It was all over one queen egg. That started the disaster. There were two Weyrs left, and one queen, and it was the first queen egg in many turns. Its mother was old. The queenless Weyr demanded the queen. Kahrain, the Weyr with the egg, refused High Reaches. Their own queen was old and would die soon. High Reaches claimed the others would get the first queen this new one had. Kahrain made them a deal - they could put as many girl candidates on the Sands, and if theirs Impressed, they got the queen. Kahrain would only have one.
High Reaches accepted - and then they found out that Kahrain's one candidate was and they scoured the northern continent to find one to match her. They did eventually find a HAD, like Kahrain's candidate - but this one was of much weaker strength. Kahrain's candidate could talk to and even pressure dragons. This one could talk and hear, but no dragon listened to the weak willed girl. High Reaches needed that queen - and they set about fixing it.
Genetic engineering was a new field, and there was a code it was not to be used on anything fully formed, or that someone was to be altered in any way except to make them healthier. High Reaches found a few who would, when paid enough marks, break this code. The girl protested - she didn't even want to be Weyrwoman. But High Reaches insisted and there was no way for her to escape. Many sevendays later she was released, and given another sevenday of rest before the Hatching. She spent most of it sobbing. Not because it hurt - it had hurt, it had hurt enough she wanted to die more than once - but because what they had done had changed her somehow. She could see and feel everything. She could move things without touching them. She could hear the nasty thoughts and emotions of everyone around her. And the day before she went to Impress, she became angry.
High Reaches couldn't have know the girl they picked, though weak in HAD abilities, had the dormant potential for so much more. The girl was marched onto the Hatching Sands with High Reaches grinning triumphantly - but her gaze was elsewhere. There was a planet out, deep in space, which followed a similar path to the Red Star after briefly interacting with its gravity. But unlike the Red Star, it would never come near Pern - usually. She fixed that, though it sent her to her knees. She didn't hear the murmurs about her as she pulled something from that planet to her. She had sensed it, and she pulled it now toward her. She could feel her energy running out, killing her - but she didn't care.
A hundred stones lay in front of her, no more than a couple of inches in diameter each, and all shining, almost glowing, various colors. Other stones had been called as well, into the shadows of the Sands, but those were saved for if the first plan failed. The queen was shaking as she lifted her gaze to stare furiously at the crowd. "As High Reaches Weyrleader has condemned me to an existence full of pain and turmoil, I condemn a hundred of you to give birth to the next generation of outcasts. They will be hated and mocked - but I give them a gift that will seem a curse to all of you. All of them will have enough empathy to Impress. Whether they will or not - who knows?"
The stones rose in the air in a grand circle, expanding above her. The Sands were quiet except for the shaking of the queen egg. A hundred stones were in the air - and one was clenched in her fist. People's murmurs had rose to screams as the stones did begin to glow as the girl activated them, and then they flew through the air, each hitting a person. Men, women, children, dragonriders, it didn't matter. They hit people - and shattered, releasing their poison into the person in front of them. It wasn't a visible poison, and it would only ever be seen in the children.
But as people screamed in fright or pain, Kahrain's one candidate cried out as the queen hatched, forgetting that a stone had hit her, and had been imbedded in her. Later she would have to take part of it out and she would bleed, little knowing what her children would now be like. The golden queen was a dark amber, and she looked up, her eyes first lighting on High Reach's candidate. Despite all of the suffering around him, High Reaches Weyrleader leaned forward, anticipating his success.
But "his" candidate blew that out of the water. "Aleranth, I hate you, and with all the strength left in my body, I curse you and scoff that you are their hope. Let them have their hope when you, too, produce outcasts. I, Shimari condemn you to hatred, Aleranth!" Shimari threw the last stone, and it hit the golden Aleranth straight in the nose. The gold cried out - and Shimari collapsed. Truly her last strength had not been used on that, but on the earthquake she had caused in the ocean. Let Pern suffer as a tsunami destroyed its coast everywhere.
She closed her eyes, willing death to come, and gold Aleranth turned to the Kahrain candidate and chose her. The two helped each other in their confusion and pain, and went from the Hatching Sands. Kahrain's Weyrleader and Weyrwoman however, were almost insane with rage. They vowed that High Reaches wouldn't get away with it - and would never get an egg from them again. High Reaches dragonriders fled back to their own Weyr.
