The Wind Star tribe was in a flurry of activity, its days having been spent in preparation for its Prince's upcoming journey. The women had ditched their usual activities and spent their time stitching him silk coats and linen shirts in the Northern fashion, the collars high with tiny ruffles. They embroidered undergarments, tunic sashes and collars, fur mittens and slippers, and to his dismay, a fine hood of white silk that he would wear on his wedding night. The hood was traditional and was supposed to make it easier, not being able to see his bride once they were bundled into bed to consummate the marriage, but it terrified him. Granted, his bride would wear one too, but that gave him no comfort whatsoever. As far as he could see, the only thing that would be easier with the hood on would be if someone wanted to knife him in the back. They'd have the advantage then, if he couldn't see anything. He resolved to drop that thing from the packs the moment he got the chance. It certainly wouldn't ever make it into the bedchamber with him, he was adamant about that.

He was half-adamant that he wouldn’t make it into the bedchamber either, at least not with Sersa Hervik. Or any girl, for that matter.

He sat now, on a low chair in the hall’s inner courtyard, with his father, his mother, and his sisters. Behind them were ranged some of the household guards, and before them, lined up in the courtyard, were women from each family, ready with gifts to present to him. The sky was a luminous, bruised yellow: there'd be thunder before the day was done.  

It was the day he’d leave the settlement, and as such was marked with feasts and dancing. There were no tears. This was not their way.

A young woman stopped before him, a long necklace of beads in her outstretched hands. He bent his head.

‘This is amber, for good health,’ she intoned in a lilting, soft voice, her cheeks dimpling as she slipped the beads over his head. He already had several others – moonstone for insight, jet for bravery, amethyst for dreams. From the line of girls arranged before them, he’d be lucky if he could carry their weight, after they’d done.

He clasped her hands in his and returned the traditional reply.

She smiled, her eyes bold on his, and moved on, and the next girl stepped up, a coil of jade beams in her palm.

He groaned inwardly. Jade, for a mage’s influence on a land. He’d forgotten about that.

He considered his magic. He’d been raised on grasslands, rich, and fertile. He could manipulate anything born of the earth, if he could get his fingers into it. But much of Vartjastafel was rocky tundra. He didn’t know how he was going to adjust, despite his desire to see it. He could work a smattering of stone magic, and he knew the runes, but marrying his soul to such a place would be a tall order. He’d be lucky if he was ever anything more than a minor Runecaster, and from what he’d heard, any of the Lyr Blaed could manage that, despite their curse.

He accepted the next set of beads – citrine for justice – with a distracted air, almost forgetting to reply to the shy girl who presented it. He pressed her hands between his and muttered, ‘Vurzh’ har’n azhoyy vurzha i’en.’

His father nudged him. ‘Pay attention, boy. This is important.’

Sorrel nodded, and took the next length of beads, noting the crescent of reddish dirt under the girl’s fingernails, and the smear of mud on her knees. A midwife. Her fingers caressed the crimson beads. Jasper, for fertility. He felt the heat rise to his cheeks at the inference. The girl looked up through long lashes, a small smile on her lips. An invitation. He looked away.

The final beads came, polished thornwood. He bowed his head over them solemnly; these were for the transcendence over death. They would protect his soul from becoming entrapped in the Marwaithyr, should he die. He already had a set, but these had been carefully crafted with tiny silver Ward-runes, an exquisite piece of art. They would tell anyone who cared to look that here was a gifted Prince, a mage of some ability.

That will soon change.

He glanced at his parents, standing together on the steps of the hall, and felt his spirit lift. They had to be proud of him, to have beads like that made for him.

He wrapped the string around his wrist, and looked apprehensively to the sky. It was one of those watery days where the sun refused to fully break through the deep violet clouds, and the sky scattered a fine mist of droplets over the thick woollen coats of the company. He wished he could call the thunder in, wished he could strike the world to shards with lightning. 

He spoke the words of the final acceptance, and then rose abruptly. He’d had enough of ceremony. He ignored the spluttered indignation of Virishnu, and stalked past the outraged councillors, away from them.

He knelt in the long golden grasses just outside the newly-built wooden gate-house, and bent his head to his knees. Warrior protocol prevented tears on a day like this, so he ground his teeth in silence, forcing all his anger and anguish through his hands into the dusty dark earth beneath him. Magic spread out from his fingers and flattened a circle in the grasses around him. He gathered more, sent it roaring out of him in a wave of pent-up anger, rattling the roof-spurs of the dwellings nearby and making the horses stamp with fear.

A stray spark was firmly crushed under his mother’s boot before it could take hold and burn. He seethed.

‘Stop it,’ she said, her tone mild but firm. ‘Your anger is misplaced. You’ve known this day would come for years now. It is your destiny, as it is any man’s, and your duty as prince of our people.’

