THE MOUNTAINS WERE gray blue colossi in the settled dark. Between them ran a black river, tumbling down out of some unglimpsed height, but where its churning surface caught the low flicker of a campfire, it glowered a pale golden before rushing on.

Six men sat around the fire, taking their ease. They were dressed unusually for that land, in a strange assortment of robes. There was no pattern or uniform about them, and their robes were soiled and hardworn from long weeks on the road. Their passing through the Ymid Valley had been hard, for the fighting was thick there in those days, and even once they escaped up into the Wolfsong Mountains, the days had grown no easier.

Yet, laughter echoed around the fire, back and forth. Cheer kept the dark things that prowled the edge of the firelight—and their minds—at bay.

Though they were short of stature, they were seasoned warriors, each with his own maze of scars to stand testament to many battles. The damage belayed their youth; not a one of them was more than twenty-four summers, though they had the look of men who had seen many more. Though they lay around the fire, their weapons were near at hand, for even in leisure were they prepared for violence.

The times had hardened them, but it also made them good men. Born at the beginning of the collapse in their homeland, they had learned honor, and the depravity that came of losing it. This one thing did they fear, these swordsmen, these ronijar of the Shining Lands of the Hinoni.

To live without honor was to serve the Enemy who dwelt in shadow.

Their teacher emerged from the darkness. He had sat long in meditation by the riverside, turning his mind to its ceasless running. How much like time, he thought, racing in one season, sluggish in the next. Yet ever on, waiting no matter how one pleaded or begged. It mattered not whether you stood at the head of the river, or the outlet that drained into the storming sea; the water ran as it always had, snaking its way across the land, seeking its course no matter how many hands or stones were set in its path.

He returned in a thoughtful mood, and his students—each one his own son by every measure but blood—felt it. They quieted, their laughing fading until all that could be heard were the eternal river and beside it, the gleaming fire. Of course, he could not see the river.

He was blind.

The old man doffed his wide straw hat and held it out, but one of the boys took it before he’d completed the motion. They could see the strip of violet cloth he wore around his ruined eyes. It had always been violet, in honor of the man who had saved him.

“Sit with us, master,” they said, clearing a space for him. He shifted the long crescent sword on his belt and settled to the ground. His bones ached, and his soul was tired, but the fire was good. He could feel it on his face, on the weathered skin of his hands. Perhaps he had been a fool to come this far. No easy task for a blind man to cross the wide world in search of an old friend.

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Worse, when all the world seemed a battlefield. Yet he was close, now. Weeks away, perhaps less.

“My sons,” he said. “Can you see the stars?”

“The night is clear,” said one. And another, “Imaahis rises in the east, master. His sword clefts the sky. The Bull is setting in the west.”

He smiled. “So close, yet never together long.”

“You knew him, didn’t you?”

“Hm?”

One of the boys scoffed, seeing through him. Good. They must see with clear eyes, must look into the hearts of men. Yet, they also knew enough to respect him, and humor his strangeness.

“The Lion. You traveled with him, didn’t you?”

“Ah. Many years ago. I was not much older than you now, when I met him.”

There was a long quiet broken only by the fire. Even the river seemed to have settled, slinking off into the dark. Finally, one of them spoke up. “That’s who we’ve come to see, isn’t it, master?”

“We’ve been talking,” another of the ronijar cut in. “It’s a long way. At first, we thought we were headed for Imidia…but we all saw how badly it was burned. The Enemy’s legions are advancing south, driving back the imperials. When we wanted to fight, you forbade us, even when the Bane, and the billowing smoke of war was near enough to choke us. Our swords could have saved lives, father.” Bitterness, there. And not without cause.

He shook his head. He did not regret his forbearance, though he knew the blood cost. “A sword must be drawn only as a last resort, and—”

“Only when it is needed,” they finished as one. “We hear and obey, master.”

“Good. To be ronijar is to be disciplined. We are tools in service of a greater cause. The Undying Dynasty has fallen. The Hinoni are no more. To linger would be to court certain death. Even Mount Zankanda burned when the Shards of Maarthuk swept down out of the mountains. Though it breaks my heart, I will not lie to you. Search yourselves, and you will find the truth of it. Do you trust me, my sons? Do you trust the path?”

Their answer was unanimous. Immediate. It made his heart ache, knowing the doom to which he led them. But some things could not be helped.

He mastered himself, refused to show them his fear, his hesitation. His sense of dread for the inevitable. Blind he was to the world, but blindness to the future was worse.

“Then I shall speak truly: yes. We seek the Lion. They say he is the high king of Celba in the west. That he forged eight realms into a bulwark against the Shadow and its Bane.”

The young swordsmen digested that in their own silence. The old man let his head settle to his chest, waiting for the question he knew they must ask.

They did not disappoint.

“What was he like? The Lion?”

“Was he as terrible as they say?”

“As strong?”

“Is it true he slew giants?”

The questions came all at once, but they caught themselves and fell quickly to quiet. Grinning, the old man raised his head again, taking them all in with the sight beyond the blindness. The vision of his heart, who saw into their very souls. He saw courage, determination, and fire, alloyed into these six students who had come so far with him. Could he hold back now?

“There are as many legends as there are lies of his trials and conquests,” the old man began.

“Which are true, Master Kinro?”

At this, the man long ago called Kinro-zhi laughed. It was a gentle laugh, one that stirred up the leaves of memory. The firelight danced golden about his battered features. “Who but the wind knows the truth of anything? I can tell you this, my sons: I walked beside the Lionborn, and we followed the wind.”