The hall between Entry hall 126 and Entry hall 128 was a funnel of black dark rock.
Here, sixty arm-lengths beneath the high galleries of the Ark, the walls narrowed to a width of barely four arm-lengths. It was flanked on either side by smooth, unfluted piers of fiery stone that rose without decoration to a flat ceiling of giant stone hard speckled rock slabs. The floor was dry, untouched by the stale pools of the lower entry halls, covered only by a thin, powdery skin of white salt-frost that crunched softly under Qiao Ming’s calloused bare soles.
The dark rock of the pier was smooth, polished by forty ages of land-mappers who had rested their shoulders against its flanks while waiting for the tide-slack. It felt like cold iron against Qiao Ming’s shoulder-blades, drawing out the leftover warmth of his body and replacing it with the deep, stone stillness of the bedrock.
His bare feet were planted firmly on the flat stone slabs, his splayed toes gripping the narrow mortar joint between two slabs of dark hard speckled rock. In this position, he was invisible to anyone approaching from the southern ducts. The deep flutings of the pier cast a thick triangle of total shadow that swallowed his oilskin coat, his leather tool-harness, and his unlit horn lantern.
