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Gwynwood. The duke of the province, Lord Stephen Navarne, was an adherent to the former but a well-loved friend of the latter, and so at his example the populace of the province, divided almost equally between the two faiths, put aside religious acrimony and differences to make merry at the coming of snow.
    In earlier years the festival had sprawled as far as the eye could see over the wide rolling hills of Narvarne. Haguefort, Lord Stephen's keep and the heart of the celebration, was located atop a gentle rise at the western forest's edge with a panoramic vista of farms and meadowlands stretching to the horizon in all three other directions. Some of the other Orlandan provinces, notably Canderre, Bethany, Avonderre, and even faraway Bethe Corbair, had long since given up their own solstice celebrations in order to combine their festivities with Lord Stephen's revels, largely because Stephen was unsurpassed as a merrymaker.
    For two decades the young duke, whose Cymrian lineage was far removed but still granted him some of the exceptional vigor of youth enjoyed by the refugees of Serendair, had opened his lands at the first sign of winter, decreeing the contests and prizes for that year's festival amid trumpet calls and flourish not often seen in Roland during this age. The Cymrian War had brought the pageantry of the First Age, the age of building and enlightenment, to a shattering end, leaving this, the Second Age, colorless and dreary, as most struggles for survival and rebuilding tend to be. Lord Stephen's revels were the only regular exception to that dull tendency.
    Like his father before him, Stephen understood the need for color and traditional secular celebration in the hardscrabble lives of the peasantry of his duchy. To that end he devoted his attention first to the safeguarding of his subjects' lands and lives, then to that of their spirits, believing that a dearth of joy had been largely responsible for the troubles the land had suffered in the first place.
    Each annual festival proffered a new contest: a treasure quest, a poetry competition, a footrace with a unique handicap, along with the traditional games of chance and sport, awards for the best singing—Lord Stephen was an enthusiastic patron of good singing—recitation and dance, sleigh races, snow sculpting, and performances by magicians capped by a great bonfire that warmed the wintry night and sent such sparks skyward as to challenge the stars.
    It was small wonder that even travelers from the distant, warm lands of Yarim, Roland's easternmost province, and Sorbold, the arid nation of mountains and deserts to the south, made their way to the inland province of | Navarne to enjoy the wintersport of Lord Stephen's carnival, as did many of the Lirin of Tyrian, at least in better days. Recent acts of terror and violence had begun to diminish the festival's attendance as traveling overland grew more hazardous. As times worsened, the festivities became more of a local celebration than one enjoyed by much of the continent.
    The expected diminution of attendance this year would be both unfortunate and fortuitous in Lord Stephen's eyes. He had recently completed the building of a vast wall, a protective rampart more than two men's heights high and similarly thick, that encircled all of Haguefort's royal lands and much of the nearby village and surrounding farmlands as well. This undertaking had almost consumed his every waking moment for the better part of two years, but it was a project he saw as critical to ensuring the safety of his subjects and his children.
    Now, as he stood on the balcony beyond the windows of his vast library, Stephen observed the new masonry border he had erected with silent dismay. The once-unbroken landscape was now divided by the ugly structure with its severe guard towers and battlements, the formerly pristine meadows scarred by the construction of it. Instead of the wide, glittering horizon of snow there was a defined and muddy