He spread the armband on the ground in front of him, its black stones staring up into the cloudy Solamnic night. Something glimmered in the centermost stone, faint like a watchfire at a distance on a pitch-black night. Steadily, calmly, the breathing of his companions as regular as a steady, single heartbeat behind him, Longwalker looked deep into the stone, his green eyes searching.

For a moment, he saw nothing-nothing but light and dark interwoven. Then the light resolved itself into shapes, into movement…

Into three pale men, moving through a rocky landscape, bearing a heavy sack.

Longwalker squinted intently into the stone for some bend in a tree branch, an odd formation of rock-for landmarks, anything to tell him where the men were headed. He knew, however, that nothing-not even the stones in the belt in front of him-would show the dark opening into which they would pass and 'go under. The vision of the Namer's Passage would be denied him: He had known that much for years.

The sack turned and coiled in the hands of its porters.

Something was alive in there, was wrestling against canvas and rope and the burly arms that carried it.

It was as Longwalker expected. He looked up and turned toward his companions, his eyes glittering exultantly like flames in their paint-blackened sockets.

"Yes, Marmot. This is the time."

The Plainsmen stared at their leader hopefully, intently. In an instinct as old as their wanderings, the hands of the men went toward the knives at their belts, those of the women toward their amulets and talismans.

"But there is more," Longwalker added, shifting his weight, turning back to the stones and the fire. "More we need to know."

Again the stones shimmered and deepened, until it seemed to Longwalker that they had opened and swallowed the sky. The stars and the scudding clouds raced over the smooth black surface of the gems until one of them-the smallest, at the leftmost fringe of the setting, took on fire and form as another vision rose from the heart of the stone.