The patrol report reached Yohan's northern intelligence office on the morning that Sakh'arran received Aliyah's emergency message about the targeted assault. A Verakh scout on the northern approach circuit had found something in the highland foothills' lower section, twelve miles north of Yohan's perimeter: a section of trail where the rock surface had been altered in a way consistent with no natural cause the scout could name.
The scout's description was precise because Verakh scouts were trained to be precise: a forty-foot section of the trail where the rock had been darkened, not burned, not stained, darkened in the specific way that prolonged contact with something of exceptional cold or exceptional density produced in certain types of stone. The darkening was not on the surface. It was in the stone itself, visible when light hit the rock face at the right angle.
Sakh'arran read the report and sent for Dhug'mhar.
