Cael Ardent woke to the smell of dry rye flour and the sound of sparrows quarreling in an ivy vine outside an open window.
For the first three seconds before his eyelids parted, thirty-six days of conditioned reflex braced his mind for the inevitable violence of the sixth bell. He waited for the blinding flash of white-gold light behind his optic nerves; he waited for the icy, iron fist of the Returner Seal to clench around his breastbone and yank his lungs backward through three days of time; he waited for the lurching nausea of the saddle as his white charger’s hooves struck the south milestone above Harth bridge and the burning gold letters etched themselves across the sky:
RETURN COMPLETE — ANCHOR RESTORED
Nothing flashed. No iron fist clenched in his chest. No horse moved beneath him.
Slowly, cautiously, Cael opened his eyes.
Above him stretched four rough-hewn beams of old, smoke-darkened oak, whitewashed between the joists and hung with two wooden peels and a string of dried sage. A high, narrow louver window stood propped open by a notched stick near the eaves, and through its flour-dusted wooden slats slanted a long, dusty beam of ordinary yellow morning sunlight.
