Once past the portcullis, she stood up within the dim confines of the passage, trapped on the road. The arched tunnel ran about twenty paces. She hurried along, aware of the road as a sting in the air, an itch nagging at her flesh, but the holystone of the walls and the foundation absorbed some of the sting, and she moved fast, eager to get out. Overhead, the arched ceiling was cut by murder holes, slits where defenders could drop missiles and hot oil and other deadly things onto attackers below. The precautions seemed strange to her, since what was most deadly here, at the shore of a Pall, was the possibility of an outbreak of Spore. Here in the north there’d been no war for generations because of the presence of Far Boundary Pall. The Sea Wolves confined their raids to the far west, while the frontier war against the Blood Wolves raged in the outer east. There were occasional border skirmishes with brigands on the Tranquil Sea and the forest nations to the south, those that hadn’t been absorbed into the empire as outlying provinces. The heartland itself remained at peace.

There was a second portcullis at the other end of the tunnel, this one also raised and kept propped up on a stone. Crawling under, Elen emerged onto what was commonly called the port of entry. This wide plaza ran all the way to the edge of the Pall and was paved in holystone, in which Spore could get no grasp. On either side were inspection chambers and, more ominously, two large shrive-steel cages surrounding iron pillars, the burning ground for hapless Spore-corrupted people, or on the rare occasions when an aivur spy, passing as human, got caught by a keen-eyed warden.

Once past the tower, the road widened back to its usual two-wagon width, and its foundation rose, ramping up from ground height. Thus raised, the road met the edge of the Pall as a pier meets a languid sea. It continued on across the fog-like expanse as a causeway. Lampposts ran along the road out into the Pall. One of the jobs of Vigil-assigned wardens was to keep the lamps filled with oil and burning, day and night.

A figure knelt at the base of the road, where its foundation stones met the Pall. He had a hand in the mist, as if in shallows of water. He moved his hand through the Pall. An eerie, pale light followed his movements as he stirred the unmoving mist to create a swirl of current.

The haunt removed his hand from the Pall and rose to greet her. Embroidered eyes glimmered along the hem of his warden’s tabard, the mark of the all-seeing eye.