At high noon on the seventh day, the sun stood directly overhead in a clear blue mountain sky. But a second, colder circle of light had become visible to the naked eye three miles north above the highest granite ridge.
Everyone on the Hollow Summit—from the twelve recovering youths sitting on their birch litters to the martial masters standing along the northern low roof wall—looked up as the air heat dropped ten degrees in the span of five breaths.
High above the northern ridge line. There, the ancient upper seal court sat abandoned among the glaciers, a vast level ring of pale white-gold blades had gathered in the open sky. Unlike the twelve six-foot blades that had spun inside the underground vault, this high-sky ring measured nearly a quarter-mile across, its hundreds of linked white-gold segments turning slowly and silently against the noon blue like the wheel of a huge clock.
Even at three miles’ distance, Seyun could see the twelve smaller blades that had escaped through the vault roof on Day 5 slotting seamlessly into the outer rim of that massive wheel, feeding the variance readings they had recorded in the cellar straight into the main array.
“Bring my brass sighting side from the inner pocket of my coat,” Steward Osen called out urgently from his litter near the northern low roof wall. With one of the former Court wardens steadying his left elbow so he could sit upright despite his bandaged right collarbone, the grey-haired steward held a…
