Len Vey watched from the witness bench as Ves Morn was escorted across the crushed dark rock gravel of the arena floor.
The former high judge walked with a stiff, shambling gait. His wrists were held rigidly before his navel by the short span of his iron links, the chain clinking in dull, metal rhythm with his unpolished boots. Two quarry miners walked half a pace behind him, their heavy leather aprons brushing his smock, their faces impassive as they guided him toward the western tunnel archway that led down into the deep limestone pit.
What struck Len with extraordinary, arresting force was how small the man appeared in the open sunlight.
For twelve years, throughout every village in the northern provinces and through every cellar in Rookvale, the name of Chancellor Ves Morn had been spoken with hushed, superstitious terror. To the people who lived beneath the black ceiling, he hadn’t seemed like an ordinary civil judge appointed by a country council. He had seemed like an omnipotent, demonic master builder. An immortal master of the dark who lived in an iron tower among the clouds, deciding whether the sun rose, whether the water pumps turned, whether the grain carts arrived, and whether a young courier kept his fingers or surrendered them to a creature under the floorboards.
