The descent into the lower pillared hall was measured not in miles, but in the slow, cooling weight of the air upon the skin.
Between the shattered thresholds of Entry hall 110 and the great inside halls of Entry hall 112 lay the Grand Terraced Stair. Sixty huge steps of unpolished green veined stone, each step two arm-lengths high and four paces broad. The stairs dropped sixty arm-lengths into the dark bowels of the foundation—ten deep-water lengths below the low-water mark of the outside ocean.
Down here, daylight was an impossibility. The only light came from the faint, spectral turquoise glow of deep-sea jellies clinging to the damp vaults, and the smoky yellow lanterns of rendered sheep fat carried by the refugee marshals. The air was cold, thick with the heavy stone thickness of deep water, smelling of wet limestone, crushed slate, and the ancient, undisturbed dust of three thousand years of darkness.
Qiao Ming walked barefoot down the center of the terrace, his strides long, measured, and silent. His calloused toes curled over the lip of each veined stone step, feeling the faint, rhythmic shudder of the ocean surge breaking against the outer retaining wall forty paces to the west. Across his shoulders lay his sixty-fathom knotted line. At his belt hung his slate ledger and his soapstone pencil, clicking softly against the copper rings of his land-mapper harness.
