The Winged live in their Weyrs and fly high above the ground. They don’t know about many problems of ordinary people—or only learn about them very late. Meanwhile, the Northern continent is teeming with people. The bravest of them cross to the Southern continent and begin a new life, but most simply sink to the very bottom.
And some get taken under the Mistress of the Homeless, and on Pern—where there are neither prisons nor executions—bandits appear.
The Winged won’t notice them soon, engrossed as they are in excavations on the southern mainland—because the raiders are about to come close to the secrets of their ancestors. And when the Winged notice them, will they intervene?