to worry that it might frighten the tiny creatures between.

No dragon can fly when he is belly-bloated, Canth said. Even a fire-lizard. And took himself off to his sun-warmed wallow, no longer interested.

“You don’t suppose he’s jealous, do you?” F’nor asked Brekke when he found her in her Infirmary, splinting the little blue’s wrenched wing.

“Wirenth was interested, too, until the lizards fell asleep,” Brekke told him, a twinkle in her green eyes as she looked up at him briefly. “And you know how touchy Wirenth is right now. Mercy, F’nor, what is there for a dragon to be jealous of? These are toys, dolls as far as the big ones are concerned. At best, children to be protected and taught like any fosterling.”