"The simple questions, according to the Measure, will suffice."

Brithelm and I looked at one another.

How like the old man to fall into the arms of the Order when he could not put word or thought around his grief. For there he sat in front of us, eyes brimming. I had never seen my father weep, but come to think of it, I had never seen him with a pen in hand, either.

It was the depths that the armor covered.

"One," he began, his old back rigid. He started to stand, steadying his right leg, injured in a long-past boar hunt. "One. Where did the boy fall?"

"In the heart of the Vingaard Mountains, sir. Into the breast of Huma," I replied, hoping I had the formula right.

"And when did he fall?"

"Elev-ten nights passing, sir. Into the breast of Huma."

And we said it together-that prayer I have heard on solemn occasions, before and since, over old Knights who passed on peacefully in their sleep and over young ones killed by adventure or accident. Over a centaur friend of mine, once in the mountains. And over my brother, who lay beneath those mountains, asleep in the heart of the planet.

"Receive this one to Huma's breast Beyond the wild, impartial skies; Grant to him a warrior's rest And set the last spark of his eyes Free from the smothering clouds of wars Upon the torches of the stars.

"Let the last surge of his breath Take refuge in the cradling air Above the dreams of ravens, where Only the hawk remembers death. Then let his shade to Huma rise Beyond the wild, impartial skies"

The prayer over, the tears shed, the old man looked up at me.

"And tell me one more thing, Galen," he began.

"He fell most bravely, Father," I said. "His last thoughts were heroic."

Brithelm looked at me briefly, but he added nothing, of course. And he always claimed, quite truthfully, that he did not see his eldest brother fall.

But our story must not end without a week in middle autumn, when briskness rode on the wind and the horses' breath misted the air for the first time that season.

We rode together, Brithelm and Danelle and I, along with a mess of Knights and retainers-from Raphael and Bradley all the way to the dog, Birgis-out from Castle di Caela and south, past the Thelgaard Keep and, keeping the Garnet Mountains to our left, into the sacred Telling Ground that Longwalker and Wanderer, the Namer of the Que-Shu, had marked off for the ceremonies at hand.

I would imagine there were ten thousand Plainsmen camped around us, the air filled with smoke and chanting and the smell of leather and grain and memory.

Memory was the richest of those smells. On the first night, we seated ourselves in the immense mile-wide circle that linked tribe to tribe. The ceremonial spears stood anchored in the ground, atop them the tribal totems-the pelts of leopard and bear and fox, the feathers of eagles, and the antlers of the springbok.

We sat beneath the sign of the antelope, totem of the Que-Nara. Longwalker greeted us and with quiet ceremony draped the hides of antelopes over my shoulders and those of Brithelm. A third, smaller hide, well tanned and softened and white and gray like the peaks of the Vingaards, had been saved for the Lady Dannelle.

They smelled of the plains to the south, those hides-of the clean, unchangeable grasslands and the sudden, crisp, metallic smell in the air when winter snows approach. I nestled into the warmth of the fur and watched the smoke rise from the fire that practical Bradley built in an instant before us.

The smoke, caught up in a strong October breeze, eddied toward the southwest, over Coastlund and out to the New-sea beyond it. It curled and surged like a river, and it circled twice over the large central fire of the Telling before gathering itself into a larger, higher current of smoke and bending away over the horizon.

Longwalker sat down in front of me, and the Telling began.

Wanderer spoke first. His tales told of a country to the south, of a people nomadic and tireless, haunted by shifts in the weather and gaps in their memories. Mournfully the young Que-Shu Namer began one telling, then paused, then told another story he seemed to join in midstride, because at the heart of each story was the melancholy phrase, "And this we do not remember…"

He spoke through the first night, and we slept until noontime restlessly. Longwalker woke me when the sun was high, his voice encouraging, a strange gleam in his eyes.

"Take off the mantles of sorrow, Solamnic," he said, his eyes fixed on the central fire, "for tonight you will see the Telling brought out of the darkness. You will see the time redeemed."

And I confess that the smell in the air was lighter, that something arose in the midst of us promising joy and history, and the second night was rollicksome until the new Que-Nara Namer began to speak.

First, it was a night of reunion. Ramiro, it seemed, had made the long journey westward across Goodlund and Balifor and the green lands closer to home, a journey so long that I wondered if he had housed himself under his own roof for more than a night before setting off again. He reclined beneath the autumn sky, staring on high at the stars in the Harp of Branchala. A glass of Thorbardin Eagle rested atop his ample stomach, and his huge head, its long black curly locks spread like a fan, rested in the lap of a Plainswoman I had never seen before, all paint and nose rings and torrid attention.

He was in good hands, it seemed, though hands that might threaten his heart with their energies.

I had spoken to the big Knight and was returning to our campfire when the Que-Nara Namer took his place at the central fire and began his telling. The voice sounded familiar, and at once I stopped and squinted toward the great monumental blaze.

The Que-Nara Namer was a black man dressed in motley, and a long, barrel-chested dog squatted beside him.

"Shardos!" I whispered. Of course it was Shardos. It surprised me how I had missed it all along.

The juggler crouched before the fire as he told of the first days of our adventure. From his patchwork robe, he took some glittering tools and began to speak of Longwalker.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see the big Plainsman standing beside me.

"Here," he said, handing me a thin band of silver. "Take this to the central fire. The juggler has need of it."

At the moment I stepped into the light of the Namer's fire, Shardos's hand was extended. He smiled as I set the silver in his hand, and he began to tell my part of the story as all of the peoples-the Que-Shu, the Que-Kiri, the Que-Nara- listened exultantly.

As my old friend spoke, all the events were set in place, from the banishment of Firebrand in the centuries past down to the Night of Telling and the Namer who seated himself before us. The old man told the stories in the present tense, his hands busy over the fire, twisting yet another piece of silver, which Longwalker himself had brought forth, onto the one I had given him. The Plainsmen nodded around him, their eyes closed as the things he told happened for the first time in their brilliant imaginings.

Shardos brought something from his pockets, and for the first time, I knew fully of what had occurred beneath Castle di Caela, knew of the dark god's plotting and how the thirteenth stone in the crown had shut its wearer in the past, where no voice, human or divine, could reach him through the stones.

But the end of the tale was the best part, for Shardos stood, holding aloft a silver circlet-the restored Crown of the Namer, adorned with twelve opals. Around him, the Que-Tana, robed against the light of the moons and stars, began the Song of Firebrand, the words of which made sense now. For, no longer twisted by that villain beneath the mountain, they found their fitting and proper hero there at the heart of the Telling.