Morning frost clung in brittle white rime to the eight-sided granite pillars of the abandoned seal court. Just then, the defenders stepped onto the flat stone slabs for their first rehearsal under the twelve-night battle plan. High above the serrated northern ridge, the pale sky-slit hung across the slate sky like a seam of split bone. It didn’t roar or cast down lightning. It simply drew a steady, cold draft up through the mountain scrub. It pulled loose pine needles and dry lichen scraps toward the summit at a rhythm that never quite matched a living lung.
Seyun rolled his shoulders inside his wool jacket. Then he took his station along the inner dark rock pavers opposite Daro Kesh. In his scarred palms he held a six-foot practice staff of seasoned mountain ash, its iron metal ring dulled by weeks of drill against stone and metal. On the scored terrace three steps above the court, Hall Mistress Soran leaned lightly on her hand-wrapped plain iron spear, her head angled so she could watch both fighters’ mouths and shoulders at once. Beside her knelt Chief Examiner Vaska Ren, a strip of clean linen bound around the old burn and fresh strain at his throat, his slate pencil poised over a flat slab of grey shale.
