The door yielded with the slow, shuddering protest of waterlogged oak torn from rusted bronze hinges.
Tomas held his stance on the spruce timber raft, his boots braced against the cross-timbers. His right arm drove the long bronze pinch-bar deeper into the seam, using his shoulder as a balance weight. Beside him, Sile drove a second glowing-bronze wedge into the widening gap with heavy, measured thumps of the rawhide mallet.
With a wet, sucking gasp, the three-inch-thick oak leaf popped free from its granite rebate. A wave of trapped air rolled out across the spruce raft. It was cold, damp, and smelling intensely of river slime, drowned stone, and the sour chemical bite of sulfur.
Nessa held her mica lantern to the gap. The pale yellow flame inside the brass gauze wire flickered once, stretched upward, and burned steady.
“Air is moving,” Nessa said, her voice muffled behind her vinegar-soaked linen breathing mask. She lifted her dual-cone hearing horn, angling the flared bell into the dark opening. “The foul fog trench is pulling. The draft is drawing inward from our backs and circulating through the upper hall. We have air-flow.”
Tomas set his pinch-bar down on the raft and unhooked his second lantern from his harness. He peered into the breach.
