The Watchtower Ruin
Public — The Ruin
Sixty years ago the watchtower burned in a single night. It was lightning, the parish record says, and nobody built it up again, for the vale had outgrown the need of it and no raider has come down the Ember in living memory. The shell still stands over the north bank, scorched from the ground to the beacon floor. Tam Seely grazes her goats in it, and she will sell a stranger cheese and an opinion. The stair is still sound, though the beacon floor above it is not.
For Corvin
To Corvin Ash
You saw that the stone was burned blackest at the foot of the stair, about the ground-floor door, and that the door stones there had cracked in the heat. Up on the beacon floor the scorch was only a thin brown.
Public — Next stop