The lower water chute opened onto a wide shelf of black wet stone overlooking the subterranean lake.
Commander Veyt had not needed a masonry tower to hang Azhrak’s clapper. Her engineers had used the broken winches and haul-cables from Edris’s basin rig, slinging them from four limestone pillars rising out of the water so the twelve-foot black clapper hung bare ten feet above the lake. The vaulted roof and the mineral lake itself were the bell.
Along the gravel shore, twenty-four soldiers stood at even intervals with pikes grounded and bare palms pressed flat against low ribs of black stone running into the water.
None of them spoke. Their chests rose and fell in a single slow rhythm—in for four, hold for two, out for four—matching the ripples spreading from the cable anchors. Where a soldier had a bandaged forearm or a raw scrape from the earlier rockfall, his face was slack and untroubled, smoothed out by the shared breath that kept fear away while making it harder for any single foot to step out of line.
Ten paces from the main winch stanchion, Precentor Edris Keth sat on the wet gravel with his wrists bound behind an iron cable-post and his splinted left leg stretched stiffly in front of him.
