Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Caer is the road-warden who first comes to survey the newly-built house at the top of the col, back in its founding days. Procedural, careful, and fair, she has the authority to call it an illegal squatter's shelter — and she is also cold and tired the night she finds it warm. What she decides to write down about "a warm place with water" becomes the very first record that the col-house exists at all.
Brix is a young traveller who comes over the col burned out, his walking-party gone on ahead without him, and…
Fenwick is the mapmaker who crosses the col each spring and autumn — the col-house's newspaper and its window…
Hetty keeps the col-house supplied, hauling barley and stores up the pass twice a season and refusing, most…
Marga kept the col-house for the better part of a lifetime before Toll, and she is the one who took him in…
Oswyn is the founder — the road-builder who raised the col-house from a shepherd's ruined shelter and became…
Toll keeps the col-house — the highest, hardest, most necessary rest-house on the mountain road — and he…