Where the gravel switchback climbed from the hospice herb garden toward the lower terrace of the seal court, Nara Soth waited under the shadow of a split granite boulder. In her single scarred right hand she held two staves. Her own shorter walking staff tucked against her hip. A six-foot pole of pale, straight-grained mountain ash held horizontally across her palm.
She extended the six-foot pole toward Seyun.
Seyun took the wood in both hands and looked down along its length. Unlike the practice staves from the rack or Bel Sar’s heavy keeper pole, this staff carried no iron ferrules at the ends, no burned-in sect markings, and no linseed varnish. Someone—Nara herself, judging by the long, even draw-knife planes braced against a boot heel—had shaved the bark from a seasoned ash sapling and rubbed the central grip smooth with dry sandstone until the natural grain felt warm and responsive against his scarred palms.
Seyun stopped on the gravel switchback beside the split granite boulder. Then he took the six-foot length of plain. Then, plain mountain ash from Nara Soth’s single right hand, he ran his palm from the middle grip all the way to the upper tip.
He could tell by the fine, overlapping facets near the ends how Nara had shaped the wood. Sitting on a stone bench behind the sheds with the timber clamped beneath her boot heel, using a curved draw-knife one-handed and finishing the surface with dry river sandstone until not a single raised splinter…
