ONE    

Heart, give voice to sing Of life on dragon wings!    

Fort Weyr, AL 508.2.2    

It was still snowing, and cold. Fiona shivered, wishing she hadn't outgrown her warm fur-lined leathers. Back in hot Igen, heavy clothing had been out of place, but here, at Fort Weyr, it was invaluable.  

Her nose and lungs froze as she took another breath. Frantically, she pulled a portion of her thin scarf up to cover her nose; the air was easier to breathe that way, but her breath fogged her vision. 

  It had been an age for her since that time--only days ago here--when the strange gold rider had come:  

"Get dressed," the rider had said. "We must be quick. We can't wake the others."  

Fiona had had only an instant to decide: a rash plunge into the unknown. Why had she taken it? 

  But she had; and for three Turns she'd been Weyrwoman of Igen Weyr, which had been abandoned until she and the other Fort dragonriders had gone back ten Turns in time to use it as a place to grow and heal . . . She'd learned to trade, learned to fly, andlearned what it meant to be a Weyrwoman.  


 She had nearly seventeen Turns now, but here, back in her own time, they still thought her not yet fourteen. A part of her longed for that, longed to give the responsibility for decisions to others, to rest and relax and just focus on raising her queen.  

Her queen. Beautiful Talenth had grown, had become a queen in all her glory, ready for her first mating flight, ready to add her hatchlings to the dragons of Pern.  

When Fiona...