Chapter 646: The People Beyond the Rain
They had two hours and they used all of them.
Vyra reseated the three tracking formations in a triangle around the shelf, at ranges she had chosen so their bearings would cross at the tightest point, and then recorded every reading twice — before the front arrived, and again as the first thunder came within four seconds of its flash.
"They're tightening," she reported. "All three, steadily. The increasing charge corresponds exactly with the bearings drawing closer."
Seraphine took the shelf itself. She spent an hour tracing the pale veins under the black glass with her fingers a half-inch above the surface, working out where a strike would enter and where the mineral would decide to send it.
"There," she said, marking a point near the shelf's northern end with a chip of stone. "It'll come in high on the ridge and run down through here. Everything on this shelf feeds through that one channel."
