Ivor led them, one on either side, letting them walk beside him now, as was fit for men, to the quarters set apart for Gereint. He went inside with them and watched as they knelt before the shaman, that he might confirm and consecrate their animals. Never had one of Ivor’s children tried to dissemble about his fast, to claim a totem when there had been none, or pretend in his mind that an eltor had been an eagle or a boar. It was still the task of the shaman to find in them the truth of their vigil, so that in the tribe Gereint knew the totems of every Rider. It was thus in all the tribes. So it was written at Celidon. So was the Law.
At length Gereint lifted his head from where he sat cross-legged on his mat. He turned unerringly to where Ivor stood, the light from outside silhouetting him.
“Their hour knows their name,” the shaman said.
It was done. The words that defined a Rider had been spoken: the hour that none could avoid, and the sanctity of their secret name. Ivor was assailed suddenly by a sense of the sweep, the vastness of time. For twelve hundred years the Dalrei had ridden on the Plain. For twelve hundred years each new Rider had been so proclaimed.
“Should we feast?” he asked Gereint formally.
“Indeed we should,” came the placid reply. “We should have the Feast of the New Hunters.”
“It shall be so,” Ivor said. So many times he and Gereint had done this, summer after summer. Was he getting old?
He took the two newest Riders and led them into the sunlight, to where all the tribe was gathered before the door of the shaman’s house.
“Their hour knows,” he said, and smiled to hear the roar that went up.
He gave Navon and Barth back to their families at last. “Sleep,” he urged them both, knowing what the morrow would be like, knowing he would not be heeded. Who slept on this day?
Levon had, he remembered; but he had been three nights in the grove and had come out, at the last, hollowed and other-worldly. A difficult, far-voyaging fast it had been, as was fitting for one who would one day lead the tribe.
Thinking so, he watched his people stream away, then ducked back into the darkness of Gereint’s house. There was never any light in that house, no matter which camp they occupied.
The shaman had not moved.
“It is well,” Ivor said, hunkering down beside the old one.
Gereint nodded. “It is well, I think. They should both do, and Barth may be something more.” It was the closest he ever came to giving the Chieftain a hint of what he had seen in the new ones. Always Ivor marvelled at the shaman’s gift, at his power.
He still remembered the night they had blinded Gereint. A child, Ivor had been, four summers from his hawk, but as Banor’s only son, he had been taken out with the men to see it done. Power for him all his life would be symbolized by deep-voiced chanting and torches weaving on the night plain under the stars of midsummer.
For some moments the two men sat quietly, each wrapped in his own thoughts, then Ivor rose. “I should speak to Levon about tomorrow’s hunt,” he said. “Sixteen, I think.”
“At least,” the shaman said in an aggrieved tone. “I could eat a whole one myself. We haven’t feasted in a long time, Ivor.”
Ivor snorted. “A very long time, you greedy old man. Twelve whole days since Walen was named. Why aren’t you fat?”
“Because,” the wisest one explained patiently, “you never have enough food at the feasts.”
“Seventeen, then!” Ivor laughed. “I’ll see you in the morning before they go. It’s up to Levon, but I’m going to suggest east.”
“East,” Gereint agreed gravely. “But you’ll see me later today.”
This, too, Ivor had grown accustomed to. The Sight comes when the light goes, the Dalrei said. It was not Law, but had the same force, it seemed to Ivor at times. They found their totems in the dark, and all their shamans came to their power in blindness with that ceremony on midsummer night, the bright torches and the stars suddenly going black.