The fifth dawn since the northern chamber battle turned the eastern crags from slate-black to iron-gray. Then, the silver curve beneath Seyun’s right collarbone pulsed once. A clean, deep, non-aimed warmth that marked two dawns leftover until Daro Kesh’s Early Jade echo arrived. Standing beside the central surveying stone stand with his cloak pulled tight against the frost, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren laid one finger on the shaking bronze gimbal ring of the pressure lens.
“No one fed it breath,” Ilyra said, joining them from the southern low roof wall with her shortened spear in hand.
“The sky-ring above the ridge is finishing its first gathering turn,” Vaska rasped. He lifted his chin toward the pale circle overhead. It now shone with the hard, polished luster of cooled steel against the graying sky. “The quartz in this lens was cut from the same northern vein as the upper sky-slit stones. When the manifestation tests the valley’s surrounding training signed names before releasing a stroke, the facet resonates.”
“How long before it releases?” Hall Mistress Soran asked, stepping into Vaska’s line of sight.
“Less than an hour,” Vaska replied.
In the freezing gray twilight just before the fifth sunrise cleared the crags, after Vaska Ren explained why the northern vein quartz in the lens was chiming in sympathy with the sky-ring overhead, Mina stood on the bottom step of the western nook holding her brass sand-glass and her medical roll. The twelve disconnected testers down in the lower hospice caves were…
