The road of warm stone ended in a huge trident.
In the center of Entry hall 830, three leagues north of the Great Portal, the single dark rock channel swelled into a wide circular plaza forty paces across, surfaced with six-sided tiles of black fiery stone that radiated an inviting, humid warmth. In the center of the plaza rose an eight-sided surveying pillar of dark bronze, five arm-lengths high, its shaft engraved with hundreds of fine, graduated lines that intersected at precise sharp-angled angles.
From the northern outer edge of the plaza, the dark rock road divided into three distinct prongs that radiated outward across the vast, blue plain of the Glacial Nave like the ribs of an open fan.
The left prong curved away to the northwest, heading toward the huge air-flow drain pits beneath the outer mountain wall. The right prong veered northeast, leading toward the backup statuary crypts of the royal ministers. While the central prong ran straight as an arrow into the dead north, disappearing into the sapphire gloom toward the distant island where Empress Yan Huaisu sat upon her throne.
Qiao Ming halted at the foot of the bronze pillar. His bare feet stepped across the six-sided tiles, his toes drinking in the rich, fiery heat that rose through the joints.
