Dawn of the ninth day since leaving the Hollow Summit—and the second dawn since Ilyra’s breakthrough on the shale hillside—broke crisp and cloudless over the northern ridge. Between the twenty-four scored granite pillars of the abandoned seal court, everyone who could hold a weapon, carry a litter, or read a pulse gathered around the central stone stand. At the top of the flat stone, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren had chalked a large, plain numeral in white limestone: 12.
Twelve nights remained before Heaven’s Measure completed its sped up gathering cycle and drove its full dropping correction down into the inhabited valleys.
Sitting on the eastern bench in his stiff leather channel brace beside Pera and sixteen-year-old Halin, tester Senn watched the senior fighters take their places. Having witnessed how the Sky-slit Court and the chartered houses normally prepared for a crisis, the rescued caravan workers half-expected to see a supreme commander appointed, a collective blood oath sworn over a bronze bowl, or Seyun and his Answering Spirit vein raised up as the miraculous focal center of their army.
Nothing of the sort occurred. Nobody raised a White Heron or Ash Reed banner. Nobody asked the twelve freed testers to lend a single breath of their inward channels to a defensive formation. And nobody nominated Seyun to stand in the middle of a circle while others fed him strength.
