The ward tasted his oath, found it good, and the black slab swung inward on silent hinges, a hundred tonnes moving like a garden gate.
"That should not have worked," Elowen said. Her voice had gone up half an octave since the palace. "The wards are keyed to the... Oh..."
The deep road ran wide and true, its floor grooved smooth by cart wheels, cold lamps of dwarven make still burning a patient blue along the walls.
Twice the wide way ended in purposeful ruin, whole junctions dropped with engineering precision, and twice Thorgar turned without pausing into narrower passages faced in royal seal-stone, patrol routes built for crown business alone, untouched.
"They dropped the trade roads..." Elowen whispered, running her eyes over the sheared rock. "They prepared for this. So how..."
