Chapter 21: Wynne's Hour

The wardens would not touch Perrin.

If they struck him, they said, a hundred thousand sparrows might fall silent in the sky, and the mortal world would take the silence for a death.

So he walked out of the hall unbound, with his cloud of birds above him, and the Deep took no oath that day.

My father gave the realms until dawn.

I went to the Dawn gate in the dark with Maelis at my side and Wynne in front of me.

She had asked for this.

She had come to my rooms at midnight, in her plain grey gown, and had said that she wanted to raise the sun.

"Not for me," she said. "For them. They have to hear it from somebody who wasn't at the door."

I set the Atlas on the rail and opened the page for the Hours.

"The Dawn is yours," I said. "For this one morning. The rest of the season, I'll hold it."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. It's heavier than it looks."

She laughed, a little breathless, and put her bitten fingers on the gold.

The sun came up under her hands, grey and slow, the First Light before the Dawn.

When it rose, it carried her voice.

That was what the Dawn did for its keeper.

Whatever she said at that gate, the Sky heard it, and the Deep, and every village in the Mortal World where somebody had gone to the window.

I saw the sparrows stir on the roofs below.

Perrin sat on the lowest rail of the gate with his hands in his lap and his brown eyes on my sister.

He had come to listen.

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