Dusk came early under the shadow of the Stormglass Teeth, turning the high quartz ridges from pale yellow to the color of cold iron.
Hundred yards down the chimney at the edge of the salt-lick terrace, Chaska, Ashaun, and Osha had pitched a low windbreak shelter where they could mend torn pack straps and watch the trail while giving Oru’s den a wide berth. Ysabet sat alone twenty paces below the granite overhang with her back braced carefully against a flat boulder and her wool blanket pulled around her shoulders. Every time the evening wind shifted down the crags and made her shiver, the tight linen wrap around her bruised left ribs reminded her to keep her breaths shallow and slow.
Beside her left boot, Pip rested on a patch of dry gravel with the scrubbed boot-nail box set just beneath the edge of its partial shelter shell. The original field mouse had come out to eat a pinch of boiled oats and now sat half in and half out of the box, its bad hind leg tucked under its flank while Pip warmed the air around it.
Up inside the shallow granite overhang, Oru was awake.
Ysabet could not see him clearly in the gathering dark, except when the tiny flame of her shielded grease lamp caught the edge of the three remaining cloudy crystal shards near his collarbone or the pale gleam of his yellow eyes behind the feather nest. The two rock manticore cubs were curled tightly…
