Leaving the shadowed inside of the boundary house, the four of them moved along the western lip of the dead ground depression, using the ancient embankment of a dry stonework drainage channel to mask their progress from the gate towers above. The ground beneath their boots showed clear signs of royal building. Dressed granite curb stones half-swallowed by grey lichen, buried under-road drains of dry-laid slate designed to channel snowmelt away from the roadbed, and broad, flat stepping stones that had once formed an expansive carriage road skirting the southern base of the mountain stone base.
Fifty paces ahead, however, the old road came to a sudden, violent end.
Where the paved surface had once wound smoothly around the western flank of the mountain shelf to begin its descent into the northern valley, the builders of Stonewake Citadel had thrown up a huge barrier of shattered rock and discarded quarry spoil. A rubble ramp seventy paces wide and thirty feet high rose across the ancient roadbed, buttressed by two massive hard speckled granite castle walls that projected from the main curtain wall like clenched stone fists.
Kezra stopped behind an isolated boulder of dark grey rock, resting her canvas instrument case on the moss. Meanwhile, she unclasped her brass spyglass. The morning sun was climbing toward noon. It cast hard, dark shadows beneath the granite foundation blocks of the western castle wall. She adjusted the draw-tubes until the mortar joints between the massive cut stone blocks came into sharp focus.
