The western aqueduct of Entry hall 130 was a massive channel sixty arm-lengths wide, carved during the Second Dynasty to carry the freshwater runoff of the Upper Terraces into the central agricultural basins.
Its floor was not laid with ordinary flat stone slabs. It was composed of two hundred huge massive stone slabs of dark veined stone, each eight arm-lengths square and three arm-lengths thick, mounted upon massive high-pressure rockers of cast sea-bronze. Under normal conditions, the floor sloped downward at a gentle two-degree grade, allowing water to glide smoothly toward the lower gardens.
Down this dry, huge avenue charged the personal reserve of the Pyre-Furnace Court: two thousand heavy shock-cavalry mounted upon clockwork void-striders. Two-legged iron beasts driven by humming spirit-coal boilers, their talons tipped with diamond-hard hardened carbon-iron claws designed to grip any stone surface.
At the head of the cavalry rode Grand Elder Yue Feng, his scarlet silk robes whipping in the fierce draft created by the striders’ exhaust vents. In his hands he held a huge spirit-spear twelve feet long, its tip wreathed in roaring crimson flames that cast dancing, terrifying shadows across the ancient relief-carvings of the aqueduct walls.
“Bypass the sunken basin!” Yue Feng roared through his helmet visor. “The ditch-vermin have exhausted their mud! Take the western aqueduct straight into the refugee nurseries of Entry hall 135! Kill the Mapmaker on sight!”
