Although sad, there are occasionally small dragon eggs that fail to hatch, but Lord Jaxom of Ruatha Hold manages to save one after sneaking into the Hatching Grounds. He assists this small dragonet as it tries to break open the shell and Impression is made. Ruth is small and the only white dragon ever seen, but both Ruth and Jaxom are convinced they should be able to fight thread together. While they're sneaking around practicing flying and breathing fire, the situation with the Oldtimers finally hits the breaking point. They do the unthinkable in a desperate bid to regain power; they steal a queen egg. Can Jaxom and Ruth find and return the egg before the dragonriders go to war when everyone else has failed? They make some amazing discoveries along the way that will reveal Pern's past and change its future.

It's been a few years since Dragonquest, which ended with the worst of the Oldtimers retiring to the Southern Weyr, and Jaxom impressing Ruth. For political reasons, Jaxom cannot renounce Ruatha Hold and become a dragonrider and for the same reason no one wants him to risk his life fighting thread. Jaxom is a typical teenager bored with studying, discovering sex, and sneaking out of the house. Okay, unlike most boys he doesn't have to sneak out for sex, but to experiment with his fire breathing dragon, so maybe not so typical. Honestly, Ruth is the more mature of the two and usually the voice of reason. Things get serious for them when the fire lizards, whose simple telepathy is limited to emotions and few images, show Ruth what happened to the missing egg. Since Lessa considers fire lizards nothing more than a nuisance, and everyone still treats Jaxom like a child, no one pays attention to the information. That's when Jaxom and Ruth investigate on their own which is when the story gets a lot more interesting. The Southern Continent is almost entirely unexplored and it's there that Jaxom meets the sister of the Southern Holder. With her help, Jaxom searches for the egg and they make some amazing discoveries. One of them being some half buried ruins that suggest the oldest legends might be true, that humans not only lived in the South before the first threadfall, but also that they weren't from P.E.R.N. at all.

One of the successful aspects of this story is that it was never a secret that humans colonized Pern, it was just that disaster struck and most of their technology and knowledge got left behind in the South. To the people of Jaxom's time, the idea that they crossed the stars and then bred dragons from tiny flying lizards seems impossible. It's fun to read about these characters discovering their heritage. Another success is the depth of the characters like Jaxom. In this single book we see him go from a frustrated young man to a dragonrider and then grow into a Lord Holder able to negotiate with the most arrogant of men with confidence.