The vaulted archway of Entry hall 677 did not open onto another row of stone pillars or clockwork gallery. It broke out into the upper rim of an empty underground pool so huge that the yellow beam of their horn lantern was fully lost in the hollow expanse. Kneeling in the center of the dry stone basin, four hundred arm-lengths high from its massive iron shins to its downcast brow, was the Iron Titan of the Western Marches.
Cast entirely from star-fallen iron alloyed with astral bronze, the titan was depicted as an armored warrior resting on his right knee, his massive hands clasped around the handle knob of an iron broadsword whose point was driven twenty deep-water lengths into the solid mountain stone. His head was bowed in an attitude of permanent, massive tiredness, his featureless iron helm turned toward the dry drainage channels below.
Qiao Ming walked along the pool floor toward the giant statue, his bare calloused feet leaving white, salt-edged tracks in the fine layer of dry red hematite dust that covered the granite paving. The sheer scale of the sculpture pressed against his senses like the weight of a rising tide. The titan’s kneeling knee was as tall as a four-story watchtower. His clasped fingers were thicker than ancient pine logs. And the rivets securing his shoulder pauldrons were as broad as wagon wheels.
