“Cael!” Jon dropped his wrapped hand from the bronze trunnion and caught the kneeling knight by the left pauldron before his helmeted forehead could strike the projecting iron studs of the inspection housing.
Even through the thick steel shoulder-plate and the quilted gambeson underneath, the heat radiating from Cael’s collarbone felt like a blacksmith’s billet pulled straight from the forge coal. Underneath the unbuckled edge of his gorget, where Sister Oda’s linen bandage had been pinned an hour ago, the skin above his right clavicle was glowing with a sunken, branching tracery of molten gold lines that pulsed in time with the whirling rings down in the shaft.
“Don’t pull him back yet, Jon,” Cael gasped through his teeth, his left hand locking like an iron vise around Jon’s forearm to hold himself upright in front of the open sight-glass. Sweat dripped from the point of his chin onto the granite flags. “Let me—let me see the bottom of the spindle. All eleven times when the black water closed over my head, I saw a thread by the point. Tell me if I’m mad.”
Jon braced his boot against the base of the granite bulkhead, taking half of the heavy knight’s weight against his own shoulder, and leaned forward over the scorching brass rim of the open viewing plate.
