The air grew steadily colder as they dropped the spiral stairwell of the second tier. They dropped past layers of tightly packed limestone and ancient stone-hard clay.
The Second Circle was not an open hall. It was a canyon of dead collateral.
Ren paused at the foot of the stairwell. His left hand gripped the stone railing while his right thumb rested against his ivory awl. Before him stretched a gallery four hundred paces long and eighty paces wide. It was flanked on either side by towering stone shelves that rose thirty feet toward the groined vaulting above. Stacked horizontally across the shelves, packed tighter than wine casks in a royal warehouse, were thousands of lead-sheathed stone sarcophagi.
Each sarcophagus was bound with three strands of thick copper wire, twisted together at the center and secured with a heavy seal of purple dead-house wax. Stamped into every seal was an inventory number and a town servant contract debt claim.
Lien Number 44,912: Estate of Tomas the Cartwright. Collateral: Physical Remains. Term: Endless.
Lien Number 44,913: Estate of Sela of the Low Weavers. Collateral: Physical Remains and Lineage Debt.
The Phantom Murmurs inside Ren’s skull surged with sudden, claustrophobic violence. It was as if every lead-bound casket were exhaling directly into his ears.