He looked up. ‘Knowing it as a thing to come to pass in the future, and living it as reality are too different things, woman.’

‘Don’t dare to use that tone with me! Get up. You’re disgracing yourself!’

She paused, and looked round. They weren’t alone, but Sorrel didn’t care. Not at this moment. He wanted to burn the earth. He gathered more magic and let it seep to his fingertips in a single Rune. He’d run, if he had to. He knew he could. One whispered word and he would be standing at the Black Gate and he needn’t come back.

One word.

His mother sighed, and gripped the back of his collar, dragging him up.  He didn’t resist.

His mother’s eyes turned hard. ‘No matter. You will go to Silverheim, and you will not,’ here she waggled a stern finger under his chin, ‘you will not bring shame to us! Have I made that clear?’

He thinned his lips in sullen displeasure. ‘You have, Mother. Many times. Many times!’

She looked as though she would pull him up by his ear for that, but then composed herself. ‘Good. Now come. We still have many preparations to make!’

‘And do you know anything of the pain I endure, on my salazhán’s behalf, when I work magic for you all?’ he demanded suddenly, unwilling to let a good fight get away. ‘Do you know what it costs me? Or is it just another way I can be useful to you – magic, a pawn in an alliance, a worthless little game-piece you can shunt around the world to your own advantage but not mine!’

Someone did grab his ear then, dragging him roughly to his feet, then knocked him sideways with a punch to his temple. He reeled, his ear singing from the blow, but kept his feet.

‘I will not apologise,’ he said, his voice thick with unshed tears. He spat into the grass, expecting to see blood, feeling like his brain had been dislodged. He’d cut his tongue on his teeth with that blow.

‘Not asking you to, boy.’ Virishnu chewed the words and spat them out. ‘Only asked for respect, but you are too arrogant for that. You disgrace us, here, in front of your tribe!’

He paused, his mouth working in anger, his black brows snapped together over black eyes blazing with fury. ‘You disgrace your ancestors. Remember this, boy – you may be the mage, a powerful man, but a mage with no clan is nything.’

He snarled the word at Sorrel, who flinched. ‘You know what that means, boy? It is a word of the North. It means worthless, pointless, useless. Is that what you wish to be? Go; go with your mother. Go before I beat you like the ungrateful dog you are!’

Sorrel swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at his father’s words, knowing that to make any protest would only result in the threatened beating. He followed his mother to his parents’ private dwelling, a large structure of an embroidered hide ridge on a base of latticed golden wood. It was slowly merging with the rest of what would become almost a palace, with long halls either side of the main roundhouse. New roundhouses were being built at the end of these halls. The Wind Star tribe would not be calling themselves nomads for much longer.

Sorrella turned to him and ordered him to shut the door behind him. She went to the big oaken desk set to one side of the large hearth and fished something out of one of the drawers. She handed it to Sorrel. ‘I know it isn’t easy for you. It wasn’t easy for me, and despite what he says, it wasn’t easy for your father either. I believe this will help you, a little.’

Sorrel unwrapped the paper from the little package and turned the two leather-bound notebooks over in his hands. A lump formed in his throat.

‘Write in the blank one,’ his mother said. ‘Every day. It will help you deal with your thoughts. The other is my own journal. You may read it.’

Now he really wanted to cry. He crushed the urge. ‘Thank you, mother.’

She waved it aside. ‘I hope you will adjust to your new life as well as I did, and that you remember you are to unite two great tribes. When the year is out, you’ll bring your wife back and integrate her into this one.’

He tried to imagine how that would go, and failed. Rather, he’d imagined he’d be slotted neatly into life at Hviturek, under his father-in-law’s thumb. No, he wouldn’t be coming back. Hervik wasn’t likely to let his eldest daughter go far, if even half of what he’d heard about him was true.

If Rurien’s three older sons were dead, or unfit, he’d pass his legacy to Sersa. That was no secret. And it was no accident that he’d set his sights on a mage for a son-in-law.

He’s going to regret it, though. Or I will. No, I already do!

‘Was there no other Tethiri mage to ally himself with?’

‘Perhaps there was,’ snapped Sorrella. ‘But he chose you, as I persuaded him to! Be grateful.’

He couldn’t find it in him.

The preparations were indeed many: there was food to pack, arrows, short bows, and a new sword, and new clothes. Then lastly there was him: several hours inside the steam tent, his head full of the scents of sweetgrass and wild hernass root, oils of almond and lavender, the scraper of silver to glide over his body and remove the oil and sweat from his skin.

