The iron-hinged service chute at the foot of the Hollow Summit opened onto a shelf of fractured black shale where the winter wind snapped straight across the gorge. Inside the mountain’s lower vault, the air had tasted of animal fat smoke, scorched bronze. The stone damp of twelve stone beds wired to a single central pillar.
Outside on the north-west ridge, the storm wiped away every trace of warmth within three paces of the threshold. Heavy flakes drove horizontally out of the dark, packing into the crevices of the rock and glazing the narrow goat ledge in a crust that hid where solid granite ended and the drop began.
Seyun stepped clear of the low top door beam with his torn sleeping mat strapped tight across his pack frame and his Account Book buttoned inside his inner vest. Behind him, freed caravan defender Pera steadied Mother Renn by the elbow as the older woman eased her stiff knees over the frost-slick stone doorstep.
Weeks of captivity inside the Sky-slit Court’s tester chamber. Then, Pera planted her boots with the wide, low-hipped caution of a woman who had walked winter baggage trains through mountain passes before half the shrine guards were born. Following them came Ilyra and Daro Kesh. They carried the four other disconnected captives—Senn, Maren, Tov, and Vey—lashed onto two improvised litters made from split pine poles and heavy wool ward blankets.
