Tomas held the first octagonal slate disc in his broad, bandaged left palm, turning it toward the bright morning sun that slanted through the eastern gatehouse arch.
With his blunt right thumb, the grain carter traced the raised relief lines Noll Vey had pressed into the stone: the three granite spans of the west gorge culvert bridge, the sharp hairpin of the willow-staked switchback, the open west postern, the roped flagstone lane through the heated hall, the three mechanical drainage levers by the east gatehouse, and the winding town grade down toward Mere’s broken lower bridge. On the reverse side of the disc, in plain, deep-cut letters that could not rub off in a pocket full of horse-nails, stood two lines of text:
HOUSE OF OPEN DOORS — SAFE PASSAGE MAP TAP ARCH AND SPEAK TO CHECK LANE CLEARANCE
“And you’re telling me,” Tomas said, squinting up at the speaking seam above the eastern lintel while his breath plumed white in the crisp, post-storm air, “that if I hang this stone on the guide-post down by the broken bridge abutment, and a carter taps his thumb on the arch and asks whether a timber drag is coming down the hill, you can answer him from up here?”
