When the first pale grey light of morning filtered down the high air-shafts of the Wild Cradle, Kiv and Corporal Vane braced their iron pry-bars under the limestone keystone at the upper lip of the Quiet Spring.
“Clear the lower trough!” Chaska called from the dry rock bridge above them, her bound left shoulder tucked back and her right hand holding her chalked measuring rod against the wall. “Now—heave!”
Kiv, Vane, and Tor threw their weight onto the bars together. The wedged limestone block groaned, shifted two inches, and tumbled sideways into the newly cut diversion trench.
Water did not roar out in a dramatic waterfall; it slid out of the Quiet Spring with a long, heavy sigh, pouring away from the lake chute and spreading across the dry, porous limestone beds to the east. Within ten minutes the steaming mirror of the refuge pool began to shrink inward from its banks.
As the water level dropped, pale sulfur-crusted shelves came out into the cool air for the first time in centuries. Tangled mats of white heat-fern roots and soft, finger-thick sponge-reeds sagged against the stone as the buoyant warmth supporting them drained away.
Ysabet, Osha, and Kiv waded knee-deep into the receding mud to move everything that could survive the transfer. Using wet canvas slings and flat bark spades, they lifted the slow mud-tortoises, the remaining clusters of blind shrimp, and the heavy sods of marsh-cress out of the cooling silt and carried them down the back cleft to…
