The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

But it was a beginning.

Born below the ever cloud-capped peaks that gave the mountains their name, the wind blew west, down through the Darkwood, and out through the grasslands of the Almoth Plain. Cold it swept through the tall grasslands, cold it howled against the walls of Almoth itself, howled down its cobbled lanes and through its square gardens, long and howling until it caught the coat of a young prince squared off against his master, two men armed with practice swords in one of the many secluded square gardens that dotted the great city.

Cold its howl found you, at the dawn of the day with sunset’s slow rise.

The Wolf Wind the peasants called it, its howl reaching down from the high peaks of the far eastern mountains promising snow and ice and all the pain of darkest winter. It meant nothing good.

You are Amalric al Amal of House Carlan, Prince of Falme. Your father is Amal al Osric, Lord of the Plain, First Keeper of the Tree, the Watcher on the Water, Guardian of the West, King of Almoth.

Your father’s master-at-arms was a dark skinned Tairen, currently flashing the gaps in his teeth through a beard ringed grin, sighting you down the length of his wooden blade. It was a poor imitation for the real sword he carried, a slender blade you’d seen him draw but once.

Vienma Sun, as foreign a name as everything else about him. His loose trousers tucked into his boots, the cuffs of his brown coat rolled up to bare his forearms. He was an age with your father, his woolly dark hair threaded with silver, but the two men couldn’t be less alike, your teacher moving through the world with a lightness of step and cheery grin that stood out among the dour people of Almoth.

He had left you gasping with a hard thrust to your chest, for a moment knocking the heavy thoughts from your head and the remaining sleep from your eyes.

“A fisherman rises with the sun, a prince should do so as well,” he said, “My father was a fisherman, he taught me this.”

Whatever his father had been, you knew there was a heron mark on Master Vienma’s sword.

“Your mind wanders. Is it the brides your father has brought for you? I would lose focus too.”