Before dropping into the lower wards to take command of the turning basin, Pella Rook made one final check of the undercroft. She carried no lantern this time, only an animal fat candle stub shielded within an iron horn holder to keep the draft from gutting the flame.
Beside her, Kel Dorr stepped quietly over the wet flat stone slabs, his cart driver boots squelching softly in the silt that had begun seeping through the foundation joints. The undercroft felt colder now, stripped of the thirty-eight backup spirits that had earlier generated a faint, unnatural warmth through their compulsory labor. It was an honest, underground chill. He smelled of wet earth, iron scale, and ancient limestone lime.
On the third shelf, beneath the white chalk lines Kel had drawn an hour earlier, the ninth peg had undergone a terrifying transformation.
The white frost that had crusted the copper mid-air wire had fully vanished. In its place, thick droplets of black, oily water drops clung to the metal, dripping steadily into a small pool on the pine shelf below: drip... Drip... Drip. The mid-air wire was no longer humming with a high-pitched shaking. It was whipping back and forth in an uneven, violent ellipse, throwing tiny black droplets against the chalked boundary line.
