On the way back down to the seasonal camp, they stopped at the moss-covered sinkhole for a closer look in the strengthening midday light.
Now that they knew Oru was not driving sheep into the pit, Ashaun and Chaska lay flat on the firm limestone rib and peered under the torn overhang while Ysabet held Chaska’s belt with her left hand.
“Give me the staff a second,” Chaska said, reaching back. She used the ferrule of Suth’s ash walking stick to scrape away a clump of wet moss from a horizontal crack three feet below the chiselled rim. Something dull gray and crystalline crumbled under the wood, followed by the metallic clink of an iron ring bolted into a drilled hole in the rock.
“Rock salt,” Chaska said, bringing up a pinch of coarse, gray-pink crystal on the tip of her glove and touching it with her tongue. “Not local spring salt, either. That’s pressed quarry cake from the lowland pans. And look here—there’s an iron guide-ring leaded into the stone, with a sheared brass pin still hanging from the eye.”
Ashaun reached down with her right hand, worked the loose iron ring back and forth until the rotten lead plug gave way, and pulled it up onto the grass along with a foot of severed six-strand braided steel wire. Attached to the wire was a small octagonal brass ferrule stamped with three interlocking pine cones.
