Two miles above the quarry flats, the eastern ravine split around a towering, wind-hollowed tooth of salt-crusted shale that the old miners called the Raven’s Tongue.
The left fork was a steep, gravel-choked chute that ended in a sheer cliff where water only ran during spring cloudbursts. The right fork curved into a narrow, shaded gorge where a line of rusted iron brackets, bolted into the rock wall at chest height, traced the route of an old cast-iron salt water pipe that had been abandoned thirty years before.
Yseld halted beneath the shadow of the shale tooth, her eyes scanning the gravel wash.
“He took the pipe trail,” she said. She pointed to where the notched mule shoe had scraped the red rusting off an exposed pipe rim. “He knows the ground well enough to follow the iron. A pipe means a building, and a building means shade and a dry floor.”
Kezra leaned against the cool limestone wall of the gorge. It caught her breath while Fellis offered her his canteen. She took one careful, measured swallow, rinsing the bitter-salt dust from her teeth before letting the water slide down her dry throat. Every drop was precious. Paxa’s hydration rules were etched into her memory. The desert sun was already turning the canyon walls into an oven.
