The Old Imperial Signal Bluff stood like a towering dark rock fang at the narrowest constriction of the Ashen Gorge, three leagues north of Iron Pass Fort.
At this point in the canyon, the upright bluffs pinched inward until the canyon floor was less than forty paces wide. A terrifying bottleneck where an invading army was forced to compress its ranks into a dense, struggling column. Two hundred paces directly above the defile, the signal bluff formed a flat, three-sided shelf of solid rock. It was surrounded on three sides by sheer, polished dark rock precipices that dropped vertically to the canyon floor below.
In the ancient days of the First Empire, border marshals had used this raised aerie to transmit mirror flashes forty leagues to the south. Today, its ancient watching shelter lay in ruins, its outer edge overgrown with withered mountain lichen.
At the base of the northern face of the bluff, Lin Tao and Tie Shan halted in the deep shadow of a rock crevice.
Above them, three hundred feet of sheer, frozen dark rock rose straight into the overcast sky. There were no paths, no stairs, and no goat tracks. The cliff face had been snapped smooth by ice-slow action ten thousand years ago. That left only hairline cracks and narrow stone seams crusted with bitter hoarfrost.
