The night wind off the permanent snowfields above Needle Gorge possessed the sharp, biting edge of broken glass. It whistled through the jagged clefts of the dark rock rim. It carried with it the faint, dry scent of crushed granite, frozen lichen, and ancient cold stone. Kezra, Fellis, Paxa, and Yseld moved south from the cut raised stone road curb, their hobnailed boots crunching carefully over the uneven slope of subalpine scree, frost-shattered fiery rubble, and frozen mud.
Fellis walked between Kezra and Paxa. His braced left arm was held close against his chest by the wool sling, his right hand steadying the brass thumb-lamp. He kept the copper shutter drawn down to a narrow level slit. He cast a pale oval of warm amber light upon the ground right away before their boots without spilling a single stray beam toward the black void of the gorge or the open sky above.
Kezra held her bronze sounding rod low, tapping the bedrock at two-pace intervals. She wasn’t listening for hollow chambers yet. She was searching for the telltale sharp-angled scarring of the Old Kingdom Survey Corps. The small, deliberate chisel cuts that marked an engineered frontier baseline.
“Keep your eyes on the dark rock curbs, Fellis,” Kezra cautioned in a low whisper. “The corps never laid an outwork without leaving a bench mark. Look for dressed surfaces where the natural frost-fractures have been smoothed by a mason’s broad-axe.”
