The crawlway beneath Stone Beta was twenty-two inches high, wet with freezing lime-water. Then he roofed by forty tons of suspended pale limestone.
Tomas Reed went in on his belly, his ash pack frame left behind on the gravel floor of the Cauldron. Across his chest was strapped only his lead-lined ledger case and a light leather mechanic’s pouch containing three forged iron cold-chisels, a six-pound copper-faced mallet. A brass animal fat lamp whose glass bullseye threw a narrow, yellow beam into the damp fissure.
Behind him, a thirty-fathom coil of tarred flax climbing line was hitched around his waist with an alpine bowline, paying out through the gravel as Sile Rook held the running end at the mouth of the gap.
“Animal fat lamp forward,” Tomas whispered into the dark.
His voice didn’t carry. It was smothered instantly by the choking mass of stone above and below him. The rock smelled of wet limestone flour, iron rust, and the bitter, metal tang of cold cave silt. Every movement needed a slow, coordinated set of physical effort: digging his iron-shod boot toes into the gravel bed. It pushed forward three inches, resting his ribs against the cold stone. Then it hauled his pelvis through the pinch-point.
