The chamber looked like it had once been a natural cavern, then later carved into more practical dimensions. The ceiling was untouched from the original cave, but the floor had been worked flat, with grooves cut into it for traction in the wet.

The chamber’s most arresting feature was the back wall, which wasn’t a wall at all. A torrent of water, blasted in one side of the room and out the other, through a tunnel taller and deeper than the chamber itself. The whole chamber looked oddly like a subway station, with the rushing water in place of a train.

There was a fence of vertical bars in front of the water, like a safety rail going floor to ceiling. There was a gate in the middle of the fence, although Jason could not imagine a reason to go through it. The water looked like it would rip off any limb someone was foolish enough to shove into it.

Velocity kept the water on course instead of spilling into the room; gravity wouldn’t win out until the water escaped the mountain. More than a little spray still escaped, filling the chamber with wet mist. It left the walls and floor slick with water, and quickly made Jason and Hiram the same.

The water was also the source of the blue light. Either there were powerful magic lamps behind it, or the water had its own luminescence. Jason would have asked Hiram, but any attempt to talk would be futile over the sound of water.

Hiram went to the side of the chamber, where Jason noticed a glazed window set into the wall. Through the window was a second chamber, cut deeper into the mountain. Inside, a young man in a comfortable chair was giving them a wave.

There was a metal door next to the window, which Hiram opened and led Jason though. Beyond was a small antechamber, barely big enough to hold both men. A lamp was set firmly into the wall next to another metal door, which Hiram didn’t open. With a door between them and the main chamber, the din from the water was greatly reduced. Jason noticed that there seemed to some kind of seal around the door to keep the moisture out.

“Just wait a moment,” Hiram said.

Jason looked about the tiny room, but there wasn’t much to see. He spotted neat arrays of fingernail-sized holes in the floor and ceiling. As he was looking at them, hot, dry air blasted from them like a giant blow dryer.

“Close your eyes,” Hiram shouted over the rushing air. “The air will dry them out.”

Jason did as instructed, waiting around half a minute as the air dried out his clothes and hair.

“It draws the dry desert air from the other side of the mountain,” Hiram explained, “with a little bit of magic to help it dry faster.”