They stirred at that. “The Seer?” Lyse ventured. “In her world?”

“So it would seem,” Enroth said. “Something new is threading across the Loom.”

“Or something very old,” Ra-Tenniel amended, and the Eldest bowed his head.

“Then why do we wait?” Galen cried. Her rich singer’s voice carried to the others on the slopes of Atronel. A murmur like a note of music came to the six of them by the throne.

”We do not, once we are agreed,” Ra-Tenniel replied. “Is it not bitterest irony that we who are named for Light should have been forced to cloak our land in shadow for this thousand years? Why should Daniloth be named the Shadowland? Would you not see the stars bright over Atronel, and send forth our own light in answer back to them?”

The music of agreement and desire was all about them on the mound. It carried even careful Lydan, and he, too, let his eyes reach crystal as Ra-Tenniel made the throne shine full bright, and, speaking the words necessary, he undid the spell Lathen Mistweaver had woven after the Bael Rangat. And the lios alfar, the Children of Light, sang then with one voice of praise to see the stars undimmed overhead, and to know that all over the northland of Fionavar the shining of Daniloth would illuminate the night for the first time in a thousand years.

It exposed them, of course, which was the gallant purpose of what they did. They made themselves a lure, the most tantalizing lure there could ever be, to draw Rakoth Maugrim down from Starkadh.

All night they stayed awake. No one would sleep, not with the stars to see, and then the waxing moon. And not with their borders open to the north, where they knew the Unraveller would be upon his towers among the Ice, seeing their taunting, iridescent glow. They sang in praise of the light, that their clear voices might reach him, too, and clearest of them all sang Ra-Tenniel, Lord of the lios alfar.

In the morning they put back the Mistweaver’s shadowing. Those sent to keep watch by the borders returned to Atronel to report that a mighty storm was howling southward over the bleak, empty Plain.

Light is swifter than wind. In the country south of Rienna the Dalrei saw the glow above Daniloth as soon as it went up. The newest storm would take some time to reach them.

Which is not to say it wasn’t cold enough on watch by the gates where Navon of the third tribe took his turn on guard. Being a Rider among the Dalrei was still a glorious thing for one who had seen his animal so recently, but there were less pleasant aspects to it for a fourteen-year-old, staring out into the white night for wolves while the wind tore at his eltor cloak, seeking the thin bones underneath.

While word of the light far in the northwest ran wild through the clustered camps, Navon concentrated on his watch. He had slipped up on his first hunt as a Rider; his attempt at a flashy kill had been one of the failures that led Levon dan Ivor to risk his life trying Revor’s Kill. Trying and succeeding. And though the hunt leader of the third tribe had never said a word to him, Navon had striven ever since to erase the memory of his folly.

The more so, because every member of the third tribe felt an added pride and responsibility after what had happened at Celidon when the snows began and the wolves had begun to kill the eltor. Navon remembered his first sickening sight of slaughtered grace in the land between the Adein and Celidon itself, mockingly near to the mid-Plain stones. For whereas the Dalrei might kill fifteen or twenty of the flying beasts on one hunt and only by adherance to their stern Law, that day the joined Riders of the third and eighth tribes had ridden over a swell of rising land, to see two hundred eltor lying in the snow, their blood shockingly red on the white drifts of the Plain.

It was the snow that had undone them. For the eltor, so fast over the grass that men spoke of a swift of eltor, not a herd, had hooves ill-adapted to the deep piled snow. They foundered in it, their fluid grace turning to ungainly, awkward motion—and they had become easy prey for the wolves.

Always in autumn the eltor went south to leave the snow behind, always the Dalrei followed them to this milder country on the fringes of the grazing lands of Brennin. But this year the snow had come early, and savagely, trapping the animals in the north. And then the wolves had come.

The Dalrei cursed, turning faces of grief and rage to the north. But curses had done no good, nor had they stayed the next bad thing, for the winds had carried the killing snow all the way south to Brennin. Which meant there was no safe place for the eltor anywhere on the Plain.

And so Dhira of the first tribe had issued a Grand Summoning to Celidon of all nine chieftains and their shamans and advisers. And venerable Dhira had risen up—everyone knew the story by now—and asked, “Why does Cernan of the Beasts allow this slaughter?”

And only one man of that company had stood to make reply.

“Because,” Ivor of the third tribe had said, “he cannot stop it. Maugrim is stronger than he, and I will name him now by his name, and say Rakoth.”

His voice had grown stronger to quell the murmuring that came at the never-spoken name.

“We must name him and know him for what he is, for no longer is he a presence of nightmare or memory. He is real, he is here now, and we must go to war against him for our people and our land, ourselves and with our allies, or there will be no generations after us to ride with the eltor on the wide Plain. We will be slaves to Starkadh, toys for svart alfar. Each man in this Gathering must swear by the stones of Celidon, by this heart of our Plain, that he will not live to see that sunless day. There is no Revor here with us, but we are the sons of Revor, and the heirs to his pride and to the High King’s gift of the Plain. Men of the Dalrei, shall we prove worthy of that gift and that pride?”

Navon shivered in the dark as the remembered words ran through his mind. Everyone knew of the roar that had followed Ivor’s speech, exploding outward from Celidon as if it might run all the white leagues north, through Gwynir and Andarien, to shake the very walls of Starkadh.

And everyone knew what had followed when mild, wise Tulger of the eighth tribe had risen in his turn to say, simply, “Not since Revor have the nine tribes had one Lord, one Father. Should we have an Aven now?”

“Yes!” the Gathering had cried. (Everyone knew.)

“Who shall that be?”

And in this fashion had Ivor dan Banor of the third tribe become the first Aven of all the Plain in a thousand years, his name exploding in its turn from the holy place.

They all showed it, Navon thought, pulling his cloak more tightly about him against the keening wind. All of the third tribe partook of both the glory and the responsibility, and Ivor had made sure they had no special status in the distribution of labors.

Celidon would be safe, he’d decided. No wolves would enter there as yet, risking the deep, ancient power that bound the circle of the standing stones or the House that stood inside them.

The eltor were the first priority for now. The animals had finally made their way south to the country by the River Latham, and thither the tribes would follow them; the hunters would circle the gathered swifts—though the name was a mockery in snow—and the camps would be on constant alert against attack.

And so it had come to be. Twice had the wolves ventured to attack one of the protected swifts, and twice had the racing auberei gotten word to the nearest camp in time to beat back the marauders.

Even now, Navon thought, pacing from north to south along the wooden outer wall, even now Levon, the Aven’s son, was out there in the bitter cold on night duty around the large swift near the camp of the third tribe. And with him was the one who had become Navon’s own hero— though he would have blushed and denied it had the thought been attributed to him by anyone. Still, no man in any tribe, not even Levon himself, had killed as many wolves or ridden so many nights of guard as had Tore dan Sorcha. He had been called “the Outcast” once, Navon remembered, shaking his head in what he thought was an adult disbelief. Not any longer. The silent deadliness of Tore was a byword now among the tribes.