The descent into the roots of the continent was measured not in minutes, but in the deepening heat, the shifting deep-rock strata, and the rising air pressure against the ears.
The iron service cage rattled down the upright dark rock chimney on four braided steel cables, its balance weight winch whining with a rhythmic, clockwork groan seventy deep-water lengths above. For the first half-mile, the walls of the shaft were lined with dense sedimentary limestone, weeping slow, cold trickles of stone runoff that smelled of sulfur and wet lime. Then, as the cage dropped through the ancient land-wide fault line, the rock shifted suddenly to sheer, fluted channels of black fiery dark rock, cut three hundred years ago by high-pressure steam boring machines whose circular tooth-marks were still visible in the dark rock like the spiral ridges of a huge fossil horn.
Ren Vale stood at the southern rail of the cage, his fingers curled around the pitted iron mesh.
His lambskin apron was stiff with dried potash lye, his woolen sleeves rolled past his forearms. He showed the permanent violet ink-stains around his wrists. In his right hand, he held his four-inch carved mammoth bone awl, its silver tip catching the faint purple eerie glow that was beginning to bleed from the surrounding stone.
