The outer staging yard of the Hollow Summit sat on a broad, wind-sheltered shelf of levelled dark rock two hundred yards below the dark stone mouth of the lower shrine’s entrance tunnel. The monthly lamp-cleaning window wouldn’t begin until the dusk horn sounded at six o’clock. Because of that, supply wagons arriving during the afternoon were needed to unhook their mules at the wooden hitching rails along the southern wall, water their stock at the stone trough, and wait in line until the gate-bell rang.
While Daro Kesh and Mother Renn unhitched the grey pack-mule and led it to the water trough, Ilyra stood guard by the tailboard in her grey wagon driver’s coat and Mina sat on the front wheel-hub adjusting the straps of her cedar medicine chest. Inside the cart bed beneath the loose archway of bitter-reed sacks, Seyun lay still on his side with his eye at the two-inch gap behind the front bench, watching Senior Steward Osen Tal prepare for the gatehouse check.
Osen reached under the driver’s seat. He pulled out a square wicker parcel-basket that they had retrieved from his saddlebags at the black-roof school. Untying the hemp twine with practiced, unrushed fingers, the fifty-year-old steward began sorting a dozen small oilpaper packages into neat rows along the bench beside him. He murmured the names and posts of the lower shrine’s staff so Mina and Ilyra would know whom they were meeting at dusk.
