The Arch of the Four Scribes was forty arm-lengths of solid, unreinforced dark rock vaulting that spanned the narrow neck between Entry halls 527 and 528.
It took its name from the four huge relief sculptures carved into the upright jambs of the portal: four First Epoch scholars seated at writing-desks, their stone hands holding slate styluses poised above open ledgers. For twelve thousand years, those stone eyes had looked down upon the quiet procession of the tides. Now, they looked down upon three clockwork drill-platforms hauled by sixty hired blades in iron-heavy leather armor.
The drill-platforms were tough machines. Each carriage was mounted on four massive iron wheels three paces in width. It carried a said clearlycrane-arm fitted with five rotary diamond core-heads driven by high-tension coiled clockwork springs. The springs—forged from thick bands of star-fallen steel twelve inches wide—whined with a high-pitched, metal hum that set the teeth on edge as they slowly released their stored striking force through bronze reduction gears.
Zhu Heling’s convoy had been forced into this backup avenue by the flooding of Entry hall 522 and the disappearance of his scout vanguard in the Gallery of Whispers.
The hired blades marched in rigid, nervous silence, their weapons held ready, their eyes darting toward the dark ceiling. At the center of the convoy walked Captain Bao, a scarred veteran of the coastal sieges, his left hand resting on the handle of a broad-bladed dao, his right hand gripping a potion-made flare-tube.
