The stair to Split-Stone was three thousand one hundred and twenty steps, carved directly into the sheer face of the white karst bluff.
Each riser was eight inches high, worn hollow in the center by four hundred years of mountain clogs and ox-hide moccasins. Where the rock had cracked under winter frost, rough pine balks had been pegged across the gap with iron spikes, creaking hollowly over the three-hundred-foot drop that yawned below.
Tomas kept his eyes on the heel of Nessa’s boots. His thighs burned with the steady, lactic fire of climbing under weight. His breath came in measured, rhythmic rasps that tasted of dry stone and cold, thin mountain air. The seventy-eight-pound pack pulled backward against his chest bone. But he kept his torso leaned forward at a twenty-degree angle, his wooden cart driver’s staff planting with every second stride to take thirty percent of the burden off his knees.
In the cage at his wrist, the canary chirped twice. A clear, sweet note that cut through the whistling mountain draft.
“Air is clean,” Nessa called back, her hand touching the rock face as she pulled herself onto the upper landing. “No gas seeps here. Just limestone dust and cedar resin.”
