The Ridge of Teeth was the geographical crest of the Sunder range. A razor-sharp arête of black, shattered hard speckled rock that separated the southern river valley from the high, frozen plateau of the northern marches.
Here, at eight thousand six hundred paces, the earth was stripped to its bare skeletal bones. The wind was so nonstop, so violent, that snow couldn’t gather upon the crest. It was scoured away as fast as it fell. That left the jagged teeth of dark rock exposed like the jaw of an ancient sea monster.
The trail was five feet wide. It was flanked on both sides by precipices that dropped thousands of feet into swirling gray cloud.
To the south lay the valley they had climbed. A world of gray limestone, buried gorges, and the distant, invisible warmth of Low Sunder. To the north lay the great alpine cirque—a vast, silent bowl of blue ice-slow ice and snowdrifts forty feet deep, fully cut off from the rest of the empire.
The wind here blew with a sustained, screaming fury that tore the breath from the lungs before it could reach the throat.
Tomas walked with his body lowered, his feet finding the narrow gaps between the rock teeth. His hands were numb despite his fleece mittens. The air was thirty-four degrees below zero. Every gust brought a blast of needle-sharp stone dust that rattled against his ash goggles like buckshot.
