I pulled the camera from my pack. It was a sturdy field model, built to withstand rough handling. I documented the Silver Princess from every angle, then carefully began extracting a specimen, using the fine tools from my collection kit to preserve as much of the root system as possible.
I was so focused on the work that I almost missed the tremor.
It wasn't the magnetic tingling I'd been feeling since we'd crossed the boundary. This was a vibration that traveled through the rock beneath my knees and into my bones, subtle, like the byproduct of heavy equipment working on a distant site.
I froze, my hands still cradling the half-extracted specimen.
The tremor stopped.
I held my breath, counting seconds. Below me, the expedition members were talking among themselves, oblivious. Gavon was gesturing dramatically about something, probably describing a scene for his screenplay. Jeffson was studying the sky to the east, where clouds were forming.
Five seconds. Ten. Nothing.
I resumed my work, faster now. The root came free with a soft resistance, trailing its metallic threads. I tucked it carefully into the specimen case packed with moistened moss.
The second tremor was stronger.
The ledge vibrated beneath me, and this time I heard it too, a low groaning from deep within the mountain, like the sound of a massive door being forced open. Small rocks rattled loose from above and bounced past me, clattering into the void.
"Jeffson!" I shouted.
He was already looking up, not at me but at the mountain above us. His usual worried expression had shifted to recognition and then to horror.
"Everyone, move!" His voice cracked like a whip. "To the rock wall! Now!"
The third tremor hit like a fist.
I was thrown sideways on the ledge, my specimen case skidding toward the edge. I lunged for it, caught it, and pressed myself flat against the rock face as the mountain above us began to move.
It started with a sound, not the dramatic roar I would have expected, but a grumble that grew. A hiss of snow shifting, of ice cracking, of a million tons of white death succumbing to gravity.
Then came the roar.
From my position on the ledge, I had a perfect and terrible view. The avalanche originated from a cornice high above us, a wind-built overhang of compacted snow that had been waiting for exactly this seismic nudge to release. It peeled away from the mountain in a single massive sheet, then shattered into a churning wall of white as it gained speed.
It wasn't coming directly at us. The main flow would pass to our right, channeled by a natural gully in the mountainside. But the debris field, the spray of ice and rock and displaced air that preceded the wall, was spreading outward like the wake of a ship.
"The wall!" Jeffson screamed. "Get against the wall!"
He flattened himself into a crevice, pulling a porter in after him. Sorel, the medic, dove behind a boulder. Three of the crew found shelter under an overhang that looked barely large enough for two.
Others weren't fast enough.
The debris field hit the trail like a wave hitting a beach. Denna stumbled, a blast of displaced air and ice knocking her sideways. Palel was struck by a rock dislodged from above and went down hard.
Gavon.
I couldn't see Gavon.
The noise was beyond anything I could have imagined. Not just loud but a physical pressure that compressed my chest andmade breathing difficult. Ice crystals filled the air, turning the world white, and the ledge beneath me shuddered as chunks of debris slammed into the cliff face.
I pressed myself flat, arms over my head, the specimen case crushed between my body and the rock. The roar went on and on, far longer than seemed possible, as if the entire mountain was coming down.
Then nothing. The mountain held its breath, and so did I.
I lifted my head. Ice crystals floated in the air like dust motes, catching the auroral light. The trail below was gone. What had been a clear path along the ridge was now buried under a meter of debris, rocks, ice, and compacted snow that steamed faintly in the cold air.
"Jeffson!" I called. My voice came out as a croak.
