_Beyond the trio of brooks there rise the first grim ranks of the Fearful Forest, line after line of tall broad-leafed trees so evenly spaced you would think they had been planted by design. Pass the palisades of this forest and brave its terrors, its darkness and great angry beasts, and you will come after a time to the other side; and there, beyond a black plain where nothing grows save crawling vines and nauseous weed patches, you may see the towering cliffs of the country of The Nameless...._ * * * * * I am a hunter. My father was a singer, and his mate also; but I have a poor voice, good for little except to shout across the valleys to my friends, so my father, affectionately calling me Bear-throat, counseled me to become a hunter; and this I did. I am strong, of course. My arms are brown as a deer's hide and they swell with muscle. My legs are sturdy and, though not thickset, can carry me at a run for the space of a day without tiring. I do not boast when I say this, for after all I am a hunter and my arms and legs are my tools as much as my lances and arrows and metal knife. My name is Ahmusk, though I am more generally hailed as Bear-throat, the nickname my father gave to me. I have eyes the color of Blue Brook where it runs into a deep pool. My hair, the pale golden hue of the earliest corn of autumn, is cut short in the fashion of hunters, falling scarcely to my shoulders in back, in front sliced off evenly just above my eyes. And I think this is all that need be said concerning the person of Ahmusk the hunter. The day of which I would speak first was a day of cheerful sun and small breezes, with that crispness in the air that makes a man stand tall and blink once or twice, and perhaps shout for joy. I did just that, after I had wakened, and then I sat on the edge of my platform and looking down the tree's trunk at the grass below I was astonished at its bright new-seeming greenness. I sucked in a great chestful of air and shouted again. In the tree nearest mine there were two platforms, and now someone sat up on the higher and rubbed her eyes and grumbled. "What is it, Bear-throat?" "The morning, girl, the morning," I said heartily. "Need you be a herald of the dawn _every_ day?" she asked, mock-petulantly. And I laughed. "Throw off your furs and smell the wind, Lora," I told her. "In the changing of the moon to nothing and back to fulness, the snow will fly. Today is the best day of the year." "To you, every day is the best of the year, or at least you say so each morning." She put back her sleeping furs and stood up, naked and young and beautiful. "When we are mated," she said, "I will see that you wake silently, and slide down the tree to find my breakfast while I sleep as long as I wish!" "What a shrew," I said happily. "What a ruler of men." "You will see." She slipped her light garment over her head. "I will quiet you down, young Bear-throat!"