The first light hit the ground, and Alistair did not stop reading.
"Its members known. Its territory declared. Its philosophy submitted… I beseech the Echelon's recognition."
The light spread along the ground as he spoke, the eastern stretch catching it first, the perimeter stones glinting one by one, the Oasis of Grain coming visible past the edge like something pulled from underwater.
"I beseech Solnar's witness."
Hearing this in his own voice, Alistair felt the color come back.
It came the way it always came back, the way it had returned in the crater nine months ago and in three small flickers across the volume since.
The horizon went orange, the grey broke open, and the first real color of his life since the Black Mountains arrived in the proper arrangement of a dawn, and he felt every piece of it the way a man who had been thirsty for nine months felt water.
