He stayed with the contact for a long time.
The mountain's pulse moved through the floor and through his sitting position and through the hand on the scabbard in the three-beat rhythm it had maintained since he crossed the deep zone boundary, his two heartbeats and the mountain's rhythm together. At this altitude the mountain's beat was the deepest of the three, not loudest but most fundamental, the way the lowest note in a chord is not always audible as a separate thing but is present in the overall sound in a way that its absence would change everything.
He let time pass.
