Cold wind came up out of the gorge before the beetles did. It smelled of wet slate, crushed fern, and the sharp mineral tang of deep water running somewhere out of sight in the dark.
Ysabet crouched beside the flat boulder at the canyon’s southern lip and checked the buckles on her pack with her left hand. Her bent right fingers ached in the evening damp, the pale burn scar across her right palm pulling tight whenever she tried to hook a strap too fast. Below the ledge, the rock dropped sheer into shadow. Across the gap, the northern wall stood forty paces off, its grey stone streaked with white lime where old beetle crossings had clung in previous autumns.
“They’re moving in the cracks,” Chaska said. She lay on her stomach near the edge, chin propped on her wrist, watching the cliff face below. Beside her, Lilt rested with her broad sandray fins folded flat against the gravel to keep the wind from getting under her ribs. Chaska’s light folding cargo frame was lashed neatly behind the saddle pad, its spare struts wrapped in wool so they would not clink. “Sounds like somebody pouring dry beans down a chimney.”
