Ackerman stood still in amazement. Then he extinguished the stillburning

Coleman, walked back to the front of the tent and noticed the

beans boiling over. He removed them from the stove, then found a flashlight,

basic supplies in case he became stuck, a rope and a digital camera.

He walked back to the ladder to climb toward his destiny.

Once through the opening, it was like Ackerman had climbed into

an attic. Here was the true cave. The one he and the students had examined

so closely was merely a carefully constructed ruse. Shining the

light, Ackerman walked in the same direction as the opening in the cave

below. At about the same distance as where the one underneath led out,

Ackerman found a pile of rocks arranged to appear as if it were a natural

landslide. Later he could clear the rocks away and peer out over the

SACRED STONE 31

frozen wasteland, but for now, and for the last several centuries, the

rock slide had protected the secrets.

The ruse had tricked Ackerman, just as it was designed to do.

Turning away from the rock slide, Ackerman carefully bypassed

the hole in the floor, then stopped and dropped one end of the rope to the

floor. Carefully playing out the line, he headed down the corridor carrying

the flashlight above his head.

The walls were adorned with pictographs of men hunting, beasts

slain and ships on journeys to faraway lands. It was obvious to Ackerman

that many men for many years had toiled inside the cavern. The cave

widened and the light caught openings where, well preserved by the

cold, furs and hides lay upon sleeping pallets stacked one atop the other. They had been hacked from the rock and dirt as ancient bunk beds for

miners. He followed a passage alongside the sleeping area that featured

several short offshoots from the main cave toward an area darkened by

cooking fires. Long, rough-hewn tables, brought into the cave in pieces

and assembled on site, filled a dining hall with high ceilings. Sweeping

the light, Ackerman could see whale-oil reservoirs with wicks built into

the walls for light.

There was easily seating for a hundred men.

Ackerman sniffed the air and found it fresh. In fact, there was the

slightest of breezes. He began to theorize that Eric the Red's men must

have figured out how to bore vent holes and create a flow-through system

to rid the cave of bad air and odors. Farther past the dining hall was a

small room with angled rock troughs against the walls. The troughs

were filled with steaming water. Knowing these were crude toilets but

figuring over a thousand years had passed, Ackerman dipped his finger

into the water. The temperature was hot. They must have located a geothermal

stream and diverted it, Ackerman thought. A few feet farther

ahead, just past the crude toilets, a large pool sat elevated and spilled

down into the troughs. The baths.