The underground silence was so complete that Kezra could hear the quiet rasp of her own wool trousers against her thighs and the slow, rhythmic crunch of fiery grit beneath Yseld’s boots.
The gallery had been dry for decades, preserved by the arid climate of the high plateau. But the air held a strange, dead coldness that seemed to leech through the soles of their boots. Every breath tasted faintly of powdered sulfur, evaporated salt water, and ancient lime. Above them, the barrel-vaulted ceiling was supported by massive arch ribs of dressed cut stone stonework, set into the natural pale limestone walls every four paces like the ribs of an overturned galleon.
Yseld walked two paces ahead, her iron-shod staff held low in both hands. She tapped every rail tie before placing her weight on it. She watched the black gaps between the ceiling ribs with the sharp, unblinking wariness of a desert hunter.
“Old timber,” Yseld murmured, pausing beside a rotting upright post of squared fir that had buckled into a splintered S-curve under upright load. “Look at the dry rot in the core. It has the consistency of honeycomb. The royal engineers built this drainage drift to carry flash floods away from the lower quarry benches. But they braced the ceiling with mountain fir instead of seasoned white oak. Sixty years of damp air ate the grain.”
