From the arched stone portal that opened toward the lower mountain slopes, Kezra Venn looked down the long, switchbacking rubble ramp that connected Stonewake Citadel to the floor of the Alderfast basin. The morning sun lay cold and brilliant across the valley, lighting up the terraced fields, the frost-silvered roofs of the drying sheds. The dark ribbons of the irrigation water chutes Davren had helped reconstruct during his long months of recovery.
Fifty paces south of the chiselled boundary groove that marked the southern edge of the 1,024-pace Horizon prism, a clear line had been drawn across the roadway.
It wasn’t a line of soldiers with drawn swords or leveled pikes. It was a line of white ash-wood survey stakes driven deep into the gravel shoulder, connected by a nonstop rope of braided hemp tied with scarlet wool markers every four paces.
Behind that rope, held back at a total, disciplined standoff distance, the people of Alderfast stood waiting in patient, solemn ranks.
Kezra raised her spyglass to her right eye, bracing her elbow against the low roof wall coping to steady the view. Through the clear quartz lenses, she could see Adra Pike standing at the center of the road, her dark woolen mantle wrapped tight against the freezing mountain draft, a heavy iron-banded measuring rule tucked beneath her arm. Beside Adra stood watchwoman Cressa, whose shoulder wound from the Host scout skirmish on Day 110 had healed enough to permit her to carry her brass signal horn and…
