The Snake Stone

76

It took Yashim a moment to focus his senses as he stepped through the doorway. Outside he had been hot, breathless, caught in the dust and the heat of sloping alleyways where the ground balled in broken rubble beneath your feet and the sounds of the city were never far away.

But as his eyes adjusted to the faint light from overhead, his ears were tuned to a new and gentler sound, the bubbling of water and its liquid echo from the walls and roof. The sweat cooled on his skin, and he raised his arms to embrace the air. When he breathed deeply, it felt as if the air were cleansing him from the inside. He felt an urge to laugh, to step forward through the dim light and plunge himself into the glistening black pool that was spread out at his feet.

Yashim brought his arms across his chest, rubbing his hands up and down.

The big tank was fed, as far as he could see, by a spigot set in the wall, and at various points around its edge the water shimmered over into smaller tanks, like basins. In the great tank the water seemed black until it spilled across the lip: this is how the water is divided, he thought, observing the way the basins were set against the walls, each basin higher than the next, each one letting the water gurgle across its lip to the basin below.

Yashim went forward cautiously, balancing on the broad rim of the great tank.

He glanced back at the spigot. Water was pouring from it in a steady stream. It seemed impossible that a single spout like this could serve so many people across the huge city-the standpipes and the fountains. Unfaltering, never-ending, the stream twisted and flexed as if it were alive. Looking around, Yashim could see the small openings set in the walls where the flow was channeled out across Istanbul, a series of little black mouths, like snake holes. Some of them were stopped with rags. Some were open.

Yashim shuddered involuntarily. It was cold in the siphon.

On the lowest basin of them all, about six feet beneath the tank where Yashim was standing, lay the mouth of a low tunnel, far larger than all the rest, into which the water skimmed so broad and shallow that its motion was imperceptible.

Yashim descended from basin to basin, treading on the rims, feeling the air grow colder with every step.

The tunnel puzzled him. Even if all the outflows, the little pipes, were blocked by rags, the tunnel would never come close to overflowing. The largest amount of water that could flow down it came from the spigot above. He glanced up. Its discharge was no thicker than a man’s arm.

As he watched, a silver ball dropped from the spigot and floated gently across the great tank.

And at the same moment a great shaft of light illuminated the tank and the basins of water, and sent huge ripples of their reflection across the walls and roof.

The door swung open.

And in the eruption of the glare, Yashim did the only thing he could.

He ducked down and made a dive for the tunnel.