It took them twenty minutes of careful picking down the final boulder talus—using the leftover length of Osen’s climbing rope tied to Ilyra’s waist. Meanwhile, Daro prodded the bruised steward ahead of him. To reach the gravel shingle at the bottom of the Ravine of Unfinished Forms. Down here among the alder roots and black chert boulders, the mountain wind was cut off by the four-hundred-foot limestone walls overhead. That left only the cold, steady roar of the winter creek and the smell of wet river moss.
Archivist Vel sat on a flat boulder three paces from the water, his thin chest still heaving. Then he patted the buttoned front of his wool shirt every ten seconds to reassure himself that the six tissue-thin leaves of the Archive of Quiet Names were dry and intact against his ribs. Upstream, caught in an eddy of foam between two underwater rocks, a single torn scrap of cowhide binding from the discarded pike catalogue spun slowly in a circle. Of the second recovery guard who had leaned out to catch the falling books, there was no trace in the churning white chute.
Seyun knelt at the icy margin of the stream and lowered both of his hands into the clear, numbing water. The cold bit into the torn deep skin of his palms hard enough to make his vision narrow to a grey tunnel, washing away the black charcoal grit from Osen’s hearth and the stiff brown fibers of the tarred hemp rope…
