Students

He looked dreamily over the whitewashed walls at the choir. The fields and meadows of the farmers of the clan all around began at the foot of the lofty fortress. Scattered in it were courtyards, barns, the warrior's training grounds, orchards and other small groups of trees. Cows, sheep and horses grazed on the pastures. They were seen as small white and brown spots.

The forest began after the fields. As far as the eye could see, it covered the gently rolling hills around the choir. Here and there the great watchtowers, the Choron, protruded from the tops of the trees in a still visible distance. At long intervals they flanked the roads through the land of Hy. The closest neighbors of the Shari clan were the people of the Rinzai clan, which was about a day's ride to the west.

Raen looked to the east again and squinted into the sun, which was already a hand's breadth above the ridge of the hill. Directly behind the range of hills the river Resch meandered to the north,