The spiral iron stair dropped into the damp bedrock beneath the Gate Ward in tight, dizzying turns.
Bram carried the twenty-pound override metal tube tucked beneath his uninjured left arm, his boots ringing hollow against the rusted diamond-tread plates of each step. Len followed two paces behind. He held the shuttered copper safety lantern so its narrow beam stayed focused on the damp granite walls of the shaft. Every five paces, thick bundles of lead-sheathed copper cables hung from iron hangers drilled into the rock. It shook with a deep, sixty-cycle hum that made the teeth in Len’s jaw ache.
At the bottom of the forty-foot shaft, the stair opened into a vaulted chamber ten paces square. The walls were lined with ribbed cast-iron panels bolted to the dark rock, dripping with cold, stone-rich slow leak that smelled of rust and wet cement.
The air at the bottom of the shaft tasted of cold wet iron and forty years of stale limestone runoff. Bram paused at the base of the iron stringer, his chest heaving, his good hand wiping a mixture of sweat and iron dust from his chin.
“Look at the floor seams,” Bram muttered. He pointed the tip of his boot toward four wide copper ground-straps bolted into the dark rock flags. “Twelve years ago, Morn had us drill two hundred holes into this rock. We poured forty pounds of molten lead into each socket to seat the spreading sleeves. He told us the ground-straps were lightning drains…
