The deepest gallery smelled of wet shale and old lime.
Sixty feet below the frozen flagstones of the courtyard, the air was entirely still. No draft reached this far down into the mountain’s roots; the mountain held its breath, wrapped in miles of cold, dark granite. The only sound was the slow, rhythmic drop of seepage water falling from a hairline fracture in the roof, striking a flat piece of broken slate every eleven seconds with a dull, hollow click.
Prit sat upon his three-legged stool ten feet from the pale dolomite slab, wrapped in two oversized wool cloaks that made him look like a ragged mound of gray fleece. His snout was tucked into a greasy beaver-fur muffler, leaving only his red-rimmed yellow eyes visible behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. His claw rested flat against the slate on his lap, holding the thick piece of grey audit chalk motionless against the stone.
“One hundred and ninety-two hours and four minutes,” Prit whispered, his voice barely louder than the falling water. “The twenty-fourth hour of the siege is expiring, master. The surface watches have changed twice since the dusk trumpet.”
“I felt them,” Noll Vey answered from the basalt doorframe. His presence occupied the lintel, the jambs, and the floor plates, extending his acoustic sensitivity deep into the crystalline structure of the rock. “Sella cleared the lower ditch forty minutes ago. Her boots made no more sound in the willow bottom than an owl’s wing. Tessa is still…
