The pale limestone ramp climbed through the gloom like the hardened spine of a drowned giant beast. He curved in broad, deliberate terraces along the inner outer rim of Entry hall 902. Every hundred paces, a massive stone support prop of dressed grey dark rock jutted outward from the curving wall, anchoring the roadway against the huge outward-pulling heave of the waters churning in the central well below.
Qiao Ming walked the outer curb of the ramp. There, the safety stone railing had long since fallen away into the deep pit. His bare feet gripped the damp stone with practiced intimacy, his toes spreading across the pitted banded limestone to read the micro-fractures born of the rising flood. The stone here was weeping cold sweat. The deep water pressure from the underwater lower vaults was forcing groundwater through the tiny pores of the stonework, leaving long trails of white crystal-clear salt that felt like coarse sand beneath his calloused soles.
Beside him moved the column. It stretched upward into the darkness and downward into the fog-shrouded spray of the sump, two unbroken ribbons of human endurance. Men with shoulders raw from hemp towing-harnesses hauled wagons laden with sacks of roasted barley and dry seed-grain. Old women carried bronze fire bowls filled with glowing charcoal wrapped in layers of damp sheep-wool to preserve the embers. Children walked with their fingers looped through the belts of their elders, their eyes wide and quiet, mesmerized by the slow, rhythmic swinging of the animal…
