The frozen stillness bubble tasted of dead hundreds of years, cold ozone, and ash. But to Ren Vale’s ruined throat, the unpressurized air inside the vault had been pure poison.
Ren knelt upon the freezing flat stone slabs of the Central Sanctum, his knees digging into crushed dark rock. His chest heaved in ragged spasms. Every breath rattled with the wet scrape of hyper-dense deep-sea salt water. The stone-soaked fluid Deep-Diver Ren had forced down his gullet moments before to stave off dysbaric collapse. Tiny blood vessels throbbed with white-hot needles where cold air had tried to tear his flesh.
“Steady the valve, boy,” Deep-Diver Ren grunted.
The fifteenth summon knelt beside him, reeking of whale animal fat, deep-sea silt, and salt water-soaked wool. The smuggler’s scarred fingers tightened the knurled brass thumbscrews of a heavy collar clamped around Ren’s throat. Deep-Diver’s faceplate was swung open on its hinge. He showed a stubbled jaw and pale green eyes adapted to lightless chasms.
“Don’t spit the wash,” Deep-Diver ordered, his gravelly voice sounding like river stones in an iron chute. “Your alveoli are stripped raw. The dry air in this tomb tried to suck your lungs inside out because your blood belongs to six thousand deep-water lengths now. Swallow the salt water, or you drown on dry air before we clear the archway.”
