The Gallery of Whispers was a sound maze disguised as a royal hall.
Carved during the Second Epoch from a single stratum of dense, homogeneous grey limestone, the gallery formed a perfect semi-elliptical vault seventy paces long and twelve paces wide. The ceiling was smooth as polished glass, devoid of ribs, coffers, or decorative relief. Of its sharp-angled curve. Because of that, any sound produced at the southern focal point—even the rustle of a silk sleeve or the click of a fingernail—traveled along the curved arc of the ceiling and packed at the northern focal point with fourteen times its original sound energy.
To a man standing anywhere else in the room, the sound seemed to come from the empty air directly beside his ear.
Eight elite scouts from the Azure Firmament Sect entered the southern threshold of the gallery. They didn’t wear the clumsy scale-armor of the tunnel diggers. They were clad in tight-fitting suits of dark, oiled eel-skin that muffled the sound of their movements, armed with short composite recurves and repeating dart-crossbars. Their boots were soled with soft felt, stepping across the smooth limestone floor with the stealth of hunting panthers.
Their squad-leader, a sharp-featured fighter named Song who possessed a cultivated wind-ear spirit vein, paused at the third course of pavers. He raised two fingers, signaling his men to freeze.
