The stone-hard whale-bone doors did not give off the smell of carrion or old animal grease. Having soaked in bitter-salt water under titanic deep water pressure for thousands of years before being sealed behind airtight inner walls, every trace of organic marrow had been displaced by microcrystalline white spar-stone. That left behind an ivory-colored baked-clay that was colder and denser than statuary marble. When Qiao Ming rested his bare forehead against the central seam, he felt no shaking from the other side. There was only the total, unbending thickness of sixty arm-lengths of trapped mountain air.
Across the upright junction of the two leaves ran three level locking bars of hammered green rust bronze, each three inches thick and six inches wide. They were held in place by eight-sided lead bolts that passed through heavy hard speckled rock staples anchored directly into the massive stone doorposts. To prevent dampness and acidic vapor from piercing the internal keyways, the ancient engineers had poured molten beeswax mixed with crushed pine pitch into every joint. That created a hermetic seal that had preserved the locking pins in a state of suspended youth.
Yan Zhiqiu set the horn lantern upon the floor flags between Qiao Ming’s bare feet. The warm yellow flame threw long, dancing shadows up the carved surface of the doors, lighting up the bas-reliefs that covered the bone panels. The carvings did not depict heroic emperors or sky dragons. They showed sky-high land-mappers standing on high promontories. They measured the gradual…
