Late on the evening of Day 117, the common hall of Alderfast was quiet, lit up only by the steady amber glow of two brass animal fat lamps and the dying embers of the birch hearth. Outside, fine dry snowflakes scratched against the oiled parchment windowpanes like mice claws, heralding the descent of the midwinter frost line from the high crags.
Across the long pine map table, Kezra Venn and her younger brother Davren stood side by side, smoothing the curling edges of four large sheets of weathered drafting paper. To hold the stiff corners flat, Paxa Sel placed two brass weights on the western edge. Meanwhile, Yseld Arken pinned the eastern margin with her heavy horn-handled skinning knife.
Beneath their fingers lay two very different cartographic worlds:
On the left were the original brass-rubbed profile plates that Kezra had carried out of Nym Correl’s archive in the Needlehouse. Massive, copper-sheathed surveys carried out two hundred years ago by the royal survey corps, showing the deep fixed survey mark lines, the five-hundred-and-twelve-pace upright shafts. The stepped boundary benches of the ancient highway network.
On the right were Davren’s hand-drawn field sheets, carried out in black carbon ink on rough linen rag paper during his solitary scouting marches eighteen months ago, before his fall behind the mountain shoulder.
