Wind In The City And Time In A Vault

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 3.

The witch-folk or City dwellers use hammers, chisels and a crude blowtorch to extract lengths of steel from a skyscraper. Carl says:

"'Piece by piece, they're ripping out the steel to sell to the tribes.' A shivering wind rippled about his words and blew them down the hollow canyon of the avenue." (p. 33)

On cue, an appropriately shivering wind accompanies and underlines Carl's words and even blows them through the wrecked city. Over the page, an entire paragraph articulates Carl's feelings:

"There was a huge sadness in it - the little men of today, gnawing apart the mighty works they no longer understood. In a few hundred years, or a few thousand, what did it matter? Nothing would be left, nothing but rubble and waving grass and the wild dogs howling where men had once lived." (p. 34)

That explains why this is a shivering, rather than, e.g., a soothing, wind.

"Howling" often means the end of civilization.

Shortly, they find the "TIME VAULT." (p. 35)

Owl thinks that time cannot be kept anywhere because:

"'Time's not a thing. It's a - well - it's time. Days and years.'" (ibid.)

Owl's units of time are natural, days and years, not artificial, minutes or hours.

Tom thinks that storing time would be "'...a very strong magic...'" (ibid.)

And it is although not in the way that he thinks.