The storm-tarp was unlashed and rolled tight across the pack mule’s saddle-tree. Then, the Knife Ridge greeted them with a vast, scrubbed stillness.
The squall had swept the fiery crest clean of loose grit. That left the six-sided dark rock columns glistening like wet ebony beneath a pale, washed-out azure sky. Twelve miles to the south, the white expanse of Saltglass had emerged from the haze, a huge blinding bowl of bitter salt flats ringed by jagged charcoal peaks. To the north, the shadowed gulf still held swirling tendrils of white cloud that rose like steam from a cooling kettle. But the wind had dropped to a brisk, steady breeze that barely fluttered the fringe of Kezra’s hood.
Kezra stood at the eastern edge of the Black Stone Tooth. There, the razor-straight upright seam divided the dark fiery tooth from the pale limestone strata.
“Take the running end, Fellis,” she said. She handed the brass thimble-eye of the sixteen-pace measuring cord to the young ropewright. “Anchor your heel on the western seam inside the fissure. Keep the cord level against your hip, and don’t let it belly in the draft.”
“Heel on the seam,” Fellis confirmed, planting his left boot directly against the hairline joint where fossil limestone met black dark rock. With his left hand, he held the brass ring firmly against the stone. That kept his injured right shoulder cradled safely in the linen sling.
