Brrrr-oooo-mmmm.
The deep, hollow blast of the six-foot bronze dusk horn rolled out from the gatehouse low roof wall. It echoed back and forth between the sulfur-crusted dark rock cliffs until the loose gravel in the staging yard shivered. Before the brass shaking had even died away down the pine switchbacks, Seyun saw the cold, white-violet glow that had been shining through the iron bars of the entrance tunnel two hundred yards away flicker once, twice. Then drop into total darkness as the lamp-trimmers inside the tunnel threw the master dampening levers across all twelve registration ward-lamps.
At the exact same instant, the subtle, prickling ringing net that had been pressing against the outer skin of the staging yard—the spirit vein-sensing field powered by the loadstone-and-oil wicks—collapsed like a dropped sail. For the next one hundred and eighty minutes, until the nine o’clock bell rang to relight the scraped wicks, the entrance of the lower shrine was blind to training signed names.
“Lamps are out,” Daro Kesh murmured quietly beside the right rear wheel, lifting the heavy wooden tail-bar for a final check before dropping the iron pin into its socket. “Pull your knees in two inches, Seyun. I’m dropping the rear screening sack down flush against the tailboard so a torch held at waist height sees nothing but burlap and reed-stalks.”
