The High Terrace command chamber of the Hollow Crown smelled of green burning acid, ozone, and cold polished marble. High above the churning gorge where the Gray Rush split around the sheer granite bluffs of the upper city, Grand Master Davin Sorell stood upon the bronze watching ring, his heavy velvet-trimmed mantle drawn tight against the damp, high-pressure draft that whistled through the brass cable sleeves.
Below his boots, embedded directly into the bedrock floor, sixty-four tuned tracking data crystals glowed with an uneasy, flickering violet soft glow. Each crystal was coupled by a braided copper wire to an underground sensor needle driven deep into the ancient heart-water gates of Lathmere. On the central control stone base, the main pressure dial showed sixty-two point four pounds of pressure. A figure that the High Council regarded as a triumph of modern academy summoner craft.
To Sorell, however, the needle was not resting. It shuddered with a tiny, arrhythmic flutter, shaking at seventy-four cycles every second. Through the lead-sleeved sound tube that led down into the deepest intake chamber. That sound rose no councilman was ever allowed to hear: a low, painful friction, like a vast iron keel dragging slowly across dry gravel.
