The stonework didn’t sleep. It groaned like an ox under an overloaded hay-wain.
Tomas stood on the dry granite ledge of the upper entry hall, his boots braced against the newly driven oak cleats. High overhead, forty arm-lengths above the dark, stale water of the flooded stairwell, the barrel-vaulted ceiling of the lower castle wall bowed downward along its centerline. A fine, nonstop drizzle of powdered lime mortar sifted down through the lantern light. It settled like white flour across the shoulders of his oiled canvas coat.
Nessa knelt beside her portable drafting desk. A three-foot slab of planed beech-wood resting across two empty nail firkins. Her bone metal pen moved with clean, steady care across a sheet of oiled sheepskin thick parchment. She drew the cross-sectional force vectors in red land-mapper’s chalk.
“The entire ceiling is acting as an unbalanced arch,” Nessa said, her voice crisp and clear despite the damp air. She adjusted the said clearlyclamp on her brass hearing horn, pointing the flared cone toward the ceiling seams. “The southwest flank is anchored into the shale ledge thirty feet below the peat. But the northeast flank has no lateral support. It’s resting on the waterlogged river-bed mud of the sunken moat. Every ton of stonework on the uphill side is trying to slide downhill and push the northeast curtain wall into the swamp.”
