The Rotunda of the Drowned Zodiac was eighty paces across, crowned by a shallow dome of green snake-like stone that had been polished until it reflected the dark water below like a stormy sky.
Around the outer rim of the pool, spaced at precise thirty-degree intervals, stood twelve giant stone statues representing the ancient star-patterns of the First Epoch. The Golden Ram, the Twin Serpents, the Iron Crab, the Winged Lion, the Scribe of the Scales, the Obsidian Scorpion, the Centaur Archer, the Horned Goat, the Water-Bearer, the Twin Sea monsters, the Celestial Tiger, and the Azure Ox.
Each statue was ten arm-lengths tall, carved from dark hard speckled rock that absorbed the lantern light like black felt. They stood with their feet underwater to the ankles in the circular basin, their stone faces turned upward toward the center of the dome where an opening three arm-lengths wide let down a shaft of cold, violet light from the upper spires.
When Qiao Ming stepped through the southern archway into the round hall, the water in the basin was boiling.
It wasn’t boiling from heat. The water was cold, holding the dark stone chill of the deep water tanks. It was boiling from gas. Millions of tiny, furious bubbles of sulfur dioxide and ozone were rising from the underwater stone floor, bursting at the surface with a nonstop, low-pitched hiss that filled the round hall with a pale, choking fog.
