Chapter 18: A Hundred Thousand Sparrows

Daelan's POV

The song did not stop when the light came.

We dressed in the dark, fast and without words, and Maelis had her robe knotted wrong and did not care.

I took the ember in its cradle from the stand.

It was still warm, but the sparrows on the roof did not look at it.

They looked at the sky, and every one of them sang.

We ran out onto the Sky Gate together and stood at the rail.

Below us the mortal world lay in the first grey, with its rivers and its roads.

And over every village, every field and every hill, brown birds were rising in clouds.

The song came up from all of them at once, thin and sweet, and it carried my mother's lullaby to the ends of the Three Realms.

"Look," said Maelis, and pointed down.

At the foot of a hill, a whole village had come out of its houses and knelt in the road.

They were not looking at the Sky or at the sun.

They were looking at the birds.

I took the Atlas from under my arm and opened it, and the page for the Mortal World was black with new names.

Every prayer that had once gone up to the Sun Court was going somewhere else.

"The tithe," I said. "They're paying him the tithe."

"Who?"

"Perrin. The prayers go to whoever the people weep for."

Wynne came running along the gate with her braid undone.

"The wardens are in the hall," she panted. "All of them. Father's sent for you."

"Of course he has."

"Daelan, they've brought a chair."

I did not understand what she meant until I came into the High Hall.

The wardens of the Deep stood in a half circle in front of the dais, in their green water robes.

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