The morning of 14 Harvester dawned muggy and too warm in theremote Keoland hill village of Upper Haven. The newly risen sun cast a ruddy pall over a crossroad just beyond the last huts as Yerik, the sturdily built, gray-bearded village headman, emerged from the hut that he shared with his mother. They had shared the small dwelling ever since his father and young wife had died of fever twelve years earlier. His beloved Aleas had been heavy with their first child, and the grief over their loss had hit him so that he hadn’twed again, taking the village as his family instead.

So far, Upper Haven’s year had not been a good one. The youngbaron had died of fever the preceding winter, leaving no heir. Since his death, there had been none of the usual hunting parties through the area. Baron Hilgenbran, who had paid in silver for all supplies needed at his lodge-fromfowl and eggs for his table to wood for the enormous firepits-had been a sternbut fair ruler. Without him, there had not been the usual drain on Upper Haven’slimited resources, but there had been no coin either.

The village’s chickens hadn’t increased properly, thanks tothe icy winter that had hung on well through Readying, and spring had been unusually cold and wet, lasting well into planting season-in mourning for thebaron, some said. Whatever the cause, the grain hadn’t sprouted until nearlymid-Wealsun, and some of it was still underground at summer’s longest day. Bythis late date, the wheat and oats should have been threshed and stored in watertight clay jugs down in the communal root cellars where they would keep the winter.

Now, with the grain barely ripe, even the youngest farmer of Upper Haven could look at that ruddy eastern sky and predict heavy rain by nightfall.

“There’ll be lightning,” Yerik predicted gloomily, his eyesfixed on the ruddy sky where the sun would soon rise, “and fires down where wepasture the goats and horses. It was too wet all spring, and it’s been too drysince.”