The Titan's Torch blazed in the predawn gloom. It first appeared in the sky almost two weeks before, a faint glimmer on the edges of sight. Now it was bright enough for its brave blue heart to be seen with the naked eye. Around the blue was a wheel of red that shimmered like the fire of a distant sun.

Ror looked upward eagerly as he climbed the stair from the Brow, the wide shelf of rock beneath Obrus's lofty summit. He'd been hunting snowlions for his father, who wished to gift a cloak of their hides to Salimod, the king of High Alden. Having found his quarry earlier than expected, he decided to have a close look at the new star before taking on the rest of the day, so he handed off his kill at the summit bounty office and climbed one of the army's hidden stairs to the peak. He was crowned with snow by the time he completed his ascent. He shook his head clean as he plodded his way through the night's heavy fall, tossing huge clumps of powder in the air with his boots.

The daystar Yalla was at her zenith, while far below the sun split the veil between night and day. Ror quickened his pace to beat the dawn, clouds of breath puffing as he charged through the violet alpenglow painting the mountaintop.

Before him sprawled Magni, the Eye of Obrus. It was the size of a small town by the standards of other kins. With its support buildings, living quarters, orrery and library, inner and outer rings of telescopes, and the great master lens at its very heart, the grand observatory covered almost all of Obrus's high, leveled peak. Ror greeted the guards, porters and starmancers as he passed them, using as many of their names as he could remember. He was looking for an unused telescope when he heard Gund and Boson's voices echoing angrily within one of the viewing domes. Ror entered through the door in the rear of the dome and grinned while bringing the arguing men in for a hug. He could tell from Gund's sudden silence that the army chief was in a particularly strained mood.

Gund and Boson were facing each other in the cramped space, leaving the telescope unused, so Ror put his eye to it and peered at the Torch. "How's the child faring?", he asked loudly. A murky fog was lingering somewhere between his telescope and the star, but he could still see its light piercing through gloom and haze.

"So you'd have me ignore everything Orenti's observed?" Gund asked impatiently, ignoring Ror. Gund's voice was the grinding of rocks at the bottom of a swift river.

"Orenti is the head steward," said Boson, Magni's chief observer. "His expertise is managing food stores and washing linens. We appreciate his interest in our work, but his knowledge of the stars is based on fanciful literature, not proper observation. I enjoy Narvi's Song and the Book of Tides as much as anyone, but..."

"Boson," Gund rumbled, "I witnessed the fall of Heth. While you had your head in the clouds, I stood in the Sea of Clay and remembered sadly when it was the Field of Iron. Heth was one of the greatest of realms before the starfall. If there is any chance such a catastrophe could befall Thrond, would you truly leave us unprepared?"

"Chieftain..."

Boson's voice trailed off as soon as he spoke, and Ror knew why. Gund was not called the White Bull for his snowy hair and beard. Step past the bounds of his patience, and you saw his horns. One hundred and forty four years of shouting commands over the screams of the dying, fighting while his blood poured from grievous wounds, watching life leave the eyes of boys just sworn into service, and the fury that drove this blooded warrior to victory after savage victory would glimmer in his moon grey eyes. No matter what argument you made, that look made you feel less than an inch tall, and your argument even smaller.

Ror looked over his shoulder to see the starmancer shuffling nervously, his eyes darting from side to side.

"Forgive me, Chieftain. All of Thrond is in your care, and you're right to be so vigilant. We'll compare the Torch's growth to our notes from past starfalls."

"You'll do more than that," Gund snorted. "Recalibrate the master lens and fix it on the Torch."

"But, but King Salimod..." Boson stammered.

"We have enough eyes on the Autumn Road. Sally and his will be within the gate before week's end. We need our brightest eye looking upward now. Also," Gund lowered his already low voice, "make copies of all your work and send them to Cloud Hammer."

Boson stifled an angry protest, then bowed curtly and left the viewing dome.

"Cloud Hammer?" Ror was surprised. "They make Orenti's theorizing seem sound."

"Best to watch all horizons when expecting a foe." Gund's eyes were pained, his brow heavy, the lines where his nose met his brow deep.

"You're not angry with Boson," Ror said calmly.

Gund sighed and shook his head. "No."

They left the dome, greeted by a blaze of orange as the sun's fingers grasped across the sky. A light wind lifted Ror's fleece of black hair as he raised his arms to stretch. Thoughts of old tales came with the dawn; of Arun and the Pale Queen, who's crowns were the sun and moon, and the dark bringer Othomo, sent by the Radiant Soul to raise betwixt them the curtain of night, so the land might have the rest it needed to grow. An old memory came next. He shuddered, then looked at Gund.

