The air that rose from the check pit carried no sulfur and no marsh rot. But it was cold enough to make Kezra’s eyelashes stiffen.
Voss pulled a short animal fat candle stub from his coat pocket, stuck it firmly onto a small lead weight. Then he twisted a length of fine copper wire around the base. He struck a spark from his flint, watched the yellow flame steady. Then he slowly lowered the candle down into the dark box-shaped shaft.
Ten feet down, the flame burned bright and straight. At twenty feet—near the eight-pace reference floor of a standard Plot parcel—the animal fat flame remained yellow and upright. It drew slightly toward an unseen draft crack in the lower rock.
“Good air,” Voss muttered, his voice echoing back from the stone collar. “No choke-damp, no dead pockets. The old drainage run must still breathe through the lower scree. A miner can work down there without his lungs filling up with black frost.”
He snubbed the candle on the pit rim, knotted a coil of three-quarter-inch hemp around a stout iron ring leaded into the curb stone. Then he dropped the bitter end down the hole. Testing the rope with his full weight, the miner swung his legs over the lip and walked himself down the upright shaft with the easy balance of a man who had spent thirty years dropping winzes.
