NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A richly detailed story on a par with the rest of the Pern canon . . . another successful McCaffrey mother-and-son collaboration.”— Booklist At Natalon’s mining camp, Pellar embarks on a secret mission to discover whether the condemned criminals known as the Shunned are stealing coal. But the gifted tracker discovers that a far more treacherous plot is unfolding. A heartless thief named Tenim has realized there is profit to be made from firestone, the volatile mineral that enables the dragons of Pern to burn the lethal Thread out of the sky. When the last remaining firestone mine explodes, a desperate race begins to find a new deposit of the deadly but essential mineral. Sure enough, Tenim has a murderous plan to turn tragedy to his own advantage. Now Pellar and his new friends—the kind and gentle Halla, a child of the Shunned, and Cristov, the son of a corrupt miner—must stop Tenim. If they fail, it will mean the end for Pern and its dragonriders. “Grittier than the early parts of the series; Todd’s apparently brought a wider, more current worldview to Pern.”— The San Diego Union-Tribune “These fabled dragons still cast a spell.”— Publishers Weekly Praise for Dragon’s Kin by Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey “Superb storytelling . . . Essential for Pern fans of all ages.” –Library Journal (starred review) “A guaranteed pleaser [in] one of sf’s most splendid and longest-lived sagas.” –Booklist Praise for Dragonsblood by Todd McCaffrey “Todd McCaffrey does something I didn’t think anyone could do: he writes Anne McCaffrey’s Pern. . . . May the saga continue!” –David Weber, author of The Shadow of Saganami “The torch has been passed and burns more brightly than ever. . . . [Dragonsblood] fits beautifully into the existing history and style of earlier books while still breaking new ground.” –Publishers Weekly Anne McCaffrey , one of the world’s most popular authors, is best known for her Dragonriders of Pern® series. She was the first woman to win the two top prizes for science fiction writing, the Hugo and Nebula awards. She was also given the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement in Young Adult Fiction, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and was named a Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula Grand Master. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1926, McCaffrey relocated to Ireland in the 1970s, where she lived in a house of her own design, named Dragonhold-Underhill. She died in 2011. Todd McCaffrey is the bestselling author of the Pern novel Dragonsblood, as well as Dragon’s Kin, which he co-wrote with his mother, Anne McCaffrey. A computer engineer, he currently lives in Los Angeles. Having grown up in Ireland with the epic of the Dragonriders of Pern, he is bursting with ideas for new stories of that world, its people, and its dragons. CHAPTER I Sent from hold, sent from craft, Whether old, whether daft. Shunned for good into the wild— Father, mother, baby child. Harper Hall, Second Interval, After Landing (AL) 490.3 He’s still waving, isn’t he?” Master Zist called back for the third time. He sat at the front of the wagon as it slowly drew away from the Harper Hall. The last of the winter snow covered the fields on either side of the track. Every now and then the wagon skidded as the workbeast lost his footing on the hard-packed icy snow and struggled to regain it. “Yes, he is,” Cayla agreed, looking back out of the brightly painted wagon at the small figure slowly diminishing in the distance. “We couldn’t bring him,” Zist said regretfully. “He’d be too obvious.” At least, Zist thought to himself, the lad was taking it better than he had when they’d first told him their plans. Pellar had thrown a silent tantrum, had sprawled on the ground in the Harper Hall’s courtyard, feet and fists hitting the ground in his outrage. He stopped only when Carissa had started howling in sympathy with him. “She’s crying for me, isn’t she?” he scrawled quickly on the slate that was never far from his hands. “Yes, I suppose she is,” Cayla answered. Pellar swiftly rubbed his slate clean and scrawled a new comment on it, thrusting it under Zist’s eyes. “Are you taking her?” “We have to, she’s still nursing.” “We want to know that you’re safe, here,” Cayla added. “Aren’t I part of your family?” Pellar scrawled in response, tears streaming down his face. “Of course you are!” Zist declared vociferously. “And we need you, as a member of our family, to stay here out of trouble.” “You are always part of our family, Pellar,” Cayla said firmly. “You’ve been part of our family since we first found you, ten Turns ago,” Zist told him. “Then why can’t I come?” Pellar scrawled on his slate, his mouth working soundlessly in emphasis. “Because we don’t know who abandoned you,” Zist told him, catching Pellar’s chin in his hand and forcing the youngster to meet his eyes. “It could