The dry, rhythmic clatter of old Orren’s ash staff faded down the six-sided raised stone road, gradually swallowed by the hollow roar of the night wind rushing through Needle Gorge. Kezra, Fellis, Paxa, and Yseld stood alone upon the cut highway bridge pillar, four small figures wrapped in dark wool coats beneath a sky that was rapidly hardening into an icy dome of diamond-bright stars.
Yseld looked down at the four silver coins the guide had thrust back into her hand. Then she dropped them with a quiet metal clink into her leather belt purse.
“Let the old man run,” the scout said. He leaned her shoulder against the fiery rock face. “He’ll reach the drovers’ hearth at the high station two hours before midnight. By the time he finishes his second horn of spiced cider, he’ll have convinced the entire common room that we’re consorting with mountain phantoms. That buys us total privacy. Not a single carter or drover will come near this raised stone road until the sun is high tomorrow.”
“We’ll not need until tomorrow,” Kezra said.
She turned her back to the open deep gap. Then she walked to the southern curb of the raised stone road. The bitter subalpine cold was settling fast into the gorge. That turned their breath to swirling trails of frost and tightened the leather of their boots. She knelt upon a broad, flat boulder of native fiery dark rock, unbuttoned the front of her heavy canvas coat, and rested Fellis’s…
