Before Osen Tal stepped to the edge of the porch to call the first exchange, Seyun took ten slow breaths to read the physical terrain of the courtyard the way Master Uren’s notes taught a bearer to read a spirit vein chart.
The yard was a twenty-pace square enclosed by high, mortared mountain-stone walls. Underfoot lay two inches of coarse gray granite gravel spread over dressed limestone flat stone slabs. It was loose enough to slide under a hurried heel, noisy enough to betray every shift of weight before a step completed. Around the four outer edges ran shallow stone drainage gutters cut to carry melting snow toward a grate in the southwestern corner.
And at the eastern boundary of the courtyard, three paces from the outer gatehouse arch, stood a heavy timber frame carved with the cloud-and-scale seal of the northern charter.
Hanging from the crossbeam of that frame, suspended four feet above the gravel by a braided bronze chain, was the lower shrine’s sacred boundary bell.
Cast from dark mountain bronze and inscribed with the founding names of the valley’s seal-keepers, the bell didn’t ring for ordinary watch changes. Osen Tal had explained during their climb up the incense terraces two nights ago. Then, the sacred boundary bell hung tuned to the outer registration lamps. Long as its bronze rim remained unstruck and unbroken. Then, the lower shrine was approved as inviolable safe hall ground where tribute carts from White Heron and Ash Reed could unload without waking…
