The frost on the high peaks didn’t melt under sunlight. It clung to the black flaky rock like crushed salt. It refused the pale amber glow of the noon sky. It waited for the wind to lift it into blinding plumes that stripped the skin from a man’s cheekbones.
Fourteen thousand feet above the smoldering foundry trenches of Vulcan-Khorat, the air tasted of frozen iron and thin ozone.
Ren Vale drew his woolen scarf tighter across his mouth. His thumb pressed against the familiar weight at his ribs. Beneath his patched lambskin apron and heavy frieze coat, the eight-sided gold-silver metal frame of the Speculum of Forfeited Paths was colder than the ice-slow stone beneath his boots.
Beside him, perched upon an overturned salt-pork crate in the lee of an abandoned sheepfold, Mira pulled her charcoal shawl tight. With her left hand, pale and nimble, she drove a bone needle through the frayed hem of a giant wool mitten. Her right arm remained motionless in her lap, tucked into a sleeve of greased fleece.
Through the heavy wool, Ren could hear it.
Every time Mira drew breath, her chest gave off a fragile crystal-clear deep ring—a chime like two thin crystal goblets tapping together in an empty room. From her right collarbone down to her fingertips, her flesh was semi-clear, smoky quartz, many-sided and hard as flint. The high height had sharpened the deep ring. It shook in quiet, ringing sympathy with the deep granite roots of the Razor-Spire Range.
