At first light on the seventh dawn, cold white frost furred the gravel outside the hospice gate as the proof party assembled beside a single sure-footed pack mule. Hall Mistress Soran checked the leather bindings on her bent iron spear. Chief Examiner Vaska Ren stood with his bandaged four-fingered left hand tucked into his belt and a bundle of iron prizing bars strapped to the mule’s pannier. Commander Keth Or adjusted the sling supporting his shattered right hand. And Masters Bren and Yul secured the padded oak case of the test lens between the saddle hooks.
Behind them on the hospice porch, Daro Kesh sat wrapped in a sheepskin coat with his cedar-braced right leg propped on an empty barley keg, drinking hot ginger water and offering unsolicited advice about loose scree. Down in the lower orchard, Nara Soth was already helping Pera spread damp marsh-reed roots across the drying racks. Having stated plainly the night before that she had spent enough decades inside mountain seal chambers and had zero desire to visit the rubble of another one.
Seyun walked beside Ilyra as far as the weathered stone mile-marker where the flat valley track turned sharply upward into the pines.
