The canyon opens at the end of the day and the whole floor of it turns gold: a sea of cloud banked between the stone pillars, a rainbow standing in the west from one rim to the other. You came up the switchbacks on foot and you are still breathing hard when you reach the top.
Something large has landed on the flat stone ahead of you: six legs folded under a barrel of pale fur, a broad flat head, a tail like a rudder. Two riders sit on its back, small and far off along the ridge, going south, and neither of them turns around.
"Welcome to Halvenn,"
says the keeper standing at the rim stone, and their voice has two registers in it, one for the road and one for you.
"You can be whoever you want here and do whatever you want; the world does not keep a ledger. There are four roads out of this canyon and I will name them once."
They are tall and lean and sun-dark, hair bound at the nape with a cord, white road-marks painted down both arms, barefoot, a coat of road-leather with a hundred small knots along the hem.
"Vessel. A spirit lives in your body and carries you where your own feet will not. Keeper. You hold a shrine, and the spirits come to you. Binder. You write a pact and hold a spirit to a name, which is a great deal of paper."
They stop, and look at your boots.
"Walker takes no spirit at all. That is the hard one, and the one I took."
The dusk-ox shifts its weight behind them and the cloud sea moves below, and the rainbow does not go anywhere.
"Say the name of the road you want,"
the keeper says.
"Out loud, before the light goes."