Chapter Twenty
For the first time in many years, winter’s touch was gentle on Broad Plain. When the extravagant nightlights of storms faded, so too did the worst of the wind. There were soft sweeps of kindly soaking rain, but little frost. Some tribesfolk moved their camps to higher ground, and the mastodons slowed their circuit in the heavy going, but there was little in the way of flooding. Snow dropped tender mantles on desert, rocky plateau, youngling forests, tents and buildings alike, and then ice fixed the delicate scene like a lost world of dreams. Even spring, when at last it appeared to unpick the frosty lacework into a flimsy veil of splashes, treated the terrain with a kind hand, bringing luminous air and the vital fragrance of new growth.
In the south, ursini splashed across
