Three miles above the quarry spoil, the mule track flattened into a wide, wind-scoured basin of gray slate where early snowdrifts lay packed in the shaded hollows like spilled flour.
The road was completely blocked.
Standing dead center in the ruts where a strip of pale morning sunlight hit the gravel were four life-sized stone statues. They were carved from coarse, mica-flecked pass granite, weathered so deeply by centuries of frost and grit that their noses were worn to blunt wedges and the folds of their carved wool cloaks looked like tree bark. One represented a stoop-shouldered peddler with a square pack on his back; another was a tall drover leaning on a staff; the third was a broad-hipped woman holding an empty stone basket against her ribs; and the fourth—missing everything below the knees—sat wedged sideways in the drainage ditch, rocking half an inch forward and half an inch back with a slow, rhythmic scritch-scritch of granite on shale.
As Ysabet halted the barrow, the tall stone drover shifted its weight. With the grinding patience of a glacier rounding a corner, its left stone boot slid two inches across the pebbles toward the sunny patch on the road, and then stopped to rest.
