Four miles along the high terrace, the limestone formation changed its color from pale chalk-white to the dark, weathered ash-grey of the Kilnstep syncline.
Kezra Venn kept her pace tally steady on the belt cord. It slid a boxwood bead every hundred strides. Her boots crunched over frost-fractured scree that sloped sharply down toward the southern drop. Behind her left shoulder, Yseld walked in silence, her hooked staff clicking against the rock with a steady beat that Kezra felt as much as heard.
To Kezra’s left ear, the vast drop into the valley had no bottom. A gust of ridge wind blew up from the lower gorges. Then, it produced a thin, whistle-like hiss against her collar, fully stripped of the deep, chest-thudding roar that used to tell her how far the stone dropped below her boots. But to her right side, every sound remained sharp: the squeak of Fellis’s leather harness at the handcart crossbar, the dry rattle of Paxa’s iron kettle, and the sharp cry of a solitary chough circling a limestone chimney fifty yards above them.
“Hold the cart at the bench cut,” Kezra said, stopping where the terrace narrowed to a six-foot ledge.
Fellis leaned against the ash shafts, easing the cart into a natural hollow between two limestone ribs. Paxa right away kicked the split wooden chocks under the tires, then unhooked a leather water skin. Then she pushed it into Kezra’s ribs.
