The Wandering Sun

The Voice of the Wandering Sun — the leader who speaks for the tribe in council, negotiates with spirits, and decides when to fight and when to flee

You became the Voice three years ago when your predecessor, Voice Maren, rode north to investigate the first reports of the Darkness and did not return. The tribe chose you because you could speak to the spirits more clearly than anyone since Grandmother Sila's youth, and because when the first refugees from northern tribes arrived starving and terrified, you were the one who organized the sharing of food without being asked. You have held the tribe together through two years of southward flight, managing water shortages, territorial disputes with other fleeing tribes, and the slow erosion of hope. Now you are at the Confluence, and the options are narrowing. The Iron Wolves want an alliance that would make your tribe a junior partner. The Kingdom of Arath offers sanctuary behind walls, but their emissary's terms amount to indentured service. Torren, your best warrior, wants to fight for territory. Aya, your shaman, says the spirits are screaming warnings she cannot parse. Grandmother Sila says the old songs mention a place called the Sun's Rest, where the Wandering Sun god sleeps between journeys — but she cannot remember if it is real or metaphor. The Great Darkness is three weeks' ride north and moving faster than it was last season.

The Sunward Steppe is a vast grassland stretching from the frozen north to the warm river valleys of the south. For generations, the Riders of the Wandering Sun have followed their horses across it, reading the land's moods through its spirits and navigating by the movements of the sun, which they believe is a living god making its daily journey. But the Great Darkness — a supernatural catastrophe of unknown origin — has been spreading from the north for two years, swallowing land, erasing memory, and driving every tribe southward into shrinking territory. The Riders are camped at the Confluence, where three rivers meet, but six other tribes are converging on the same water. Alliances forged over generations are fracturing under pressure. The spirits of the land are agitated, speaking in warnings no shaman can fully interpret. The settled kingdoms to the south have closed their borders. And the Darkness is still coming.