When the third and last cedar brace locked tight under the western lip of the tear, Ysabet tapped Pip’s shoulder plate with her left hand.
“Down now,” she said. “Let the wood have it.”
Pip lowered its head slowly, inch by inch, watching through its lattice antlers to be sure the three timber frames and the woven root-slings settled evenly against the lodestone vault.
The cedar poles creaked once, sank half an inch into the pebble bed against Ashaun’s hammered stone wedges, and held fast. Overhead, the dangerous six-foot blister of black water rose back to ten feet above the path, flattening out into a shallow, stable trough supported by the three small braces.
Immediately, a dozen blind white river otters swarmed across the repaired underside of the river. Half of them packed fresh magnetic clay around the cedar tips until the lodestone pull bit into the iron-rich mud and sealed the dripping seams. The other half swam upside down into the middle of the current, chittering in rapid, clicking chorus to herd the schools of pale blind fish away from the disturbed channel and into the calmer deep water along the eastern wall.
Down on the gravel path, two older otters rolled the four overturned stone markers back into place with their noses and forepaws, patting fresh mussel-mud around the bases until the line of cairns stood straight again.
