Eight paces below the cobbles of the Splitflint hostel yard, the air smelled of cold cellar-rot, dry wet lime plaster, and old fiery ash.
Kezra Venn held her horn lantern high. That let the animal fat light wash across the square pillars of grey tuff that carried the vaulted ceiling. The quarrymen had cut directly into the mountain’s dark rock bench three ages ago. He set four heavy piers on square footings to carry freight wagons rolling overhead.
She planted the iron shoe of her ash survey rod against the base of the nearest pier and tapped the dark stone three times.
Tock. Tock. Tock.
The shakes travelled up the straight grain of the ash wood into the calloused pad of her right thumb. It was a tight, dry sound, fully free of the hollow rumble that warned of hidden mine workings or water-rotted shale. The pillar sat solid on the native bedrock.
“Northeast pier footing sound,” Kezra called up into the draft. Her voice sounded flat in the vault, swallowed by the empty lime casks stacked against the northern wall. “No voids behind the facing cut stone. The base plane rests squarely on black dark rock.”
From the open hatchway above, Fellis Dain answered. His voice came down through the ladder shaft with the scrape of dry gravel under a boot heel.
