The road into the valley wore festival colors before it showed a single house. Ribbons hung from the branch-limbs over the lane, faded where old weather had worried them, but still bright enough to move like cheer in the wind.
Small bells had been tied among them. They answered the morning in thin silver voices that should have sounded merry.
Instead, they rang with the patience of something practiced too often.
Cael Veyr stopped beneath the first of them and listened. The Black Lantern at his side gave no light while shut, but its weight seemed greater here, as if the metal knew before he did that the valley ahead had rules of its own.
Beyond the bend, a painted wagon waited beneath the trees. On the wagon side, in careful gold letters, someone had written: SORROW MADE LIGHT.
Halfway down the orchard lane, under apple boughs and ribbons, a small coffin rested on trestles draped in cream cloth.
