The bronze air-powered service valve in the ceiling of Tier Six hissed open with the dry, high-pressure sigh of an ancient tomb unsealed.
Ren Vale dropped through the hatch, his cobbler’s boots landing soundlessly on a carpet of crushed cedar dust and hundreds of years of undisturbed sulfur powder. He right away turned. It caught Mira by the waist as she slid down from the duct. She was followed by Master Ren, who lowered himself with the heavy, disciplined grace of an ascetic monk.
The silence in Tier Six was not the peaceful absence of noise. It was a dense, choking empty pocket that seemed to press against the ears like deep water.
Ahead of them stretched the Restricted High Archival Stacks. An underground canyon hollowed out of the living limestone mesa, four hundred yards long and eighty feet high. Towering shelves of stone-hard black walnut rose from floor to ceiling, their massive timbers groaning under the weight of hundreds of thousands of huge folios, lit up registers, and iron-bound codices that had not seen sunlight since the First Epoch.
There were no gas sconces here. The only light came from the pale, sickly eerie glow of dry cave-moss clinging to the upper roof ledges. The faint, many-sided glow of Mira’s smoky quartz arm shining through her wool shawl.
