Dawn broke over the Knife Ridge with the cold, pale clarity of chipped chalcedony.
The eastern sky was a wash of saffron and thin primrose, silhouetting the jagged black teeth of the Spine against the rising sun. Two thousand feet below their limestone camp, the bitter salt basin of Saltglass was slowly turning from lavender to blinding silver. Its vast stone terraces reflected the morning light like sheets of hammered tin.
Yseld Arken stood at the eastern rim of the displaced parcel. Her hooked climbed staff planted firmly between two limestone ledges, studying the descent route through her brass field glass.
Behind her, Fellis was tightening the pack girths on the grey mule with his good left hand, bracing his knee against the pack frame. Meanwhile, Kezra fed the leather tongue through the iron buckle. The animal stood quietly, its breath blowing white plumes into the sub-zero air, its grey coat dusted with frost from the night bivouac.
“We take the limestone face,” Yseld announced. She lowered the glass and slipping it into its leather case. “The native dark rock on the left is a disaster of loose prisms—six hundred feet of upright six-sided columns with frost-heaves at every joint. One mule slip over there would start an avalanche of dark rock logs that would sweep the entire slope into the gorge.”