Only one young man went to the side of Shimari once everyone had left and she had been forgotten. "The stones," She whispered in her sleep, and he picked her up - but noticed the glint of stones in the shadows. There he found just ten more, and he paused, putting Shimari down. One shattered when he tried to pick it up, but the rest went into his pockets. He took Shimari and left, down into the tunnels of the nearest Hold, where the watch-whers were. They too had problems with their population, and unlike the dragonriders, it was a lack of candidates that caused their problems - more than half of their whers went wild. They were more sympathetic to the weakened Shimari, who cursed the boy inwardly. She had wanted to die - and then the boy showed her the stones. She saw the mark on his palm where he had been cut and smiled to herself. He was already cursed then.
"Give them to a queen and see. Let people touch them. Then you'll know what they do," She answered when asked about them. They hesitated - but the boy did it. A fire-lizard queen was first, and then when she didn't die, he handed two to a queenhandler - one of the last - and Hers. Both shattered. That left six - and the boy, Tekas, put one in his pocket, and gave five back to Shimari, who hid them away.
Tekas went on to Impress a bronze wher hatchling, and used the stone on Tekask, who didn't mind. By then Tekas had seen what it did to the fire-lizard children, and he was eager for the other gold to fly - the one that had used a stone. It too would have weird hatchlings. Shimari Impressed the first of those children, a queen - she hadn't even meant to. The watch-wher had sought out the much weakened HAD herself, and suddenly a world of possibilities had opened up to her. For her powers still worked a bit, but not enough to be useful, and she had practically crippled herself, unable to walk around much without tiring. With Shimarsk, she could go anywhere. And five glowing stones still remained.
She later went to the surface, and one stone went to a runner stallion, and another to a tomcat hanging around. The other three she went North with when Shimarsk was old enough, and one went to a fox, the rare species that hadn't done well on Pern, but was valued for it's fur still. Another she used on a wherry, of all things. The last, she planted in the ground with the seed of a tree. And then she was done - there were no more stones, there was nothing more to do - but there was Shimarsk, and Shimari turned to a life of being a Wherlady - and perhaps, eventually, Whermaster.
In the turns it took for Shimari to do this, Kahrain's candidate had grown, and so had her dragon - and they wept at each hatching as half their eggs were destroyed as they hatched. Kahrain wasn't allowing the mutated ones to live - a few had tried to do the same to the human children, and some fled. Others argued they could be used to fight High Reaches as they grew older - and High Reaches said the same for the mutated children born around them. Most were children of dragonriders, but a few were born in the Holds. Wherever they were born, the children of the hundred touched by Shimari's stones - as they were being called - were different, and all had a mark, exactly where there parents had been hit with a piece of stone, in the same shape their parents had - but in various colors.
Nearly thirty turns passed and children grew, and more were born, and even some of the children had children - mutated the same way. And dragonets were killed savagely as they were born. Kahrain and High reaches raided each other once every couple of turns by then, the battle had faded as Kahrain realized High Reaches was dying - and High Reaches realized it as well. There were some of Aleranth's eggs on Kahrain's sands - and the smallest, youngest, and quickest of their dragons were sent. Not to grab the normal eggs- but to grab the eggs that had been catalogued as always producing a strange color. A giant green egg, and a giant pale blue egg. They were taken - and Aleranth raised no alarm as she watched them go, and her rider refused to say what had happened to the eggs.
By the time Kahrain found out where the eggs had gone, they had hatched, Impressed, and were over a turn old. And unless Kahrain was to kill every dragon between the Emerald and Aquamarine, they were not touching those dragons.
A turn and a half later, and a clutch is on both Weyrs' Sands, and tension was high. The Emerald and Aquamarine both tended to their clutches, Aleranth finally deciding no mutant would die. And then, two months after a healthy hatching at High Reaches, two eggs are stolen from Kahrain. Small though they were, Kahrain blames the other Weyr - and after they deny it, they launch an attack on High Reaches, starting the first Dragonwar. However, the dragonwar was cut short when the green planet that had appeared on the horizon was proved to be carrying Thread when it rained down and killed Kahrain's Weyrwoman - just as Shimari had smugly been saying for months. After all, she had brought it here.