"The shrine stood outside the palisade, and the village kept it the way other villages keep a granary."

He was born in a village on the southern shore of Atmora, whose name he has never written down and does not intend to. The ice had taken most of that continent already. His people had not got round to admitting it. The shrine stood outside the palisade, antler and stone, swept twice a month by whoever was nearest. Nothing about it was secret. Nothing about it was discussed.

The blood came to him at nine, which the village considered late and said so. His father held his shoulders through the first turn and afterward set the date on the door frame with the rest of the household accounts, between a debt of salt and the death of a good dog. That is the whole of the ceremony.

At nineteen there was a running that he has recorded in one line and no more. At twenty-two he left. He took a token from the shrine on his way out, a wolf-bone disc with an antler inlay, and he did not ask anyone whether he could.