The gravel trail winding down from the upper cutting terrace was steep, narrow. Then he cut into the sheer pale limestone flank of the ravine like a flight of rough-hewn stairs. The late afternoon sun slanted across the basin. It set the vast, crystal-clear expanse of the Saltglass flats ablaze with gold. Meanwhile, the shadows of the western ridges pooled in the dry gullies below like dark indigo ink.
Kezra Venn walked with her ash sounding rod resting loosely across her shoulder, her boots picking their way over the loose shale with the easy, gut balance of a seasoned mountaineer.
Beside her walked Fellis Dain. It carried his coiled measuring ropes. Meanwhile, Yseld Arken held her customary station two paces behind Kezra’s deafened left shoulder, her hooked staff clicking rhythmically against the stone.
“You really meant it, didn’t you?” Fellis asked, glancing sideways at Kezra as they rounded a hairpin bend where an ancient juniper clung to the cliff face. “About giving the road away. When you dropped those two Reach parcels, I thought you’d feel... I don’t know. Like an apprentice who just dropped her master’s best fine china jar.”
Kezra smiled faintly, feeling the cool mountain breeze play across her forehead. “I thought I’d, too, Fellis. When we were climbing out of the Blackglass pass three weeks ago, I watched every entry in my book like a hawk watching a nest of mice. If an anchor stone got chipped or a sheep walked across a boundary, I felt…
