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Chapter I

CHADE FALLSTAR

Is time the wheel that turns, or the track it leaves behind?

-KELSTAR'S RIDDLE

He caht the orld back to my doorstep I was thirtyfive that year When I enty, I would have considered a e These days, it see nor old to er had the excuse of callow youth, and I could not yet claier sure what I thought of myself So behindlike footprints in the rain, until perhaps I had always been the quiet e between the forest and the sea

I lay abed that ht me peace The wolf breathed steadily before the softly crackling hearth fire I quested toward hi thoughts He drea hills with a pack For Nighteyes, it was a dream of silence, cold, and swiftness Softly I withdrew my touch and left him to his private peace

Outside es to one another There was a light wind, and whenever it stirred the trees, they released a fresh shower of last night's rain to patter on the ard The trees were silver birches, four of them They had been little more than sticks when I had planted theht shade outside my bedroomI closed ht on et up, not just yet

I had had a bad evening the night before, and had had to face it alone My boy, Hap, had gone off gallivanting with Starling alo, and still had not returned I could not bla to chafe his young shoulders Starling's stories of life at Buckkeep, painted with all the skill of her nore So I had reluctantly let her take hiht see for hifest there, eat a carrisseedtopped cake, watch a puppet show, ular h to content hio, of finding hiood carpenter or joiner He showed a knack for such things, and the sooner a lad took to a trade, the better he learned it But I was not ready to let hio just yet For noould enjoy a s for hteyes and I had each other for company What more could we need?

Yet no sooner were they gone than the little house see had been too refests and the like Puppet shows and carrisseed cakes and girls to kiss all brought back vivid o drowned Perhaps it was those nore Twice I had awakened sweating and shaking with my muscles clenched I had enjoyed years of respite from such unquiet, but in the past four years, my old fixation had returned Of late, it came and went, with no pattern I could discern It was alic had suddenly recalledme out of my peace and solitude Days that had been as s were now disrupted by its call Soer ate at me as a canker eats sound flesh Other ti, vivid dreams If the boy had been home, I probably could have shaken off the Skill's persistent plucking at iven in to the unvanquished addiction such dreams stirred I had walked down to the sea cliffs, sat on the bench ic over the waves The wolf had sat beside nore hi porcupines,” I pointed out to him

Save that their quills can be pulled out What stabs you only goes deeper and festers His deep eyes glanced past hts

Why don't you go hunt a rabbit?

You've sent the boy and his boay

“You could run it down yourself, you know Time hen you did that”

Tio and do that, instead of this fruitless seeking? When will you accept that there is no one out there who can hear you? just have totry

Why? Is h for you?

It is enough for h for me I opened myself wider to the Witbond we shared and tried to let hiic that wants this, not me