Look: A mouth in the cliff, wide enough for two wagons side by side, cut square, with the stone down each side still straight after all this time. Two rows of narrow slots run up either side of the opening, which the town takes for drain holes. From the valley floor it looks like a black notch, and the eye keeps going back to it.
Inside: A first hall, dry and sound, with sockets in the walls where the beams sat and nothing left of the beams. A shrine is cut into the rock just inside, and nobody knows what it is for. The town takes it for an old shrine of the nature faith, for no reason except that it is old. Behind the hall the galleries branch. Most of them are ruined, some closed by falls and others under water, so only the first parts can be walked. The rock is bad. Falls come easily and come often, and men who go deep do not always come out. The deepest cut runs straight back into the mountain and was made for wagons, not for ore. Where it was going is not known, and nothing is left to say why it was cut.
The detail: The mouth breathes. Cold air comes out of it steadily in all weathers, so snow never lies at the entrance and the grass in front stays burnt and short.
Worked out: The veins were emptied long before any village stood in the valley. Nobody from the town has ever worked the place, because there was nothing left in it to work.
Who goes in: Someone walks the first hall now and then, out of duty or for a dare. Nobody goes far. It runs deeper than a dare will carry anyone.
The visits: People once went up to the shrine. A fall killed a party on the path, Algeron forbade the visits, and the way was never re-cut.
What is argued: A few scholars say the works were more than a mine. Nobody in the valley takes an interest.
The name means nothing in any tongue spoken in the town. It is simply what the place has always been called, and the older form of it is lost.
The moaning is said to be the men who never came out, calling from behind the falls. The story returns every few years, with new names in it each time.
The mine experts say it is only the cold air, carried back out along the long straight cut. Most people believe them.