Standing on the flat, dressed granite curb at the foot of the central access stair, Kezra Venn looked down the four massive cardinal galleries that opened into the root of Stonewake Citadel. At five hundred and twelve paces depth—over twelve hundred upright feet below the courtyard flags where Marshal Krail’s cavalry drilled—the silence was huge, heavy, and deep. The air was cool, dry, and clean, tasting faintly of ancient quartz dust and the faint, cold stone draft that flowed from the distant eastern chimney pipes.
The central gallery intersection was an astounding monument of ancient earth-measuring stonework. Unlike the cramped, twisting stone drifts higher up the mountain. It had been gouged out by greedy mining syndicates chasing copper and iron veins, these basal galleries were designed as permanent earth-measuring proof tunnels for the First Imperial Expedition. Each tunnel was exactly twelve feet wide by twelve feet high, driven through the living basement banded rock with straight-line accuracy along the four cardinal compass bearings: true polar north, south, east, and west.
In the center of the crossroads, mounted upon an eight-sided stone stand of dark pink granite that rose three feet above the flagged floor, sat the foundational fixed survey mark of the entire pass.
