The solar of Stonewake Citadel occupied the entire third floor of the central keep, an expansive stone room thirty paces long by twenty wide, warmed by two massive hard speckled granite hearths where dry mountain pine logs burned with a pine-scented roar. High, leaded glass windows looked out across the southern castle walls, offering a clear view of the blocked northern roadbed, the ancient dead ground ditch. The low shale ridge where Kezra had crouched with Davren two days before.
Seated behind a huge table of polished mountain ash sat Marshal Solvan Krail.
Krail was forty-nine, a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man with close-cropped iron hair, thick grey eyebrows. A neat, square-trimmed beard that framed a face carved by thirty years of military campaigning. He wore a dark, plain wool tunic over a linen undershirt, with no armor or gold braid. Even so, a heavy silver signet ring bearing the seal of Stonewake Citadel gleamed on his right forefinger. Spread across the ash table were dozens of survey sheets, supply registers, and brass dividers, arranged with the careful sharp-angled order of an engineer’s workshop.
Standing beside the western window, his arms folded into the wide sleeves of his velvet robe, stood Master Ulvan Dret, his glasses pushed up onto his freckled forehead. He watched the newcomers with an expression of weary worry.
