over ice and across the seas. They told how their great hero Ukpik had fought a battle with the Demon of Darkness that had lasted half a year, but which he had finally won, and so brought the sun back to the sky to give light to the world. They told, too, how the Demon of Darkness somehow managed to steal the sun again every year, plunging the world into winter, before Ukpik would repeat his feat of strength and rescue the light of the world just in time for summer.
In the short silence that followed this epic, Thirrin decided to tell the tale of Edgar the Bold and his war against the Dragon-folk of the Wolfrock Mountains. The werewolves were hugely impressed and growled their approval when she finished. But only Oskan noticed how sad she looked. No one else knew that Thirrin was remembering the last time she’d heard the tale, sitting with her father in the cozy comfort of his rooms on Yuletide Eve while Grimswald, the Chamberlain-of-the-Royal-Paraphernalia, read from The Book of the Ancestors. But that was when she’d still been a child.
The storm raged for two days, screeching like a “sackful of boiled monkeys,” as Oskan put it. But at last the wind slowly dropped, until its final moan drifted away over the ice and silence returned. Grinelda Blood-tooth opened the flap in the hide tent and crawled out. Downwind of the storm, snow had gathered around the wall of ice blocks in a long-tailed drift that stretched off into the darkness, but on the windward side the wall was smoothed and polished as though a giant hand had rubbed it to a sheen.
The others scrambled out, too, and stood stretching and breathing in as much as they dared of the bitterly freezing but wonderfully fresh air. Two days spent in the cramped company of twelve huge and hairy werewolves was not the most fragrant of experiences, and the pristine beauty of the frozen world was in striking contrast to being inside the tent. After a few minutes of enjoying the freedom of space, the Wolffolk started to prepare food and soon they were all eating the inevitable meal of meat.
After that it was a matter of minutes before the tents and other equipment were stashed away, and they set off once again on their trek to the Kingdom of the Snow Leopards. Thirrin and Oskan took their usual places in one of the sleighs, and they sped over the ice as the world got steadily colder and colder.
The Wolffolk seemed determined to make up as much of the lost time as they could, and they ran on for hours as the stars wheeled slowly in the black crystal sky. Then, as Thirrin and Oskan watched the stately theater of the night, a sudden burst of color draped itself in a long wavering streamer from horizon to horizon. They both gasped aloud, and the werewolves slowed and stopped before throwing back their heads and howling.
“What is it?” Thirrin called to them. “What are those strange lights?”
“The Veils of the Blessed Moon, My Lady,” Grinelda answered as a cascading curtain of red-and-yellow flame shimmered and flickered over the sky. “They’re omens of great good fortune.”
The visual immensity of the display of fire was in awesome contrast to its total silence. In Thirrin’s opinion, a manifestation of such brilliance and beauty should have crackled and roared like the biggest bonfire, and yet every cascading waterfall of color, every billowing banner of light, was as strangely soundless as an empty hall.
“I think I remember Maggiore talking about this in one of my geography lessons.”
“You did listen sometimes, then?” Oskan whispered, as though not to disturb the display and frighten it away.
“It had a strange name … the aurora borealis, I think … Yes, that’s it! The aurora borealis.”
“So what is it? What causes it?”
“I can’t rightly remember,” Thirrin answered. “It’s to do with the sun’s light on the upper atmosphere, or something like that.”
“That’s the trouble with science. It has to explain beauty. It can’t just let it be.”
“It doesn’t stop it from being beautiful.”
“No, but it takes away the mystery. It takes away the magic. I prefer the Wolffolk’s name for it: the Veils of the Blessed Moon.”
“But you asked me what it was. You wanted to know.”
“Well, next time don’t tell me. Knowing exactly what things are doesn’t improve my life in any way.”
“You know you don’t mean that. You’re just reacting against the Empire and