The midnight hour arrived without the triumphant, singing resonance that had governed the valley of Harth for three hundred years.
Jon stood by the high oak counter in the taproom of the River Lantern, his boots laced, his heavy frieze coat buttoned to the throat against the damp cold that seeped between the foundation timbers. On the center board rested his closed ledger—the leather-bound volume wrapped in oiled pigskin, its pages balanced and ruled in black ink to mark the close of the second day of the cycle.
Through the heavy cedar shutters, the chimes of Saint Jude the Anchorite began to toll.
The first stroke was a dull, muffled thud that traveled through the freezing river mist like the blow of a wooden mallet on an unpitched cask.
CLANK.
The silver overtone was gone. The glorious, ringing sustain that had once carried five leagues down the water to the sheep folds of the lower marl died within two heartbeats, suffocated by the structural flaw in the bronze.
CLANK.
The second stroke.
