Night in the haulage pass was cold, clear, and vast.
The charcoal fire bowl inside the low stone archway beside the cut rails burned with a steady, quiet glow, throwing soft orange light across the blankets where the four companions lay resting. Outside the circle of warmth, the stars of the northern autumn glittered like chips of diamond in a sky of ink-black velvet.
Kezra Venn couldn’t sleep right away.
She lay wrapped in two thick wool blankets, her head propped on her leather survey case. She listened to the mountain with her good right ear.
Beside the low charcoal fire bowl, Fellis Dain worked with the quiet respect of a monk lighting up an ancient gospel.
His braced left forearm was propped comfortably on a folded grain sack. But his right hand wielded the fine camel-hair drafting brush with breathtaking delicacy. On the smooth rag paper of the route portfolio, he was applying thin, semi-clear washes of pale indigo and burnt umber to complete the topographical height cross-section of the pass.
“Look at the continuity of this line, Kez,” the boy whispered. He held the page toward the firelight so she could see.
The drawing showed the entire journey in profile: the low clay hills of Kilnstep. The crossing of the frozen river. The broad bitter salt sink of Saltglass. The jagged, snow-streaked couloirs of the high Spine. The ancient cut stone towers of the Needlehouse. The vast, stepped quarry bowl of Coldwork Bench. And finally, this opened pass…
