The collapse of the northern top stone ledge left a raw, outward-sloping scar of wet grey limestone along the middle of the arch, with an eighty-foot drop yawning right away below the broken edge. Broken only four feet down by the jutting shelf of the wedged granite boulder. On the western bank behind the boundary cairns, the youngest of the four White Heron shrine guards took a reflex step forward. His face was pale beneath his helmet rim.
“Commander Arel!” the young guard shouted over the roar of the water. “The northern lip has snapped down to the spine! Call the trial off before the center keystone splits under your boots!”
Arel Fen didn’t look back at the western bank, nor did he retreat from his two ice grooves. To his disciplined, single-minded eye, the narrowing of the bridge from four paces to barely two had not invalidated the Trial of the Narrow Span. It had made his defensive victory certain without requiring him to strike a single injuring blow against his junior sister.
He slid his lead boot forward six inches to seal the leftover strip of flat stone, his mature Bronze spear intention humming like a struck bronze bell as its twelve-inch sphere fully covered the two-pace bottleneck.
