Twilight arrived at the Needlehouse not as a gradual fading of light, but as a deep, indigo tide rising out of the Great Sump to swallow the lower valleys. By five in the afternoon, the sun had slipped behind the jagged spine of the High Crags. That left the western sky bathed in a cold, blazing bright wash of lemon-yellow and pale green. Above the low roof walls, the wind began its evening lament, a low, sustained hum that shook through the hollow hard speckled granite chimney pipes of the abandoned waystation.
Inside the sheltered lee of the old survey hut, the four of them sat around a small, hooded fire bowl fueled with dried dwarf-willow twigs and pine-resin cakes. Paxa had allowed the fire. That was because the smoke from dry willow was nearly invisible in the dusk. The deep overhang of the crag scattered the heat before it could rise into the upper air currents.
A blackened tin pot simmered over the coals. It filled the narrow space with the earthy, comforting aroma of boiled lentils, coarse barley, and dried onion flakes. It was the first warm meal they had eaten since leaving the lower timberline two days before.
