The relief of being rescued when she was fearing injury or death was too overwhelming for speech. The brown dragon half-ran to the bluff edge, dropped down briefly to get wing room, and then surged up. Menolly felt herself pressed against the soft warm flesh and burrowed into the hide-clad back of her rescuer, straggling for a lungful of air to ease her tight chest. She had one brief glimpse of her little fire lizards trying vainly to follow when the dragon winked into between.

Sweat froze on her forehead and cheeks, down her back, on her calves, her wet and ragged boots and her sore feet. There was no air to breathe and she felt she would suffocate. She tightened her hands convulsively on the dragonrider, but she couldn’t feel him or the dragon she knew she was riding.

Now, she thought with that part of her mind that wasn’t frozen in panic, she fully understood that Teaching Song. In terror, she fully understood it.

Abruptly, sight, sound, feeling, and breath returned. They were spiraling down at a dizzying height above Benden Weyr. As big as Half-Circle was, this place of dragons and dragonmen was bigger by half again as much. Why, the immense harbor of Half-Circle would have fitted with dragon lengths to spare in the Bowl of the Weyr.

As the dragon circled, she saw the giant Star Stones, and the Eye Rock, which told when the Red Star would make its fateful Passes. She saw the watch dragon beside the Stones, heard him trumpet a greeting to the brown she rode. Between her legs she felt the rumble of response in the brown’s throat. As they glided down, she saw several dragons on the Bowl floor, with people gathered about them; saw the steps leading to the queen’s weyr, and the yawning maw of the Hatching Ground. Benden was vaster than she’d imagined.

The brown landed near the other dragons, and Menolly now realized that the dragons had been Thread-scored and were being treated. The brown dragon half-folded his wings, craning his neck around to the two on his back.

“You can relax your death hold, lad,” said the brown rider with tolerant amusement as he unfastened the fighting straps from his belt

Menolly jerked her hands free with a muttered apology. “I can’t thank you enough for finding me. I thought Thread would get me.”

“Whoever let you out of your Hold so near to Thread-fall?”

“I was catching spiderclaws. Went out early.”

He accepted that hurried explanation, but now Menolly wondered how she could make it plausible. She couldn’t remember the name of the nearest Hold on the Nerat side of Half-Circle.

“Down you go, lad, I’ve got to rejoin my wing to mop up.”

That was the second time he’d called her “lad.”

“You’ve a fine pace on you. Ever think of going for a hold runner?”