The Crypt Chapel of Saint Mark was built into the western foundations of the Great Sky-Spire, its heavy barrel-vaulted ceiling resting directly upon the huge granite footings that anchored the tower to the valley bedrock.
It was a dim, damp safe hall that smelled of stale frankincense, lamp oil. The cold, stone dampness that seeped continuously through the mortar joints. At midday, the only light came from two narrow slit-windows cut through twelve feet of solid stonework. It cast pale, dusty beams across the uneven limestone floor. The air was so heavy with moisture that saltpeter bloomed across the lower wall courses in white, woolly crystals that crunched like dry snow under Tomas’s boots.
Father Mark sat in an oak wainscot chair beside a small charcoal fire bowl, his gnarled hands wrapped around a clay pot bowl of thin barley broth. At eighty-two, the old priest was nearly deaf and walked with two sticks. But his memory of the Spire’s construction was clearer than any parchment in the High court.
“I was a boy of twelve when the first foundation stones were hauled from the river,” Father Mark said, his voice whistling through dry lips like wind through autumn reeds. “I carried water to the stonecutters. They were good men from the High Karst, master masons who knew how to bed stone on its natural quarry plane. But when they reached the second tier, the old King died, and the money ran short. The council brought in contract overseers from…
