The western whistling shelter was a stout, barrel-vaulted stone cabin ten paces square, built of massive granite blocks keyed together without mortar. Its thick walls were designed to shed the winter gales that swept across the plateau from the northwest. At the same time, its heavy, arched doorway faced southeast toward the lee of the mountain.
As Kezra Venn walked around the outer edge of the building. Her sounding rod tapped the flat stone slabs, Yseld Arken and Voss cleared the drift gravel from an open stone channel that circled the entire structure. The channel was eight inches wide and six inches deep, chiselled directly into the live granite of the plateau to carry snowmelt away from the footings.
“Look at this spreading cut,” Voss said. He pointed his pick at the bottom of the trench. “The builders didn’t bond the cabin to the plateau bedrock. They cut a level stone base sixteen paces square. They laid a two-inch bed of crushed fiery melted rock waste mixed with mutton grease. Then they set the foundation blocks on top. It’s a detached island. If the mountain shivers in an earthquake, the cabin slides an inch on the grease bed instead of cracking its vault.”
