A weather goat is a big, shaggy wild goat, larger than the crag goats of the lower cliffs, with a thick, long-haired coat of slate grey and white that hangs in a fringe along the flanks and a dark stripe down the back. Both sexes carry horns: the billies' are massive, ridged, and swept back in a curve as long as a man’s arm, the nannies' short and thin. The horns are dark, almost black, with a dull metallic sheen. Before a storm the long hair stands up along the back, and the horn tips hiss and flicker with small pale sparks, and a herd on a crest at dusk shows as a line of faint lights. They bleat harshly and stamp, and a herd smells of goat and of the sharp air after lightning.

They live on the bare high ridges and storm shelves above the holds and the Headwater terraces, coming down in winter to the colossal terraces at the head of the valleys. They are scattered in small herds along the crest as far as it is mapped.

They graze the thin high grass and lichen and keep out of reach on the steepest ground. When a storm is coming, hours before the cloud hides the Weatherline, they climb to the highest crests and stand facing into the wind; when the storm breaks they scatter downhill to shelter. They are shy of people, and Giants are said to walk among them.

They feel a storm coming long before the sky shows it, and the charge in the air gathers in their horns and hair. Lightning strikes near them often; they seem to come to no harm from what would kill a man standing in the same place.

Kids are born in early summer on the high shelves and climb within hours. Billies fight in autumn with a clash of horns and a crack of sparks that carries across the valleys. They live as long as other wild goats.

Their use is the warning. Notchfield reads the goats with the Weatherline, and a shepherd who sees goats on the skyline brings the flock down and shuts the high road. They are rarely hunted, being hard to reach, and their horns, which keep a faint tingle long after death, are prized by workers of Storm Magic. They are harmless, though the crest where they stand is the most dangerous place to be in the storm they warn of.

Headwater folk say the goats are the sleeping god’s weather-watchers, sent up the ridges to warn the valleys, and that it is unlucky to kill one. Giants, who keep the storm shelves, are said to read the goats as valley folk read the shrines. Some say the goats were changed by standing so long in the Stormcrown’s storms; nobody knows.

Raiders crossing the Stormcrown watch the goats as closely as shepherds do, and a war-band that ignored them on the high ridges is remembered only as a heap of scorched iron on a storm shelf.