The granite bedrock was colder than the flagstones of the gallery, but beneath the chill lay an unnatural, trembling warmth that rose and fell like the breath of a sleeping beast.
Alden Bram kept his thick fingers pressed against the carved glyphs on the floor, his weathered face inches from the stone. His thumbnail traced each angular stroke, following the geometric lines where ancient stonemasons had recorded the thermodynamic law of the three rings. Beside him, Sister Oda held her horn magnifier steady, her lips moving in silent translation as she matched the quarry runes against the suppressed liturgical texts of the First Foundation.
“The language is harsh, Jon,” Bram muttered, his voice gravelly in the dry air. “It uses quarry terms. It treats the human soul like a block of freestone being fed into an unslaked lime pit to make mortar.”
“Read it, Alden,” Sister Oda urged softly, adjusting her horn spectacles as she held the lantern beam steady across the floor. “The Church has buried this truth for two hundred years under gold leaf and choir chants. We cannot afford mercy toward our own ignorance.”
Bram cleared his throat, his breath raising tiny puffs of gray dust from the carved channels.
