Waystation Four was built into the cavernous mouth of a natural limestone hollow. There, an ancient underground river had cut a deep chamber into the mountain before freezing solid thousand years ago.
Inside the cave, the air was dead and motionless, held at a steady twenty-four degrees below zero. Above the entrance, a frozen waterfall hung like a massive curtain of blue-green glass thirty feet high, sealing the inside from the howling blizzard outside.
Kael unhitched the mules right away. The four beasts stood in the center of the cave floor, their heads hanging low, their flanks heaving in slow, exhausted rhythm.
“We need oat-mash,” Kael croaked, leaning his back against a granite boulder. “Warm oat-mash with molasses. If the mules don’t get warm mash into their bellies tonight, their gut-heat will fail before morning. A frozen mule doesn’t wake up.”
Tomas didn’t sit. His legs were trembling from the four-league march through the Sluice. But the procedural discipline of the trail demanded that the camp be secured before rest was taken.
He carried the small iron fire bowl into the center of the cave, shielding it from the draft with two heavy ash pack-boards. From the sledge deck, he brought a bundle of dry spruce kindling and a small sack of coal nuts he had brought from Low Sunder.
