The smell of wild mountain heather and summer honey filled the freezing dark rock vault.
Qiao Ming stood knee-deep in the receding sludge, his shovel discarded against the wall. He knelt before the underwater shelf of living dark rock, his hands trembling slightly as he brushed away the final shroud of black magnetic iron silt. His calloused fingers touched the surface of the metal tube. The metal was cold, dense, and remarkably heavy, its outside skin covered in a delicate green patina that had formed beneath the water hundreds of years ago.
The ancient object was three arm-lengths long and seven inches in width, cast from the finest grade of naval glowing-bronze. At each end, heavy threaded caps of cast brass were screwed into machined collars. The seams were sealed with a quarter-inch layer of pale, semi-clear beeswax that had resisted both the acid-burning salt water and the grinding abrasion of the silt.
He brought his horn lantern close to the seal. The wax was not ordinary animal fat or lamp-wax. It was virgin beeswax harvested from the high alpine apiaries of the First Epoch, blended with powdered amber and crushed frankincense to prevent bacterial rot. When his fingernail pressed into the rim, the wax gave slightly, tough and fragrant, releasing that startling burst of ancient floral perfume into the damp, rotten-egg air of the channel.