"I suppose I'm not really worried about that thing up there either." Gund nodded upward. The Torch was fading now, along with the old and weary stars around it.

The memory persisted, creeping into Ror's inner eye. It was forty one years ago to the day, no wonder it struggled to emerge. He chased it away with a kinder memory, one he cherished. He was nine years old, very young for a dwarf, when he first saw the open sky at night. Having just been through a trying time, his father brought him to the brow to show him the stars. Ror had scoffed when he heard the night sky was as beautiful as the gem caves beneath the mountain, but when they stood on the brow and Ror looked up, he was so taken by what he saw that he fell backwards into the snow.

He remembered the sound of his father's laughter. "I told you," he said after laying down next to him. His father then showed him the twelve Lords of Night. Ror's favorite were Ferenrar, the Red Wolf of War, last constellation of the Wheel of Lords, and the warrior shepherd Emvolo, the first. Ferenrar had dominated the sky for two thousand years, and now Emvolo was bearing down on him hard. "All ends are beginnings," his father told him, "and all beginnings are ends."

Ror's young mind went wild with stories then, and he filled his father's ears with questions, all of which were answered joyfully, save one. Emvolo was reared up on his hind legs, his curved horns lowered and ready for the charge. Ror wondered why the great ram had only one eye, when the mosaics and reliefs always showed him with two. "Did he lose it in battle? With Ferenrar?" he asked. "Yes," his father told him, quietly. "You know, your mother wanted to name you Emvolo at first, because of your green eyes." Ror then laughed and covered one of his eyes with his hand. His father smiled, but did not laugh. Later, Ror would learn the bleak truth; the stars were dying, and the night sky was slowly growing darker. Until now.

"We should be glad for the Torch," he said to Gund.

"I suppose. If Boson's right, then the sky is healing. If your father's right, your uncle Balvor will need some healing."

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There it is, thought Ror. He felt a wave of melancholy. "So that's what's gnawing on you. He gave his betrothed a gift, Gund. The world is to blame if such a common thing can bring harm."

"Your uncle's not a common man, and he's to blame for thinking like one. He's a prince of Thrond. He has an entire kingdom to think about, not just his bride-to-be. Stupid, love struck idiot! He could have given her a necklace made of anything in the world. Why, for the love of Imanna's tits, did it have to be made of mannarim?"

"As you just said, he loves her. He wanted to give her the best of what he had."

"I'm going to speak to your father about you dodging conclave meetings." Gund shook his head as he spoke.

Ror did his own head shaking. "I understand the conclave's concern, Gund, I just don't agree. What have we to fear from Salimod? Or from anyone?"

Gund pointed towards the parapet at Magni's edge. Beyond that wall lay the whole wide world, and the millions who dwelt in the shadow of Mount Obrus. "We don't fear anyone, Ror. We fear everyone. If word spreads that we've learned to forge the world's strongest metal, other kingdoms will have no choice but to put us down before we can use it to our advantage."

"I've scoured our history books, and have yet to find a record of Thrond being defeated, with or without mannarim."

Gund's frustration was plain. "Thrond is mighty, Ror, but not invincible. We'd hoped to have three legions equipped before our secret was discovered. We have four swords, and three of them were given to our allies."

Urum Brann, Chieftain of the Guilds, had asked him what style of sword he'd like. Ror reminded Urum how long he'd been in forging Malgond, his warhammer, and declined the offer of a mannarim sword. When he heard his father had commissioned three of them for the visiting Janissaries, elite soldiers of Thrond's closest ally, Ror had nodded with approval.

"They deserve them."

"I agree," said Gund. "Queen Nandi's ever been a friend to Thrond. To all dwarves, really. If not for the Araad, Karli would have beggared Heth while trying to rebuild it."

"Karli," Ror snorted. He thought of the comet striking Heth, as he'd heard the tale, and thought it was a shame that for all the dwarves it killed, it left their penny mongering king alive. "The meteor missed its target."

Gund sighed. He gestured towards the guard house and they began walking. Next to the guard house was an ohr-tempus, one of the many lodestone powered drills that were once used to bore shafts into the mountain, later repurposed as mechanized steeds to traverse the vast kingdom quickly. The guard house was built into a spur of rock that jutted out of the summit near the western face. Beyond it, rising like an arrow shot from the sky, was the topmost portion of the Ringing Horn, a system made of great rods of bell metal set in pieces throughout the mountain. Each piece was placed within a resonance chamber that projected sound to the others, so that if any were struck, it would echo throughout the entire kingdom. Narvi had it built at the kingdom's founding, presumably in case a strong enough foe ever defeated Thrond, so that all the realm could be warned and flee with their lives. In a thousand years it had never been rung. Ror wondered idly if it even worked.

