At dusk on Day 28, the expedition made camp on the lowest fiery shelf of Blackglass, three hundred paces above the white, heat-shimmering margin of the Saltglass basin.
Outrider Marn had picketed his dun mule beside their grey pack animal in the sheltered lee of a dark rock stone support prop. Following Yseld’s seasoned advice, they had halted on the final rock terrace rather than dropping directly onto the desert floor before nightfall. The vast salt crust below acted like a giant heat pool, streaming the day’s scorching solar energy into the twilight air like the floor of an iron smelting kiln. Until the cold mountain winds tumbled down from the Spine around midnight to purge the basin, the desert was a choking fire that sapped the strength of man and beast alike.
The last light of dusk faded from the western horizon. Then, the heat on the lowest dark rock shelf plummeted with the sudden, knife-like edge characteristic of high-sky desert margins. The choking blasting heat that had risen from the salt flats during twilight was swept away by a cold, cleansing katabatic wind that tumbled down from the heights of Blackglass, smelling of frosted rock and clean snow.
