The passage dropped into the Whispering Gallery. There the world became a nightmare of sound.
It was a vast, naturally eroded limestone rift, seventy paces wide and soaring upward into shadows that swallowed the glow of their lanterns. The walls were not smooth stone. They were honeycombed with millions of tiny sound flutes and natural sound-channels formed by underground water slow leak over tens of thousands of years.
Every draft that rose from the depths below whistled through the stone flutes, transforming the natural wind into a huge, echoing pipe organ.
And because Ren’s hearing channels were permanently tuned to the hum of the dead, every single flute in the cave screamed with the voices of the unpaid.
He took the silver... Three spoons and a silver basin... Stolen from the parlor...
The contract for the mill... Clause four... Clause four was forged!
Why did the water rise? The water gate gates were locked from the outside! Murder... It was murder!
Ren Vale... Hear our petition... Audit the blood... Audit the blood!
