By the flickering yellow light of two animal fat candles, Kezra and Voss studied the ancient linen plate of Station IV. The drawing was a stone-built cross-section of Empty Choir’s mountain root, carried out with the breathtaking care that characterized the old survey corps’ finest master mapmakers.
It showed the 1,024-pace surface terrace at the top, punctuated by the two whistling shelters and the central small roof-dome. Directly beneath the small roof-dome dropped the main upright reference shaft. A straight, circular column four paces in width, dropping through five hundred and twelve paces of solid crust to a vaulted end-post chamber at the base plane. Every thirty-two paces, level landings were shown cut into the rock, connected by a nonstop column of forged bronze ladder rungs.
“Here is what I found while you were walking the northern road,” Voss explained, his thick finger tracing the upper portion of the upright shaft. “Yesterday and this morning, before Paxa arrived, I took two lanterns down to the two-hundred-pace landing.”
He looked up at Kezra, his eyes bright with skilled enthusiasm. “Unlike Windpit. There, the upper shaft was an ice chimney choked with frozen cascade runoff, Empty Choir sits on the dry leeward bench of the peak. The copper small roof-dome on the surface kept out eighty years of snowmelt. The main ladder column is forged from three-inch naval bronze, pinned into the granite with leaded bronze spreading sleeves. Not a single rung is loose. The bronze shows that fine, greenish patina of…
