They went down the shaft at first light, which meant nothing anymore, because there wasn't any.
Selah went first and built as she walked.
A throat of ice, top to bottom, forty feet of shaft lined in a smooth unbroken bore, and it took everything she had in her arms and she did it in under four minutes because Dani's stopwatch said four minutes.
"Down," said Dani, at the top, with a whistle in her teeth and paper in her hand. "Positions. Mona's map, second chamber, west drain."
Nobody asked her to repeat anything.
That was the whole benefit of a woman who had spent a year making herself the only route information took.
◆◆◆◆
The chamber under the east yard was bigger than it had any right to be.
Four anchor points. Four closed loops. And past them, where the rock should have been rock, the floor of the world had gone soft and dark and open, and something was coming up through it without hurrying.
