The mountain wind howling across the eastern low roof wall of Stonewake Citadel smelled of freezing granite, bitter pine resin, and the rotten-egg exhaust of the charcoal fire bowls. Map maker Ulvan Dret sat on the cold stone bench beside the air-flow turret, his gnarled, ink-stained hands clasped over the cracked calfskin folio on his knees. In the orange torchlight, his face looked parchment-thin, hollowed by fifty-four years of highland winters and the exhausting strain of serving military commanders who treated mountains as lines drawn on office paper.
Kezra Venn stood two paces before him, her sounding rod resting in the crook of her elbow, her good right ear angled slightly toward his voice to catch every whisper above the rushing gale of the gorge. The eastern turret was an island of stone suspended between the sleeping guard post and the deep pit of the northern gorge. Below the low outer low roof wall, the mountain fell away in two thousand feet of sheer, upright banded rock. It plunged into the dark, frozen riverbed where the winter winds moaned like a great pipe organ. In the courtyard behind them, the iron bell of the keep had ceased its evening toll. That left only the steady crunch of sentry boots on the gravel ramps and the distant barking of a guard dog in the lower mule pens. Kezra watched the way the flame in Paxa’s safety lamp flickered behind its wire gauze. Steady, golden, and untroubled by the swirling draughts that…
