The air in the lower gallery had grown cold, dry, and brittle, tasting of scorched limestone and frozen black glass.
Noll walked down the curving spiral stair, each step of his basalt host body sending a dull, heavy thud into the foundation rock. Behind him, the steady amber beam of Tessa Dene’s brass lantern swung across the mortared walls, revealing the fine, spiderweb fractures that had opened in the stone over the last six hours.
Where the lower gallery met the approach to the ninth door, the mountain had ceased to look like masonry.
A great curving rib of polished black glass had burst through the bedrock floor, split the limestone paving stones like dry kindling, and arched upward into the ceiling vault. It was twelve feet across at its base, smooth as obsidian and cold as winter river ice, but its interior was alive with shifting, oily reflections. Within the depth of the dark glass, ghostly silhouettes of long banquet tables stretched into an infinite, suffocating distance—endless rows of high-backed chairs, iron platters, and silver forks that gleamed with hungry, spectral sharpness.
Up on the western ridge, the fire set by Lord Auditor Vane’s sappers was still burning, painting the night sky with a violent, smoky crimson. Eight thousand soldiers down in the siege lines were staring up at the burning timber, clutching their spears and listening to camp rumors of an ancient devouring horror sleeping beneath the hill.
