Location:Hearthwell · The Pavilion — The Workshop · Obsidian Academy — The Lower Hall
Date/Time:26 Flamefade 9943 AZI, Hammerday, first bell to dusk (outside)
Realm:Lower Realm
An hour before first light, the children were asleep in rows in the long hall at Hearthwell, eleven hundred and forty-two of them, in bunks of new pine three high, and the three fires in the kitchen had been banked down to the color of embers.
Jayde stood at the end of the hall and counted them anyway.
They had come through six doors in one breath, and the eleven from the column road a little before first light, and not one of them knew how. Six valleys behind them stood empty to the walls, and there was not a slate, not a pendant, not one twist of waxed paper left in any of them. The Temple could come and look as long as it liked. It would find six schools with the beds made.
