Chapters (64)
- Other titles by Anne McCaffreyPublished by Ballantine Books:
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- PROLOGUE
- At a Gather—6.15.30
- Part 1
- Turnover at Landing—1.1.31 Present Pass Aivas—Aivas Adjusted Turn 2553
- Benden Weyr—1.1.31
- Southern Hold—1.1.31
- Healer Hall—1.1.31
- Back at Landing—1.2.31
- Fort Hold—late night—1.1.31
- Fort Hold Runner Station—1.2.31
- Keroon Printer Hall—1.3.31
- Benden Weyr—midday—1.3.31
- Monaco Bay Weyr—five days later—1.8.31
- Part 2
- Ruatha Hold—local time 12:04 in the morning—1.9.31
- Telgar Weyr—local time 4:04 in the morning—1.9.31
- Benden Weyr—local time 6:04 in the morning—1.9.31
- Harper Hall—local time 1:00 in the morning—1.9.31
- Landing—local time 10:12 mid-morning—1.9.31
- In the Conference Room at Landing—1.9.31
- Monaco Weyr—10:22 in the morning—Timing it
- In the Conference Room at Landing—local time 1:10–1.9.31
- Sunrise Cliff Seahold—timed-back
- In the Conference Room—local time 2:12 at Landing—1.9.31
- Back at Landing—local time—3:40
- Harper Hall—5:00 in the morning, and Southern Hold—2:00 in the morning–1.9.31
- Landing—late afternoon—1.9.31
- Same time at Keroon Printer Hall—local time 11:15—1.9.31
- Later, on an unusually bright evening at Landing, Sunrise Cliff, and Honshu Hold—1.9.31
- Part 3
- Honshu—1.10.31
- Circle Runner Station—1.18.31
- Harper Hall
- Benden Weyr—
- Benini Hold—east Monaco and Honshu—1.20.31
- Harper Hall—1.28.31
- Honshu Hold—2.1.31
- Fort Hold—2.13.31
- Printer Hall at Wide Bay—same night
- Honshu Hold—2.9.31
- Night at Wide Bay—2.9.31
- Ruatha Hold—late evening—2.9.31
- Core Hold—two days before Council Meeting—2.26.31
- Part 4
- Honshu Weyrhold—2.26–27.31
- Council Meeting at Telgar Hold—3.1.31
- Honshu Weyrhold—3.01.31
- Interim at Benden and elsewhere
- Honshu Weyrhold—time passing slowly
- Landing—3.21.31
- Honshu Weyrhold—3.21.31
- Southern Hold—3.23.31
- Honshu Weyrhold—3.27.31
- Benden Weyr—3.27.31
- Cove Hold—same day, same approximate time
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
Leaving the cothold, he investigated the tracks that led off in several directions. A flash of sunlight on something metallic caught his eyes and he whirled toward the river, afraid that he had been discovered. It took him much longer to locate the source of the reflection: the oarlocks of a small boat. Under the thick shrubbery along the bank, the boat was almost invisible, tethered to a branch with a rope so worn by constant rubbing against a half-submerged stone that the slightest pull would part the last strands.
He provided the pull and, stepping carefully into the boat, used his stick to push out into the current of the river. Perhaps he should have tried to find the oars, but he felt an urgency to be away from this cothold and as far down the river as possible. The little craft was just long enough so that if he cocked his knees, he could lie flat and be unseen from the shore.
That night, when he saw the glowbaskets of a sizeable small holding—not a large enough one to have a watchwher on guard—he propelled himself to the bank and tied up the boat by the tether he had mended with strips of his tattered shirt during his long day afloat.
Luck was with him. First he found a basket of avian eggs left on a hook outside a side door to the beasthold. He sucked the contents of three, and carefully deposited three more in his shirt, tucked into his waistband. Then his eye caught the shirts and pants drying on bushes by the flat river stones where women would have washed them. He found clothes to fit him well enough and corrected the positions of others to make it appear that what he had chosen might simply have fallen into the river and drifted away.
In the beasthold for a second look, though the animals moved restlessly in the presence of a stranger, he found bran and an old battered scoop. Tomorrow he would boil the bran and add the eggs for a good hot meal. Suddenly he heard voices and immediately returned to his boat, pushing it carefully out into the current and lying down, lest he be seen.
The night swallowed the voices and all he heard was the gurgle of the river in which the boat moved so silently. Above him were the stars. The old harper who had taught all the youngsters at the Glasscrafthall had told him the names of some of them. Indeed, the old man had mentioned meteorites and the Ghosts that appeared in bright arcs in Turnover skies. Shankolin had never believed that those bright sparks were the ghosts of dead dragons, but some of the younger children had.