By mid-morning on Day 27, the fiery bluffs of Blackglass had flattened into a low, jagged bench of black vesicular dark rock that dropped toward the southern plain like the giant steps of an abandoned quarry.
The expedition had marched for five hours since dawn, putting ten miles of rough cart ruts between themselves and the gravel terrace where the courier had delivered his white willow wand. The morning air was thin and sharp with the scent of sulfur and sun-baked stone. Behind them, Captain Vale’s two scouts still followed at three hundred paces. But their horses were beginning to show the strain of the descent, their bay coats lathered white where the girths chafed and their heads hanging low over the stony trail. The scouts had abandoned any try at stealth. They rode in plain view along the upper contour line. They maintained contact but clearly under orders not to close within bowshot.
The road wound through a narrow fiery notch where the dark rock had cooled in twisted, rope-like folds of dark pahoehoe lava.
Yseld Arken led the file. Her ash climbed staff planted firmly on every downhill pace, her eyes scanning the rock shelves above them for snipers or deadfall traps. Paxa walked directly behind the grey mule, checking the tension on the pannier ropes whenever the beast scrambled over a ledge. Yseld rounded a projecting black stone support prop where the rock rose in a crescent bluff. Then, she halted so suddenly that the grey mule…
