Cold mountain air smelling of crushed shale, damp moss, and woodsmoke struck Kezra Venn across the brow as she hauled herself through the final limestone cleft of the newly opened southern gallery. Her boots slipped half an inch on the frost-dusted dark grey rock plates before her studs caught. Her knees trembled with an ugly, rhythmic tiredness that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the two hundred and fifty-six paces of living mountain shoulder she had traded into Coldwork Bench barely twenty hours ago. Behind her collarbone, her breath arrived thin and sharp in the high valley draught. Her left ear, robbed of its lowest octave by the bitter salt flats of Saltglass fifty days earlier, registered only a hollow, rushing hiss where the wind poured across the basin rim. Meanwhile, her right ear caught every distinct rattle of loose stone under Yseld Arken’s iron-shod climbing staff.
Yseld kept one calloused palm firmly wedged beneath Kezra’s left shoulder. She took enough of her weight to prevent her from pitching forward onto the scree that spilled from the cut seam. Behind them, echoing from the dark limestone throat, came the muffled scrape of Fellis Dain’s pack frame and the steady, dry cough of Paxa Sel as the healer brought up their rear. They had spent nine hours scrambling through the raw fracture where Coldwork’s cut gully had seated itself against Alderfast’s ancient rock. They tested every overhead flake with ash poles before committing a boot.
