The road entered the ground through a door large enough for a house.
Iven saw it from the ridge above the western mouth: two tall stone cheeks, a curved lintel and a black opening beneath a line of pale grass. The door itself had gone. The hinges remained, sunk into the stone on either side, with one enormous pin still hanging halfway out of its socket.
Around the entrance stood a much smaller settlement. Four roofs, a drying yard, a water tank and a mast made from two different kinds of timber. Laundry moved between the houses. A child was hitting a wooden hoop with a stick while a woman repaired a boot on the porch.
Beyond the entrance, the land rose in broken hills that breathed faint yellow vapor into the afternoon light.
Safa stopped at the last route marker.
“West Mouth.”
They had walked five more days since the ford, using two occupied shelter houses and one high camp. A spring on the older map had dried, so they filled at the next keeper’s paid tank and cut the following day’s march short rather than ask the animals to climb without enough water. The northern bypass remained possible. It would add at least two days if its high cut was sound, more if the latest rain had damaged it.
