If a person could walk vertically through the air, they would descend a thousand paces or more from the top of the cliff to the rubble at its base. The land below the cliff was a canyon, wider in the south and narrowing as it ran north past the Halt. Its far side was a steep ridge, like this one with a sheer escarpment. To the north, the high, rocky ridges flattened into the characteristic plateau through which wound the river canyon known as Grinder’s Cut. Olu Canyon was one of the side canyons that made up Grinder’s Cut. Olu Canyon had a stream at its base. Early in the empire, imperial engineers had refurbished Olludia Halt for travelers needing extra time to get through the grueling ups and downs of the rest of the canyon route.

The massive rockslide that had torn away part of the cliff face had buried the village and rolled onward to block the entire canyon. A row of six undamaged houses stood in a line just above the unstable rock.

“What are those anchoring posts?” Xilsi asked. She pointed to a set of iron spikes driven into the ground near the upper edge of the cliff.

“Do you see those intact houses? People were trapped there after the avalanche, with no way up or down. Rescuers drove in the spikes so they could lower down harnesses and bring people up, one by one. It was the only way to get them out. They were the only survivors from Olludia Halt. Even so, five of the survivors died before they were all rescued.”

“Incredible to think of attempting such an operation. Look there! Down in the scree. Isn’t that the circular roof of the Heart Temple? I think there’s a better angle to see it from down by the anchoring spikes.”

Elen rubbed her eyes. She did not want to look. The main temple building had been only half buried, its custodian miraculously spared, but its lower buildings were gone, hidden beneath slabs of crazily tilted rock and the massive debris slide. Aoving sometimes assisted laboring women in their homes, but more commonly their kin brought them to the Heart Temple’s annex, which had beds and heated water and other useful accoutrements for delivering children and healing wounds and illnesses, and whose courtyard offered a meditative sanctuary for a person who needed time to pray, or grieve. Now Ao’s body lay, unrecoverable, alongside that of the woman she’d been assisting. Elen’s grief lay buried there, too.

She hadn’t had time to grieve. The rescues had taken weeks. There’d been frantic meetings, more storms, and a second avalanche that had covered another section of road, a bit farther south.