The air in the underground relic vault beneath the High Terrace of Lathmere was suffocatingly damp. He smelled of ancient wet stonework, sulfur fumes from iron fire bowl pots. The sharp, powdery bite of fresh pipe lime where the academy masons had hastily mortared an iron mounting frame into the Roman bedrock.
Corvin stood in the deep shadow of an arched limestone pillar, his scribe’s thick parchment folder clutched against his gray woolen tunic. In his right hand, hidden within the folds of his wide sleeve, he held a short stub of red grease pencil and a brass ruler. His pulse thrummed in his throat, each beat loud in his ears against the distant, muffled thunder of the mountain river echoing through the air-flow shafts.
Thirty feet away, in the harsh, yellow glare of three academy magnesium torches, Master Davin Sorell stood with Chief Potion-maker Vane and four junior summoners. Between them, lashed to a heavy oak timber gallows with tarred hemp rope, hung the fourteen dismantled components of the Courtesy Arch.
The scene was a horrifying parody of honest building. Instead of the delicate, metric-spaced ash sleepers and glowing-bronze posture shoes that Eren Tal had crafted, the academy alchemists had jammed the upright support posts into crude cast-iron sockets packed with wet sulfur cement. Heavy sheets of gold leaf had been hammered wildly into the rune-tracks, obliterating the three-inch safety gaps that Jo Saye and Ada Morland had tuned to prevent ringing feedback.
