The water at the bottom of the sunken sally port was clear as black glass. But it wasn’t water that any living thing could breathe.
Tomas stood on the final oak cleat of the underwater stairway. His oilskin trousers were tucked into grease-sealed leather waders that came up to his ribs. Beside him, Nessa lowered her third check lantern. An underwater device consisting of a thick bull’s-eye glass lens set into a heavy brass metal tube. It was sealed with sheep fat and lead washers.
The lantern dropped on a weighted copper wire, its amber beam cutting through the dark depths of the underwater Great Magazine.
Tomas leaned forward over the surface, his monocular pressed to his eye.
The flooded magazine was huge. Built to supply three regiments during the highland campaigns, the vaulted hall stretched sixty arm-lengths into the dark beneath the central keep. Two rows of massive eight-sided granite piers supported the barrel vaults. But the thirty-degree tilt of the castle had twisted the perspective into a nightmare of slanting shape.
Arranged along the lower stone ledges, forty feet beneath the surface, were the storage racks.
“Count them, Tomas,” Nessa whispered, her voice barely louder than the lapping of the black bilge against her boots.
