The heat chimney created by the burst heavy-duty dome didn’t rest with the coming of night.
It roared.
Because the floor of the volcano bowl still contained eight hundred tons of cooling melted rock waste and the simmering ruins of the Heart Vat, the air at the bottom of Vulcan-Khorat was sixty degrees warmer than the freezing alpine air above. The result was a nonstop, howling upward draft. An upright river of warm air rushing toward the five-hundred-foot puncture in the roof. It carried the last traces of heavy-duty grease and coal dust into the stratosphere.
Ren Vale leaned upon his hand-carved ash wood staff, each step up the northern outer edge ridge a calculated negotiation with pain.
The ascent was brutal. His left knee, wrapped tightly in clean linen bandages soaked in Brother Ren’s astringent willow-bark salve, was stiff as seasoned oak. Every time he planted his boot on the crumbling dark rock scree, a sharp, dull ache pulsed through his hip. But the ash timber held. With every upward thrust of his arms, Ren hoisted his body over the frozen switchbacks, his knuckles white around the notched grip.
Behind him climbed Mira.
She wore a heavy sheepskin coat Silas Vance had left hanging in the commissary office, its giant collar turned up against the whistling gale. Her right arm—the smoky, faceted prism of quartz—was held close to her ribs. But her sleeve was pinned back. That left the stone forearm exposed to the mountain air.
