Rather than guessing which way the true pass continuation went, Kezra Venn set about reconstructing the shifted watershed through the physical evidence preserved in the stone.
The morning wind was cold and steady. It whistled through the narrow gap between the granite paving and the foreign sandstone wall. But the weather held clear. There was no dramatic crisis, no sudden thaw, and no roaring avalanche to hidden their work. The high Spine was frozen, quiet, and readable to anyone who possessed the patience to measure its seams.
“Voss, clear the curb gutters ten paces back,” Kezra ordered. She unbuckled the brass-and-leather casing of her clinometer. “Paxa, hold the zero-peg on the sandstone contact.”
While Voss scraped the packed rime from the granite curb channels with his steel trowel, Kezra examined the iron-oxide meltwater stains etched into the flat stone slabs. Comparing them against the copied Needlehouse bronze contour plates she had traced in Alderfast, the historical shape began to resolve.
Along the surface of the granite flags, faint brownish-red oxide bands ran diagonally across the stone. Stone tracks left behind by hundreds of years of seasonal snowmelt. Kezra knelt on the cold stone, examining the stains through her brass magnifying lens.
