Working under Fellis Dain’s precise verbal instructions, Kezra Venn and Yseld Arken spent the late afternoon turning the Needlehouse map room into a carpenter’s workshop. Fellis sat on his cedar crate ten paces back from the hoist line, his braced left forearm strapped firmly to his chest. Meanwhile, his uninjured right hand held an iron grease-pencil and a sheet of stiff drawing stock.
“Don’t pry the table leg from the top,” Fellis called out. His voice was sharp and clean in the high vault. “Those are four-inch oak dowels driven through wood slot shoulders. If you lever the rail with your crowbar, you’ll split the wooden peg and ruin the span. Yseld, set your cold chisel against the wedge pin on the underside. Two taps with the wooden mallet to back the wedge out, then pull the leg straight down.”
Yseld knelt beneath the seven-foot drafting table, tapped the mallet twice against the chisel butt. Then she caught the seasoned oak wedge in her palm. The massive frame stand leg slid free with a dry, squeaking groan of cured wood. Within twenty minutes, the two empty oak tables had been reduced to eight stout four-by-four posts and two thick, seasoned tabletops measuring seven paces long.
