In the light of the Staff he surrenders the Staff. More brightly it bums as it shines on the country of trials, on the three moons balancing now, on the night turning in on the heart of the night creating blue light, the light of the crystal brought forth by the hand of the warrior out of the lineage of leopards, the long heart of the people remembered past memory, but Riverwind, cold as the silence of stones, laughs the first time since the west has vanished, for this is the country he knows he has failed in winning, for under the plains lies nothing, and victory walks in the skins of the children through damaging years of light.
IV
The rest of the story is known to you, how Riverwind, bearing the staff, returned to the People, the darkness of stones in his eyes, what the Chieftain ordered, (I was there to see it my words this time could not stop them) what the Staff in the hand of Goldmoon accomplished. But this you may not know: that in the pathways of light from the plains to the Last Home riding she said to him, now are you worthy, no longer in my eyes only, but now in the falcon's eye of the world forever the story is walking forever the story, but riverwind no, and no again no to the fractured light of the staff, for caught in the light his hand was fading, through facet and facet unto the heart of the light, and not of this earth was the third moon rising, and the heart of the staff was his naming night.
Here on the plains where the wind embraces light and the absence of light, where the wind is the voice of the Gods come down, the rumor of song before singing begins, here the people under the winds are wandering ever towards home, forever in movement an old man is singing the song of an absent country, beautiful, heartless as sunlight, cold as imagined winds behind the eye of the rain, and wide before us, my sons and fathers, the song of the country centers and swoops like a hawk in a sleeping land, borne upon hunger and thermals, singing forever, singing.