The air smelled neither of moldy river silt nor of burning sheep fat.
It smelled of dry stone salt, cool mountain granite, and the faint, sweet warmth of dry cedar shavings. Ten leagues west of the collapsed Sunken Temple, through four miles of dropping natural limestone fissures, the underground drainage channel opened into a huge, natural cave of pink and white halite crystals. Formed by ancient salt-seas trapped beneath the continent two million years ago, the salt walls rose sixty feet to an arched ceiling of pure, semi-clear white chalk-stone that caught the orange glow of three campfires in soft, shimmering sharp-angled refractions.
Two hundred and fourteen survivors—apprentice bookbinders, master tanners, and freed trench laborers—lay collapsed on thick layers of dry salt gravel. He was wrapped in woolen shawls and dry canvas awnings retrieved from an old survey cache. For the first time in ten months, there was no sound of royal boots above their heads, no whistle of high-pressure steam drills, and no rhythmic clanking of void-court heavy steel crossbows. There was only the gentle murmur of women bandaging blistered feet, the hiss of boiling water in iron pots. The rhythmic, deep breathing of exhausted people who had forgotten what it felt like to be safe.
