An hour before sunrise on the eighth morning since the snow bridge, Seyun stepped out onto the stone porch of the southern ward rooms to breathe the crisp pre-dawn air. Meanwhile, the others finished strapping the expedition packs. Above the terraced pine slopes of Ash Reed Mountain, the last winter stars were fading into a pale slate sky. Down in the courtyard basin, the repaired stone grates murmured with the steady, four-beat warmth of the restored stone spring.
Resting his hands on the cold timber rail of the porch, Seyun looked down the long stone stairs toward the outer gatehouse. The exact flight of steps he had walked down two months ago carrying a torn sleeping mat, three copper needles, and a chest full of solitary bitterness.
When he had first climbed down into the flooded crypt beneath the Monastery of the Last Question and read Master Uren’s stone tablet by the light of a single animal fat stub—and even. Just then, he had sworn his first Rival Mark with Ilyra before Mother Renn at the funerary shrine. His central ambition had been backward-looking and intensely personal. He had wanted to uncover the chain of corrupt decisions behind Ash Reed Sect’s false winter check breakthrough and force the elders and tribunals that had dismissed him for eleven years to admit in public that he had been right all along. Even in Oran and White Heron Hall, a part of him had still weighed every stolen docket by whether it vindicated…
