A foul, choking stench of burning coal-tar, pitch, and sulfur filled the Great Nave.
At the western entrance, beneath the triple triumphal arches of the First Dynasty, the Conclave engineers had deployed forty wheeled iron fire bowls. Huge bellows, pumped by teams of eight sweating soldiers, blew blasts of forced air into piles of sulfur-soaked pitch-cakes. Dense, oily black smoke poured from the iron vents, rolling across the floor in greasy billows before rising toward the high stone vaults eighty arm-lengths overhead.
“Smoke them out!” Zhu Heling’s command echoed down the nave through a sound horn. His voice was hoarse, ragged with tiredness and mounting rage. “The rebel archers are roosting in the high window row niches! Smoke them until they drop like blind crows! Cover the statues in soot! If we can’t quarry the idols, we will choke the air until no man can draw breath in this cursed vault!”
The black smoke surged through the lower aisles, coating the fluted red stone columns in a greasy layer of black carbon. The soot settled over the carved stone stands, obscuring the ancient tide-tables, turning the white limestone reliefs into dark, charred shapes.
High on the eastern gallery, sixty arm-lengths above the floor, Yan Zhiqiu stood behind the stone railing of the Fourth Triforium.
