The stone stair leading from the model gallery into the lower vaults was three feet wide, cut into the native blue granite of the river bluff eight hundred years before the College of Summoners laid its first foundation terrace.
Korr Var went first, his dark-lantern held at his knee so the beam raked the wet treads. Water seeped from the rock face on the left in thin, greasy ribbons. He carried a bitter-salt lime crust that felt like wet soap under the leather soles of their boots. Eren Tal followed with his timber pry-bar in his right hand and a coil of three-ply tarred hemp rope over his shoulder. Pella brought up the rear, carrying Hal Rook’s brass measuring tongs in her canvas apron pocket and a bundle of seasoned cedar tell-tale sticks tucked under her arm.
“Watch the sixth tread,” Korr called back softly. “The nose has broken away along a natural mud seam. Step close to the rock wall.”
Pella set her heel against the dressed granite riser. The air grew warmer with every step down. At the upper landing, the cellar draft had been forty-eight degrees. It smelled of river damp and old paper. By the twelfth step, the surrounding air had climbed past eighty, humid, choking, and heavy with the sharp, stone bitterness of boiling groundwater. Sweat broke out across Pella’s shoulder blades. It soaked her linen shift under her heavy wool tunic until the coarse cloth rubbed against her spine like sandpaper.
