By sunset on Day 66, the expedition pitched camp on a high limestone knoll half a mile south of the old roadside weighing station.
The wind had shifted into the north. It carried with it a sharp, cold tang that smelled utterly unlike the dry chalk dust of Kilnstep or the stinging bitter-salt glare of Saltglass. It was the scent of green wood, damp feather-moss, and boiling turpentine. The clear pine-scented breath of Hushwood.
Kezra stood on the highest point of the knoll, her brass sighting tube resting against her shoulder, looking north across the last rolling swells of pale upland pasture.
There, two miles ahead, the open sky ended.
Rising like a huge, dark green wooden wall against the fading twilight sky stood the southern margin of the great subalpine forest. The resin pines grew seventy to eighty feet tall, their massive, linked crowns forming a solid, nonstop roof that swallowed the fading sunset light before it ever touched the forest floor. Even from two miles away, the forest looked iron-hard. A dark, brooding sea of evergreen needles that stretched twenty leagues north to the hidden foundations of the Spine.
Paxa Sel finished unrolling her sleeping blankets beside the sheltered side of a pale limestone boulder. Then she walked up to join Kezra on the crest.
