The air on Level Three was an unbreathable white fog. It wasn’t water vapor, but millions of tiny, razor-sharp specks of crushed hard black rock quartz suspended in the stale, damp air of the drift. Within ten paces of leaving the cage, Tomas felt the dust coating his tongue with a dry, bitter chalkiness that made his throat ache and burned his nostrils like lye.
The drift was fourteen feet wide and ten feet high, carved directly out of the dark, dense granite of Mount Sunder. Along the ceiling, a six-inch iron pipe carried tightly packed air from the surface compressors, hissing and leaking at every rusted pipe rim, sending cold jets of greasy water drops down the rock walls.
Dozens of stonecutters were working along the rock face fifty yards down the drift. The noise was an ear-splitting barrage of air-powered drill hammers and hand splitters that echoed off the granite walls with the violence of a nonstop landslide. Clouds of white dust billowed from the drill holes. It caught the yellow glare of open-flame grease pots that sputtered on iron pins driven into the rock.
Tomas pulled his linen neckerchief up over his nose and mouth, his eyes watering from the dust. Beside him, Nessa took a clean silk sponge from her coat pocket, moistened it with water from her canteen, and tied it securely over her lower face, breathing through the damp fibers.
