Sect Year 3 · eleventh month · day 10 · the Drum tent, the hill above Ammel Gorge
They left the inn at first light on the ninth day and rode up out of the Hesk valley behind a herder who did not speak the whole way. He stopped at every fork to look back at them, waiting for them to turn round. The road gave up its grass for scree, and the scree gave way to bare stone.
They came over the last ridge at dusk and saw the Ammel gorge laid out below them like a cut in grey cloth. Above it, on the highest shoulder of the hill, stood the drum tent. They slept in a herder’s camp under the ridge and climbed to the tent on the tenth day, in the late light, when the drum was meant to sound.
The drum tent stood at the top of the hill, a round house of grey felt with its door flap tied back to let the wind through. Inside it was darker than the grass outside. It smelled of wet wool and woodsmoke and a green herb that Lin did not know. A fire bowl burned low at the centre of the floor, and beyond it, on a frame of pale wood set a hand’s width above the felt, sat the drum. Its skin had gone soft at the edges, furred the way old leather does after years of hands.
