Twenty-eight hours had passed since the fourteen hundred fighters of the Conclave entered the Northern Sluice.
In the Peristyle of the Twelve Mirrors—a vast circular court framed by twelve concave slabs of polished black hard speckled rock—the leftovers of the three armies were slowly grinding to a complete, exhausted halt.
The water on the floor had dropped to six inches during the low slack interval, leaving behind a greasy layer of black silt, rotting kelp, and hundreds of discarded iron items. Rusted spear-tips, broken helmet buckles, soaked leather pouches, and shattered torch-butts. The air was foul with the reek of stale sulfur-salt water, wet wool, and the bitter copper stench of human panic.
The proud expeditionary force had ceased to exist as a military body.
Groups of thirty and forty soldiers lay slumped against the wet bases of the columns, their bodies wrapped in soaked cloaks that smelled of mildew and stale sweat. Their breath came in shallow, wheezing rasps in the freezing, humid air. Most had discarded their heavy breastplates and iron shin guards hours ago, unable to carry the fifty-pound burden of dead metal through the endless, circling halls. Their bare, salt-puffed feet were swollen to twice their natural size, covered in raw red ulcers where the gritty quartz sand had ground between skin and wet leather.
