fading rapidly.

Sometimes, when he was not so weary and in so much haste, he would
loiter here, wondering about the ancient buildings and the
long-vanished people who had raised them. There had been no woods at
all, then; nothing but great houses like mountains, piling up toward
the sky, and the valley where he meant to hunt tomorrow had been an
arm of the sea that was now a three days' foot-journey away. Some said
that the cities had been destroyed and the people killed in wars--big
wars, not squabbles like the fights between sealing-companies from
different villages. He didn't think so, himself. It was more likely
that they had all left their homes and gone away in starships when the
Ice-Father had been born and started pushing down out of the north.
There had been many starships, then. When he had been a boy, the old
men had talked about a long-ago time when there had been hundreds of
them visible in the sky, every morning and evening. But that had been
long ago indeed. Starships came but seldom to this world, now. This
world was old and lonely and poor. Like poor lonely old Raud the
Keeper.

He felt angry to find himself thinking like that. Never pity yourself,
Raud; be proud. That was what his father had always taught him: "Be
proud, for you are the Keeper's son, and when I am gone, you will be
the Keeper after me. But in your pride, be humble, for what you will
keep is the Crown."

The thought of the Crown, never entirely absent from his mind, wakened
the anxiety that always slept lightly if at all. He had been away all
day, and there were so many things that could happen. The path seemed
longer, after that; the landmarks farther apart. Finally, he came out
on the edge of the steep bank, and looked down across the brook to the
familiar low windowless walls and sharp-ridged roof of Keeper's House;
and when he came, at last, to the door, and pulled the latchstring, he
heard the dogs inside--the soft, coughing bark of Brave, and the
anxious little whimper of Bold--and he knew that there was nothing
wrong in Keeper's House.

The room inside was lighted by a fist-sized chunk of lumicon, hung in
a net bag of thongs from the rafter over the table. It was old--cast
off by some rich Southron as past its best brilliance, it had been old
when he had bought it from Yorn Nazvik the Trader, and that had been
years ago. Now its light was as dim and yellow as firelight. He'd have
to replace it soon, but this trip he had ne