Paxa Sel kept one firm hand clamped over Kezra Venn’s shoulder, pinning her gently but immovably against the sheltered limestone stone base. Meanwhile, the violent shivers of the Horizon recoil spent themselves in her limbs. “Don’t even think about standing,” the healer said. Her voice dropped into the flat, unrushed tone she reserved for patients who confused mind with recovery. “Your pulse is eighty beats above normal and your skin feels like animal fat pulled out of a snowdrift. You sit right where the rock supports your back until I tell you your blood has returned to your head.”
“I’m not trying to run,” Kezra whispered, though her chest still heaved as she fought to draw enough air past her very thirsty throat. She tilted her chin toward the lane mouth, angling her sound right ear toward the open breeze. Meanwhile, her left side held only its dead, unchanging hum. “I only want to see the southern join. If the base planes translated high by even half a yard, the wheel track is blocked.”
Fellis Dain leaned his uninjured right shoulder against the corner of the cut stone pier, his braced left forearm resting lightly across his belly in its rigid larch-wood sleeve. He squinted down through the bright alpine glare toward the chiselled boundary line four paces beyond the stone base. “You don’t need to stand to see it, Kezra. The line is as clean as a slate table in a brewery. Look at the turf edge where the…
