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Those born with the caul in the southern highlands, those who fought in the Ember wars and saw the shapes of the Others who came to battle there, did not speak in such a way Not that they would ever be so foolish as to deny Morian of Portals or Eanna or Adaon; only that they knew that there were powers older and darker than the Triad, powers that went beyond this peninsula, beyond even, Donar had once told her, this very world with its two moons and its sunOnce a year the Night Walkers of Certando would have, would be forced to have, a glimpse of these truths under a sky that was not their ownThere would be more claimed for death tonight, she knew, and so fewer to fight the next year, and fewer the nextAnd where it would end she did not knowShe was not educated in such thingsShe was twenty-two, a mother and a widow and a wheelwright's daughter in the highlandsShe was also a child born with the caul of the Night Walkers into a time when all the battles were being lost, year by year She was also known to have the best eyesight in the dark of all of them, which is why Mattio had placed her here by the door, watching the road for the one Donar had said might come It was a dry season; the moat, as he'd expected, was shallowOnce, long ago, the lords of Castle women rolex watches Borso had been pleased to keep their moat stocked with creatures that could kill a manBaerd didn't expect to find such things; not now, not for a long time now He waded across, hip-deep, under the high stars and the thin light of Vidomni in the skyIt was cold, but it had been many years since the elements bothered him muchNor did it disturb him to be abroad on an Ember NightIndeed, it had become a ritual of his own over the years: knowing that all across the Palm the holy days were observed and marked by people waiting in silent darkness behind their walls offered him a deepened sense of the solitude his soul seemed to needHe was profoundly drawn to this sense of moving through a scarcely breathing world that lay as if crouched in primitive darkness under the stars with no mortal fires cast back at the sky, only whatever flames the Triad created for themselves with lightning out of the heavens If there were ghosts and spirits awake in the night he wanted to see themIf the dead of his past were walking abroad he wanted to beg their forgiveness His own pain was spun of images that would not let him goImages of vanished serenity, of pale marble under moonlight such as this, of graceful porticos shaped of harmonies a man might spend a lifetime studying to gucci indy bag understand, of quiet voices heard and almost understood by a drowsy child in another room, of sure, confident laughter following, then morning sunlight in a known courtyard and a steady, strong, sculptor's hand upon his shoulder Then fire and blood and ashes on the wind, turning the noon sun red Smoke and death, and marble hammered into fragments, the head of the god flying free, to bounce like a boulder on scorched earth and then be ground remorselessly down into powder like fine sandLike the sand on the beaches walked in the dark later that year, infinite and meaningless by the cold uncaring sea These were the bleak visitants, the companions of his nights, these and more, endlessly, through almost nineteen yearsHe carried, like baggage, like a cart yoked to his shoulders, like a round stone in his heart, images of his people, their world destroyed, their name obliteratedTruly obliterated: a sound that was drifting, year by year, further away from the shores of the world of men, like some tide withdrawing in the grey hour of a winter dawnVery like such a tide, but different as well, because tides came back He had learned to live with the images because he had no choice, unless it was a choice to surrenderOr retreat into madness as his mother hadHe defined saddle handbags himself by his griefs; he knew them as other men knew the shape of their own hands But the one thing that could drive him awake, barred utterly from the chambers of sleep or any kind of rest, what could force him abroad now, as he had been driven abroad as a boy in a ruined place, was, in the end, none of these thingsNeither a flash of splendor gone, nor an image of death and lossIt was, instead, over and above everything else, the remembrance of love among those ashes of ruin Against the memory of a spring and summer with Dianora, with his sister, his barriers could not hold in the dark And so Baerd would go out into the nights across the Palm, doubly moonlit, or singly, or dark with only starsAmong the heathered summer hills of Ferraut, or through the laden vineyards of autumn in Astibar or Senzio, along snow-mantled mountain slopes in Tregea, or here, on an Ember Night at the beginning of spring in the highlands He would go out to walk in the enveloping dark, to smell the earth, feel the soil, listen to the voice of winter's wind, taste grapes and moonlit water, lie motionless in a forest tree to watch the night predators at their huntAnd once in a great while, when waylaid or challenged by brigand or mercenary, Baerd would killA night predator in his chanel sac own incarnation, restless and soon goneAnother kind of ghost, a part of him dead with the dead of the River Deisa In every corner of the mainland Palm except his own, which was gone, he had done these things for years upon years, feeling the slow turning of the seasons, learning the meaning of night in this forest and that field, by this dark river, or on that mountain ridge, reaching out or back or inward all the time toward a release that was ever and again denied He had been here in the highlands many times before on this same Ember NightHe and Alessan went back a long way and had shared a great deal with Alienor of Borso, and there was the other, larger reason why they came south to the mountains at the beginning of every second yearHe thought of the news from the westHe remembered the look on Alessan's face reading Danoleon's letter and his heart misgave himBut that was for tomorrow, and more Alessan's burden than his own, however much he might want, as he always wanted, to ease or share the weight Tonight was his own, and it called to himAlone in the darkness, but hand in hand with a dream of Dianora, he walked away from the castleAlways before he had gone west and then south from Borso, curving his way into the hills themselves below the Braccio mulberry roxanne Pas