The check counter at Gate Three was a narrow steel kiosk set directly into the massive limestone arch of the Boundary Canopy. On the inner side, where Len, Bram, and Tav stood on the wet gravel, the world was black, choked with sulfur fog and lit up only by the sputtering green flare of four copper fire bowls mounted to iron tripods. But fifty yards ahead, through the wide, riveted steel tunnel of the canopy, lay the outside world.
Through that steel opening poured a blinding, roaring torrent of gold and white light. The late afternoon sun blazing down upon the pine-covered slopes of the northern mountains. To Len, who had spent twenty-six hours in the darkness, the light looked like an open fire door, dazzling the eyes and painting the wet gravel with long, golden reflections. Even from fifty yards away, the air drifting down the tunnel smelled different. Clean, sharp, carrying the scent of dry pine needles, sweet clover, and unpolluted mountain wind.
Beside the kiosk, two armed guard post guards in burnished steel cuirasses stood at ease, their axe-spears resting in iron floor sockets. A large mountain freight wagon loaded with salt barrels was being weighed on the platform scale twenty feet away, the wagon driver arguing loudly with an assistant clerk over axle tare weights. The dispute created a wall of noise that masked their approach, the shouting wagon driver waving his manifest under the clerk’s lantern.
