Midwinter night fell over the Sunder Pass with total, breathless stillness.
The heat had dropped to twenty degrees below zero in the valley of Low Sunder. But the wind had died fully. The sky was a huge, velvet-black dome, dusted with millions of icy stars that burned with razor-sharp bright glare above the jagged silhouettes of the peaks.
Tomas Reed stood on the gravel crest of the end-post moraine, five hundred paces above the town.
Beside him stood Nessa Vale, her four-foot survey rod resting on the frozen crust, her brass sound horn slung across her back. Her breath rose in a quiet, steady plume that drifted away into the stillness.
“Look up,” Nessa said softly. She pointed with her rod toward the high shoulder of Mount Sunder.
Tomas looked up into the mountain dark.
There, at five thousand feet, a bright, steady star of orange light flickered against the black limestone cliff.
It was the watch-lantern of Waystation One, newly roofed with heart-oak. Its iron fire bowl burned with valley coal.
