The rhythmic thrum humming through the bedrock didn’t shrink.
Instead, the underground shaking gathered strength, pulsing upward through forty feet of dark rock foundation courses into the flagged terrace of the high keep.
Lord Giles Croft stood at the low roof wall edge. He looked down across the tiered arena of the settlement.
Beside him, Duchess Rowena Wintermere leaned against the dressed granite merlon, the cold alpine wind catching the hem of her traveling cloak.
Judge Malric Ostrander stood to her left. His silver Heresy Brand was held upright, lit up by the warm amber eerie glow seeping from the mortar joints beneath their boots.
Down in the Grand Plaza, seven thousand five hundred citizens stood in silence.
Stone-cutters from the south quarry stood shoulder to shoulder with dwarven metallurgists, Highland timberwrights. The twelve hundred former legionaries of the Imperial Border Host.
Every face was turned toward the apex of the central keep monument.
