Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern is a science fiction novel by the American-Irish writer Anne McCaffrey, published in 1983. It is the seventh book of the Dragonriders of Pern series, and with it McCaffrey stepped a thousand years back from the setting of the first novel, to a time the later books remember only in song.

It begins with Moreta, the senior Weyrwoman at Fort Weyr, travelling with her queen dragon Orlith, who is near the end of her pregnancy, to the Gather at Ruatha Hold. There is talk at the Gather about a strange animal that was found at sea and had been on display at Ista, but Moreta is more interested in the runner races, having been hold bred and fond of watching them.

While she is watching with Alessan, the new Lord Holder, one of the runners collapses with liquid in its lungs, and nobody can say what is wrong with it. The next morning the Weyrleader Sh'gall tells her that the disease has become an epidemic and is spreading very quickly across Pern, and Masterhealer Capian has ordered a quarantine to try to stop it. Having been born in a hold, Moreta is also the one who can carry messages and medicine between holds and weyrs when the sickness closes them off.

The novel follows her through the crisis that follows, in a period the rest of the series only knows about through the songs sung about her. It came after Dragonflight and its sequels had established the setting, and it fills in an earlier chapter of the same history.