High Adept Hornfels rarely emerged from the Vault, the last occasion having been the funeral rites of Marl"s uncle, the Baron Breccia Jaspil Gossan Gneiss.
For a moment, during the ceremony, Marl had come face to face with Adept Hornfels, and he had seen the old man recoil.
Not with the obvious hands-to-the-face, I-can"t-believe-the-evil-I-see, I"m-so-revolted,-I-feel-defiled kind of recoil, but more the mental withdrawal, the deep retreat, the what"s-happening-to-my-domains? type of recoil. Marl in his so recent vault into high society felt as though the rejection carried all the qualities of the former and was sensed by the assembled Stonevale nobility, their wagging tongues spreading the whispers among them with the virulence of a plague.
And here, at the entrance to the Vault of Sto
