Across the wide terraces of Entry halls 060 through 080. There, the stone rows of stone pillars opened upon the broad embankments of the Grand Silt Canal, twilight in the underground world was marked by the dimming of the ceiling mosses.
The eerie-glowing pale green algae that lined the high vaults faded into a deep, meditative violet. That left the lower halls lit up solely by the warm amber fires of forty-eight thousand hearths.
Along two miles of canal quay, the work of ten thousand hands was reaching its quiet, sacred completion.
For three days, mortal artisans and awakened spirit craftsmen had worked together to prepare the vessels of light for the coming night. Hundreds of bamboo bundles, salvaged from the ceiling scaffoldings and storage barges, had been split into slender, flexible ribs no thicker than a swallow’s quill. Ten thousand circular frames, each twelve inches across, lay neatly arranged on mats of woven reed.
Over these light bamboo skeletons, sheets of white mulberry paper, stiffened with boiled pine resin and brushed with sheep fat, had been glued with paste made from boiled rice starch.
In the center of each float rested a shallow clay pot cup containing three ounces of purified sheep fat and a braided wick of dried sea-grass. They were simple vessels, costing nothing that could not be gathered from the wreckage of the drowned world. Yet each lantern carried a weight far heavier than bronze or jade.
