At the moment of dawn in the valley of Blackstone the rays of the rising sun crept over the eastern edge of the valley wall and touched the top of the moving mist enveloping the city. The whiter fog at the top seemed to tremble, and its color ran down into the darker clouds until the whole was a paler shade of pearly grey. The whorls and eddies in the whole mass slowed and stopped, and though they were still obscured by shadow the streets and buildings of ancient Vod’Adia, the Sable City of the vanished Ettaceans, stood out in the cool morning air as though they were present in a way they had not been a minute before.
A great wall of house-sized blocks of black basalt was now visible around the city, and from a gatehouse big as a castle came a loud ratcheting and the grinding of gears. The iron door rumbled down to bridge a chasm still unseen in the mist, on a straight line with the road running across the green field from Camp Town. It struck the ground with a gong that shook the whole valley, echoing off the stone walls and cliffs for what seemed like minutes.
Even before the echoes died out, the Shugak had opened their own palisade gate, and the first party of ten adventurers was moving down the road. For the first time in ninety-nine years, Vod’Adia was Open.
The Sable City Page 60