The entrance to the lower bridge pillar gallery was a narrow, iron-plated door set flush into the riverwall twenty paces below the Third Gate bridge. The door was locked with a heavy bronze padlock bearing the seal of the College, but Eren Tal didn’t bother with keys. He pushed in a four-foot cold chisel between the hasp and the granite door post, leaned his two hundred pounds against the lever. Then he snapped the bronze retaining screws with a sharp, echoing snap that sounded like a pistol shot in the foggy night.
They slipped inside, Pella leading with the hooded animal fat lantern, Eren following with his canvas tool roll slung across his broad shoulder. The air hit them right away—thick, choking, and reeking of boiled sulfur and wet copper. It was fifteen degrees warmer inside the gallery than on the riverbank, the limestone walls slick with dripping water drops that tasted unpleasantly of bitter soda.
A flight of fifty wet stone steps led down into the belly of the bridge pillar, right beside the massive timber water chutes through which the Gray Rush flowed under normal head. The roar of the water was different here. It wasn’t the clean, churning splash of an open weir, but a deep, underground thrumming that shook through the soles of their boots, rattling the loose fillings in their teeth.
