The descent into the lower water tanks of Khor-Sula was like stepping into the gullet of a dead god.
Chief Assessor Malakor had insisted on escorting the ‘Royal Checker’ to inspect the physical public works of the Siphon Tower, with four heavily armed hired blades carrying iron lanterns and cocked heavy crossbows. Down a spiral stairs hacked through the black fiery dark rock they went. They dropped three hundred steps into the freezing, underground darkness beneath the central keep.
The air grew heavy, damp, and suffocatingly sweet. An unnatural, cloying humidity that reeked of copper, vinegar, rusted iron, and packed human sweat. Heavy bronze pipes ran along the curved stone walls. Their joints weeping was dark, oily water drops that dripped into stone trenches with a hollow, echoing clink.
At the bottom of the shaft opened the Great Siphon Hall.
Ren stepped onto the suspended iron walkway. He looked out across the vast cave, and his breath caught in his throat.
Suspended from the vaulted stone ceiling were five hundred iron cradles, arranged in ten nested circles around a massive central pillar of polished bronze piping. In each cradle hung a living human being. Men, women, and older children, clad in thin rags of gray canvas, their heads locked into rigid copper collars that were connected to branching rubber hoses.
