“Five!” Fellis’s voice roared across the quarry, cutting through the deep, underground rumble of the shaking bedrock.
Kezra Venn knelt motionless at the northwest anchor peg, her hands clamped over the split-oak covers of her notebook, her eyes fixed on the master commitment seal on Page 008.
“Four!”
Through the shaking ash shaft of her sounding rod, she could feel the two giant blocks of the mountain reaching deep ringing hum. The thirty-two-pace base plane in the deep drift and the thirty-two-pace base plane beneath the cut quarry bench had locked into matching shaking phases. In the arithmetic of her class, the two parcels were no longer separate pieces of terrain. They were two ends of a single balanced equation waiting for the sign of equality.
“Three!”
On the southern rise, Master Barst and young Kesten held their white flags motionless against the dawn sky. At the southern bench below, Yseld Arken stood with her hooked climbing staff held high, her white flag snapping in the freezing wind.
Not a single red flag moved. Not a living soul had stepped across the chalk lines.
“Two!”
