The descent into the foundations of Crown-Reach felt like walking backward through two hundred years of royal history.
Tomas Reed, with Hester Reed and Sile Rook, dropped the circular granite stairs beneath the Great Appellate Registry in the heart of the capital. Three hundred steps of cold, damp stone wound downward through the bedrock of the High Ridge, far below the city sewers, below the ancient wine cellars, below even the forgotten crypts of the First Dynasty.
Sile Rook carried a heavy iron storm lantern, its yellow light lighting up walls of ancient giant cut stone that had been mortared with crushed fiery tuff in the days of King Alden I. Sile walked with a slight limp, his left foot supported by a stiff leather boot with an iron instep-plate. But his stride was firm and his tall body-shield was slung over his back.
At the bottom of the three hundredth step lay a vast, vaulted ante-chamber of black dark rock.
Dominating the northern wall of the chamber was the portal.
It was a huge blast door of solid bell-bronze, twenty feet high, twelve feet wide, and six inches thick, heavy with upright ribs of cold-rolled steel and secured by twelve four-inch locking bolts that extended into the bedrock walls. Across the face of the bronze, deeply engraved in the unbending characters of the First Promise, ran the master stone carving:
