The stone groove Daro Kesh had carved with his broken Bronze sword steamed in the cold air. That created a direct four-inch trough from the buried eastern valve cap out to the barren dry-stone retention wall. Yet Ilyra sprinted across the northern basin coping to line up her final thrust along that groove. Then, the two-ton slab of fallen granite top stone ledge above the valve began to settle under the violent shakes of the guardian’s tightly packed Jade core. If the slab slipped two inches lower before her spear arrived, it would guillotine the trough shut and trap her marsh-iron spearhead beneath two thousand pounds of rock.
Before Daro could reset his bruised left shoulder to brace the top stone ledge, staff keeper Bel Sar vaulted over the southern threshold steps, splashed across ten paces of ankle-deep hot mud. Then he jammed the heavy iron-shod butt of his heavy Ash Reed staff directly into the V-shaped gap beneath the tilting granite slab.
“Put the spear through, White Heron!” Bel Sar roared, his broad shoulders corded with strain. He poured his own Bronze focus—Distributing Weight—into the seasoned ash timber of his staff, bleeding the crushing downward load of the two-ton top stone ledge out sideways into the courtyard flat stone slabs so the four-inch groove beneath it stayed clear. “I can hold the rock off the groove for three breaths—not four!”
