For two months Noll Vey’s world had ended at the threshold stone of the eastern entry door as abruptly as if someone had sawed the mountain off outside the jamb.
Now, as the low harmonic chord rolled from the western postern to the eastern arch, the black stage curtain at the doorway simply dissolved.
Noll did not merely see the outer courtyard; he drank it through every wet mortar joint, frost-cracked curb, and buried culvert tile between the two cliff-side gates. In a single rushing breath of cold stone-sense, his awareness leaped fifty paces outward in every direction. He felt the three-foot snowbank piled against the ruined sheep-pen wall on the north parapet. He felt the deep, vaulted granite ribs of the garrison culvert bridge spanning the gorge below the west gate. He felt the iron-bound oak leaves of the main gatehouse arch, the rusted chain-windlass in the guard turret overhead, and the exact weight of Sergeant Berr’s mailed boots standing beside the entry pillar.
Across the main arch of the gatehouse, cut into the dressed grey lintel in clean, glowing white capitals that every pair of eyes in the yard could read against the dawn sky, the ledger stamped its seal:
