The southern service courtyard was swept by a rising mountain wind that rattled the frozen blankets on the bakery lines and drove fine scuds of ice across the cobbles. A castle blacksmith, summoned by Sergeant Kroll under Marshal Krail’s standing order, knelt beside the circular iron hatch with a heavy cold-chisel and a sixteen-pound sledgehammer.
Clang. Clang. Crack.
With three tremendous blows, the blacksmith snapped the rusted through shackle of the ancient padlock. The rusted iron broke with a dull, glassy snap, smelling of sulfur and wet melted rock waste. Two spear guards wedged iron pry-bars beneath the rim of the hatch, grunting with hard effort as they broke the seal of fifty years of piled up rust and street dirt.
The heavy iron plate swung upward on its counterweighted hinges, thudding back against the stone curb with a hollow, echoing boom that shook the frozen gravel across the flat stone slabs.
Kezra Venn knelt at the edge of the opening, peering down into the dark upright shaft. The shaft was six feet square, lined with dressed granite curb stones for the first twelve feet before plunging into exposed native bedrock. An upright ladder of rusted iron rungs was pinned into the northern face of the stone, disappearing into the blackness below.
