Above the third-floor ceiling of the Eastern Dormitories, eighty percent of the valley refugees and foundation new students had already cleared the drying-loft trapdoor, creeping on hands and knees along the heavy timber truss-walk toward the solid cliffside rock of the upper archive terrace. Only the last twenty stragglers—elderly weavers from Birch Hollow, three limping quarrymen injured in the Red Chute slide. A dozen twelve-year-old new students carrying the sick room blankets—were still climbing the narrow cedar stairwell below the hatch where Ilyra and Jesh held the rear.
Down in the sixteen-foot granite row of stone pillars, however, the load-bearing margin of the building had run out.
Six exchanges of early Jade Spatial Crushing inside an enclosed gallery had turned the outer row of stone pillars into a row of splintered teeth. Four of the eight-sided granite pillars were cracked. The main twenty-inch oak wall-plate running above the sixth bunkhouse bay—directly beneath the drying-loft ladder where the last twenty refugees were climbing—was groaning under three tons of unsupported slate roof.
And Hall Mistress Soran was bleeding from both temples now. Forced to stand rooted on the exact same three flat stone slabs for four minutes so her Mature Jade spear could catch and oblique every single squeezing cone before its empty pocket imploded the thin plaster wall behind her left shoulder, she had absorbed a dozen bruising internal shocks that would have melted a Bronze fighter’s organs. Her white wool sleeves were dark with sweat and granite dust. Her boots…
