“We don’t wait for dawn,” Hall Mistress Soran said from the low roof wall steps as Ilyra, Bel Sar, Nara Soth, and sixteen-year-old Halin joined the circle around the broad granite map stone at the center of the seal court. “We launch the assault tonight, within the hour.”
Around the map stone, four hooded oil lanterns threw warm yellow pools across the chalked diagram of the northern cliff face that Vaska Ren and Keth Or had drawn over the past week. Above the lantern light, the cold blue-white glare from the widened sky-slit painted sharp second shadows behind every fighter’s heels.
Bel Sar rested his heavy iron-shod ash staff against the corner of the stone table, his bearded face serious as he squinted up at the pulsing rent on the ridge and then back down at the chalk map.
“Climbing those upper granite seams in the dark with frost lifting off the rock is going to be mean footing, Mistress Soran,” the Ash Reed staff keeper said. He kept his face turned toward her lantern. “If we went up at first grey light five hours from now, at least a man could see which ledge has ice on it before he plants his boot.”
