The dimming of the outer wards came on with the steady, unhurried cadence of night falling over an abandoned lime pit.
High in the north wall, Noll felt the perimeter of his reach draw inward like a wet wool blanket shrinking toward the fire. The outer gatehouse was the first to cool; its iron pintles lost the subtle warmth that had kept frost from biting into the hinges since the third month of his awakening, and the long draft down the culvert went dead and still. Then the eastern sally port surrendered its slight spring tension. The acoustic tubes running out to the horn-work gave a dry, papery sigh as the acoustic resonance drained from the mortar, leaving only cold hollow pipes of common lead and tile.
Down on the floor of the Hall of Witness, Noll knelt inside his one-armed basalt host body, his single stone hand pressed flat against the witness rail. The second core chip lay seated in the oak groove where he had bedded it, pulsing pale and faint. Between his chest cavity and the older blue stone up in the lime socket, the staked Dominion points had fallen to ninety.
Ninety points. Once, during the week Vane had ringed the lower ditch with breastworks, ninety points would have seemed like starvation. Now each point slid away into the foundation seams like meltwater through gravel, paying the back-interest on sixty months of showman talk.
