The hour before dawn was its own kind of cold, sharper than the night.
Alistair had been outside for twenty minutes, not fully outside, just past the door, sitting on the low stone of the threshold with his coat pulled around him and the cup of tea Due had given him at his feet, gone cold an hour ago.
The territory in front of him was dark, the settlements dark too, with the cookfires down to coals, and the runners had not yet taken to the roads. The wind had stopped in the way it sometimes did before dawn, which was the way the world made room for something about to arrive.
Alistair was thinking about the full circuit.
The Black Mountains, far away, and the cave, and Glory's smile.
That conversation had permitted him, he had not realized he was asking for, and revived something he had not realized was still in the world.
