The approach to the central spindle of the Primordial Loom needed crossing forty paces of green jade stone floor that rose in three shallow tiers above the round hall floor.
Qiao Ming walked barefoot across the milky white jade, the soles of his feet savoring the cool, waxy texture of the uncarved stone. In his right hand he carried his boxwood measuring rule. In his left, the seven-inch green rust needle sheathed in its oiled calfskin case. Yan Zhiqiu walked half a pace behind him, holding the Broken Slate before her like a shield of dark stone, her senses tuned to the sound shakes that hummed through the air. The green jade flags were clean, devoid of the salt-crusts and weed-stains that had fouled the lower galleries.
The central spindle of the loom was suspended between two massive brackets of uncorroded sky bronze, twelve arm-lengths above the green jade floor. It was a tube-shaped beam thirty arm-lengths in length, carved not from bronze or stone, but from a single, unbroken trunk of stone-hard World-Tree heart-wood. The grain of the wood was deep amber, shot through with golden resin channels that glowed from within with a soft, steady eerie glow.
Around this amber metal tube, millions of the taut, shimmering filaments of light came together, wrapping around the wood in a fine, detailed, tiny braid before dropping into the floor-channels.