They stepped onto the stage of the ohr-tempus and nodded to the guards on duty. One of them pulled a lever, and the stage whirred with the hum of passive terrestrial power, then took them back into the mountain.

"Karli was once a decent man," Gund said as the mountain passed upward in a blur. The light from the crystal towers lining the stage glinted off the brigandine plates of his leather duster. "The starfall took a third of his people from him. No kingdom can recover from that magnitude of loss. They've regained their numbers, perhaps, but their faith and endurance are gone. They now live for the thrill of each moment, with no thought for tomorrow, and Karli values gold above all other things."

"He couldn't have been that decent of a man," Ror mused.

"Tragedy can change people, my boy. You'll learn that lesson one day."

He looked at Gund suspiciously. "That's a fine thing to say."

Gund shrugged. "It befalls us all, eventually."

Ror felt his stomach tighten at those words. His own grandparents had died before he was born, leaving Gund and his sister Genneth as the closest thing he ever knew. Genneth's death was a wound Gund still bled from, along with the wound of his nephew Buri being sent to the Underguard. The Underguard... Ror shook away that thought. "Well, Karli clearly had it in his heart to become the man he is."

Gund folded his arms and squared off with him. "And that's that, eh? We are who we're born to be, with no choice in our actions? Just let the stars spin around us and do what we will until we die?"

Ror folded his arms as well. "A good man makes good decisions, does good to others, and lives a good life."

Gund rolled his eyes. "Well, your brother's definitely the clever one. I hope your father factors that into his choice."

Ror didn't want to talk about the choosing. "Speaking of Halfur, he's to make the switch."

Gund nodded. "Your father told me. He's the perfect man for the job. I hope it's not too late to fix this. If Salimod hasn't yet discovered the necklace's make, he never will. And if he has, and tries to show our fake to anyone after claiming it's mannarim, they'll just laugh at him."

There was a quiet moment, then Gund put a hand on his shoulder. "I didn't mean to insult you, Ror. You're clever as well, in your own way. But when I hear you say something that's, well, stupid, I can't let it rest. You need to learn to see things as they are, not as you think them to be. Believe a good man can collapse when put under enough weight, or you'll become such a man."

"Then what hope is there for anyone, if we all have a breaking point?"

"You've sung the old workmens' song. As long as one of us still stands, then none of us shall ever fall. Your father's put the choosing off for as long as law allows. He's got to choose his heir before the season turns, and Klar has made it clear she wants nothing to do with the throne. Whether you or Halfur becomes king, you'll all need each other, as your father has needed both your uncles and your mother. I know you love Balvor, but understand that he never took your grandfather's lessons seriously, and he's a burden more often than not. He only sees the good in the world. That may make him happy, but the hard things in life are there, whether we choose to see them or not. Does blindness to danger protect one from it?"

"You're right," Ror said grudgingly.

Gund smiled. "I know. I'm right about Salimod, too. You were a boy when you saw him last. Watch him now with the eyes of a man."

Ror chuckled. "I'll be watching his daughter with the eyes of a man."

The White Bull laughed heartily. "Look all you like, but you're marrying a dwarven woman, or I'll cut my own throat."

Ror grinned. "Keep your knife sheathed. I don't think I could wed a human. They're pretty to look at, but far too thin."

"And too tall. Your uncle will need to carry a stool with him when they're together."

"What does he see in her?" Ror had never asked his uncle that question, fearing it would come out bluntly, as it just had.

Gund shrugged. "She's a sweet woman, and seems to really like Balvor. And she's a direct descendent of Alden Gace. I suppose Balvor wants to bring some of that blood into your line. Personally, I'm surprised he never went after Yselde."

Ror raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Their queen?"

Gund nodded. "She's of the ancient hillsfolk blood, sprung from one of Narvi's bastards with Alden's third daughter. Balvor had his eye on her, long ago. King Verrold did as well, and King Jambi of Casimir. But they all hesitated, and Sally swept her up the day she came of age."

"So, Princess Cara has some dwarf blood in her." Ror stroked thoughtfully at his beard.

"It's long since faded by now. Be careful, Ror. Befriend her, if you wish, but remember your place. Crowned or not, your people depend on you. Be what they need you to be."