The pale light of the witness ring climbed up Noll Vey’s kneeling basalt shin like cold spring water rising in a well-shaft.
He could feel it in both places at once—down here on the flagstones where his one-armed stone host body braced itself against the oak bar, and high up in the north wall where his fist-sized blue core sat in its mortar niche beside Tessa’s copper speaking tube. One thousand one hundred and twenty points of staked Dominion power hung suspended between the two points, vibrating with the low, taut hum of a bridge cable just before the river ice breaks against the piers.
Every joint in the basalt frame carried the ache of the nine-day siege. The left shoulder ended in a rough, sheared stub where mining charges had bitten through the grain; the limestone ribcage was scored with pale fracture lines from the recoil of the Bastion load-tubes; and the soles of his stone feet were welded to the floor flags by the hall’s binding grip. Up in the north wall, his true core rested in its lime bed, feeling the cold mountain draft seep through the outer masonry alongside the faint warmth of the gallery stoves.
