At dawn the trail climbed out of the gorge mist onto the flat stone circle of the ruined observatory.
The plateau was sixty paces across, paved with frost-split granite slabs and open to the pale morning sky. Around its rim stood seven tall migration lenses—great disks of thick greenish glass set in tarnished bronze rings that rode on curved iron tracks embedded in the floor. Centuries ago, watchers had cranked those lenses around the circle to follow high flocks and shifting stars; now half the bronze gears were choked with gray lichen, though the smallest sighting lens on the inner ring still gleamed clean where the wind scoured it.
Suth’s wooden beetle clicked across the frost-rimed flagstones, walked up to the bronze foot of that smallest inner lens, and folded its six carved legs neatly underneath its belly.
Chaska stationed Lilt near the low parapet on the north edge where a single leap would put the sandray into clean valley air, leaving her riding straps buckled loose. Ysabet checked that the injured mouse’s wooden box was wedged safely inside Chaska’s pack between two folded wool blankets, with the air-slits clear and a piece of dried apple inside.
Boots scraped on the south ramp.