He was dressed carefully, first a long shirt of soft white linen woven through with threads of precious and rare blacksilver, with a collar ruffled high at the neck, then over that a quilted robe of pale green silk embroidered in blue and gold. On his feet went fine new boots of black leather, and at his waist a wide belt of blue brocade. Over that, a hooded cloak of white fox fur from his mother, and finally a new sword from his father, a thin, curved svárath that marked him as a Tethiri warrior. Its silk tassels were of apple-green, and gold, and so was the silk laminated onto the leather sheath.

The women fussed round him as he was dressed, then once he was prepared to their satisfaction, they opened the hide sides of the hall and marched him out, down the lines of gathered warriors, to his horse.

His father waited there, a man almost as wide as he was tall, but straight and proud, without any grey in his black hair, which was elaborately braided and bound as befitted a married man of his station. He nodded his approval of his son, his earlier anger forgotten.

‘Prince Ellazhán mabVirishn’ y Sorreilli - my first-son!’ he announced, his tones strident, bell-like, resounding through the grasses like a gale.

Sorrel rolled his eyes. He hated ceremony, and he knew this one would be over the top. He’d seen it before, whenever a man or woman of the tribe rode away from them to another tribe – for marriage, or in the case of the witches and shaman, for position or training.

Virishnu had detailed sixty spearmen to ride with Sorrel, and sixty archers. Sorrel was rather less comfortable with that than he wanted to be. Only one hundred and twenty men between him and a wasteland of grasses, one hundred and twenty men to watch his back in the hills, and get him safely to Silverheim, Vartjastafel’s capital city. They were not going via the Cherndorozh. That would take them too far out of their way. The hill-pass, however, wasn’t an easy one. Two-hundred warriors would have made Sorrel happier.

He went mentally checked through his own pack again. Not for food or supplies; he had coin for what he may need once he left Serahaleros. But he found he didn't fully trust his weapons. One svárath; one short sword, curved and weighted for use on horseback. One yew horsebow, backed with horn and with a string of sinew, a quiver of bronze-tipped arrows. No shield, and no armour save for his bow-arm brace, a long sleeve of jointed leather. He didn't need the armour, he reflected, not with Runes at his fingertips, but he would have felt better if he'd had it anyway.

Forty men of the King’s guard, drew their swords and raised them in an arch. Sorrel ducked under them and walked, his footsteps crackling on the crisp turf, to meet his mother, standing at the head of his mare. He’d raised her from a foal and she was one of the tribe’s best.

The mare whickered at him as he approached, and flicked her tail. Sorrel took the reins, an intricate bridle of woven wool hung with silver bells, from his mother’s hand.

And then someone blew a horn, the signal to mount up, and he hooked his boot in his stirrup and settled in his saddle, his reins gathered in one hand, the other resting lightly on his thigh.

Virishnu re-emerged from the council hall with a large flat bowl, ornately carved and inlaid with silver, in his hands. He held it up high, as though he made an offering to the goddess, turning first east.

The gathered company straightened, anticipating the farewell ritual.

'May all your suns rise early and bright,' Virishnu bellowed, as much at the stars as the company ready to ride.

'And your horizons forever be new!' was the resounding bellow in response.

Virishnu grinned, and turned to the west. 'May your days close on conquest and victory!'

'And your women rise to meet your return!'

Sorrel swallowed a lump in his throat. He caught his father's eye, and steeled himself. Virishnu would never live it down if his son bawled like a maiden now. But the words of farewell never failed to move him.

The chief turned to the north, a cool wind drifting down from the mountains and whispering through the slender birches that waved elegantly among the grasses. 'May the ice-winds of the north be forever at your back, and the road lie wide and smooth under your feet!'

'And the stars of your ancestors light your way!’

The atmosphere had turned now from bright anticipation to a jubilation that swept through all those gathered - men, women and children, warriors and maidens alike. Finally, Virishnu, after waiting for the hubbub to die, turned to the south. He held the bowl high for a final time, and stood in silence for a moment, letting the sun glint off the clear liquid inside.

He cleared his throat for the last blessing. A hush descended, unbroken even by the creak of harness or shuffle of boot, and his voice was quiet, reverence softening his tone.

'May the heat of the sun in the south set the flame of desire in your belly, and warm your heart.'

At that moment the sun broke through the clouds, illuminating the settlement with an eerie, violet-gold light, and the reply came on the wind.

'And the Archer’s arrows find their mark in your soul!'

He drank. Sorrel knew what the dish held - sweetened varrtir, warmed with an infusion of wild fruits over the fire. The cup came to him second. He raised it high, eyes squinting into the sun, and drank deeply.

His eyes locked on his father. Virishnu's gaze was openly affectionate, but the steel in them, deep down, said do not ever dishonour me. Remember who you are.

Sorrel vowed never to forget any of it.