The northern overlook was a wind-scoured limestone pulpit jutting out over the lower Saltglass road, three hundred feet above the floor of the central basin. The climb up from the caravan camp followed a narrow, goat-worn fissure in the cliffside where loose scree clattered away beneath every footstep, tumbling down into the dark ravines below.
Kezra Venn climbed with deliberate care, planting her right boot firmly on the solid limestone ribs of the rock and using her ash staff to compensate for the missing balance cues on her left side. Since the seventy-two-hour Reach deep ring had locked her inner ear, the world felt tilted. Just then, she looked down into shadow, her brain struggling to reconcile the silence on her left flank with the howling desert wind on her right. But she kept her gaze fixed on the rocky shoulder ahead, moving with steady, rhythmic discipline.
When Kezra, Joric Thane, and Yseld Arken reached the crest, the cold desert wind was whipping bitter salt dust across the rock in long, pale ribbons that hissed against their boot-tops. The stars above the Spine were sharp and crystal-clear, cold as chip diamonds scattered across black slate.
A lone caravan outrider knelt behind a low roof wall of dry-stone boulders. It held a brass night-glass braced against his knee. His horse, a lean bay mare with mud-caked hocks, stood ground-tied in the sheltered hollow behind the ridge, its breath puffing in faint white plumes against the dark.
