Seen from the eastern bridge pillar boulders, the natural snow bridge looked less like a road and more like the hardened rib of some ancient mountain beast stretched across eighty feet of black water. At its center, the grey limestone spine measured barely four paces from edge to edge, and half of that apparent width consisted of wind-sculpted snow roof ledges and five-foot icicles hanging out over the deep gap.
Eighty feet below the arch, snowmelt and broken river ice ground through a chute of dark stone with a nonstop, hollow roar that swallowed ordinary speech unless a speaker pitched their voice flat across the stone. Standing directly over the keystone of the arch was Arel Fen.
He wore the slate-lined winter cloak of White Heron Hall’s outer road command pinned neatly at the throat with a bronze heron clasp. His silver-tasseled spear rested vertically against his right boot heel. Ten paces behind him on the western bank, four outer-hall shrine guards stood beside the boundary cairns with their crossbows lowered at forty-five degrees and their polearms grounded. Disciplined, unrushed, and waiting entirely on their commander’s signal.
At the eastern rock shelter thirty paces back, Seyun eased the rear poles of Vey’s litter onto a flat granite shelf while Pera, Mother Renn. Mina set Maren and Tov’s frame behind a windbreak of scrub juniper. Seyun crouched beside the stone marker with his ash measuring pole across his knees. He studied Arel Fen’s stance with the trained eye of a base…
