The impact struck the bedrock beneath their boots with a shuddering, violent blast. CLANG-CRASH. Fifty feet above their heads, the great counterweighted drop-gate that sealed Tier Three from the upper archives had dropped into its granite doorstep, its four-inch square iron bars plunging six inches deep into the dressed limestone sockets. A cloud of ancient, powdery lime dust and dried black mold spores billowed out from the ceiling joints, catching the yellow beam of the dark-lantern and making all three of them cough into their woolen collars.
The sound rolled through the underground chambers like muffled thunder. It echoed down the long, uncatalogued bays of decaying parchment before dying into a heavy, choking silence. From somewhere high above, on the far side of eighty feet of solid granite and iron, came the muffled, grinding scrape of an iron bolt being shot home into a triple-throw lock. It was followed by the retreating footsteps of Orson Pell and his two court guards.
Tomas didn’t shout. He didn’t waste breath rattling the distant landing grille. He knew the King’s Bench was built in the reign of the first Alden. Just then, the lower vaults were designed not merely as document repositories, but as fireproof, floodproof underground redoubts capable of withstanding siege. The drop-gate was not a decorative parish gate. It was forged from two tons of Swedish bar-iron, balanced against a heavy stone balance weight box that could only be raised by a geared crank winch in the Upper High court guardroom.
