The air beyond the bronze gate smelled of sulfur. The black glass gave way to rough limestone, and soon the passage opened onto a ledge above a gorge. Two hundred feet below, a slow river of magma gave off enough light to paint the stalactites red.
The ledge was barely four feet wide. Water ran down the wall and pooled in shallow patches along it. The outside edge dropped straight into the gorge. He had sixty paces to go before he reached the next hall.
Pei Jing stopped with his back to the wall. Beneath the smell of sulfur he caught a whiff of the rancid fat the men had used on their leather. He waited until his eyes adjusted to the glare and looked farther along the ledge. Three men were crouched around the bend, and a fourth lay high in a crack in the rock. They had rigged the ledge with traps. Most men would hurry across to get away from the heat. Anyone who got caught would be easy to strip of a storage ring.
He left the Cloud-Splitter on his back. The blade had three cracks already, and the slide down the shaft had done it no favors. He put his thumb to the catch on his wrist guard instead. The catch worked on its own. The old Ghost-Shadow darts needed no qi, so the array would have no surge to follow. He kept the Thunder-Astral set packed.
