We will fly, Carenath said with ineffable calm. He tilted forward off the ridge.

Despite years of staying astride bucking horses, sliding horses, and jumping horses, the sensation that Sean Connell experienced in that seemingly endless moment was totally different and completely new. A brief memory of a girl’s voice urging him to think of Spacer Yves flitted through his mind. He was falling through space again. A very short space. What sort of a nerd-brain was he to have attempted this?

Faranth wants to know what we are doing, Carenath said calmly.

Before Sean’s staggered mind registered the query, Carenath’s wings had finished their downstroke and they were rising. Sean felt the sudden return of gravity, felt Carenath’s neck under him, felt the weight and a return of the confidence that had been totally in abeyance during the endless-seeming initial drop. The power in those wing sweeps drove his seat deeper between the neck ridges as Carenath continued to beat upward. They were level with the next ridge, the floor of the gorge no longer an imminent crash site.

“Tell Faranth that we’re flying, of course,” Sean replied. He would never admit it to Sorka—he could barely admit it to himself—but for one moment he had been totally and utterly terrified.

I will not let you fall, Carenath’s tone chided him.

“I never thought you would.” Sean forced his body to relax, forced his long legs down and around Carenath’s smooth neck, but he took a firmer grip on the neck ridge. “I just didn’t think I’d stay aboard you for a minute there.”

Carenath’s wings swept up and down, just behind Sean’s peripheral vision. He felt their strong and steady beat even if he did not see them. He could feel the air pressure against his face and his chest. There was nothing around him but air, open, empty, and absolutely marvelous.

Yes, once he got the hang of it, flying his dragon was the most marvelous sensation he had ever had.

I like it, too. I like flying you. You fit on me. This goes well. Where shall we go? The sky is ours.

“Look, we better not do much of this right now, Carenath. You just ate, and we’re going to have to think this thing through. It’s not enough to fall off a ridge, Oooooooh—” he cried inadvertently as Carenath banked and he saw the wide-open, dusty, Thread-barren ground far, far beneath him. “Straighten up!”

I wouldn’t let you fall! Carenath sounded nearly indignant, and Sean freed one hand to give him a reassuring slap. But he quickly replaced his hand on the ridge. Jays, a rider can’t fly Thread hanging on for dear life!

“You wouldn’t let me fall, my friend, but I might let me!”