In the damp rows of stone pillars of Entry halls 020 through 040. There, the black salt water of the outer basins met the drainage drain tubes, the stone bases had been crusted with twelve thousand seasons of marine vegetation.
Thick, leathery ribbons of black bladderwrack hung like dark tapestries from the sculpted stone stands. Dense mats of pale green sea-lettuce carpeted the underwater stepped stone bases. And in the shadow of the fluted pillars, colonies of hardened salt water sponges clung to the stonework. During the long weeks of the retreat, mortal refugee healers had viewed this vegetation with disgust, warning their people that to touch the black weeds was to invite the “kelp-rot”—a skin-burning ulceration of the skin caused by the packed iodine and sulfur salts of the deep-sea salt water. Ignorance had turned an abundant larder of pharmaceutical minerals into a dreaded source of pestilence.
Now, as the amber warmth of the awakened statues heated the water in the lower basins, two semi-clear spirits in the saffron-dyed linen coats of royal alchemists stood waist-deep in the steaming shallows of Entry hall 028.
Their stone stands identified them as Master Yao and Physician Bu of the Third Dynasty. In their glowing hands they held curved copper scrapers and shallow wooden sieves woven from boiled willow strips. Around their necks hung strands of dried sea-beans and tiny apothecary scales cast from silver-gilt brass.
