The entrance to the western fissure was masked by an artfully built dry-stone screen.
Tomas and Sile scrambled down from the watching shelf and waded through the ankle-deep gravel of the drainage trench. At the base of the cliff, fifty paces to the right of the huge rubble plug, the limestone wall appeared solid at first glance. An upright face of shattered pale limestone covered in loose scree and powdery lime dust.
Sile stopped before a five-foot outcropping that projected from the wall. He didn’t touch the rock. He knelt on the stones and held his lantern three inches above the gravel.
“Look at the mortar lines,” Sile said. His finger pointed to a level joint near the ground. “There’s no mortar. These stones were fitted dry, using small shale chocks to level the courses. But look at the dressing. The face of the rock is weathered and stained with lichen. But the bedding joints are fresh, cut with a flat chisel within the last twenty years.”
Tomas stepped forward, setting his shoulder against the outcropping.
He braced his boots against the gravel, locked his left wrist brace tight. Then he pushed with forty pounds of force. The stone didn’t budge. He shifted his grip. It slid his fingers into an upright crevice behind the outcropping, and pulled outward.
