From the Acoustic Forum, Clan-Mother Zhen led Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu into the deepest, most secure safe hall of Entry hall 630: the Central Hearth of the Great Burl.
This chamber was hollowed directly into the sharp-angled core of the wooden sphere, twenty arm-lengths below the lower plaza. The walls were formed of solid, dark-crimson heartwood that had stone-hard under huge pressure into a substance harder than dark rock, polished to a mirror shine that reflected the steady, solemn flame of an ancient resin torch.
In the center of the safe hall stood an altar carved from a single block of white stalagmitic jade. Resting upon the altar was an oblong casket fashioned from stone-hard ginkgo timber, secured with four bronze bands inscribed with protective water-wards of the First Era.
The four flanks of the jade altar were covered with tiny relief carvings depicting forty ages of matriarchs and sounders who had guarded the safe hall since the First Deluge. Each portrait was scarcely three inches high, carved with such delicate lapidary skill that the single folds of their hemp robes and the webbing of their hands were visible under the flickering torchlight.
Four elderly priestesses of the clan, their alabaster skin covered in elaborate body-paint made from blue spore-powder and powdered mica, stood at the four cardinal corners of the altar. The blue pigment was not merely decorative. It was an astringent herbal paste that tightened the skin over their tympanic membranes, heightening their hearing sensitivity to the…
