The boy came to awareness while walking along a low line of hills.
He remembered earlier things, distantly - the pod, the crash landing, the short swim to shore. But this moment, on the summit of one grassy hump, one of whose sides fell off in a rocky cliff to the waves - this moment would be one that he would later recall was the first time he remembered his thoughts.
He walked on, walked forward, angling away from the coast, towards the only tree he could see, which was on the summit of the tallest crag around. It was half-dry, but vast, roots reaching down through the rocks and seeming to permeate the whole region.
When he was perhaps halfway to that crag, he saw the party of people walking towards him, wearing robes of white and green. Each carried a staff, the most decorated being that of the white-haired woman who led them, whose robes alone of them all were a vivid blue. The procession had the air of a ritual, but the men and women spoke softly among themselves without concern for ceremony, though they were too far for the boy to hear their words.
They quieted as they approached, and the leader of the procession knelt down to face him.
"We greet you, child," she said. "How did you come to Taba?"
"I do not remember," he answered, which caused some muttering among the robed men.
The woman only nodded. "Have you been named?"
"I... have not," the child admitted. "I think I may have a name, but I do not know what it is."
The woman nodded. "Then," she said, "I give you the rise-name Ri, which in the Yellow Tongue meant to arrive; and you shall take your path-name when you come of age."
That caused more mutters. "Melgiana," one of the men wearing white robes said, stepping forward, "did you not say his name was to be Tlugh?"
"Another's name was to be Tlugh," Melgiana said, standing back up. "The boy Alaca spoke of was to have hair of dark brown, while Ri has light hair." The newly named Ri brushed a strand of hair over his eyes to confirm this.
"Prophets can be imprecise," the man said.
"Yes, Utamun," Melgiana said, "but usually that means they are wrong. This boy is not Tlugh; I can feel it. His path is a different one."
Ri coughed. "What are you going to do with me?" he asked, recognizing that he was not the one that Melgiana had been searching for.
"Come," Melgiana said. "Follow us to the top of Taba Hill, for things of such import must be spoken of in places of import. But fear not. You are in the company of druids, and we will not act unjustly."
Ri was only somewhat comforted by that, but he followed Melgiana and the druids nonetheless. There seemed to be a great uncertainty in the air. Ri found he did not like it. The path ahead should be more certain than that, even if it was difficult.
They walked up the shallower slope of the crag, though in the end they still had to clamber over roots. When they reached its top, in the shadow of the great tree's patchy crown, Ri found he could at last look out on the land below him in its entirety. For, he now saw, they were on an island, and not a large one. To the east, across a strait, a larger landmass stretched to the horizon, which inland slowly rose to densely wooded hills, in places dotted with what seemed to be villages and wooden keeps.
"That," Utamun pointed out, "is Ysc. The first land of humanity, and the only land in which it survived the Days of Violet Sky. The center of the world, the domain of the greatest knights and shipwrights and druids."
"Can he even understand you?" one of the other druids asked.
"I can," Ri said. "You surely knew that, since I did respond earlier."
"Ri," Melgiana said. "Alaca of the Silver Bloom spoke of a boy that we would find on Taba, a boy that would reshape the stars themselves. You are not the boy she spoke of, but your greatness is just as certain. The portents are clear enough on that. So I offer you a choice. You may stay here with us, and learn the way of the druids until you come of age, so that you are better-prepared to meet that destiny. Or, if you choose, I will find a family that will take you in and raise you, with kindness that we cannot show."
"I will stay, of course," Ri said. He could not imagine why anyone would not.
The sun set slowly in the western sea. By the time twilight engulfed them, they were laying in tents on the shore of Ysc. One by one, the sky revealed points of light.
"A clear night," Utamun muttered. "It really is an omen."
One by one, too, the druids went to sleep. Ri remained, looking up at the stars for the first time in his life. Patterns of light, split in half by the great stripe of light that was called the Road of Heroes -
And, as a sparse web around them, places it was painful to look.
"Rifts," Melgiana explained to him. "There are fewer with each generation, but some remain. They are malevolence written in the stars, and it is ill to look at them overlong. Focus on the stars, instead."
And Ri clenched his fists. He was not angry, not exactly. But if he were to reshape the sky, as was prophesied, then he would cleanse those blights from it, every last one.
For - what could it mean, that the sky above them was tainted?
And - tainted by what?
