The blue fire pouring from Noll Vey’s stone palm lit the damp vaults of the Hall with the harsh, cold glare of a lightning strike frozen in granite.
He held his hand buried in the rail coping, his stone fingers digging through centuries of lime dust until they locked against the iron core anchors beneath. Through the fracture at his left shoulder, where the artillery round had sheared his arm away, hot blue sparks leaped like hornets, hissing as they met the cold cave air. Every pulse from the core chip in his ribs tore at his awareness, threatening to dissolve the mortar holding his granite body together.
Eleven hundred and twenty staked points—the sum total of every fair exchange, every paid wage, and every honest meal served at the watch fort—flooded down the limestone channel toward the red hazard line.
“Take it!” Noll roared, his voice rattling the tin lanterns hung from the lower tiers. “Drink the well dry! Leave the men where they sit!”
Across the cracked red chalk, the Last Guest leaned forward from the shadows of the ninth doorway.
The towering traveler looked down at the pool of sapphire light lapping at the tips of its split leather boots. It did not strike with the iron cleaver. Slowly, with the deliberate curiosity of an old wanderer testing thin river ice, the entity knelt upon one ragged knee.
