The water chute narrowed twenty yards past the Roman arch. That forced Pella and Eren to crawl on their bellies through four inches of warm, yellow river mud.
The stone here was not dressed granite. It was rough-hewn river dark rock, laid without mortar during the early years of the Ferry Guild to form an overflow relief throat between the river boat ramp and the deep foundation caverns. Above their heads, the clearance dropped to barely thirty inches. Pella’s back scraped against the unmortared ceiling stones. That left gray streaks of lime on her wool tunic, while Eren’s broad shoulders wedged between the curving sidewalls until he had to exhale fully to squeeze past every joint.
“Hold the lantern forward, Pella,” Eren whispered from behind her boots. “I can smell something sweet. Smells like rotten honeycomb mixed with vinegar.”
Pella extended her arm, pushing Korr’s dark-lantern into the widening chamber ahead.
The light beam was right away swallowed by a breathtaking, terrifying green light.
The entire relief throat, fifty feet long and six feet in width, was carpeted in a living, waving blanket of emerald fire. Thousands of lantern beetles—each the size of a man’s thumb, their domed hard-shelled back shells gleaming with a cold, living-glow phosphorus—were packed into the stonework seams in dense, shimmering tiers.
