The next morning was clear and crisp with lean white cumulous clouds gliding across a bright blue sky and bold sunshine making sharp and low shadows in the chill, early autumnal air. Today was census day. Every citizen of Ironhope would answer to the Master of the Flame so that Verindu could assign them their skill beads. Then on the morrow the games truly began with the rider tribes competing to win rights over the townsfolk, determining where they may live once their current homes had been burned to the ground. Klane walked abroad, listening more than he spoke and gauging the mood of Riders and residents alike. His first visit was to the blacksmith, for he had decided that he was going to compete in the festival and he wished to check that Lyr was shod properly.

At first the blacksmith seemed suspicious of Klane; one more stranger in a town on the edge of destruction. When he saw how Lyr had been shod though, his professional curiosity took over. 

"These are remarkable horseshoes," he said. "I dunno what they're made of but they're light, clear as air, obviously strong and they almost seem like they've growed with the stallion. There's hardly any wear and if I can just replace three or four nails I'll soon have 'em seated all to rights again. I don't suppose you'd tell me where they came from? I'd like to meet the smith who made these." 

But Klane just smiled and diverted the conversation onto other lines. "I'll be sad to leave this place," the blacksmith said at last. "Ironhope is a good town with good neighbours. This smithy was built by my grandfather and my father worked here all his life. Now I'll have to take the family elsewhere. Clara's expecting my third and the two prentices I've been tutoring, aint ready to work on their own yet. It's a bad time to move." 

He squinted at Klane as if weighing him up then settled on the conventional wisdom. "Still, the law's the law. There's mite too much of History here I suppose... Time to clean it down." 

"Where do you want to go?" Klane asked. 

"It aint exactly up to me, is it?" the blacksmith said and now Klane thought he detected a hint of bitterness. "The games will decide that. But I know where I don't want to go." He turned and spat on the floor, then looked speculatively at Klane again. 

"I don't want to go with that damned Muttu and his Southern Pralannians. They tell me you've come from a long way, so you may not know about 'em but there's something bad about the lot of 'em. It all started when that rogue Enclave got burned; some place called Kalonia. That's when the weapons appeared. And now they've got smiths making things no honest rider ever needed before, 'just in case'. I hear they got a lot of work for blacksmiths in that part of the world, but not the kind of work I want to be doing, nor my son neither."

Four rider tribes had sent participants to the Great Burning of Ironhope. The Pallish people were the locals with the greatest numbers, including Verindu, the "Master Of The Flame" in charge of the ceremony. The Nykwin, their neighbours to the north, were represented by thirty of their strongest men. Two dozen Thranish riders had travelled over the Sand Hills from the east and then there were the Southern Pralannians, fewer in number than the others and well outside their traditional territory but assertive in attitude. They strutted round the town with loud harshly accented voices and brashly displayed weapons. Klane half expected to see Muttu, but he did not encounter the brutal looking Pralannian aristocrat who had been drinking with the Conclave representitive last night. As for Klane himself, he was the only traveller from the west since the badlands were seldom crossed in these parts. 

Passing the market, Klane was conscious of the underlying tensions between each of the tribes and the tribes and the townsfolk. Outwardly it was all good humoured as lore and tradition said it should be, yet underneath the surface something was very wrong. The carrying of weapons to a Burning was unexpected and unwelcome and had never happened before. 

Klane felt keenly the normal rider aversion to settled places and to the large numbers gathered here. It seemed unhealthy, as though the taint of History was already staining the land, and his Rider heritage sympathised with the cleansing need for a Great Burning. Yet at the same time in his encounters with the friendly townfolk he coudn't help but empathise with their fears and the barely suppressed arrogance of some of the Riders was alienating. They behaved like an invading army might have done in the ancient days before the Great Forgetting, rather than a part of the natural cycle of life which the Conclave sustained and to which they all subscribed.

The games field was north of the town near the Pallish camping grounds, where this morning the census was due to conclude before competitions could start on the morrow. Each resident of Ironhope presented themselves to a panel consisting of Verindu, the leader of ceremonies and his advisors, Jythra of the Nykwin and Thorawn from the Conclave. Although he appeared to be just a delegate, Klane had no doubt that it was Thorawn who was really running things. Alone amongst the Riders, Klane understood how the Conclave worked and the influence it wielded in maintaining the Season of Innocence, even as it ostensibly faded into the background of their lives. 

Explaining their skills and duties in Ironhope before the panel, a townsman or woman was given a twine necklace looped with a set of coloured crystalline rings which betokened their abilities. At the same time, a matching necklace was tallied and stowed with Jythra. These necklaces would be used to assemble sets of workers to be assigned as prizes for the winners of the games. Children and old folk might travel with their families but the rest of the ciizens of Ironhope were destined to be split up and dispersed amongst the other settlements in the lands of the winning Riders. In time, a new settlement would surely arise as a natural replacement for Ironhope, but the numbers of such settlements were never allowed to grow without a matching Great Burning, just as the human popuation of the Earth was now balanced at levels far below the ones the world had known before the Great Forgetting by the long disciplines and traditions of its current global culture. 

Klane waited his turn patiently, although as a Rider he could have pushed to the front of the queue. There were only a last few ahead of him and he was not pressed for time. All he needed to do now was to register his alias "Alderon" as a competitor, for Klane had chosen to try his luck in the games.