The Great Cloister was the widest hall in the entire underground complex, spanning one hundred and twenty arm-lengths from the eastern roofed porch to the western retaining terrace.
In the center of this cavernous expanse rose the huge effigy of the Third Patriarch.
Seventy arm-lengths tall, carved from a single, unbroken spur of black olivine dark rock, the patriarch stood upright like a lighthouse rising out of a stormy sea. His stone cloak was draped over his broad shoulders, hanging down to the floor in thirty-six deep, upright flutes. It was narrow, curved channels cut into the stone, each two arm-lengths wide and three feet deep, polished to a mirror-like finish that reflected the dark water lapping around the stone stand.
Down the central avenue of the cloister advanced the pride of the Conclave siege train: two Mountain-Breaker steam rams.
These war machines were monstrous constructions of cast bronze and riveted boiler-plate, each thirty paces long, mounted upon twelve iron-shod wheels. Inside each machine’s hull roared a high-pressure spirit-coal fire, heating copper boilers that drove massive air-powered pistons. At the prow of each ram hung a twenty-foot beam of solid star-fallen iron, capped with a horned dragon-head designed to shatter city gates and castle walls with explosive clockwork force.
