Idrin went down alone, because the Chamber’s sitting was not yet called and because he did not want a lamp held over his shoulder by anyone who could see his face.
He took the lantern from its hook at the top of the Undercroft stair and carried it down by its ring, the way Ysra had shown him in the autumn, so that the light fell on the treads ahead of his feet and not on the wall. The rope across the fourth step was taut and tied off in a sailor’s knot, which he could not have tied himself. He stepped over it. He counted the other eight aloud, under his breath, because Ysra had taught him to count stairs and because the sound of his own voice was the only company the Undercroft had ever offered him. He counted them all the way to the bottom. Each one held. None of them spoke.
The air at the foot was cold and smelled of old wet stone and of something sweeter underneath, like grain left too long in a sack. The vault rose above him into a darkness the lantern could not reach. Along the walls, where the Chamber’s first benches had been set against the stone, the lamp caught the shapes of the bone-room’s shelving through the arch on his left, and beyond it, in the furthest corner, the long grey shape of the lease-press with its iron-bound door.
