The midnight wind swept down from the high dark rock notches. It carried the cold, dry fragrance of bitter salt and frozen mountain scree through the gaps in the caravan barricade. In the horse lines near the western gate, Joric Thane’s wagon drivers were busy saddling two sturdy mountain mules, checking the cinch straps and packing grain bags with quiet, practiced smooth speed. The camp was asleep under canvas, save for the double sentries posted on the wagons and the small knot of travelers gathered by the light of a single horn lantern.
Vennik stood beside his dun mule, Gulla, his wool coat buttoned to the throat, a leather courier pouch slung across his chest. Thanks to Paxa’s vinegar soaks and a double ration of hot stew, the boy looked refreshed, his eyes clear and steady. He tightened the beast’s noseband.
Kezra Venn knelt beside the tailboard of the handcart. That made the final additions to the packet she had been preparing since Day 48.
The core of the packet was a square-folded sheet of heavy linen paper containing the verbatim transcript of Davren Venn’s eleven-month-old letter. The message Kezra had pulled out from the sealed brass metal tube in the Saltglass archives. Every word had been copied in her neat, upright apprentice script, witnessed and signed by Paxa Sel and Joric Thane, with an exact rubbing of Davren’s split-triangle seal. In that letter, Davren had described the towering, unclimbable cirque of the Spine, the cold mountain basin of Alderfast…
