After four hours of fitful, necessary sleep wrapped in their heavy woolen cloaks inside the dry first entry hall of the service gallery, the expedition stirred into the pitch-black underground stillness of the seventy-fifth day. There was no sunrise in the roots of the mountain to mark the shift from night to morning. There was only the cold, dry draft flowing steadily through the iron check hatch and the quiet, rhythmic clicking of Paxa’s razor-sharp shears as she trimmed fresh linen bandages for Fellis’s splint.
The bitter subalpine chill had crept deep into the stone floor during the night, freezing the condensed moisture along the lower margins of the dark rock walls into delicate rime-crusts. Paxa had coaxed a small flame to life in her bronze spirit-lamp, heating a tin cup of water to boil a pinch of dried mint and very thirsty oat flour. The fragrant, steamy vapor filled the cold air of the entry hall with the clean scents of herb and toasted grain, a meager but deeply grounding comfort against the huge weight of the mountain above.
Fellis sat upright on a dry flat stone slab bench, his back braced against the dark fiery dark rock wall. His face was pale from the enclosed air and the physical tiredness of the high pass. But his breathing was slow and even. Paxa knelt before him to unlace the outer bindings of the boiled-leather casing. Then, the boy held his arm fully steady, not a flicker of pain crossing…
