Idrin had stood on the quay since the four went into the tower. He had not moved from the place where the wet stone met the dry, except once, in the night, when the cold had got into his bones so deeply that he had sat down on his folded coat and wrapped his arms round his knees until the feeling came back. He had not slept. He had not wanted to. There was something about the still water at the quay’s end that made sleep feel like a kind of discourtesy, as if he might miss the moment the water decided to speak.
The vessel-pit door lay under the lake at the foot of the tower. He could see it from the quay when the surface was flat, which it had been since dawn. It was a dark arch of grey stone sunk into the water a few yards from the tower’s base, and its keystone had been carved with a plain bar of lettering that he could not read at this distance. The water in front of it was very black and very clear. It did not move. Beneath its surface the stone of the arch went down and down into the dark, and he could not see where it ended.
