Eighteen miles north of Alderfast, high above the timberline where the air was thin, razor-sharp, and bitter with the scent of frozen granite, Stonewake Citadel settled into its new home.
The arrival of a thousand-pace square castle upon the stepped bedrock socket of Empty Choir had been as mechanically perfect as the departure from the valley. Five hundred and twelve upright paces of living mountain foundation had slid into the ancient, pre-cut historical bench with an accuracy that honored the forgotten survey corps who had quarried both sites a century ago. The massive curtain walls had absorbed the shifted weight without losing a single coping stone. The four corner watchtowers stood plumb and true. The deep underground water tanks held their water without springing a single leak. And three weeks of hard winter grain lashed into the lower barrel vaults remained undisturbed in their timber cradles.
On the high stone low roof wall of the western wall, Captain Hest Vale gripped the iron rail of the banquette, her knuckles whitening through her sheepskin-lined riding gauntlets.
Beside her, forty soldiers of the Citadel Guard were lowering their arms from their faces. During the ten beats of the warning chime, every man had held his breath, bracing his boots against the stone flags in expectation of the arrival. In their minds—fueled by the briefings Marshal Solvan Krail had delivered in the great hall three nights ago—the shifted weight was supposed to carry them down from the miserable, freezing basin into the rich…
