ELENA STOOD BY THE OPEN DOOR OF MATTIOS HOUSE LOOKING up the dark road to the moat and the raised drawbridge, watg the dles flicker and go out one by one in the windows of Castle Borso. At intervals people walked past her into the house, only a nod or a brief greeting if anything at all. It was a night of battle that lay ahead of them, and everyone arriving was aware of that.
From the village behihere came no sound at all, and no light. All the dles were long snuffed out, fires banked, windows covered over, even the ks at the base of doors blocked by cloth s. The dead walked on the first of the Ember Nights, everyone khat.
There was little noise from within the house behihough fifteen or twenty people must have arrived by now, crowding into Mattios home at the edge of the village. Elena didnt know how many more Walkers were yet to join them here, or later, at the meeting-place; she did know that there would be too few. There hadnt been enough last year, or the year before that, and they had lost those battles very badly. The Ember Night wars were killing the Walkers faster than young ones like Elena herself were growing up to replace them. Which is why they were losing each spring, why they would almost certainly lose tonight.
It was a starry night, with only the one moon risen, the white crest of Vidomni as she waned. It was cold as well, here in the highlands at the very beginning of spring. Elena ed her arms about herself, gripping her elbows with her hands. It would be a different sky, a differeo the night entirely, in only a few hours, whetle began.
na walked in, giving her quick warm smile, but not stopping to talk. It was not a time for talking. Elena was worried about na tonight; she had just had a child two weeks before. It was too soon for her to be doing this. But she was hey were all needed, and the Ember Night wars did not tarry for any man or woman, or for anything that happened in the world of day.
She nodded in respoo a couple she didnt know. They followed na past her into the house.
There was dust on their clothing; they had probably e from a long way east, timing their arrival here for after the sundown closing of the doors and windows iown and in all the lonely farmhouses out in the night of the fields. Behind all those doors and windows, Elena khe people of the southern highlands would be waiting in darkness and praying.
Praying for rain and then sun, for the earth to be fruitful through spring and summer to the tall harvest of fall. For the seedlings of grain, of , to nourish when sown, take root and then rise, yellow and full of ripened promise, from the dark, moist, giving soil. Praying —though they knew nothing within their ed dark homes of what would actually happen tonight—for the Night Walkers to save the fields, the season, the grain, save and succor all their lives.
Elena instinctively reached up to fihe small leather or she wore about her neck. The orhat held the shriveled remnant of the caul in which she had been born, as all the Walkers had beehed iransparent birthing sac as they came g from the womb.
A symbol of good fortune, birthwomen he caul elsewhere in the Palm. Children borhed in that sac were said to be destined for a life blessed by the Triad.
Here at the remote southern edges of the peninsula, in these wild highlands beh the mountains, the teags and the lore were different. Here the a rites went deeper, further back, were passed fr