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the Camp, you won’t need worry about that cripple.”
    “He’ll be fine when the cast’s off,” Cristov protested. For all the ten Turns that Cristov had lived, his father had found fault with anyone that Cristov had tried to befriend.
    “That’s neither here nor there,” Tarik grunted. “He’s a cripple now and I’m glad you won’t be around him.” He snaked a hand onto Cristov’s shoulder and pulled him tight against him.
    “This is Harper Moran,” Tarik said, gesturing to the man in blue beside him. Cristov nodded politely to the harper.
    “Look! The dragons are starting the games!” Moran exclaimed, pointing up to the sky.
    Cristov craned his neck back but found himself bumping into his father’s chest. He squirmed forward to give himself enough distance to look straight up into the sky.
    “It’s a nice day for it,” Moran said. “Not a cloud in the sky.”
    “I hope Telgar wins again,” Cristov said. Crom Hold was under Telgar Weyr’s protection; it would be the dragons from Telgar who flamed Thread from the sky when it fell. Cristov knew that Thread wasn’t due for nearly another sixteen Turns; having only ten Turns of age himself, Cristov could hardly imagine such a distant future.
    “Of course they’ll win again,” Tarik growled. “They won last year, because of their new Weyrleader.”
    “He came from Igen Weyr, didn’t he, Father?” Cristov asked, still amazed that a whole Weyr had been abandoned.
    “There wasn’t much else for them to do,” Harper Moran remarked, “given the drought down that way and that their last queen had died.”
    “Their loss, our gain,” Tarik said. “Telgar Weyr’s got nearly twice the dragons the other Weyrs have.”
    “And twice the duty, too,” Moran said.
    Cristov lost the sound of their voices, intent only on the dragons flying into view above him.
    One group, all golden, burst into view high up above them. The queen dragons.
    Moran pointed. “They’re going to throw the first Thread.”
    “Thread?” Cristov gulped. He knew that from the Teaching Ballads that had been drilled into him first by Harper Jofri and then by Harper Zist, just as they were taught to everyone on Pern. He knew that every two hundred Turns the Red Star returned, bringing Thread: a mindless, voracious parasite that ate anything organic—wood, plants, coal, flesh—and grew with such rapidity that a whole valley would be destroyed in mere hours. Water drowned it, steel and stone were impervious to it, and flame, particularly dragon’s fire, reduced it to impotent ash.
    “Not real Thread,” Tarik growled. “Just rope.”
    “Made to look like Thread,” the harper added. “For the games.”
    “Oh.” Cristov turned back around and craned his neck skyward, relieved.
    A wing of dragons suddenly appeared in the sky, well below the queens, and moments later the loud
booms
of their arrival shook the air.
    “Light travels faster than sound,” Harper Moran murmured. Cristov wasn’t sure if the harper meant to be heard or was just so used to teaching that he never stopped.
    “They look small,” Cristov said, surprised.
    “They’re weyrlings,” the harper said. “They’re just old enough to fly
between
and carry firestone.”
    “Firestone?” Cristov repeated, unfamiliar with the word. He made a face and turned to his father. “Is that another name for coal?”
    Instantly Cristov knew from his father’s angry look that he’d asked the wrong question. Cristov flinched as he saw his father’s arm flex, ready to smack him, but he was saved by the harper.
    “No, it’s not another name for coal, more’s the pity,” the harper said, not noticing or choosing to ignore Tarik’s anger. “You’ve never seen it, though you might remember it from the Songs.”
    “I did,” Cristov confessed. “But I always thought it had to be coal.”
    Tarik glared at him.
    “You said, Father, that Cromcoal makes the hottest fire there is. I thought for sure that the