The narrow high walkway followed the wooden water chute for two miles through an underground gallery cut straight through the living heart of Mount Sunder.
The air here was fully different from the dead, dusty vaults of the Siphon entrance. It was damp, freezing cold. Then it filled with the sharp, ozone smell of high-speed water rushing over fresh timber. Every sixty paces, an iron bracket bolted to the wall held a small grease-lamp that burned with a steady, smokeless flame. It cast yellow pools of light along the wet oak planks.
Tomas walked with his right hand resting on the wooden handrail. His boots kept a steady, measured rhythm on the wooden walkway planks. His seventy-eight-pound pack felt light now, balanced by the relentless driving force of a cart driver who knows he is reaching the end of an open custody chain.
Beside him, Nessa carried her brass level-transit under her arm, her eyes scanning the rock roof above the water chute.
“Slope is one foot in forty,” she said, her voice easily heard beneath the rhythmic slosh of the water in the timber race. “A master-mason’s grade. Just enough slope to keep the water moving at eight feet per second without causing bubbling blast against the oak joints. The men who built this tunnel were the finest high-pressure engineers in the kingdom.”
