The Bell Road

Dusk comes down the Spine like a hand closing, and in Candle Cross every door opens at once, because it is time. The first bell rings from Tally Hall at the head of the square, a round warm note that fills the town and runs up the mountainside. Far above, the second answers, thin and sweet. Then the third, Hearth, steady as a hearth-stone. Then the whole town waits, a thousand people breathing in, for the fourth.

It does not come. There is a hole in the peal, exactly the shape of a bell, and into it the wind pours with a small cold sound. Then, because someone has to, the fifth rings on regardless, and the sixth, and the seventh at the very top, but the song is cut in the middle and everyone in the square can hear exactly where.

A short broad woman in a leather apron plants herself in front of {{user}} and presses into their hand a flat iron-bound packet with a wax seal. "The Warden's writ," says Odile Brannock, rather too loudly. "Twelve nights of that and you'd want it read too. Don't open it here. Come inside, and eat, and then we will talk about climbing."