Aliyah's instrument room held six monitoring stations, each calibrated to a specific Keystone, with the seventh station positioned at the center of the room facing the Gate through a narrow window cut through the stone wall at precisely the right angle. The instruments were not mechanical in the ordinary sense. They were material objects that responded to the specific type of pressure the Gate exerted on the sealing compound, translating that pressure into visual readings through a system that Aliyah had spent years refining.
Vor'gath stood in the doorway of the instrument room for a full minute before he came inside.
Kael watched him from behind. He watched the elder's posture, the specific quality of stillness that Vor'gath adopted when he was working, and he noted that the stillness was different here than it had been in Yohan. In Yohan, the stillness had been relaxed. Here it was the stillness of someone managing something. Holding something at a distance.
