The pathway cut a switchback zigzag into the Cleft wall. Red stone, worn smooth by generations of hoof treads, lay in a slick ramp beneath them. They climbed, and each step required attention, each distraction raised the risk of a slip or fall. One by one, the horses of the Nurani took to that path until they made a many-coated snake inching its way up the canyon wall.

  Back and forth, Sabba followed Dabon, who followed Muria. The snow had thinned rapidly over the last few days, each morning's sun half again as strong as the day before. Now only a damp speckle of white lay over the valley bottom, a splatter of patches that reminded Sabba of a blanket pattern on some old mare.

  The sun had risen just enough to gild the stones pinkish gold, to highlight the waving bands of color in the cliffs, and to accent the coats of the Wind Singers as they left their winter shelter.

  "I bet the fahr is already fighting," Dabon had chattered about the battles for most of the climb. They were halfway up the switchback trail, and already he'd mentioned the fahr-itza at least a dozen times. "Jarof saw the battles last year and said the fahr always wins."

  "Jarof has rocks between his ears," Sabba said, looking quickly over his shoulder in case the yearling was in hearing range. "No one always wins."

  "But the fahr had to beat everyone to become fahr-itza," Dabon argued.

  "Sure," Sabba said. "I guess."

  He tried to imagine the battles Dabon described, but the other foal was relaying things he'd never actually seen, passing on stories he’d heard from the yearlings who were likely too young to understand what they'd been watching the year before. Surely there could not be so many contenders as Dabon claimed.

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  Certainly, there would not be so much blood.

  One of the horses near the top of the trail snorted, and the rumble passed down the line. One after another of the Wind Singers blew out, rumbled their anxiousness and rattled their thin barrels. They looked forward to more than just the fights and the company.

  There would be grass above, more than the drowned pickings the snow had left behind at the cleft's bottom.

  At their head, the jegoch-itza and the Nurani’s lead mare had nearly reached the lip. When the echo of the collective rumbling died, a long, high-pitched stallion's scream answered from somewhere beyond the Cleft. Sirrain immediately answered, and suddenly the band was singing again, piercing stallion's cries, and low, eager whickering from the mares.

  The air rang with the voices of may horses, and Sabba wondered quickly if Dabon might have heard correctly about the numbers.

  Surely, it took all the horses in the world to make that much noise.

  The band's leaders topped the rise, vanished over the canyon lip. The remaining horses on the trail sped their steps, risking a little more in their enthusiasm. Sabba struggled to watch both his feet and the approaching lip ahead and above them. Dabon risked a prance, skidded back so that his rump became another obstacle to avoid. They went, up and up, around and back.

  Then, all at once, the wall was gone. Muria and then Dabon vanished over the rim. Sabba crested the trail to find it continued sharply downslope on the other side. The others were trotting, now, moving away rapidly on the safer path.

  The plain stretched forever and a day away from the Cleft. It swept sound and east to the far horizon. To the west, there was a glimmer of something flat and sparkling. But ahead, directly ahead, the entire grasslands shifted and wheeled. The slope fell quickly to a flat land, studded with small ridges, and miniature canyons. Everywhere that was not rock moved as if he ground itself were a living creature.

  Band upon band of speckled horses drifted across the vista, eating, playing, fighting beneath the pale winter sun. There were hundreds of Wind Singers here, thousands, and Sabba felt his throat clench at the sight of them. His whole body shivered. Then Dabon's voice called from somewhere below, sang his name to the sky, and Sabba answered.

  The colt leapt forward, trotting down the slope as fast as his hooves could move. He pranced out to the wide plain, out into the open, and straight into the crowded herd.